10 Horror Films That Will Make You Nostalgic For The 1980s

With its New York setting and nefarious officials, C.H.U.D. could be a 1950s monster movie, retooled for Reagan-era America. Gone is the Reds-under-the-bed paranoia of the Eisenhower decade and in, courtesy of Ronnie’s demolition of the welfare system, comes a critique of the rise is the city’s homeless population.

NYC, 1984: On the surface, life for John Heard and Kim Griest is, if not peaches and cream, then yuppies and condominiums, as all their photographer/model couple has to worry about is whether or not the perfume they’re hawking “smells like faeces.” Not so Daniel Stern’s soup kitchen worker who like the rest of the city’s derelicts is far more concerned with the radiation-spawned monsters in the sewers. Yep, radiation is still the #1 cause of monsters, but in this decade, more money is spent denying the problem exists than tackling it.

When Stern discovers a Geiger counter in the sewers, he convinces a cop whose wife has disappeared to lean on the Mayor, who of course denies all knowledge until the body of a Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller washes up. “It’s a coincidence,” says one official. “Couldn’t happen again.” But we know that’s baloney, and when teams of flame-thrower wielding cops surge into the sewer system, they encounter an army of C.H.U.D. that sees them as C.H.O.W.