When Hollywood needs an other-worldly setting that’s still close to home, sewers and wastewater tunnels often fit the bill.
To the average moviegoer, sewers are both familiar and eerily unfamiliar — a parallel world running beneath their own. This year, sewers seem to be populated by good guys with the release of TMNT, the latest installment of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise, and two charming rat-in-a-sewer films, “Ratatouille” (pronounced rat-a-too-ee) and “Flushed Away.”
But filmdom takes special delight in populating the sewage system with humanity’s nastiest enemies. Here are five notable examples:
“Alligator” (1980).
Meet Ramon, a pet alligator who is flushed down the toilet, then gets hopped up on steroid-saturated meats dumped into the sewers by an unscrupulous industrialist. Ramon soon grows to the size of a bus, picking off sewer workers and dismissing trenchless technology by bursting through the asphalt surfaces of city streets to enjoy the human smorgasbord.
“C.H.U.D.” (1984).
“You won’t want to know what it means.” But really, of course you do! It’s an acronym for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, a race of mutants with glowing eyes who get hungry now and then. Toxic waste and government cover-ups are culprits, as a cop and minister join forces in sewage tunnels so clean and well-lit, you’d think you were in an American Apparel outlet. Followed by “C.H.U.D. 2: Bud the C.H.U.D.”
“Predator 2” (1990).
The original hit was set in a jungle. This sequel moves the action to then-future 1997 Los Angeles, where the invisible alien hunter goes on the warpath after parking his spacecraft in a handy sewer conduit. Nobody from the public works department notices the interstellar craft, so it’s up to tough cop Danny Glover to take the action back to the Predator’s lair.
“Slugs” (1987).
Your garden-variety snail isn’t a very scary fellow, but the same can’t be said for giant mutated slugs with four sets of sharp teeth and a taste for human flesh. When folks in Ashton, USA, experience a rash of gummed up water mains and exploding craniums (the babies nest in human skulls), it’s time for a trio of heroes, including a sewer maintenance worker, to take back the conduits — by blowing up the whole town!
“Them!” (1954).
Nuclear testing is the culprit again, as radiation plumps New Mexico carpenter ants up to elephant size. When the queen lays eggs inside the Los Angeles sewer system, it’s up to stalwart heroes James Whitmore and James Arness to flush ’em out.
Peter Kenter is a freelance writer living in Toronto, Ont.
