makes one a Chewer? It isn’t just reading CHUD.com regularly, although
that’s a great start. It definitely isn’t being an expert at
mastication. Being a Chewer requires a certain sensibility that’s
outside of the mainstream. Sure, a Chewer can hold his or her own in a Star Wars
OT vs PT argument with a standard movie geek, and sure, a Chewer can go
with the rest of the film snobs to an Ozu revival, but a Chewer also
gets really, really excited about the DVD release of The Manitou.
Over
the next few weeks we’re going to be bringing you The CHUD.com
Essential Films Collection – the films that would be in our dream
Chewer DVD Box Set. These are 50 movies that we think every Chewer
should see and love. This is by no means the definitive list of movies
that make one a Chewer, but it’s a good start. It’s also in no order –
the first films that we list are just as essential as the last ones.
And it’s a list that will leave off the obvious as much as possible –
you don’t need us to tell you to see Lawrence of Arabia or Seven
Samurai.
So fire up your Netflix or your Amazon accounts –
every day we’ll be bringing you two movies that are worth seeing, and
probably worth owning as well. Chew on, Chewers.
The Movie: It’s the 80s, and the height of New York City’s homeless problem. The streets are choked with winos and vagabonds, and a cheap new liquor, called Viper, is making the rounds – and making the bums melt and explode. This is essentially the entire glorious plot of Street Trash.
Why it’s Essential: The 80s were a golden age for wildly talented filmmakers on the edge of good taste. Street Trash is completely in keeping with the likes of and Evil Dead 2Dead Alive – in fact, I think that if director J Michael Muro hadn’t become a born again Christian, we’d be talking about him in the same tones as Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Street Trash is wickedly, amorally funny, going for the gross-out gag whenever possible, and it has a gleefully un-PC presentation of the homeless. But even through all of the grossness and unpleasantness on display, Street Trash manages to come across as sort of sweet and cuddly. Don’t ask me how, although I suspect that it comes from the “Let’s put on a show!” nature of the low-budget production. Come for the melting bums, stay for the game of severed penis keep-away and fall in love with the Martin & Lewis banter between James Lorinz and Tony Darrow as a doorman and the mob boss who wants him dead.
The Movie: The Argonautica, a massive ocean liner full of rich folks, is set upon by a small boat full of mercenaries’ at the same time as it is attacked from below by a species of mutated sea worms which like to swallow people whole.
Why it’s Essential: The script seems like it was written by a kid snorting Ritalin: take Treat Williams as the pilot of of the small boat, Anthony Heald and Derrick O’Conner as the shepherds of the ocean liner, and Wes Studi and Djimon Hounsou as the primary hijackers. But it wasn’t a kid on speed, just Stephen Sommers, showing massively entertaining pre-Mummy promise as a guy who could throw 20 seemingly incoherent ideas into a blender and make the result so absurd and over the top that it’s irresistible. Sure, it’s easier to love the result when it has Famke Janssen as the wild card, Hounsou getting an axe to the head (not that we don’t love the man) and those tentacles. Man, those tentacles, which make it impossible not to stick around for the third act. And the film’s final scene still leaves you with a vague hope that we’ll get a sequel that will make Lost look like a pathetic soap opera.