Bud: My Life as a Zombie

Bud is not in a good mood

There are times when I just have to concede to a film's charms. This isn't a good film. It isn't even a fair or decent film. But, dammit, its heart as a charmer is in the right place as a zomedy. This is like a first cousin to Return of the Living Dead Part 2 or something. Bud (or C.H.U.D. II: Bud, the Chud) is a film that has this soldier prepared for extermination as the CHUD program is being ended by the government much to the chagrin of Colonel Masters (Robert Vaughn, a far cry from Man from U.N.C.L.E.), head of its masterplan to use undead soldiers on the battlefield [natch] with Gerrit Graham (giving a fine comic performance using some rather amusing facial expressions and saying very little) the final dead human experiment left to get rid of. He's not going quietly. In fact, a small town will feel his presence's impact. You see like zombies of typical, Bud bites you for a small meal and the results leave those bitten returning as Chuds themselves. One scene has a poodle suffering the results of Bud's hunger, returning as a zombie dog attacking the mailman! That must've been on the minds of those behind the screenplay. Let's just load the film with stupid zombie gags. Like a bunch of zombie locals going crazy in a fast food establishment. When the poor employee working the register asks some of the hick yahoos what they want from the menu, they say in unison, "Bobby" (the name on the poor guy's badge!). Seeing Vaughn with a flamethrower is surreal. Graham is fascinated with the blue water from a toilet (he is in the bathroom of a high school student's parents house; "accidentally stolen" from a hospital by two high school kids (Brian Robbins and Bill Calvert) needing a replacement corpse for another one they lost after it went rolling off in a cart down a street from an inventory warehouse!) while catching his rather unpleasant mug in the mirror.

Robbins was the "supernatural psychotic guitarist" running rampant on Crystal Bernard and her slumber party gal pals in the sequel to Slumber Party Massacre. He's just a D-grade high school student and lively (if often trouble-prone) friend of the nerdy and dyed-in-the-wool Calvert. Calvert tolerates a lot but Robbins is so amiable you can see why. Neither really mean any harm but get themselves in difficult dilemmas. Tricia Leigh Fisher, bless her heart, is stuck on Robbins, it seems, although Calvert has a shine on her. The three of them keep trying to worm their way out of this mess they caused. The body they stole (that was being held in a cryogenic chamber, no less; yep, this wasn't a sign that maybe the corpse shouldn't be touched) was to get themselves out of trouble with the biology teacher. Instead, this just allows (that is, when they accidentally drop a blow-drier in the bathtub that resurrects Bud) the body to roam free to kill, feed from, and turn zombie residents in the town. One of the first victims is a neighbor in her aerobics garb (think Jamie Lee Curtis in Perfect (1985)) doing exercises, unaware that the seemingly friendly disposition and face of Bud yields some rather unsavory chompers. Oh, and his decision not to feast on a kid because he's "small fry" while he and the CHUDs take to trick-or-treaters and their parents during a veritable buffet...the kid responds, "bitchin' costume." Yeah.

Graham's talents are on full display, though. I'll watch this in the future just because he's so good in it.
Graham had quite the animated performance. Expressions without saying much of anything. There is one scene where he placed the head of a zombie back on its neck (after he himself knocked it off!). Oh, and Bud is in love with Fisher’s Katie. He pulls out his heart as an expression of his adoration for her! The ending has the trio motivating the zombie army Bud has assembled (crashing a high school Halloween dance) to follow them into the pool room, with the CHUDS falling in. This allows the kids to freeze them, with electricity (a discovery on how to kill the CHUDs is learned when they obliterate their bio teacher!) used to eventually blow them to kingdom come.

The film offers cameos, some like Robert Englund and Rich Hall (one a guy walking a neighborhood while the CHUDs are on the rampage biting folks, the other a victim of a zombie barber) are inconsequential. June Lockart and Norman Fell, of all people, are an elderly couple that greet kids, not knowing they are CHUDs! They eventually join up with Graham! Even Larry Linville of MASH shows up as a mortician (!), getting bit by the mailman. I can't make this stuff up.

Character actor with that face you just know you've seen before, Larry Cedar (no telling how many commercials this guy has been in), is the long-suffering Graves, following around the bonkers Vaughn, just awestruck at how gunhappy and corrupt the colonel is. When Vaughn talks openly and rather unapologetically about the CHUD program, all Cedar can do is respond in shock. There's the nonchalant nature to Vaughn about the situation that leaves Cedar stunned. Vaughn just plays this no-holds-barred.

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Funny memory came back to me as I was watching this again. I used to borrow old VHS tapes with recordings of horror movies that appeared on HBO from my uncle. On a video tape I borrowed from him had Bud, the Chud on it. The scene, curious enough, that I always remembered was the bio lab encounter between the high school trio and their biology teacher (eating some of the frogs to be dissected!) they eventually explode using electronic rods after freezing it. It happened when I put the video tape in the VCR…that scene popped up on the screen, and so I watched it. When my uncle died of cancer in 2011, I inherited some of these very tapes. I far preferred borrowing them from him. His influence on me is substantial, and films like this nutty nonsense I couldn’t have watched if not for him.