C.H.U.D.
One of the more interesting failures of the 80s horror scene, this little opus telling the tale of homeless people living under New York City who mutate into cannibal mutants suffers greatly from the struggles that went on behind the camera: The script was rewritten several times to the point that stars John Heard, Daniel Stern, and Christopher Curry wound up just adlibbing all their dialogue and basically making it up as they went along. That of course would be all well and good if the dialogue was actually FUNNY and CLEVER, but unfortunately it isn’t. What starts out to seemingly be a fun zombie flick degenerates into a overblown diatribe against government and big business, with WAY too much screen time spent explaining how the corporate bad guys dumped the toxic sludge into the sewers to cause this whole mess to begin with, and not nearly enough time on zombie-chomping fun. However, there are a few good gore bits (mostly aftermath) that keep the viewer awake at times, and the cast is uniformly likable. Very few actors of the decade possessed the easy charm that John Heard had, yet it’s amazing he didn’t get bigger roles and wound up in dreck like this; Daniel Stern (sporting a wicked afro) tries hard to be off-kilter with his liberal activist / homeless shelter guru, but ultimately the character falls flat, especially when he and Heard spend the last act running around the sewers and need to be saved; Kim Griest as Heard’s girlfriend is the epitome of 80s blonde fuckability, even when she gets saddled with a ridiculous and out of place abortion speech in order to make the film seem topical; really only Christopher Curry comes off badly, his police captain that nobody believes(!) tries to talk tough and be authoritative, but the actor is so wooden that you don’t really care about his character. What is nice to see, is the plethora of cameos from various character actors throughout, including Sam McMurray, Frankie Faison, and even a young John Goodman. The film commits its biggest sins in the final moments, as the title monsters don’t even become involved in the climax!! The film just kind of sputters out with its half-assed resolution (wouldn’t we rather see the main human baddie get eaten instead of shot??). Even a certain amount of bizarre moments throughout the film (like when a henchman eats a quarter), aren’t enough to save this film, an overrated cult classic that ironically spawned a more entertaining sequel…
5/10