DVD : C.H.U.D. [1984] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Rating: - low budget gem
This is one of those low budget oddities that surfaced on home video in the eighties and developed a cult following among horror fans as well as people curious to see early performances from Daniel Stern and John Goodman. Mutant tramps living under new-york city are beggining to venture to the surface to find fresh meat, speading panic amongst the city's homeless population, a cop, a soup-kitchen worker and a professional photographer begin to investigate the mystery. Anchor bay's disc is great, with the best transfer I have seen yet and the film itself has been re-edited and presented as the director intended. The commentary track is both fun and informative and the disc also includes a superb easter egg. At the prices i've seen this go for on amazon this is an essential purchase for horror fans.

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Rating: - Good for a lazy afternoon/morning...
CHUD is a solid, fun movie, with a lot of things to recommend it. In terms of how the movie feels, although it's generally known as a horror movie there's very little scary about it so it falls into the 'sci-fi thriller' category along with Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Predator and the like. While those films are suitable for kids, aside from Predator anyhoo, CHUD is definitely not (of course the R rating and the fact that CHUD stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers probably tipped you off) and the admittedly few and far between instances of violence or gore are quite grim, so keep this one out of reach of the littlies, but otherwise this is a fun B Movie thriller that everyone will enjoy. The acting is solid throughout, and it's surprising given the time the movie was made (during the 80s slasher boom when most of the characters in movies got bumped off before they had a chance to speak let alone develop) but the writers have taken genuine pains to create characters who you actually care about and believe in. This movie reminded me of the kind of daft Sci-Fi I used to watch back in the 80s when I was a kid, so it instantly got accepted into my heart just for that, and it really is the kind of movie anybody should be able to watch, horror fan or not. The only things that stopped CHUD from getting 5 stars were that it seemed to end abruptly, and at times the movie didn't seem to know whether it was trying to be funny or frightening. Also the sound transfer on the DVD is a little haphazard, resulting in some of the script getting lost in the hubbub. Mind you, this is an old movie and one that's only just been reissued so the print had probably deteriorated a fair bit.

If you like CHUD and feel you'd want to check out similar stuff, try these: Return of the Living Dead(1 and 2, not 3), Repo Man, Humanoids from the Deep.