7. 2 Guys From Home Alone Vs Cannibalistic Humanoids - C.H.U.D. (1984)
Six years before encountering Macaulay Culkin, John Heard and Daniel Stern prepared for Home Alone by accepting roles in a low-budget horror picture that required them to wade through sewage and fight a monster that threatened to steal the show. Its called The Method, people. Its Reagan-era America, and live is all yuppie friends and condominiums for Heards photographer, who even gets to sleep with his models. Not so Sterns soup kitchen worker who like the rest of the citys 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. This prompts the Mayor to send a team of flamethrower-wielding cops down below, but when they end as a monster snack, Heard and Stern propose a different solution flooding the sewers with gas and triggering an explosion.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
