DwC returns with another edition of Masterpiece Theater, once more analyzing the hidden depths in previously unheralded movies that just might be hidden masterpieces. This time around Masterpiece Theater goes deep, deep underground and examines Douglas Creek’s C.H.U.D. from 1984.
This stars John Heard, Daniel Stern, Christopher Curry, and Kim Griest. This analysis is of the C.H.U.D. Integral Cut, which contains significant differences from the theatrically released version of the film and, in DwC’s opinion, a far superior version of the film.
Be warned, Masterpiece Theater contains spoilers.
C.H.U.D.
When the number of missing persons cases skyrockets in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, Captain Bosch teams up with soup kitchen proprietor AJ “The Reverend” Shepherd to investigate.
With the aid of photographer George Cooper and his girlfriend, Lauren, they stumble upon a government conspiracy concerning the storage of nuclear waste under the city, which is poisoning the homeless living in the sewers and turning them into “cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers.”
As this army of bloodthirsty beasts grows and their food supply dwindles, they take to the surface in search of victims while our heroes fight to expose the conspiracy and stop the creatures. But it won’t be easy; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sent Wilson, who has total authority and will stop at nothing to keep the truth concealed, even if it means the deaths of hundreds of people.
When a disastrous plan to eliminate the subterranean threat is implemented, our heroes race to expose the NRC and defeat the chuds before Wilson destroys Soho and buries the evidence.
There’s a reason why movies like Death Wish, The Warriors, Escape From New York, and C.H.U.D. were being released every other week during the 70s and 80s: it’s because Manhattan Island was an open stink-hole teeming with rats, crime, poverty, and deplorable living conditions.
Very much like the New York City of today, but with far fewer hipster coffee shops or Blade Runner-esque billboards.
Couple this urban blight with rising government distrust over the recent Watergate Scandal, a moment in history when people began to realize the government was staffed with power-crazed lunatics who would happily burn down the country if it meant they could lord over the ashes, and you have a recipe for fascinating cinema.
While it may be hard to believe today, there was a time when people were angry about being treated like garbage by politicians, and these socio-political conditions provided endless inspiration for stinging social commentary.
Director Douglas Cheek and screenwriter Parnell Hall, working from a story idea by Shepard Abbott and receiving uncredited re-writes from stars Daniel Stern and Christopher Curry, tapped into this malaise and assembled a cast of some of the most talented actors of all time, crafting one of the greatest films ever made in the process.
After a pre-credit sequence in which a hapless woman (Laure Mattos, wife of costar Daniel Stern) and her dog get pulled into a manhole by a grotesque, beclawed hand, we are introduced to New York City circa 1984. It’s filthy, graffiti adorns every building, and mumbling bums shuffle to and fro, looking for spare change and something to eat. These scenes expertly capture the essence of the city and make it a character unto itself, a character that hasn’t bathed in months and whom you can practically smell from your couch.
From the window of his newly rented apartment, photographer George Cooper (Emmy Award nominee, John Heard) takes photos of the passing vagrants. He’s avoiding phone calls from a reporter who needs pictures for a story and arguing with his girlfriend, Lauren (Kim Griest), about an upcoming photo shoot and the jewelry he left in the basement but won’t go get.
When Lauren goes for the jewelry, she hears some weird noises coming from a hatch in the basement floor. On the sidewalk outside, her landlord, Francine (Brenda Currin), gets the scare of her life when a pile of boxes seemingly explodes in front of her. When she goes in for a closer look, she sees an open manhole with blood all over the place and a bottle of cheap booze sitting by the opening.
At the police station down the street, Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) is informed of yet another missing person. He calls Chief O’Brien (Joseph Jackson Award nominee for best actor, Eddie Jones) and tells him he can no longer keep quiet about the missing people despite his orders. He then asks Officer Sanderson (Cordis Heard, sister of costar John Heard) for all the missing persons reports from the area and becomes visibly agitated when she tells him how many there have been.
He recognizes the name of a man who reported some of these and wonders if it’s the same guy he once arrested. Before leaving to question this man, and after he runs into a freelance reporter, Murphy (JC Quinn), he walks in on the interrogation of Mrs. Monroe (Ruth Maleczech), a bag lady who tried to steal a gun from Officer Crespi (Two-time Drama Logue winner, Sam McMurray).
With her one phone call, she dials George Cooper, who gets her hilariously profane message while doing a photo shoot for a perfume ad with Lauren. He was pretty pissy about the job to begin with, but when he hears Mrs. Monroe’s message, he leaves immediately to bail her out.
Captain Bosch arrives at the soup kitchen run by AJ “The Reverend” Shepherd (Daniel Stern) to ask him a few questions about the people he reported missing. This is the man Bosch once arrested, and AJ is none too pleased to see him, nor is he impressed that Bosch is now a captain.
There’s tension between the two, but AJ obliges. He reported twelve people missing, all regulars at his soup kitchen, over the last two weeks. But, AJ explains, it’s only those who live underground that have gone missing. The only one still coming up for food is Val (Graham Beckel).
AJ warns Bosch to tread lightly, as Val is a pretty big dude and looks a bit unstable. When questioned, he guards his sandwich and starts going on about Gog, Magog, and multi-eyed creatures sitting on thrones. Bosch asks if he’s talking about his friends, which is even nuttier than whatever Val was going on about. Val glares at Bosch and declares:
“I know your work! You go by the name of being alive, and you are DEAD!”
Bosch, not liking Val’s attitude, leans in and starts to get tough, but Val whips out a big fuckin’ shiv and plunges it into the table, the hand holding it trembling with a mixture of fear, rage, and insanity:
“They… have the power… to shut… the sky!”
It’s a chilling exchange, and Bosch has had enough of this madness, so he heads back to the station where Cooper has arrived to bail out Mrs. Monroe.
After Cooper posts her bail, Bosch instructs undercover Officer Jackson (Gene O’Neill) to follow them. Cooper asks why she wants a gun, but she tells him it’s not for her, it’s for Victor (Bill Raymond, who would later work with Steven Spielberg in Lincoln and star as ‘The Greek’ in season 2 of HBO’s The Wire).
When they head into the sewers, Jackson takes one whiff of the place, and that’s it for him:
“Sorry Bosch, I lost ‘em.”
As the pair get further underground, Cooper asks why she and Victor can’t live in a cardboard box like normal homeless people. The atmosphere is excellent, and the score, sounding like industrial machinery humming rhythmically, sets the mood brilliantly. When they climb a ladder and round a bend, Hugo (Rocco Siclari) jumps out and nearly brains Cooper with a table leg.
Mrs. Monroe calms this fella down by reminding him that Cooper is the man who once took his picture. Cooper knows these folks from a photo exposé he did on the homeless in New York City, which featured Hugo, Mrs. Monroe, and her brother, Victor, who is wounded and delirious with fever. Cooper asks him why he needs a gun, to which Victor replies:
“To shoot the ugly fuckers!”
This is a rather startling statement, considering where Victor lives and who his neighbors are.
Mrs. Monroe assures Cooper it’s just the fever talking, so he gets in there to examine the wound on Victor’s leg. He slowly peels back the filthy bandage and… Wowser! There’s a huge chunk of flesh missing from his leg, with muscle tissue and bone exposed.
C.H.U.D. isn’t a very gory film, but when it does get to the red stuff, the makeup effects by John Caglione Jr. are incredibly realistic.
Bosch returns to the soup kitchen to ask more questions about Cooper and Mrs. Monroe, making AJ very suspicious. He wants to know why, after two weeks of nothing, he suddenly gets two visits from a police captain in one day and antagonizes Bosch:
“We lose somebody important down there, like the mayor… or your MOM?”
To which Bosch dejectedly responds…
“My wife.”
AJ, feeling like a dickhead now, asks when it happened and why Bosch didn’t tell him. That woman walking her dog at the beginning of the film: Mrs. Bosch.
They look at some pictures, and AJ identifies Victor’s gang. Now AJ has some questions of his own, namely about the EPA probe going on in the sewers. Bosch explains that it’s routinely done every year. AJ knows this, but this year, it’s been going on for four weeks as opposed to the typical two, and it’s still going on. They head into the sewer through a hole in the wall of the basement, where AJ shows him the EPA gear he found and describes the inquiries he made about it.
The people he spoke to became anxious, wanting to know who he was and who he’d been talking to. When they find a Geiger counter, Bosch turns it on, and to their horror, it immediately goes into the red. In the distance, an inhuman, blood-curdling shriek lets loose.
Cooper returns to his apartment, where Lauren is anxious to talk to him. He’s a bit distracted, however, so she just lets loose with the news: she’s pregnant. They discuss abortion before finally deciding to have the baby while outside, a lost man (Peter Michael Goeltz) and his granddaughter get in a phone booth to call for directions.
The little girl sees a CHUD come up out of the manhole and tries to warn Pea-Pop, but it’s too late; it drags him off as she looks on in shock.
The next morning, Bosch bursts into the station with a renewed sense of purpose. He sees the child from the night before, and Officer Crespi tells him she’s hysterical, that she says a monster came out of the sewer and ate her grandfather. Bosch doesn’t think she’s lying.
He orders Sanderson to station two men on every corner of the neighborhood and to get Chief O’Brien on the phone; then, he posts an APB for his missing wife.
When he gets the chief on the phone, he tells him he’s not keeping quiet any longer. He demands a meeting with the Commissioner and someone from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and if the Commissioner doesn’t show up, he’s gonna read all about his involvement in the NRC cover-up in the morning paper. Boom.
Bosch is getting shit done today.
He picks up AJ and goes to Cooper’s for a chat, but Cooper isn’t there. Bosch then does what any police captain would do and lets AJ break into the apartment to steal some of Cooper’s pictures. Then they’re off to the meeting. Seated at the table are Chief O’Brien, the Commissioner (John Ramsay), and an official from the NRC, Wilson (Tony Award nominee George Martin).
Martin is such an excellent actor you can tell his character is an asshole before he says a word.
Bosch explains that he was ordered to turn a blind eye to the disappearances in his precinct, but he can no longer do that because he believes these people were murdered. He also believes that these murders are related to the ongoing NRC probe. As he’s laughed at by Wilson and the Commissioner, AJ pulls out a boot belonging to the NRC, drawing the ire of the Commissioner, who demands to know who this man is.
Wilson finds more humor in the situation when Bosch tells them AJ runs a soup kitchen. As Bosch is mocked, AJ gets fed up, tells the group he’s wasting his time and that he’ll take his pictures elsewhere. Now that AJ has their attention, he passes the photos of Victor around the table, describing him as a man who saw a monster.
He follows this with pictures of the massive bite wound on Victor’s leg and challenges Wilson to provide a sass-mouth explanation for that, then presents an ultimatum: they can discuss this, or he’ll happily discuss it with the press. A slight, shit-eating grin spreads across Bosch’s face.
Meanwhile, Cooper and Lauren are in Central Park talking about raising a kid when Murphy approaches. He introduces himself and tells Cooper that the police were following him and Mrs. Monroe. Murphy is desperate for a story, and he thinks Cooper is the way to get it, so he asks for help and tells him about the presence of the NRC, but Cooper refuses and leaves in a cab with Lauren.
Back at the meeting, the Commissioner tells them that what he’s about to say goes no further than the room. The EPA detected elevated levels of radiation in the sewers around the area of Bosch’s precinct. Wilson explains that the NRC was transporting radioactive waste through the sewers, but it was halted by an injunction and can’t be moved while the case is appealed.
AJ smells bullshit and wants to know how this relates to the disappearances. The Commissioner interrupts, but AJ politely tells him to eat it. Wilson dismisses him by saying he won’t entertain the notion of monsters. AJ loses his cool, but then it hits him. He points at Wilson:
“You saw it! You saw the monster.”
He once again threatens to go to the press, but Wilson calls his bluff. The following exchange is glorious. He tells O’Brien that at least he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut, calls the Commissioner a fool, then gets about an inch from Wilson’s face, declaring:
“And you, sir, are a LIAR!”
He gathers his pictures and the bag of NRC gear before storming out. In his tirade, he threw Wilson’s briefcase on the floor, emptying the contents, while Wilson makes a phone call describing AJ and that they know what to do. Bosch picks up a document from the briefcase and wants answers, particularly what C.H.U.D. stands for. Just then, Wilson gets a phone call that lifts his spirits. He hangs up and addresses the group:
“Two gas workers just found it. A cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller… a chud.”
Outside, AJ puts a quarter into the payphone, but Wilson’s goon (John Bedford Lloyd, who would go on to play Frank Cosgrove in the Netflix series Ozark) hits the lever, ejects the coin, and then swallows the fuckin’ thing. AJ doesn’t know what the hell that was, so he gets his ass out of there.
At NRC headquarters, Bosch, Wilson, the Commissioner, and Chief O’Brien are shown the dead chud. As far as Wilson is concerned, the ordeal is finished, so he’s sending in a cleanup team. Bosch isn’t buying it though; he thinks there are more chuds, so he’s sending in his team armed with flamethrowers. Wilson forbids it, and Bosch is informed by the Commissioner that Wilson is in charge.
As Wilson’s team heads into the sewer, they’re greeted by Bosch’s men who… Yeah, damn, Bosch wasn’t fuckin’ around, those guys have flamethrowers. Wilson sees them via his team’s camera gear and hits the roof. He orders Bosch to get them out of there, who shades him with one of the greatest, thinly veiled ‘fuck you’ responses ever put on film:
“I’m busy, Wilson.”
After Bosch makes it clear his guys aren’t going anywhere, they proceed.
In a brilliant scene that proves sometimes less is more, the men head down a tunnel where they’re attacked by chuds. We hear nothing but screams and see nothing but flames, the horrified expressions on the faces of Bosch and Wilson tell us all we need to know. The Commissioner wants to go public after seeing the footage, but Wilson won’t allow it. He wants to use gas to asphyxiate the chuds, after all:
“Who’s going to get hurt?”
Cooper is contemplating Murphy’s offer when he discovers his pictures have been stolen. Suspecting Murphy, he calls him and sets a meeting at a nearby subway station. Cooper demands the pictures, but Murphy tells him the cops took them because there’s a cover-up going on, and the only way to get to the bottom of it is to enter the sewers…
AJ arrives at the soup kitchen, where he shits himself after Bosch jump-scares his ass. After AJ changes his shorts, Bosch explains everything: the chuds, the attack in the sewer, and the plan to kill the beasts with gas. AJ, obviously a big John Carpenter fan, responds accordingly:
“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding.”
Bosch offers him a lift, as the kitchen won’t be safe when they start the gas, but AJ refuses.
A few blocks away, Wilson has the gas shut off in preparation to divert it into the sewers. When the pilot light on AJ’s stove goes out, he heads into the sewer, where he finds Val and convinces him to leave. As Val is climbing up the ladder, Wilson’s goon slams the hatch on Val’s head, killing him, then he locks AJ in.
Cooper and Murphy aren’t having much luck either. When Murphy hears a noise, he pulls his gun, peeks into a tunnel, and… It’s a chud!
It drags him into the darkness while Cooper makes a break for it. In a different part of the sewer, AJ is creeping along an elevated ledge and spots all the chuds gathered below, almost like they’re worshipping the vats of toxic waste.
He knocks a stone off the ledge and alerts the chuds, who give chase.
Cut to Lauren in the basement of her apartment building, where she finds the mangled corpse of Mrs. Bosch’s dog.
She calls the police to report it and hops in the shower while waiting for them, but the drain is clogged. Note the anti-abortion metaphor here as a pregnant Lauren tries to clear the blockage with a coat hanger, only to have a fountain of blood spray up out of the drain. Subtle.
On the banks of the Hudson River, Bosch and some police officers are responding to a report of a human head. They go to retrieve it and… Jesus! It’s Bosch’s wife! They get him out of there as quickly as possible, but instead of going home, he does what any one of us would do: belly up to the bar to get sauced.
Back at Lauren’s, a chud finds its way out of the hatch in the cellar and breaks through the basement door.
At a diner down the road, two police officers (Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner John Goodman and Emmy Award winner Jay Thomas) sit down for something to eat and to harass the waitress (Emmy Award nominee Hallie Foote. Even the Goddamned extras in this film were nominated for awards).
Officer John Goodman hears a noise at the window and turns to check it out. It’s an army of chuds, who are out of their element, and they have the diner surrounded. The patrons enter a world of pain when the chuds go over the line and break through the windows to a symphony of screams, killing everyone and leaving the place covered in blood, inside and out. Within minutes, there is a huge crowd gathered, and the press is everywhere, causing Wilson to become even more unhinged.
He orders the Commissioner to start pumping gas and for the local police to block the manholes by parking box trucks on them. He also warns them to watch the potholes because the trucks have been rigged to explode on impact from below, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when flammable gas is flooding the sewer system. I wonder if this will factor into the climax of the film?
Cooper is still trying to find his way out of the sewer when he realizes he’s outside the quarters of Victor, Mrs. Monroe, and Hugo. He goes to see if they’re alright, but when he turns the corner, he stumbles upon the corpse of Hugo, the lower half of his body entirely eaten away. It’s awesome because you can see his spine and pelvis.
Victor is crouched in the corner, apparently alive. Cooper checks on him, but he’s in the early stages of chud-hood and attacks Cooper, who shoots Victor in the throat, leaving one gnarly-ass neck wound.
Just when he thinks he’s safe, Mrs. Monroe charges in and tries to club him for killing her brother. That’ll teach him to help the homeless! Just as she’s about to bash his brains in, AJ shows up and punches her in the back of the head, knocking her out. He helps Cooper up and introduces himself. Cooper recognizes him:
“You’re from the soup kitchen.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God they deliver.”
Up top, a shit-faced Captain Bosch drives up to the scene of the diner massacre and confronts Wilson, loudly blaming him for the deaths of everyone, including his wife.
He’s escorted away while the Commissioner gives a bogus statement to a reporter (Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival award winner for best actor and frequent Coen Bros. collaborator, Jon Polito), blaming the carnage on a gas explosion.
The police then arrive at Lauren’s apartment to save the day, where they are instantly killed by the chud. Lauren hears the commotion, peaks out the door, and is spotted by the beast.
AJ and Cooper find a manhole, but they can’t get out because of the truck parked on it. As they make their way to another exit, they find a mountain of waste containers and discover what C.H.U.D. really means: Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal.
They also find the disembodied remains of the teams sent in by Bosch and Wilson. AJ sees the camera, takes the mic set off a decapitated head, and shouts for help. They reach a technician and tell him to get Captain Bosch on the line. Bosch tells them Wilson started the gas and where to go to escape, but first, AJ wants to tell him about C.H.U.D…
Lauren manages to lock the chud in Cooper’s darkroom, then grabs a sword and prepares to go all Kill Bill on its ass. The tension is unbearable as she waits by the door, but the chud bashes its way through the wall behind her, Kool-Aid man style. Now, I’m no expert on toxic waste, but apparently, it turns bones and spinal cords into elastic.
Utilizing this new skill that I can’t understand the evolutionary advantage of having, the chud stretches its neck to a length of about ten feet before Lauren chops its Goddamned head right off. Realizing her man is in grave danger, she heads to the diner where Bosch is looking for whoever has the keys to the truck parked on the manhole above AJ and Cooper.
Wilson tries to stop him, but Bosch knows about Wilson’s involvement in the conspiracy. The NRC and EPA weren’t transporting waste through the sewers; they had been storing it there for years, and Wilson was their garbage boy. Wilson, so committed to the cover-up he makes the mayor in Jaws look like Erin Brokovich, figures the best way to deal with this is to kill Bosch.
Before he can do it, Bosch delivers a right cross and knocks his ass out cold as Lauren shows up looking for Cooper. All of them converge on the manhole under which Cooper and AJ are trapped.
Bosch moves the truck so they can escape, but he’s shot by Wilson, who gets behind the wheel and tries to run everyone over. AJ checks on Bosch, grabs his gun and starts taking shots at Wilson as he returns for another attempt to publicly murder several people. AJ steadies his aim and lets loose. Direct hit on center mass. Wilson loses control of the truck and drives over the open manhole.
The explosion is glorious, killing Wilson, the chuds, and anyone else who happened to be in the sewer. Bosch praises AJ’s nice shooting before sadly passing away, while Lauren and Cooper embrace.
Most “message films” will opt for subtly. C.H.U.D. is not one of these films.
It takes great skill to effectively utilize subtext, but it takes even more skill to stick the theme of a film right in the viewer’s face; otherwise, it becomes a ham-handed, overbearing mess. See 90% of all films released in the last five years for examples of how not to do it.
Director Douglas Cheek walks this fine line so expertly that it’s shocking C.H.U.D. is his only feature film. The themes of rampant government corruption, appalling disregard for the impoverished, and the general apathy of authority are more relevant today than ever. Even Bosch was perfectly fine ignoring the problem until his wife disappeared and it directly impacted him.
Multiple times throughout the film, characters threaten to alert the press, and the expressions of those presented with this threat are telling. The higher the rank of the official, the greater lengths they’ll go to maintain the cover-up. Wilson, having the most authority, is willing to kill several people and go to prison to protect The Narrative.
He says as much when Bosch asks how he’ll explain murdering a police captain. Wilson’s answer:
“I don’t know, but I can’t let that story get out!”
This is serious, thought-provoking material, elevated by stellar performances from the cast, most of whom went on to have long, successful careers in Hollywood. The groundbreaking electronic score by Martin Cooper and David Hughes was so influential that physical copies were sought by collectors for years.
When Chicago-based Wax Trax Records released it on vinyl in 2015, it sold out immediately. While not a success in theaters, C.H.U.D. was an immediate hit on VHS and continues to influence not only pop culture but the government as well, as the attention it generated towards homelessness and urban decay is directly responsible for the attempt to clean up New York City.
That attempt failed because all the pretty lights in the world can’t cover the stench of urine and rotting garbage, but at least they made an effort. So, the next time you’re drinking a fifteen-dollar latte under the buzzing neon lights of Times Square, thank C.H.U.D.
10 mutant hobos out of 10
-DwC