We’ll just come out and say it: C.H.U.D. II > C.H.U.D. I
First and foremost, C.H.U.D. II: Bud The C.H.U.D. is a movie that belongs to the late, great Geritt Graham. His performance as the titular character pretty much makes the movie and without him in it, we’d probably be talking about C.H.U.D. II as much as we talk about Caddyshack II and Teen Wolf Too … which is to say, literally never.
It might be controversial, but I’ve always thought C.H.U.D. II was a much better movie than the original C.H.U.D. from 1984. Then again, C.H.U.D. II has literally NOTHING to do with the first movie at all, so it’s almost a moot point to even compare them. C.H.U.D. II is really more of a quasi-family friendly, suburban zombie apocalypse movie from a point in time where that really was an actual subgenre trend for a few years. Bud the C.H.U.D. is a film cut from the same cloth as something like The Gate or Return of the Living Dead 2, and in that, it’s probably one of the better films of its type from the late ‘80s. It’s campy, it’s corny, it’s cheesy – and it’s a lot of fun all the way around, even if it is lacking in unimportant stuff like “nuance” and “character development.”
Whereas the original film was about radioactive homeless people turning into elongated neck sewer monsters, this is a very by the books George Romero living dead Armageddon parody. In fact, you could even say that Bud himself is a parody of Bub the zombie from 1985’s Day of the Dead. I have a hard time imagining the nearly identical names being a coincidence, but who knows, maybe it is. There’s the expected military-industrial complex thematic going on in this one, but it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek; I seriously doubt the people who made this thing were trying to make any legitimate commentary about the Cold War of George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy. I mean, it’s a movie where a zombie poodle attacks people and a roving band of reanimated corpses politely eat a guy who works at a burger joint. Thoughtful subtext should not be expected here.
One of the things that makes C.H.U.D. II slightly better than average fare is its portrait of small town American life in the late ‘80s. It’s kind of a snapshot of a world that doesn’t really exist anymore — that very brief point in time where mom and pop pharmacies and shopping malls and greasy spoons and an upwardly mobile middle class were around simultaneously. You make this movie just two years later and it’s recession-mania and people doing narcotics to Pearl Jam. Clearly, the window of opportunity for this movie to exist was very narrow.
As for the plot of C.H.U.D. II, well, it’s not terribly complicated. There’s a trio of high school students — the nerd, the hair metal rebel, the cute girl next door — and they’re literally the only people in town who notice an ongoing zombie onslaught in the community. The military is pretty much useless and just make the situation worse (huh, maybe there’s some valid political commentary going on in this movie after all) and before long, like 90 percent of the neighborhood has a hankering for human flesh.
The shortcomings of C.H.U.D. II are pretty obvious. It’s a zombie movie with hardly any gore, zero nudity and maybe just a few swear words here and there. It’s obviously not a Disney movie, but it’s pretty tame compared to its contemporaries. It’s a film that doesn’t even try to be scary, which is probably for the best. This film aims low and as a result, largely succeeds at the precious little it seeks to accomplish.
There are some great lines in this one, too, like the part where a woman calls an aerobics instructor on TV a “Neo-Nazi anorexic leotard slut.” It’s low hanging fruit, for sure, but that doesn’t make it any less tasty. Oddly enough, the movie even makes you feel a little sympathy for Bud, who doesn’t really know why he wants to eat people. Then you remember he canonically eats a poodle on camera AND lusts after a teenage character. All of a sudden, his apparent axe murdering at the very end of the movie isn’t that heartbreaking anymore.
It’s a weird movie that isn’t always effective, but that’s kinda irrelevant. Half the fun of watching C.H.U.D. II today is just relishing the carefree absurdity of it all, from the split-second cameos from Robert Englund and June Lockhart to the hilariously awful soundtrack courtesy of the band that used to be called Wall of Voodoo. It pretty much is the spiritual antecedent to that great ‘90s video game Zombies Ate My Neighbors, if not in substance, than certainly in style. Too bad they couldn’t throw in a subplot about tossing exploding soda cans at werewolves, though.
Nobody thinks C.H.U.D. II is a great movie, but I don’t think anybody can say it’s a genuinely bad movie, either. It’s the kind of movie that occupies that wonky middle ground between ironically terrible and unironically excellent and you just kinda have to roll with it on its own terms. You can’t have very high hopes for a movie subtitled Bud The C.H.U.D., but all in all I think C.H.U.D. II sorta over-delivers in most respects. It’s dumb, but it’s entertaining. And that counts for a lot, folks.
