While 1984’s CHUD didn’t become a box office hit, it attracted enough of an audience to spawn a sequel. That leads us to 1989’s CHUD II: Bud the Chud.

In the first film, we encountered “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers” (CHUDs), mutants created because the government stored toxic waste in the sewers of New York City. Since that time, the military conducted tests on the CHUDs in the hopes they could use these creatures as weapons. However, the government shuts down the program and sends the remaining frozen CHUD to a middle-of-nowhere town.

After they lose a cadaver meant for their biology class, teenagers Steve (Brian Robbins) and Kevin (Bill Calvert) steal a new one that happens to be the frozen CHUD. When they accidentally awaken this monster – known as “Bud” (Gerrit Graham) – it gets away from them and works to create his own CHUD army.

Though the original CHUD suffers from a mix of flaws, it offers a fairly effective and entertaining horror effort. Even with the absurdity of its premise, it plays things relatively straight and gives us a tale with impact.

Whatever pretensions to “serious horror” we got from CHUD go totally by the wayside in the goofy, comedic CHUD II. While the movie still aspires to provide some scares, it much prefers the silly side of the coin and feels more connected to 1985’s Return of the Living Dead than to CHUD.

In theory, a more comedy-oriented CHUD film seems acceptable, especially since I assumed the original would gear toward laughs more than chills. The choice to give CHUD II a more frivolous bent doesn’t hamper it from the outset.

However, the movie’s relentless idiocy creates massive damage. CHUD II throws any comedic conceit it can find at us, and literally none of these stick. The film comes with stupid stabs at humor that lack even rudimentary cleverness or wit.

It doesn’t help that CHUD II sacrifices any attempts at coherence to pursue its comedic agenda. From start to finish, little about the story makes any sense, as the scenes exist just for wacky shenanigans. The flick requires us to suspend far too much disbelief – even for a movie about undead cannibals, it’s too stupid to prosper.

CHUD II doesn’t even boast real connections to the first movie. In truth, it acts more as a sequel to Return of the Living Dead than to CHUD, as it matches the former’s tone more closely.

Like Return, CHUD II is also essentially a zombie movie. Its monsters really bear no link to those of CHUD. They look nothing alike and act much more like traditional zombies than the mutant beasts of CHUD.

Why even bother to call this a sequel to CHUD? For marketing reasons, I guess – I can’t think of any other reason to connect the two. I’d not be surprised to learn that CHUD II started life as an unrelated project that got shoehorned into the CHUD universe just to milk bucks out of the first film’s fans.

I hope they avoided it like the plague. Poorly constructed, incoherent and relentlessly moronic, CHUD II becomes a terrible excuse for a supposed sequel.

Footnote: a minor tag appears after the conclusion of the end credits.

CHUD II: Bud the Chud appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Though not a bad presentation, the transfer showed its limitations.

Definition was acceptable, as the film showed reasonable accuracy. I’d never call it razor-sharp, but it usually offered fair delineation. Sporadic soft shots popped up, though, especially during interiors.

No issues with shimmering or jaggies occurred, but I saw light edge haloes. Print flaws were absent.

Colors seemed acceptable. CHUD II provided a natural palette that never favored any particular tones. The hues lacked much pop but they appeared passable overall. Blacks were moderately inky, and low-light shots tended to appear somewhat dense. The transfer seemed dated but decent.

Similar thoughts greeted the lackluster DTS-HD MA 2.0 soundtrack of CHUD II. The soundscape offered good stereo presence for the score, but effects failed to add much breadth. Some material occasionally pooped up from the side channels, but outside of the music, much of the mix felt monaural.

Speech appeared a little reedy and thin, and the movie came with some poorly looped audio. Nonetheless, the lines showed good intelligibility and lacked overt flaws. Music demonstrated limited range as well, but the score was clear enough and showed moderate pep.

Effects fell into the same range. The track didn’t ask for much, and the elements sounded decent; they could be somewhat flat but they showed no distortion and represented the material well enough. All of this left us with a “C+” soundtrack.

As we shift to extras, we begin with an audio commentary from director David Irving. Along with disc producer Michael Felsher, Irving presents a running, screen-specific look at how he got into movies and other aspects of his career, what brought him to CHUD II, sets and locations, story/character areas and editing, cast and performances, effects, music, the film’s release and legacy.

Take the “screen-specific” aspect of the track loosely, as Irving rarely discusses the material as it appears during the film. Instead, this piece largely acts as an interview conducted by Felsher.

Which works fine most of the time, as Felsher gets Irving to provide a pretty good look at the film. However, the track loses some steam about two-thirds of the way into the flick, so it meanders a bit for the final half-hour. Even so, we get some nice insights about CHUD II.

A few interviews follow. Bud Speaks! gives us a 16-minute, 18-second chat with actor Gerrit Graham, as he discusses aspects of his career and what led him to the movie, his character/performance, and reactions to the film. Graham gives us a decent collection of memories.

Katie’s Kalamity runs 12 minutes, 45 seconds and features actor Tricia Leigh Fisher. She goes over topics similar to those discussed by Graham, though with her own spin. Fisher provides a peppy personality and she offers a mix of fun thoughts.

Finally, This CHUD’s for You offers a 14-minute, 44-second conversation with special makeup effects designer Allan Apone. As expected, Apone chats about his work on the film, with an emphasis on various practical effects. Apone brings us a useful chat.

In addition to the film’s video trailer, we finish with a Still Gallery. Presented as a running piece, it fills six minutes, 20 seconds with production photos, publicity pics and ads. It’s a decent compilation.

A sequel in name only, CHUD II: Bud the Chud fizzles in all possible ways. Stupid, witless and inane, the movie offers no entertainment value. The Blu-ray brings us decent picture and audio along with a reasonable set of supplements. Even for a low-budget 1980s horror sequel, CHUD II stinks.