On its own, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud isn’t such a bad effort. It’s a fairly enjoyable, somewhat humorous piece of late 80’s camp not unlike (but nowhere near the quality of) Night of Comet or Night of The Creeps.

Honestly, if you told me some guy just wrote a zombie send-up script and the studio said “Hey, let’s slap the name C.H.U.D. on this fucker and put our pockets on Shrek,” I wouldn’t be surprised.

Despite haphazardly inserting the word “Chud” everywhere without any C.H.U.D.s in sight and then sending this turkey straight to video, that might have worked.

But Unfortunately, it’s presented as a sequel to C.H.U.D., and it’s pretty piss poor and disappointing in that regard.

However, C.H.U.D. II does have a few things going for it:

• Its got Eric Mardian (Brian Robbins) from Head of The Class – that’s pretty solid.
• Plus, there’s Robert Vaughn hammin’ it up as Colonel Masters – always a pleasure.
• And that’s to say nothing of genre heavy Gerritt Graham’s (Phantom of the Paradise, Terror Vision, Chopping Mall) inspired turn as the titular C.H.U.D.
• And if that wasn’t enough, its got one sweet ass Shindigger in Kipp Lennon’s Bud The Chud.
• But above all, it takes place on Halloween night.

And though its Halloween quotient is rather low considering, its back loaded with some genuine Halloweeniness. There’s a full-on high school Halloween dance climax, plus a pretty fun trick of treating sequence with a blink-and-you’d-miss-it cameo from Mr. Big Time, Fred Krueger, dream crasher. So we better take the 8th and recognize.

Yeah, they don’t look or act anything like C.H.U.D.s. Hell, half the time the characters are referring to them as zombies, and for all intents and purposes, they might as well be. And yeah, maybe it’s trying too hard to be funny and coming up short 70% of the time, but it’s Halloween goddammit, and if that ain’t a good enough reason to tough it through this somewhat enjoyable sequel(?) then there isn’t one.

Stay tuned for Bud The Chud later in the Shindig. Until then, forget you’ve seen C.H.U.D. at all. While you’re at it, forget this is even a sequel to that movie (which shouldn’t be too hard) and enjoy some Halloween camp.