11 Horror Movies From The Sewer, Creeping Up On You

Cannibal Apocalypse, directed by Italian director Antonio Margheriti, is a name you will remember if you see a specific Quentin Tarantino film. This movie pre-dates C.H.U.D. by four years but deals with another group that feels ostracized by society: Vietnam veterans. John Saxon leads the cast as a veteran bitten by a fellow soldier and starts to crave human flesh. There are only four cannibals, so it's not quite an apocalypse yet, but you get the general idea. The cannibals, three veterans, and a nurse flee to the sewers after the police start hunting them. But are these the only cannibals? The final shot doesn't leave it a mystery.

Alligator also pre-dates C.H.U.D. and explores a different kind of monster that hides in the sewers. This time, it concerns the urban myth of alligators kept as pets but flushed down the toilet after they become too big. The film is both a horror film and a satire of horror films written by independent filmmaker John Sayles and directed by Lewis Teague. The now colossal alligator rises from the sewers looking for victims after feeding on tainted meat from animals used in medical experimentation. The film stars Robert Forster and Robin Riker. Read more about how President Devon Sawa Takes On Chucky in the new Season 3 trailer.

Stephen King used the sewer system as Pennywise's headquarters for a reason. Everyone is kind of afraid of the sewer system. It's dark, underground, and a lonely place where only the rejected go to live. It capitalizes on the question that we all have in our minds about sewers. What is down there? In this case, a Lovecraftian inter-dimensional or otherworldly monster that our minds can barely comprehend. It feeds into the morbid curiosity that human beings have about forbidden and dangerous places.

The Blob is one of this list's gory and overtly frightful movies. Frank Darabont, writer of The Mist and notorious for that film's pitiless ending, and the director Chuck Russell, this film laid on the grue. It has a lot of likable characters who are not safe, and spoiler alert: they don't make it. As a film, it stays close to people's horror of being consumed while they are still alive. Yikes, just typing that sentence made me shiver a little bit. The Blob uses the sewers to stay hidden and travel from place to place. It stars Kevin Dillon, Donovan Leitch, Jeffrey DeMunn, Candy Clark, and a pre-Saw fame, Shawnee Smith. Read more in Cat And Mouse: Who Is The Real Villain Of Hitchcock's Rope?

This time, it is a case of vampires in the sewers. Oh no. When these humans and vampires are infected with the Reaper strain, they are led by Jared Nomak, the first of his kind. Blade and the Bloodpack fight the Reaper army hiding in the sewers in a spectacular battle that kills most of the Bloodpack. Having the Reapers hide in the sewers is a great idea since their ranks are growing exponentially, and they are a new kind of vampire. The Reapers feed on humans, but Nomak has a grudge against vampires, and the Reapers go after vampires first. Guillermo del Toro directed the film, David Goyer wrote it, and it stars Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela, and Norman Reedus.

Return of the Living Dead III is a Romeo and Juliet zombie love story at its heart. After his beloved girlfriend Julie is killed in a motorcycle accident, Curt uses the 2-4-5 Trioxin gas to reanimate Julie, not realizing what he's done. Julie loves him just as much and fights with her craving for brains as long as she can, using the pain of body modification to keep her from eating anyone. The lovers flee to the sewers, in this case, a welcoming place, and stay with the homeless resident of the sewer, The Riverman. Return of the Living Dead III is more of a subversion of this subgenre where love conquers all. Well, almost all. It stars Melinda Clarke, J. Trevor Edmond, and Kent McCord and was directed by Brian Yuzna. Read more about 12 Horror Movie Directors As Actors Who Terrify On The Screen.

Deadly Eyes is a Canadian adaptation of the James Herbert novel The Rats, which, like many Herbert novels, is horrific and gory. The idea is that rats who feed on steroid-infused grain grow huge and become man-eaters who infest the sewers. The movie stars Sam Groom, Scatman Crothers, and Sara Botsford. One of the most interesting facts about this movie is that the giant rats are Dachshund dogs in rat costumes. No one said that making a movie about giant rats is easy, but these were probably the cutest killer giant rats in horror history.

Phantoms is based on a discredited theory about mass disappearances in places like Roanoke, Virginia, which the movie calls the Ancient Enemy. It is a shapeshifting monster that takes over people like The Thing. It's based on a book by Dean Koontz and directed by Joe Chappelle, who is probably best known now as a director on the prestige television show The Wire. It stars Peter O'Toole, Rose McGowan, Joanna Going, Liev Schreiber, and Ben Affleck. The sewer sequence is after a group of Army commandos investigate the sewers looking for the entity and are slaughtered. Once again, sewers are looked at as places where monsters feel safe and are dangerous for human beings.

After a water contamination incident forces a town to be evacuated, a sewer worker must investigate what happened. Lord Auch traps him in a septic tank until he mutates and transforms into a Septic Man. Directed by Jesse Thomas Cook, the movie stars Jason David Brown, Molly Dunsworth, Julian Richings, Tim Burd, and Robert Maillet. This is less about the fear of being eaten than the fear of becoming the monster yourself, a mutant that can no longer live in society, so it has something in common with other films on the list, like Cannibal Apocalypse.

Species doesn't go to the sewers until the end, but this film with a monster designed by H.R. Giger, the same artist who created the Xenomorphs from Alien, does posit the sewer as a place of safety where monsters can hide. The production designer John Muto referred to the sewer he created for the film as "just the sort of place in which a creature from another planet might feel at home." which is thematically on target for horror explorations of monstrosity and the other. Roger Donaldson directed the movie and starred a bevy of well-known actors such as Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker, Marg Helgenberger, Natasha Henstridge, and a very young Michelle Williams as the child version of Sil.

Slugs get the last spot on this list because you have to admit that slugs are gross. It was a good and creepy decision when they decided to make a horror film about mutant man-eating slugs lying in wait in the sewers and coming up through toilets and drains. The idea of monsters using the sewers and drains connecting to everyone's homes is a good and macabre choice. There's something about the worry you always have looking into the darkness of a drain or feeling vulnerable while using a toilet, which is very effective and used in The Blob films and It.