Nudity: None
Gore: Low
Body count: Low
Review after the jump.
C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) is a heartwarming prequel to Home Alone. John Heard does a great job portraying a young Peter McAllister trying to make a living in New York City as a photographer. Daniel Stern plays Marv as a humanitarian running a soup kitchen, before he went down the path of robbery. The events that take place in this movie do a great job leading up to Home Alone and it's really nice to see where the Wet Bandits got their work ethic from.
SIKE, I wish it were.
C.H.U.D. opens up the movie with a brief scene of a woman walking her dog (in the middle of the street, at night, in the ghetto). As she walks past a manhole we see a monster's arm reach out and grab her. This is pretty much all the horror and monsters we get for the next 50 minutes. We do get a comical scene of a guy eating a quarter for no reason, though. During this 50 minutes, there are lengthy scenes of conversation that, while they further the plot, drag on for far too long.
There are many people in a particular Manhattan neighborhood that are going missing. Among the missing are homeless that live underground. Daniel Stern's character going searching for them in the sewers, which leads to him finding Geiger counters and other radiation-detection equipment. We soon learn that the
This is how I felt for the first 50 minutes.
This movie leaves way too much to the imagination, as far as deaths go. For instance, we get a nice cameo of a young John Goodman as a police officer going to a diner for a burger (and to hit on the waitress) - we see C.H.U.D. begin to attack the diner, but it cuts right away. A couple of scenes go by and we discover that everyone inside the diner was slaughtered. In another scene, a group of soldiers enter the sewers armed with machine guns and flameflowers - we never see them again. We only later find out that they were killed. Not sure how they couldn't manage to kill at least one of the C.H.U.D.
Speaking of head-scratching, this movie is filled with it's fair share of it. I already mentioned that we see this guy eat a quarter. This same guy also happens to carry around a padlock so he can lock people in places. Also, why is a soup-kitchen being operated in an abandoned building with a collapsing roof? Finally, why do drains spew out blood when prodded with a coat hanger?
Adding all of this up along with the cool scenes few and far between, and a very lackluster ending, leaves me wondering why this movie gets all of the praise it does. The first half is mostly boring character development/introduction and the second half really leaves too much to be desired.
I'm sure Ian (Baron Blood) is bound to be a little upset with my review.
4.5 out of 10 skulls
