After the VHS tape was featured in Jordan Peele’s Us (a film it also shares storyline similarities with), 1984 horror flick C.H.U.D. has become a bit of a hot topic of discussion here in the horror community, and that unexpected love continues this week thanks to LA’s Hyaena Gallery.
Several pieces of artist Tim Boxell‘s hand-drawn concept artwork for C.H.U.D. are currently being sold off by the gallery, with price tags ranging from $200 all the way to $1,250.
In Boxell’s own words…
“Monsters. Why do we want to look at them? Why do we want to see what they have to show us? Teeth. Claws. Eyes that see our fear. Tentacles that coil around us. All threats generating anxiety. All ready to drag us screaming into the dark.We are fascinated by monsters. We like to be scared. We enjoy being repulsed by what these creatures do and how they look. Monsters bring on emotional reactions that we find entertaining even if we have our doubts about seeking them out. We like looking at monsters even if they make us feel fear and horror.”
“The drawings in this exhibit were created years before American Horror Story began to deliver a frightening diet of monsters on a weekly basis. For me, a fan of fantasy and horror, the chance to be paid to design monsters for a feature film, was a dream come true. To be recommended for the job by Dan O’Bannon, the writer of the sci-horror movie Alien, because of my original approach to monsters, was an honor and an opportunity. O’Bannon saw the possibility of the chestburster at work in my comic book story Defiled, that would later be transformed into something monstrous and brilliant and alien by Giger and Ridley Scott.”
“Coming up with an interpretation of how sewer-dwelling humans transformed into monsters resulting from exposure to radiation would look, was a chance to show what I could do working in this genre. The bottom line is that making monsters is cool. What did I do? What monsters did I imagine? You can see some of what I came up with on the walls around you. The monsters of C.H.U.D. Enjoy.”
Check out Boxell’s art below and head over to Hyaena Gallery to browse the full collection.
Thanks to Broke Horror Fan for the heads up!
