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Hey kids! It's C.H.U.D.! That movie you totally know exists but don't know much beyond that! Let's solve that problem right now! Oh wow, no menu on this DVD. Just bam, Andrew Bonime Presents some intimidating 80s drum machine sounds! Then we've got some lady walking her dog down a street that reminds me of something, possibly Little Shop of Horrors, over to a steaming manhole. Suddenly, it's moved aside as a CHUD grabs her ankle and yanks her to her doom. You know it's a CHUD because the title of the movie pops up right then so it's pretty much labelled. Would be nice if they'd gone all Road Runner cartoon with it. Anyway, Bonime is a funny name.
The next day, a street cleaner removes her shoe from the middle of the road, as some bums mill about, one of whom kinda looks like an old Jim Carey. Some dork, who may be our protagonist, takes some artsy pictures of the bums from his apartment. His boss calls, the answering machine gets it, he talks back anyway. His wife is also bugging him to do work. Apparently she's a model. He, obviously, is a photographer. So, yeah. We can go ahead and move on to the actual movie any time now. Or we can drag this out even more by have them talk to the neighbors. And poke around in the basement for jewelry. Oh, well at least the basement has a trap door leading to the sewers in it, that's something.
Here's something too! Neighbor lady is wandering over to some cardboard boxes piled up. Hmm? It's just a box. Well, OK, fine. It's several boxes, and a bloody hole leading underground. Oh, here's some cops talking about filing Kirby under missing persons. So I guess Kirby was eaten by CHUDs. Which is scary what with not having a character I'm aware of so far named Kirby. They don't mean Kirby Kirby do they? So yeah, here's a reporter pestering the cops. C.H.U.D.! Constantly bringing you new characters who aren't in any way interesting! Here's another one! It's Almost Rob Schneider running a soup kitchen! Oh wow! He seems to actually be advancing the plot! He says all his normal street bums are still around, but the ones who climb up from the underground sewer maze his basement connects to all seem to have disappeared. Except for this guy. He's angry and overdramatic. The underground bums are also arming themselves. You know. To fight off CHUDs. Also, all this business with homeless people having to fight off monsters is reminding me of Neverwhere. Neil Gaiman's Magical Bum Novel. They made a mini-series out of that. It was utterly unwatchable.
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Anyway, I'm surprised. One of our many drawn out filler scenes starting this movie off was Photo Joe here getting all irritated with his wife that they were doing a nude photo shoot for a perfume ad. I was totally expecting that to lead into the oddly consistent phenomenon that is Boobs By Paragraph Three, but no! Photo Joe takes the camera and leaves at the last minute to go and try to maybe advance the plot! Of course, before he can get much more established than one of his bum friends got bit by something, we cut back over to some other characters attempting to do some more foreshadowing of what we already totally know because the movie frelling started right off by SHOWING that sewer mutants are eating people. It's like if Soylent Green's opening shot was a big close-up on a nutritional facts label that was just "People, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Natural Flavoring" and then tried to continue on building up towards the shocking twist ending. Or if The Sixth Sense started right off by showing how Bruce Willis dies... oh wait, that IS how it started. Well, you know, if they were more obvious about it. In any case, Cop and Soup Kitchen Guy head into the sewer maze, find a geiger counter which is pretty dang geigery, and then hear a scary noise. Naturally, as something interesting is threatening to happen, we compulsively cut away.
Model Wife is pregnant it seems. She's also officially passed on that open invite for gratuitous nudity. And there went another one as they just blinked over a sex scene! I appreciate this kind of tastefulness, but you know what I appreciate more? Movies which engage my interest by actually devoting screen time to scenes that aren't all total filler and foreshadowing of stuff we already know. Ah, here we go, finally. Some random businessman and his weird kid are walking down the street, apparently get lost, and stop to use a pay phone. Oh, I stand corrected, weird grandkid. While he's chatting away, a CHUD very gradually gets around to opening the nearby manhole, strolling over, going RAR! and snatching him away. Weird kid doesn't say anything the whole time, which would suggest to me that she's mute, but we then talk to cops talking about how she told them a crazy story so, I guess she just couldn't be bothered to act. The person playing the kid I mean, but I suppose by extension, the character too.
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Meanwhile, Cop and Soupy go to talk to the nuclear regulatory commission. EXCITING! Cop goes OK, there's totally a radioactive monster, or race thereof, eating people. Commissioner says BOOORING! Soupy shows pictures of bums with monster bites. How will the government cover up types react to that? We don't get to find out, because it is urgently important that we cut away to Camera Joe and Model Wife having a picnic! Oh hey, here's Reporter coming to talk to them. Perhaps he'll say something to advance the plot! I'm kidding of course. No, as soon as he threatens to do so, we cut back to the commission. They're about to explain something, so quick! Back to the park! This is getting tricky. All our characters are split into just two groups, both of which are trying to actually advance the plot. It takes some really tricky cutting to make sure it doesn't actually happen. Eventually, Camera Joe flees the plot, and Soupy gives up and goes home. Cop though gets bored enough to just kinda yoink a government dude's file, flip it open, and ask what CHUD stands for. The answer of course, which I think we all already knew, is Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller. So yeah, they totally found a dead sewer monster, so, hey, problem solved, coverup time. Cop suggests having a bunch of guys poke around with flame throwers to make sure there aren't more. This is odd since A- we're officially establishing that these are just hideously mutated people, so, you know, killing'em on sight is wrong, and B- Uh... movie? You don't want to use a flame thrower in a sewer. There's kind of a lot of, you know, flammable gases? Like from the gas leak you just specifically mentioned killed that dead CHUD? Anyway, flamethrower no kill CHUD. Government dudes just go, eh, we'll just gas'em. Cop says but gas is dangerous! Uh, yes Cop. Yes it is. That's what I was just saying.
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So Cop tells Soupy what's up, and Reporter convinces Camera Joe to come on down to get some first hand experience. So, we all go down to have proper monster fighting experience, right? No! That would be interesting! Instead Soupy starts making dinner and the government types discuss that sewer gas angle again. Oh, but these run together! Rerouted gas lines mean Soupy can't get his stove lit! Oh no! Now there will be no soup! Soupy heads underground to warn his underground friend about the impending horror, and... some random jerk locks the door behind him. Meanwhile, Reporter gets eaten by a CHUD. Then Soupy finds a whole cluster of CHUDs. Then Model Wife LOOKS THROUGH OLD PHOTO ALBUMS! Thrilling! Eventually though she just gets so completely bored that she decides to crawl into the basement sewer hole for... reasons that are completely beyond me. I guess she somehow dropped a photo album down there? Anyway, she goes to retrieve it and discovers the looming form of... a small dog which has been hanged. That's... totally random. Meanwhile, some other cops take Cop to see a dead body down by the docks, and it turns out to be his wife. Whoops. Anyway, don't you love how tightly focused this movie is?
So... OK, that was Cop's wife who was killed when the movie started. Model Wire forgot to lock the basement sewer hatch back up, and decides to go take a shower, so, you can kinda guess what's coming here. Unless you guessed nudity, because again, we're above that. Oh. OK. That uh... that wasn't my guess either. She notices a clog in the drain, goes to pry the offending hair ball up with a coat hanger, and is rewarded with a blood geyser. Suddenly, we cut away to a totally random cameo by John Goodman as a cop! Then after 2 seconds of oh hey, I know that guy, we show another CHUD crawling out of a random manhole. Back to random famous cop though. Oh! Lots of CHUDs are coming out of the sewers, and BOY do they hate windows! Or famous cameo diner patrons. Here's a CHUD pounding on the door to Camera Joe's... apartment? The Basement thereof? ÊNeighbor Kid is playing by it, but is called for dinner before it gets broken down.
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So anyway, we are now... let's see... 75 minutes into the movie and FINALLY the plot is actually starting. There's CHUDs out on the street and in public knowledge now, so the police are getting all mobilized, and Camera Joe discovers, by way of his bitten bum friend, that CHUDism is contagious. He also finally actually meets Soupy, who rescues him... which is kinda weird because Soupy totally had the pictures he took of him when he was meeting with the commission there. Apparently Cop stole them at some point or something. Oh, and Model Wife is FINALLY getting menaced by that CHUD she let in forever ago. So she's barricading her door and trying to call the cops, but the phone line has been cut. Which is... kinda baffling, because it clearly hadn't been in her apartment yet, and wouldn't be smart enough to do that. Maybe Camera Joe did it because he was sick of the phone always ringing? He could have just as easily unplugged it. Cops come to investigate the dead dog she called about, dorkily wander in through the broken down door without paying attention, and are grabbed by the necks by a CHUD. One hand for each neck. So, we can totally dismiss them as dead, because, you know, this is a bad movie.
Camera Joe and Soupy find a whole bunch of... radioactive waste... cardboard boxes, stashed underground. Which are actually labelled C.H.U.D. So uh... this is the T-Virus then? People are being turned into monsters by something that was intentionally designed to turn people into monsters? Which they were just storing in leaky cardboard boxes in the sewers of New York? Yeah, I can totally buy that. Oh, and they find a camera and headset off the flame thrower guys to use to call for help. Meanwhile in a... very very confusing scene, as Model Wife attempts to climb out her window, the CHUD outside bashes the door in, then kind of... accidentally slams it shut in a fashion that re-stacks all the stuff that was blocking it. So uh... yeah. Model Wife hides in the dark room (photographer husband and all), splashes some developing fluid in the CHUD's face, then runs over and grabs a cavalry sword down off the wall. Uh. OK, if you had a frelling sword handy, why was hiding in the closet and throwing a bucket of what's essentially just water your first notion on fighting back? CHUD isn't stunned for long, bursts out through the wall and then... stretches his neck out all E.T. style for some arbitrary reason. So she lops it off, easily enough. It rolls across the floor and bites her ankle before dying though so, yeah, she's doomed.
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Cop meanwhile confronts government dudes to say "I know what C.H.U.D. really stands for! It's not Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller! It's Chemical Hazard Urban Disposal! OK, I guess that's less stupid a thing for the boxes to be labelled with, but, that's a terrible attempt at a plot twist. So... Camera Joe and Soupy manage to get out of the sewers with the help of Cop, who is then shot by some crazy government guy, who hijacks the big ol' truck that was being used to keep the manhole cover weighed down to try to run everyone over. Soupy grabs Cop's gun, and after some failed attempts at shooting out tires, carefully takes aim at the insane driver, and kills him. He slumps over and the truck just kinda gets a tire stuck in the now open manhole. Then it explodes. I don't understand why it explodes. It is one of the most baffling things I have ever seen. But anyway, Model Wife is suddenly present, Camera Joe hugs her, badly bleeding Cop tells Soupy "Nice shot." and the movie spontaneously ends right there. Uh... did we actually resolve anything? Did the whole plan to floor the sewers with gas work? Was that even attempted? Did anyone bother to expose the whole arbitrary conspiracy causing this whole mess? Does Model Wife eventually turn into a CHUD herself because one bit her? Why was there a strangled dog in the basement? What about all the various other CHUDs that totally weren't in the sewers any more and were generally going on a rampage? I can understand not answering ALL of these questions, but... you really should get to one of them. Because that wasn't an ending. That was just stopping before the ending should logically begin.
Also, I am so totally going to have to try and actually capture a clip of that exploding truck bit. Hmm... my experimental attempt at video capturing is failing me, but, as with all things in life, there is a YouTube clip already available. Assuming that still exists by the time you read this, there is no context missing here. He shoots the guy, he hits some cardboard boxes, gently rolls to the manhole, and then tada, huge explosion. I can't recall ever seeing a more arbitrary vehicular explosion in a movie, and that's saying a LOT.
