C.H.U.D. II: Bud the CHUD (1989)

Did you enjoy the 1984 cult classic horror film C.H.U.D.? This movie about radioactive materials disposed of in the sewers turning New York City’s homeless population into Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers somehow fails to make a statement about the homeless or the environment. Still, it’s fine for what it is: a 1980s low budget horror flick filmed in gritty Manhattan. Somewhere, in the dark annals of time, someone decided to make a sequel, for reasons passing all understanding. C.H.U.D. was mutated, brought back from the dead, as C.H.U.D. II: Bud the CHUD. 

Released direct to video in 1989, the sequel has 99.9% nothing to do with the original movie. No New York, no homeless, no radioactive materials, no Underground even. The writer clearly had seen and ripped off 1985’s Return of the Living Dead, which was better in every single imaginable way, down to the tips of its toes. It also apes heavily from Romero’s Day of the Dead (which to be fair, Return did as well), also a much better film. The character of Bud the CHUD is played by Gerritt Graham, who was excellent as dim-witted rock star Beef in Brian De Palma’s horror musical Phantom of the Paradise, another vastly superior film. Please, watch any of those films, watch any other film at all.

Noted scholar Rich Evans claims that the worst thing a bad movie can do is try to be funny. Rather than bad, this movie is aggressively boring. The hundred or so jokes in this aren’t cringe worthy, but they’re not funny either. They’re just… there. They’re like that green bean casserole at the Super Bowl party that takes up space on the counter in between all the foods you actually want. The cast knows it, too. They can barely be bothered to deliver the jokes much less sell them. Many has-been actors such as Larry Linville and Robert Vaughn* are in this, but much like the film’s unconvincing zombies, nobody’s buying the reanimation of their flagging careers. 

The screenwriter used a pseudonym, which is always a mark of quality. The main character is named Steve Williams, though, so I can kind of understand why. He’s played by Bryan Robbins, the current CEO of Paramount Pictures, who at the time was best known as being a snarky little punk on Head of the Class, a TV show nearly as forgotten as C.H.U.D. but not as forgotten as Bud the C.H.U.D. I also want to point out that June Lockhart, from Lassie and Lost in Space, plays an old lady who is killed by a bunch of zombie children in what must have been one day of shooting. She was too good for C.H.U.D. II, and provides the only believable scream on camera. Bianca Jagger, one of the top billed actors of the movie, appears only in the last thirty seconds of the film and has one line. The ending is so accidentally ambiguous that I wish they’d just cut it. No ending would have been more satisfying. 

CHUDs apparently take a single bite of their victims off screen, turning them into more CHUDs. The  science babble in this movie explains they’re mutants or something, and won’t stay frozen because they’re capable of raising their own body temperature to melt the ice. They have to be killed by freezing them and then electrocuting them. Science. Sure. I have now put more thought into this than the writer and director did.

This movie had a budget, sadly. There were lots of pyrotechnics, explosions, fires, car stunts, choreographed zombie dancing, and someone hired the band Wall of Voodoo. While suffering through this, I thought to myself “at least everyone seems to be having fun making this movie.” But then I reminded myself that they were paid. I first caught this movie on TV somewhere between my 9th and 10th birthday, and other than the “Thriller” music video, it was the first horror feature I had seen. I had nightmares about it, although now it’s unclear if I was frightened by the movie or the jokes. 

Is C.H.U.D. II: Bud the CHUD worth seeing? Yes, if you watch it at a dive bar with the sound turned off, only looking at the screen every five minutes or so. You can find a much better quality movie to watch in your life outside the bar. Was this review worth me having to navigate the Shift key while typing C.H.U.D. so many times? Absolutely not. And like the makers of C.H.U.D. II, I seem to have given up halfway through. 1 out of 5 sacs of blood.

*Anyone familiar with Robert Vaughn has to love the guy for turning a lackluster career into an amazingly bad one. He chews the scenery in this way harder than the CHUDs chew people, as is to be expected. Hopefully you, like me, can’t see him in any movie without thinking of the Pootie Tang line “…and Robert Vaughn.”

—Steve Roberts

BONUS TRACK: Read about the three scenes that scared young Steve and sort of confuse him now IF YOU DARE!