C.H.U.D
Crappy Heap of Ugly Diapers
George Cooper-Played by John Heard. He's a photographer who likes to take pictures of homeless people. As a result, he must help them fight mutated monsters in the sewer. Should've stuck with hot chicks, man.
Lauren-George's model girlfriend/wife.
Bosch-Captain of the police squad who must figure out why a bunch of homeless people are missing. Never thought mutated monsters would be the answer.
A.J Shepard-Played by Daniel Stern. A "reverend" that runs a soup kitchen for the homeless. Wonders why his clientile are dissappering and stumbles on a huge government conspiracy. Go figure.
Wilson-The EVIIIL head of the EPA or NRC or some other agency with initials. Is the cause of the whole mutated monster mess.
Murphy-A nosy reporter that panics easily. I would hope he'd never get sent to a war zone but he doesn't last too long so it don't hardly matter.
The Homeless People-Monster food. And like to be photographed.
The C.H.U.D's-Mutated monsters formed in the sewer and likes to eat people.
Here I sit, minutes after watching "C.H.U.D", trying to think of an opening paragraph and the only thing I can think of is "Home Alone", only because both John Heard and Daniel Stern appear in both. Oddly enough they didn't have any scenes together in "Home Alone" but I'm sure if they did there would've been some "C.H.U.D" inside joke said, shown, or done. Now that I got my opening paragraph written, I can get to the review.

George is a photographer who did a whole pictorial on homeless people. I'm not sure what magazine or newspaper wanted a pictorial on homeless people, I'm guessing it was a slow news month. As a result of this, George is totally in with the homeless crowd.

He also has a model girlfriend/wife and she has a photo shoot that he doesn't approve of. Something about appearing naked in a perfume ad or something. It was a small attempt to flesh out George's character but none of that matters, cause we're here to see monsters, dammit!
If this movie was made in the 50's or 60's, when rubber monsters running amok was in it's heyday, this might be a decent movie. It has most of the elements. A crazy guy who knows about the government conspiracy. A couple in love. A evil guy who'll stop at nothing to keep his secret. And monsters. Of course, the monsters would play a more prominent role which would make it much better. For a movie called "C.H.U.D" about monsters, there sure weren't a lot of monsters. Just homeless people, pregnant women, and government conspiracies. It's like if "The X-Files" was on Lifetime.
Ok now I really have to go to the hospital.
Read The Reviews!
"Hi, I'm John Heard. The next you hear from me, I'm gonna be the dad in 'Home Alone'. Then I'll kill myself on 'The Sopranos'. Oops, spoiler alert! LOL!"
"Hi, I'm Daniel Stern. Somehow this role got me the voiceover of Adult Kevin on 'The Wonder Years'. I'll later go on to work on 'Home Alone' getting set on fire. My life is fun."
This must be a period piece. Here, we have the first person ever to discover New York City.
Dawn of the Homeless. When there's no more room in boarding houses, the homeless shall walk the streets!
Just so happens that a monster hand poked up and snatched some lady and her little dog too. But this lady isn't the only disappearance in New York City. The police department is flooded with missing people reports. Bosch gets one from a guy he arrested once five years ago. He turns out to be A.J, who's now a Reverend that runs a soup kitchen for the homeless.

A.J tells Bosch that a lot of the regular bums that come for soup haven't been coming by for two weeks. The only person that has come up from the underground is Val, a big scary homeless guy who speaks in strange riddles or something. He spooks Bosch by jamming a big Crocodile Dundee knife in the table.

  Speaking of the homeless, a bag lady was arrested for trying to steal a cop's gun. Since George and the homeless are tight homies, she calls him to bail her out. And also since the homeless are now coming up missing, George is a suspect cause why would a normal guy be hanging out with the homeless?
Silk. Love. C.H.U.D. Obsession. By Calvin Klein.
"I could have sex with those boxes, but they don't pay much..."
Officer Jay Leno is on the case!
"Vietnam was bad. But the worse war I fought in was the Leprechaun/Unicorn war of '80! Bad times, man. Bad times."
So Bosch has George and the bag lady followed until they get to the sewers. The dude tailing them couldn't handle the smell and leaves. George follows the bag lady to her underground pad that she shares with her brother Victor and a huge dude named Hugo. Hey, didn't Victor Hugo write "Les Miserable"? And isn't that about the homeless? Pretty sneaky, sis.

Anyway, Victor shows George this huge thing that use to be his knee. George takes some pictures of it and returns home, where his girlfriend/wife tells him she's pregnant. They have a 20 minute discussion about if they should keep the kid or not. Jesus, is this the fucking Lifetime network? Get to the monsters already!

Bosch returns to A.J's kitchen to see if any of the people George took pictures of are the people that went missing. A.J says no, which leaves George in the clear. Then A.J decides to show Bosch some neat stuff he found in the sewer while leaving food out for "the shy homeless people that don't come up from the underground". The neat stuff turns out to be parts of a contamination suit, some device that measures nuclear waste, and a Geiger counter.

A.J then decides to lay a ton of backstory which would've been helpful to Bosch about 20 minutes ago before he almost got stabbed by Scary McVal. Apparently every year the EPA does some kind of evaluation in the sewers and it normally lasts a week. This year, they been down there for 4 weeks, during which all the people went missing.

Realizing they're onto some conspiracy of some kind, they decide to ask George if he saw anything in the sewer. But he and his pregnant gwife (get it? Girlfriend and wife put together? Better than Wirlfriend.) are out having a picnic. They get interrupted by Murphy, who tells George he must be important if cops are following him. Murphy wants to know what's going on but he's being a bully about it, so George tells him to fuck off.

A.J breaks into George's apartment and finds the pictures of Victor's missing knee and steals them. When George returns home, he thinks Murphy did it and agrees to meet with him to tell him what's up in exchange for the pictures.

Now that Bosch and A.J have the pictures, they decide to blow the lid on this whole thing. They arrange the meeting with the Chief of Police, the Commissioner, and Wilson, the head of the EPA or the NRC or the NRA or what-the-hell-ever it was.

At first Wilson is like "Nope, nothing's happening", but when A.J pulls out the pictures and all the neat stuff, Wilson's like "Ok, here's what's going on". Jeez, he's a horrible cover-upper. If he was in charge of Roswell, and some UFO nut went "I got this picture of a small round thing in the sky", Wilson would be showing him the crashed UFO and the alien they found. But then probably kill him after. Or at least gave him an anal probe. That's what he gets for being a UFO nut.

Sorry.

Wilson apparently is in charge of some project that involves putting some kind of poison or radioactive waste in the sewers of New York City. "Something" got into the poison waste and has now mutated into what Wilson named a "C.H.U.D", which stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller. But Wilson refuses to do anything about it, which pisses A.J off and threatens to go to the newspapers with the pictures. Wilson has some dorky thug that wears Lacoste shirts and cheesy shades follow him. He probably has a Member's Only jacket.

Ah, the 80's.
I think it's time to start feeding your dog.
If "Pulp Fiction" was made in the '80's, Jules and Vince would look like this.
We get a delightful scene where Lacoste Thug steals A.J's quarter before he makes a phone call and eats it. A.J is just like "Um, ok" and walks away slowly.

Wilson gets a call that the C.H.U.D was found dead. Bosch goes along for the autopsy and it is indeed some kind of mutated freak. But Wilson thinks it's the only one. Bosch doesn't think so and wants to kill them with fire.

So Wilson sends a team of EPA/NRCAwhatever guys down into the sewer to make sure there are no more and they run into Bosch's flamethrower team. They walk ten feet in the sewer when they're attacked. I guess there are more C.H.U.D's. Of course Wilson blames Dennis Mitchell.

Murphy shows up to George's meeting place and tells him that it was the cops, not he, who stole the pictures. George decides to show Murphy what's going on and takes him into the sewers. Murphy gets paranoid and starts waving a gun all over the place in the sewer. As they're about to turn a corner, a C.H.U.D attacks and kills Murphy. George panics and makes a run for it.

Lauren meanwhile is in the basement of her apartment looking at photographs. There's apparently some big ass door that leads to the sewer in this basement and Lauren decides to investigate for some dumbass reason. While down there, she finds Bosch's dead dog. She freaks out and runs back up to her apartment, where she calls the cops.

Wilson, wanting to clean up the mess he made, decides to flood the entire sewer system with gas, in hopes it'd kill all the C.H.U.D's. Bosch thinks this is a crazy idea and goes to A.J to warn him so he can get all his underground homeless buddies out.

A.J heads down into the sewer where he runs into Val. A.J, talking in riddles, lets Val know that the sewer is no longer safe and Val should go topside. As he's about to, he suddenly for no apparent reason, falls off the ladder and decides to die.

Turns out Mr.Lacoste Thug has closed the gate and I guess Val hit his head on it, which made him fall? It wasn't made too clear but let's go with that. A.J realizes that Wilson is responsible and is trying to kill A.J. But A.J knows the sewer's, man! He's the fifth Ninja Turtle! (I'm guessing if there was a 5th Ninja Turtle he'd be Van Gogh to stay with the painter theme. I'm such a TMNT dork.)

So in case you're keeping track, both Daniel Stern and John Heard is roaming the sewers of New York City. Hey! The sequel to "Home Alone" took place in NYC! This is getting weird...

Back to Lauren, she decides to take a shower. But a C.H.U.D has got her scent or something and is coming up through the sewer door in the basement. Seriously, why the fuck is there a sewer gate in the basement? Why would there ever need to be one in an apartment building? I wonder if our apartment building has a sewer entrance. Let me go find out.

Ok back. There's no sewer gate but there is a basement apartment. And the lady that lives there don't like visitors. I need to hurry up with this review, I gotta take a trip to the emergency room.

While in the shower, her shower drain backs up. Lauren decides to poke inside the drain with a hanger and for some retarded reason a large spray of blood splurts out at her. So what, was a C.H.U.D trying to come through the shower drain and she poked it's eye out or something? The hell?
Fact: Models do their best thinking in the bathroom. Normally it's while they're kneeling in front of the toilet though.
Reverse "Psycho".
So C.H.U.D's are just Sandpeople without their hoods?"
Luigi mourns the loss of Mario.
A.J stumbles on a group of C.H.U.D's eating something. He makes a noise and he makes a run for it.

Remember George? I kinda forgot about him but he's here, roaming around the sewer. He's trying to find Victor and the bag lady. He finds Hugo torn in half and Victor is mutated. George shoots him in the head, which makes me think they're zombies, but probably not. We got enough movies in the zombie genre, let's not add "C.H.U.D" to the mix.

Bag lady gets pissed that George shot her brother. She loves her dead mutated brother! She got ahold of George's gun and is about to shoot him. But A.J appears out of nowhere and simply shoves her and she...just falls over. And now she is stopped. Ok whatever, this movie is officially retarded.

To prove it's even more retarded, Lauren, after seeing a dead dog and having her shower drain spew blood at her, is simply getting dressed and arranging flowers in her apartment. I guess stuff like that is normal for her. Maybe the blood thing happens every day but she forgets then after it happens she goes "Oh, right, the shower shoots out blood when you poke it with a hanger. I forgot."

Downstairs, a C.H.U.D is banging on the basement door, which Lauren actually had the good sense to lock. Some kid is playing nearby and is just watching the door rattle. Hey kid, do me a favor. Open the door. Let him in.

Now that George and A.J have teamed up they're trying to find a way out before the gas flows through the city. But it might be a bit too late. At some diner, two cops come in (one of them played by a super young and skinny John Goodman!) and flirt with the waitress. While that was happening, some C.H.U.D's appeared and ate the diner customers. At least they did it at a diner. It only makes sense.

A.J and George find Wilson's poison pile and it's got CHUD written on it. But according to the box, CHUD stands for Contamination Hazardous Urban Disposal. So....it doesn't stand for Cannibalistic Humanoid whatever whatever? Make up your fuckin' mind, movie.

Since a bunch of diner patrons have died, Wilson orders that heavy trucks be placed on top of manhole covers throughout the city so no C.H.U.D's get out. Then he lets the gas rip. A.J and George stumble upon (there's a lot of stumble uponing in this movie) the camera equipment that Wilson sent down there with the flamethrower guys. They turn it on and just so happens a bored guy is watching the connecting monitors. Why he's still there, no clue.

Meanwhile Bosch answers the call from one of the Super Mario Brothers about a dead body. Turns out to be his wife. Wait, why is his wife in one part of the city and his dog in an other? Whatever. I got a lot to cover and this gunshot wound I got from the basement lady isn't healing itself.
I haven't figured out the John Goodman/Home Alone connection yet. But give me time. Give me time...
Man, they must sell good burgers there.
Eventually the C.H.U.D at George and Lauren's makes it way to her apartment and she puts every stick of furniture against the door. The cops show up to respond to her dead dog call but the C.H.U.D eats them. I'm guessing this building doesn't have a fire escape cause she stays in the apartment screaming her head off. Jeez, they moved to the one part of NYC that doesn't have anybody in it. Then again it's NYC they probably just ignored her screams.

The C.H.U.D breaks in and Lauren hides in George's darkroom. When the monster comes after her, she throws photo acid in it's face and goes to leave. But she has to move all the furniture she placed against the door. Wait. A big hulking mutated monster can get through that door but a skinny ass female model can't? I'm telling you, this movie is special ed.

Good thing George keeps samurai swords in the apartment. I bet Lauren disapproved of them when he got them and now look, she's using it to save her life. I should use that argument with my fiancee. "No really Felicia, if we keep a replica of the sword Uma used in 'Kill Bill' around, it might save your life some day!"

Anyway, Lauren beheads the monster and runs out of the building. She takes the cop car and drives off. I'm sure she was having a blast with the siren going.

Bosch makes it to the place the bored guy was that got A.J and George's message and tells them to go to a certain manhole and he'll move the truck and let them out. Bosch then runs back to the diner and asks for the keys but Wilson interferes and refuses to let him move the truck. Bosch threatens to tell the press where the boxes of CHUD poison and what CHUD really stands for. Wilson pulls out a gun but Bosch punches him and steals the keys.

A.J and George make it to the manhole Bosch told them to go to. I should mention that they haven't ran into any C.H.U.D's in awhile and don't seem to be threatened by them. Their main concern is being gassed to death. Maybe the C.H.U.D's will have a massive attack at the end.

Bosch makes it to the manhole and moves the truck, but Wilson shows up and shoots Bosch. Wilson gets in the truck and is about to run A.J and George over when Lauren shows up and tells them to look out! They jump out of the way in time but here comes Wilson, trying again. A.J grabs Bosch's gun and shoots Wilson. Then the most retarded thing to ever happen in this movie happens. And I'm serious when I say this.

The truck simply drives over the manhole and the entire truck just blows up like it was carrying a billion pounds of explosives. Everyone looks at this like it's normal and goes "phew". Bosch is still alive and A.J is happy about that, even strokes his hair. Wow, I think they're getting gay for each other. Hey, that's cool, whatever floats their boat or whatever. Hope Bosch loves homeless people.

George and Lauren kiss and...ending credits. Wait. What about the fucking C.H.U.D's?? Are they no longer a threat?? I mean Wilson was a bad guy sure, but there are fucking monsters underneath New York City! What about them? Did the truck exploding kill all of them suddenly? What the hell, man? What. The. Hell. Then again, there was a sequel. So I guess I'll have to see that to get my questions answered.
That's an awkward DVD case.
I swear these two screencaps were taken exactly one second apart.