Horror Film Review: C.H.U.D. (dir by Douglas Cheek)

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s something living under the streets of New York City.

That’s the basic idea behind 1984’s C.H.U.D., a film that opens with an upper class woman and her little dog being dragged into the sewers by a creature the reaches out of a manhole. People are disappearing all over the city but the authorities obviously aren’t revealing everything that they know. Even after the wife of NYPD Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) disappears, the city government doesn’t seem to be too eager to dig into what exactly is happening.

Instead, it falls to two activists. Photographer George Cooper (John Heard) specializes in taking picture of the homeless, especially the one who live underground in the New York subways. He’s like a well-groomed version of Larry Clark, I guess. Social activist A.J. “The Reverend” Shepherd (Daniel Stern) runs a homeless shelter and is convinced that something is preying on the most vulnerable citizens of New York. When the police won’t do their job, George and the Reverend step up!

So, what’s living in the sewers? Could it be that there actually are cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers out there? Everyone in New York City has heard the legends but, much like stories of the alligators in the Chicago sewers, most people chose not to believe them. Or could the disappearance have something to do with the cannisters labeled Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal that are being left in the sewers by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? Wilson (George Martin) of the NRC says that they would never purposefully mutate the people living underground but Wilson works for the government so who in their right mind is going to trust him?

C.H.U.D. is a horror film with a social conscience. It’s very much an 80s films because, while you have Shepherd running around and attacking everyone for not taking care of the most vulnerable members of society, the true villain is ultimately revealed to be the members of a regulatory agency. Instead of finding a safe way to get rid of their nuclear waste, they just found a sneaky way to abandon it all in New York and obviously, they assumed no one would care because …. well, it’s New York. Everyone in the country knows that New York City isn’t safe so who is going to notice a few underground monsters, right?

The idea behind C.H.U.D. has a lot of potential but the execution is a bit lackluster. For every good C.H.U.D. kill, there’s long passages where the story drags. Considering that Heard spent most of his career typecast as the type of authority figure who would dump nuclear waste under New York City, it’s actually kind of interesting to see him playing a sympathetic role here. Daniel Stern, on the other hand, is miscast and rather hyperactive as Shepherd. You really do want someone to tell him to calm down for a few minutes. Watching C.H.U.D., one gets the feeling that it’s a film with an identity crisis. Is it a horror film, an action flick, a work of social commentary, or a dark comedy? There’s no reason why it can’t be all four but C.H.U.D. just never really comes together. It ultimately feels more like a mix of several different films instead of being a film made with one clear and coherent vision.

In the end, Death Line remains the film to see about underground cannibals.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.23 “The Bargain”

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, a woman gets more than she bargained for when she gives it all up for love.

Episode 2.23 “The Bargain”

(Dir by Tom Noonan, originally aired on May 27th, 1990)

Sarah (Kim Greist) is a lonely woman who owns a used bookstore and who is in love with the man who appears to be her only customer, Joe (Kevin Geer). Joe is a TV repairman and he presents himself as being a typical blue collar guy, except for the fact that he’s always buying books of romantic poetry. He claims that they’re for a friend. Sarah recites a French poem for him. “I don’t speak French,” Joe replies.

Sarah feels that she’s too shy and plain to ever catch Joe’s eye. But then, while looking through an old magazine, she comes across an advertisement for a mask that will make all of her dreams come true. On a lark, Sarah calls the number. Soon, a horribly scarred woman named Carmen (Sharon Sharth) comes to the store. Carmen gives Sarah a mask but she says that there’s a price. First off, by putting on the mask, Sarah will be agreeing to give up all of her books to Carmen. Secondly, Sarah must never remove the mask. Sarah agrees.

The mask does make Sarah beautiful. Now going by the name of Mandy, she turns her empty bookstore into a video store. When Joe comes in, Mandy flirts with him but it turns out that Joe is angry about the bookstore going away and also, he was in love with Sarah. Mandy protests that she is Sarah, just for Carmen to show up with Sarah’s old face. Carmen has assumed Sarah’s identity and Joe is now in love with her. Desperate to prove her actual identity, the real Sarah rips off her mask, leaving her face just as disfigured as Carmen’s used to be.

As Sarah cries, Carmen tells her that the only she can ever fix her face is by selling the mask to someone else….

Featuring three strong performances and a storyline that’s a bit more nuanced than usual for this show, this is a pretty good episode of Monsters. Interestingly enough, it was directed by actor Tom Noonan, who has played a number of villains over the course of his career, including the memorable killer from Manhunter, in which he co-starred with Kim Greist. (Kevin Geer actually looks enough like Noonan that, at first, I thought Tom Noonan was pulling double duty as both director and star.) Noonan directs the episode like a particularly fast-paced play, emphasizing character and location over easy shocks. Not only do the characters seem real but so does Sarah’s beloved bookstore. The twist at the end is effective, even if it is a bit predictable.

Next week, we finish up season 2 of Monsters!

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 1.20 “Nobody Lives Forever”

Posted on January 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Sorry, it’s been a busy day and I’m a little bit medicated and, as a result, this review is posting later than expected. Fortunately, this week’s episode is also about someone struggling to keep up with their schedule. Read on!

Episode 1.20 “Nobody Lives Forever”

(Dir by Jim Johnston, originally aired on March 29th, 1985)

Nobody lives forever, the title tells us. That’s certainly true in 1980s Miami.

Three teenage punks have gone on a crime spree, killing innocent civilians and criminals alike. The punks (who are played by Frank Military, Michael Carmine, and Lionel Chute) are initially easy to laugh off because of how over the top they are. When they decide to go to the beach and rob a bookie, they start chanting, “Bookie! Bookie!” But, just because they’re ludicrous, that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. From the very first scene, they’re shooting at people and laughing like maniacs. As informant Izzy Moreno puts it, these are three guys who know that “they’re already dead.” They’ve got both the police and the mob (represented by Peter Friedman and a young Giancarlo Esposito) after them. They might as well go out in a blaze of glory.

What else would you expect from three people who drive this car?

Vice is after the teenagers but, for once, Sonny Crockett has got other things on his mind. Sonny is dating a wealthy architect named Brenda (Kim Greist) and he’s spending all of his free time at her mansion. Even when he’s working the streets, Sonny is thinking about Brenda. He misses a chance to capture the three teens because he is too busy talking to Brenda on the phone. Later, Tubbs gets severely beaten up because Brenda allowed Sonny to oversleep and Tubbs had to go on a stakeout alone.

Brenda asks Sonny if it’s true that a cop partnership is like a marriage and this episode certainly suggests it is and an obsessive one at that. All of the members of the Vice Squad get annoyed with Sonny for finding happiness off the grubby streets of Miami. Castillo doesn’t think Sonny is focused. Tubbs thinks that Sonny is losing his edge. Gina is upset that Sonny led her on earlier in the season. Switek and Zito …. well, they’re too busy reading comic books to really care much about Sonny’s problems.

There are several artfully composed shots of Sonny and Brenda floating in her pool and discussing how Sonny can go from having a gun pulled on him to relaxing at home without missing a beat. Don Johnson and Kim Greist had a lot of chemistry and it’s impossible not to feel bad when Sonny realizes that he can either be Brenda’s lover or he can be a cop but he can’t be both.

In the end, the punks end up getting gunned down by Vice and Sonny ends the best relationship he’s ever had. And Tubbs? He sits on the beach and plays his saxophone.

That’s life in Miami.

Insomnia File #36: Punchline (dir by David Seltzer)

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were up at 12 midnight and couldn’t get to sleep, you could have turned over to Movies TV and watched the 1988 film, Punchline.

Sally Field is Lilah, a New Jersey housewife who, in between getting her children ready for school and helping her husband (John Goodman) throw dinner parties, is pursuing a career as a stand-up comedian. Everyone says that she has a lot of stage presence but she struggles with her material. She’s even resorted to buying jokes from a seedy man who hangs out in a grimy diner.

Tom Hanks is Steve Gold, the youngest member of a family of doctors. When we first meet Steve, he’s getting kicked out of medical school for cheating on an exam. That’s probably for the best, though. Steve doesn’t want to be a doctor. He wants to make people laugh! Every night, he performs at a comedy club known as the Gas Station. Audiences love him almost as much as he hates himself.

Together … they solve crimes!

No, actually, they don’t. I wish they had but they don’t. Instead, in the tradition of A Star is Born, Steve ends up mentoring Lilah and helping her develop her own voice as a comedian. Lilah attempts to balance her loyality to her family with her friendship with Steve. It’s not always easy, largely because Steve isn’t exactly emotionally stable. On stage, Steve may be in control but offstage, he’s frequently selfish and self-destructive. Complicating things is the fact that, even as he watches her talent threaten to eclipse his own, Steve thinks he might be falling in love with Lilah.

Punchline is an uneven movie, largely due to the fact that, while one role is perfectly cast, another one most definitely is not. Not surprisingly, Tom Hanks is believable as a stand-up comedian. It’s not just that he’s obviously comfortable on the comedy club stage. Hanks also shows that he knows how to tell a joke. To put it simply, he has good timing. As played by Tom Hanks, you can look at Steve Gold and imagine people actually paying money for him to make them laugh.

But then you’ve got Sally Field. At no point is Sally Field believable as a stand-up comedian. That’s not so much a problem at the beginning of the film when Field is supposed to an inexperienced amateur. But, as the film progresses, we’re asked to believe that Lilah could conceivably win a spot on television over Hanks and there’s nothing about Field’s performance that suggests that would be possible. When we laugh at Sally Field’s jokes, it’s because she’s Sally Field and she’s talking about multiple orgasms. However, the comedy club audience doesn’t know that she’s Sally Field. Instead, they just know that she’s a comedian who has absolutely no timing.

Much like The Comedian and the Showtime TV series I’m Dyin’ Up Here, Punchline is one of those films that really goes overboard with the audience reaction shots. The only thing worse than listening to an unfunny comedian is then being assaulted by a shot or the sound of an audience dying of laughter. If someone’s not funny, showing some random guy doing spit take isn’t going to help. One thing that directors rarely seem to take into account is that laughter is rarely neat. It’s rare that a huge group of people both start and stop laughing at the exact same moment. There’s usually a stray chuckle or two to be heard, both before and after the punchline has been delivered. Even Tom Hanks, who actually is funny in the movie, is sabotaged by one scene where a group of patients at a hospital are way too amused by his act.

The film’s a bit too long and it takes its dramatic moments way too seriously but it’s almost worth watching for Tom Hanks. Hanks plays a real bastard in Punchline but you still care about Steve because he’s a likable bastard. As you watch the film, you hope Steve becomes a star even if he doesn’t really deserve it. I mean, he’s Tom Hanks!