The single greatest filmgoing experience
When I was but a wee ginger child, my parents, bless them, allowed me to read and watch anything I wished. This allowed me, they claimed, to easily discern between reality and fantasy. My favourite films were the B-movie horror classics where the hero's face, without fail, would come off at some point during the plot, generally with aid of bloodthirsty invertebrates. Yeah, they taught me the difference between the real world (gun aficionados wishing to kill me) and the film world (disfigured axe aficionados wishing to kill milk-titted teenagers in the woods.) These lessons kept me well adjusted, until C.H.U.D.

The premise of C.H.U.D. is, according to IMDB:

“A rash of bizarre murders in New York City seems to point to a group of grotesquely deformed vagrants living in the sewers. A courageous policeman, a photo journalist and his girlfriend, and a nutty bum, who seems to know a lot about the creatures, band together to try and determine what the creatures are and how to stop them.”

Eeeeeeeeeeeeek! These Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers had faces like a pile of used condoms stuck together with Marmite, but they came up through toilets and ate people’s arses! This was the point where the real world and the horror film world morphed into a single space of liminal reality and I, as an impressionable babe, became convinced that if I sat on a toilet to do my wee, my bottom would be eaten by a human, long ago disfigured by toxic waste. Doomed was I to a decade of hovershits.

I never really got over this, and every time I sit down for a poo, I hesitate and wonder if there are any C.H.U.D.s in the sewers beneath me, geared up to snack on my bum. I can’t even use the toilet on planes, as I am so convinced I will die on the toilet, be it by maw of C.H.U.D. or other reprehensible mean. I was having a sleepytime toilet evacuation when the Buncefield oil depot blew the fuck up just a handful of miles from my house.

I was briefly terrified that the blast (nuclear, in my panic) would render me an ashen form on the bog, much like residents of Pompeii died in stasis.

The next thought hissed through my mind: C.H.U.D.s.

Best film ever? I doubt it, but it was certainly the single film – nay, piece of art of entertainment – which had the biggest impact on my life.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 9:49, Reply)