“Beneath the city of New York are living catacombs, an endless maze of subterranean tunnels, unfit for anything human, unauthorized for anything experimental…” Look closely during Us’s 1986 prologue and you might spot the VHS copy of C.H.U.D., which reimagines the city’s unhoused and neglected as irradiated mutants (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, in fact) who start dragging New Yorkers down through manholes and sewer grates. John Heard and Daniel Stern lead a scrappy ensemble of skeptics, activists, and urban outcasts navigating a conspiracy that tunnels deep into institutional rot. Grimy, industrial, neglected, and claustrophobic, C.H.U.D. wraps a bleak social parable in unapologetically low-budget B-movie scuzz, turning environmental decay and systemic failure into monstrous form—literalizing the nightmare that the forgotten might rise, and no longer recognize us as their own.