For horror fans, the director of the moment is Jordan Peele, who recently released his latest thriller, Nope, in theaters nationwide. Although Peele is known for rather sophisticated, socially conscious horror, the inspiration for his previous film, the acclaimed 2019 horror movie Us, might have come from a seemingly unexpected source: the 1984 monster movie C.H.U.D. The cult film -- which featured future stars of Home Alone John Heard and Daniel Stern as its leads and John Goodman in a small role -- may not be remembered by audiences as well as Us, but Peele was certainly aware of it.
In fact, a VHS copy of C.H.U.D. can be spotted sitting on a shelf in the opening shot of Us, which felt like Peele cheekily acknowledged the inspiration that the movie had on his own film. In several ways, Us is Peele's unofficial remake of C.H.U.D. Even though his film was more slickly produced and had much more social commentary, both Us and C.H.U.D. have far more parallels than one might expect, including some involving their creatures.
The similarities between C.H.U.D. and Us begin where their titular creatures come from: the underground. In C.H.U.D., its monsters were originally homeless people who lived in the sewers and subway tunnels of New York City. After they came in contact with illegally dumped toxic waste barrels, they mutated into the vicious creatures that attacked and ate people, earning them the titular acronym, which stands for "Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers."
The very creative Peele gave Us villains in the form of "the Tethered," which were clones of humans that were created as part of a project to control their counterparts on the surface. After the project was deemed unsuccessful, the Tethered were abandoned and left underground in abandoned subway systems, unused service routes, and deserted mine shafts. Like the creatures in C.H.U.D., the Tethered found their way to the surface with the goal of killing and replacing their human counterparts.
Us and C.H.U.D. shared other similarities, even in their opening scenes. At the beginning of C.H.U.D., a woman and her dog were snatched down a manhole by one of the titular creatures, while one of the first scenes in Us involved a young girl encountering her Tethered twin in a funhouse -- which the audience later learned resulted in her being taken underground. Us even shares a small connection with C.H.U.D. when it comes to its characters. Its protagonist -- Adelaide Wilson, played by the talented Lupita Nyong'o -- shares the last name of Wilson, the human villain of C.H.U.D. who wanted to cover up the illegal dumping. The grown-up Adelaide had a secret herself: she was actually one of the Tethered that switched places with the real Adelaide at the beginning of Us.
One of the most enjoyable things about genre cinema is watching a director take inspiration from another and mold it in his or her own direction. That is what Peele did with Get Out and Us and will likely do with Nope and his future films. He will not only delight his own fans with his movies but open them up to treasures -- like C.H.U.D. -- that they had never encountered before.