| Product: |
C.H.U.D. (DVD) |
| Date: |
05.10.01 (231 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: see review
Disadvantages: see review
C.H.U.D. is an inexplicably well regarded movie in the horror genre. It is considered to be one of the classics ofthe 80s but for the life of me I can not see why. It seems to have all the elements which make a horror movie not worth watching and none of those which at least give it some sort of exploitation value, if nothing else to keep it interesting. C.H.U.D. is quite frankly boring.
It shouldn't be though, because the general premise is good playing on the fears and paranoia of people over those who rule them. CHUD tells us that the US government has been dumping nuclear waste down into sewage pipes for years and that this has had a horrific effect on the homeless and derelicts who live in the cavernous sprawling system. They have mutated into shambling monsters who sometimes rise up from the manhole covers to attack and feed off human flesh. Lovely. Our hero runs a soup kitchen and has noticed that his usual homeless clientel have been dwindling in numbers and decides to investigate uncovering the horrible truth.
CHUD is liek I said, not a good movie but it does have some good elements to it. Director David Cheek does know how to build suspense if nothing else and sometimes he does this superbly. At other times he misses the point completely and we are left looking at an opportunity missed. To take the opening scene, we get a woman walking her dog at night...a clawed hand reaches out from a manhole cover and pulls her in - 20 seconds in she is dead and gone. Where was the build up and the suspense? Then in the same movie we have a protracted scene which is very similar where you could cut the atmosphere with a knife it is so tense. The movie is full of this kind of annoying inconsistency. The special effects are another. One moment we have some grotesque shambling monsters, very nasty looking, the next those same monsters are filmed badly and look like they have floppy rubber claws and light bulbs for eyes...arrghh!! Its frustrating, but
that what you get when you sit down to watch CHUD.
Other elements? Well the acting is quite bad as you would expect, but not THAT bad when compared to others in the genre, but that is not too much of a recommendation. The plot itself does tend to move on quite slowly at times and the gore level is pretty low when you consider the kind of movie around at the time went for all out gore and little else. The worst feature of all though is how the movie plays itself completely seriously. I mean, this is a movie about homeless people reaching out of manhole covers and grabbing people by the ankles and then gobbling them up - and we are not supposed to giggle once. The title of the movie ought to lend itself to a piece of camp nonsense(who says it didn't - not me) yet its all played with a straight face? It couldn't be any more hokey but its all played for real and well it doesn't really work. Many horror fans will tell you that this is a classic horror movie and one which all genre fans should check out, but for me it was dsitinctly mediocre.
Rating: 3 stars if you are a fan of horror movies and looking for a genre fix, 1.5 stars if not, because there really isn't much of interest here for you.
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