Fetish Dolls

Year: 1998

Director: Ronny Yu

Cast: Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The Child’s Play series has always been kinda funny. Even the straight-faced original film had a couple comic moments, like when Chucky is insulted by an elderly couple on the elevator. And while I hold the fervent belief that a good director can make anything scary (hell, The Ring and The Babadook make videotapes and children’s books terrifying – it can be done), the “killer doll menaces people five times his size” thing is a little tough to take seriously.

So when 1998’s Bride of Chucky made the leap into full-on horror comedy, I accepted it with open arms. By acknowledging and embracing the fact that Chucky as a villain is more than a little campy, the film opened itself up to a world of twisted humor that ended up being even darker than the staunchly horrific entries.

What allowed Chucky to enter this territory (aside from Don Manicini’s slow drift across genre lines), was the release of Scream in 1996. Following the success of that slasher satire, a tidal wave of postmodern self-referential killfests crashed into theaters, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Halloween: H20, and the inevitable Scream 2. While Bride of Chucky is a banner-waving member of this crowd, it’s also one of the very best because it largely eschews the temptation to carve up a gaggle of airbrushed teens in favor of a dazzling tragicomic love story.

It’s the Weekend of slashers.

In Bride of Chucky, Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) is a serial killer groupie. Over the past ten years, she has dated a series of quasi-murderous nutcases, but none can hold a séance candle to her ex, the Lakeshore Strangler Charles Lee Ray. Since his death in 1988 (and the Child’s Play franchise’s ignominious death in 1991), she has been searching for the doll into which he transferred his soul. After bribing a cop to steal the doll from an evidence depository (which includes a razor-tipped glove and a hockey mask, because 1998) and killing him, she stitches him back together for a slick, creepy new makeover, and resurrects him. Chucky (Brad Dourif) just got lucky.

They immediately start arguing, of course, because relationships that begin with homicide are not exemplars of calm debate, and Tiffany winds up dead, with her soul transferred into a doll. They decide to find new bodies using an amulet buried in Chucky’s grave (one that could have really come in handy three films ago, no?) and hitch a ride with eloping teens Jade (Katherine Heigl, who likes to pretend this movie doesn’t exist) and Jesse (Nick Stabile, who likes to pretend we know he exists), killing anybody who gets in their way. On the road, they rekindle their romance over a shared love of assaulting people with sharp objects.

I think these two are gonna make it.

What sets Bride of Chucky apart from the rest of the post-Scream fodder is that it’s actually funny. While its dark, uncouth sense of humor may not be palatable to all viewers, the film is a modern success story of combining big guffaws and gruesome murder in a wholly organic way. The self-referential gags are likewise incisive and not too overbearing, enthusiastically lampooning itself by playing with the idea that, since he went dormant in 1991, the horror genre has left Chucky and his traditional slice ‘n dice antics behind. There’s perhaps a tad too much emphasis on name-dropping the 80’s considering that only one Child’s Play entry was actually released during that decade, but the film knows where it stands in the new wave of horror, and by embracing that it perfectly adapts to the postmodern trend.

It’s perhaps not as beefy in the scare department, but what the film lacks in genuine terror it makes up for with an atmosphere so perilously dark that Christopher Nolan could happily shoot a Batman film in it. Think early Tim Burton: grand gothic silliness that relentlessly retains that elusive creep factor while still allowing you to sleep at night. It’s as if they slapped Dracula’s favorite Instagram filter over everything, turning outsized suburban abodes into imposing cathedrals and seedy motels into Eurosleaze abysses of doom.

Really, it’s the road trip comedy Charles Manson has been waiting for.

Of course, the seven years advanced effects likewise had major influence over the film’s quality. Finally, Chucky’s lips actually have a semblance of orchestrating his dialogue. Praise be to Kevin Yagher Productions! And although the sight of Chucky running in his adorable little booties will never ever scrape up a scream, the enhanced animatronic work prevents the interactions between two dolls that drive the film from looking like a Punch and Judy puppet show. No, these dolls are capable of genuine emotional expression (well, mostly homicidal rage) and personality, and their love story never feels like anything less than two absolutely real people. Maybe with a bit of extensive plastic surgery, but still. They steal the show and they deserve to have it.

It also doesn’t hurt that the overarching story of Bride of Chucky is the most coherent, developed, and emotionally satisfying of the franchise. With the motivation for killing each victim firmly set in a narratively satisfying capacity, this streamlines the obligatory bloody mayhem and allows four-time screenwriter Don Mancini plenty of slack to explore beyond the shallow slasher mold.

Pitting two couples against each other in a showdown for survival, he indicts both distrust within relationships (Jade and Jesses both think that the other is the killer) and the self-deception and blind optimism that allows people to stay with a poisonous partner (à la Tiffany’s lament, “Why can’t I be with one of the real Good Guys?). Both couples become committed (either through marriage or voodoo possession of a plastic object - which is legally binding in several states) over the course of the film, but the one that survives is the one where their love for each other trumps their love for themselves.

I wasn’t kidding when I called Bride of Chucky a romance. Hell, it’s a tighter rom-com than My Best Friend’s Wedding.

Typically the driving force behind these films is the pedal-to-the-metal performance by Brad Dourif. He’s just as good as ever, but he’s met his match in Jennifer Tilly. Her disarming helium voice, her effortless sensuality, and her dippy charm make her perfect for the new direction of the franchise. She utterly inhabits the in-person comedy bits, allowing her amateur murderer side to show cracks beneath her calm, cool exterior. And when her work transfers to voiceover only, she’s equal parts sweet and wicked, making an indelible mark on an already terrific film.

Bride of Chucky is a couple notches short of a masterpiece, especially with the fact that the entire plot centers around a MacGuffin that’s uneasily shoved into the franchise formula. But it’s the magnum opus of a series that was never perfect yet always consistently entertaining. If you only have the stomach for one killer doll picture, I urge you to pick this one. You won’t regret it. And at the very least, you can make Katherine Heigl rom-com jokes the whole time.

Body Count: 12; including the killers because damn does this series not care about mortality.

1. Cop is stabbed through the back of the throat.
2. Damien is smothered with a pillow.
3. Warren is shot in the face with nails and stabbed.
4. Needlenose dies in a car explosion.
5. Alex and
6. Russ are pierced with shards of falling mirror.
7. David is hit by a truck.
8. Motorhome Guy and
9. Motorhome Lady are killed offscreen.
10. Gravedigger is shot.
11. Tiffany is stabbed in the chest.
12. Chucky is shot to death.

TL;DR: Bride of Chucky is a beautifully silly, creepy romance for the ages.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1309

Reviews In This Series

Child's Play (Holland, 1988)

Child's Play 2 (Lafia, 1990)

Child's Play 3 (Bender, 1991)

Bride of Chucky (Yu, 1998)

Seed of Chucky (Mancini, 2004)

Curse of Chucky (Mancini, 2013)

It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp

Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed some of the movie posters schizophrenically flickering along the "Coming Soon" section of my blog's sidebar. Rest assured, everything truly is coming soon. "Soon" is an exquisitely relative term chosen for its very nebulousness. But over this summer, between work, the Scream 101 podcast (which I am very proud of), and the inordinate amount of movies that I have been watching, it's just been a struggle to prioritize which reviews to get out first according to the system of extremely complex algorithms I have set in place for myself.

My accountants are hard at work figuring things out and you can prepare for an onslaught of reviews like you've never witnessed before, but in the meantime, please enjoy these two mini-reviews for films that I watched recently, but about which I had only relatively minor thoughts to share.

Hustle & Flow

Year: 2005

Director: Craig Brewer

Cast: Terrence Howard, Taryn Manning, Taraji P. Henson

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes 

MPAA Rating: R

A small-town pimp thinks he has what it takes to make it in the hip hop business.

Some movies with that exact plot line are inspiring. Some are treacly and shrill. Most are painfully generic. But a very special few anchor themselves around a protagonist so vehemently, ho-slappingly unlikeable that you actively root against him. Perhaps this isn’t what Hustle & Flow was going for, but that’s at least what makes it interesting.

“Interesting” does not always mean “good,” but Hustle & Flow flirts with the combination when it’s not being nauseatingly misogynistic. Which is most of the time. You see, Mr. Pimp, played by the terrifyingly good Terrence Howard, lives with three of his hos, one of whom is pregnant, one of whom he kicks out on the street with her baby, and all of whom he menaces with precise regularity like the world’s most evil cuckoo clock. And then he turns around and records songs like “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” or “Whoop That Trick” about how these skanks need to understand that he’s actually a super sensitive guy who’s beating them for their own good. As he performs a job that they could easily do themselves. If they even wanted to. Which they don’t.

It’s tough to process the urge to strangle your protagonist with 8-track tape when you’re not watching a horror movie or some other genre actively meant to shock or horrify you. The really disheartening thing about Hustle & Flow is that it doesn’t seem to notice any of this. There’s an awe-inspiring level of cognitive dissonance going on between the Take the Lead/Freedom Writers story that it imagines it’s telling and the GTA XXI: Harlem Shake amorality that actually plays out onscreen. In the film’s most triumphant, romantic moment, a kiss between Howard and Taraji P. Henson, it’s hard not to think, “What, she suddenly forgot that the only reason he’s not forcing her to sleep with a stranger is that because she’s carrying another stranger’s baby so she’s damaged goods?” It’s not exactly Sleepless in Seattle.

As a character study, there is a mild degree of nuance, but the film is far more interested in exploring how the man’s ambitions and talent have led him to believe that he deserves instant success and the consequences of his realization that that’s not exactly how it works. The film’s acknowledgement of reality – that just being a good rapper is only a start to getting big, that there’s a lot of hard, thankless work involved, is its biggest strength.

Its second biggest strength is its setting, which effortlessly evokes the town’s poverty in simple, sad, beautiful details: a splash of garish neon in a rain puddle, water slowly dripping into buckets through the leaky roof of a strip club, and the ever-present, grotesquely un-Hollywood sheen of sweat that glistens on every performer, a la The Fighter or Do the Right Thing. And Howard is admittedly terrific, bolstered by strong, committed performances by his side-hos, Taryn Manning and Taraji P. Henson. But damn, is this film unpleasant to watch.

Rating: 6/10

Knocked Up

Year: 2007

Director: Judd Apatow

Cast: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd

Run Time: 2 hours, 9 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

An entertainment news presenter accidentally finds herself impregnated by an unemployed pothead.

Speaking of movies by noted misogynist filmmakers starring a pregnant woman and a less than credible romantic lead…

OK, obviously I took a lot of creative license with that description, but surely it hasn’t escaped the notice that in Judd Apatow’s parables of schlubby man-children learning about the splendors of adulthood and heteronormative pair-bonding, the women are vehicles for this transition more often than they are thinking, breathing, flesh-and-blood human beings. That said, Knocked Up is one of his better efforts, thought I believe I can be forgiven for slightly preferring Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

First and foremost, Knocked Up is funny. That’s the important thing, I suppose. However, much like Trainwreck (review pending) and many other flicks in his filmography, he film is funniest when Apatow throws open the floodgates on his massive stable of comic actors, allowing thrilling fringe performances from Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Ken Jeong, Adam Scott, Bill Hader, Charlyne Yi, Craig Robinson, and Alan Tudyk to wring laughs from the sidelines. In the midst of such a squall, Heigl and Rogen hardly make any impression at all, finding themselves likewise outshone by co-leads Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd, as the squabbling married couple providing a benchmark for how our unhappy pair shouldn’t strive to be.

In fact, the strongest scenes with any of the leads are when they buddy off into same-sex pairs: Mann with Heigl and Rudd with Rogen. It hobbles this romantic comedy somewhat that its romantic pair is by leaps and bounds its weakest link, also stunting the flow of several of its major story arcs, but there is enough genuinely good material at work here to buoy the movie past any obstacle.

At the end of the day, it’s quippy, poppy, and a lot of fun, and I can’t begrudge it of that. It doesn’t leave me with a strong sense that I truly understand the mechanics of this couple or the reason they decided to keep this baby and raise it together, but damn it, it’s a good enough time that it’s hard to care too much. Nothing a nice, even slicing of fifteen minutes couldn’t fix. Even in the early years, Apatow never knew how to edit himself.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1093

Archive: January 26, 2013

14 More Celebrities You Didn’t Know Were in Slasher Movies

I had a ton of fun writing my original list, but as I thought about it, I realized there were a lot of omissions that I had overlooked at the time in my haste to discuss Johnny Depp’s midriff. So now I present an addendum.

Read on in horror and see all your favorite stars slum it. Hey, you gotta pay your dues.

Round 1: Leatherface Double Take - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Franchise

Viggo Mortensen

Famous for: The Lord of the Rings, A History of Violence, The Road

Skeleton in the Closet: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III(1990)

Our dear friend Aragorn is the first of many now-famous stars to have rubbed shoulders with our friend Leatherface. His character’s name also wins the award for Least Effort Put Into a Pun in a Horror Film: Tex. True story.

Renée Zellweger

Famous for: Jerry Maguire, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Chicago

Skeleton in the Closet: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation(1994)

This woman has won an Oscar for her performance in Cold Mountain.

This woman has dated Jack White.

This woman was once engaged to Jim Carrey (OK, maybe that one’s not so good to brag about).

And months before she hit the big time, she starred in this grubby little horror reboot that almost never saw the light of day.

Matthew McConaughey

Famous for: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike, People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2005

Skeleton in the Closet: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Twist ending: He’s insane. 

Following Renée’s footsteps, McConaughey starred in TCM:TNG, became famous shortly afterward, and became the bane of Hollywood reporters before the invention of spellcheck.

He actually fought to keep the film out of theaters, effectively killing any slim chance it had to make money.

Jessica Biel

Famous for: 7th Heaven, The A-Team, Valentine’s Day

Skeleton in the Closet: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

This one isn’t too embarrassing, the movie was actually pretty good, and it’s only Jessica Biel. But still, worth noting.

Matt Bomer

Famous for: White Collar, Magic Mike

Skeleton in the Closet: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

And instantly legions of teenage girls become Leatherface fans.

Round 2: Rap ‘n Slash - A Brief History of Rappers in Horror Cinema

Ice-T

Famous for: “O.G: Original Gangster”, “6 ‘N the Mornin’ “, “Colors”

Skeleton in the Closet: Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Ice-T stars as rap producer Mack Daddy whose success comes about by harnessing the leprechaun’s magical flute, which makes people appreciate rap music. I can’t believe I just typed that sentence. 

LL Cool J

Famous for: “Mama Said Knock You Out”, “Doin’ It”, “I Need Love”

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween H20 (1998)

The Halloween franchise was getting pretty desperate at this point, already having retconned four films to bring back Jamie Lee Curtis, so it makes sense that they would use this kind of novelty casting.

Dirty little secret: The movie, directed by Friday the 13th: Part 2’s Steve Miner, is actually pretty darn good.

Busta Rhymes

Famous for: “I Know What You Want”, “Break Ya Neck”, “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See”

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Now this is desperate. Busta Rhymes stars as the obnoxious host of a web series who traps a group of teenagers in Michael Myers’ old house and broadcasts their brutal murders online. 

He seems like a standup fellow.

Honorable Mention: Tremaine “Trey Songz” Neverson, who appeared in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), earning him a place in both rounds 1 & 2. Unfortunately, his film is too recent to be considered for this category. Better luck next time.

Round 3: Bikini Death Toll - The (Not So) Final Girls

Tyra Banks

Famous for: America’s Next Top Model, The Tyra Banks Show

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

To top things off with what is one of the most awful movies in a franchise that previously featured the magic of Stonehenge turning children’s heads into bugs, Tyra Banks is here. She plays Busta Rhymes’ assistant, and isn’t even murdered onscreen. What a shame.

Amy Adams

Famous for: Enchanted, Julie & Julia, The Muppets, being perfect

Skeleton in the Closet: Psycho Beach Party (2000)

That’s her in the middle! Amy Adams is a gem in this quirky slasher sendup that’s actually pretty great. She is far too adorable to play her role, a sex-crazed vixen who tries to stab her best friends in the back and win the affections of Nicholas Brendon (whom she also appeared with in a season 4 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Katherine Heigl

Famous for: Grey’s Anatomy, Knocked Up, 27 Dresses

Skeleton in the Closet: Valentine (2001)

This was a good one. There’s some quality movies on this list, weirdly enough. At least on the very narrow adjusted scale of slasher grading. David Boreanaz (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Angel) stars as the loveable alcoholic boyfriend, and Katherine Heigl is mowed down within the first ten minutes.

Not to be confused with the 2010 romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, although I’d love to see the look on that horrified Heigl fan’s face.

Round 4: OK Seriously? - These Guys?

Leslie Nielsen

Famous for: Airplane!, The Naked Gun series

Skeleton in the Closet: Prom Night (1980)

This actually happened. Nielsen is the fourth lucky star on this list to have worked alongside everyone’s favorite Scream Queen, Jamie Lee Curtis. If you don’t like Jamie Lee Curtis, you don’t exist.

In Prom Night, Nielsen plays the principal of the high school which is host to both the prom and a teenage blood bath. Did I mention he’s Curtis’s father? Glorious.

Also, be sure to check out the fantastically overlong dance breakdown in the middle of the film.

God, I love the 80’s.

Seann William Scott

Famous for: American Pie, Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Dukes of Hazzard

Skeleton in the Closet: Final Destination (2000)

Steve Stifler’s at it again in this zany teen comedy! After a botched European vacation, the Stiffmeister hangs around town with his wacky friends until he is abruptly decapitated by flying shrapnel.

David Copperfield

Famous for: being a magician

Skeleton in the Closet: Terror Train (1980)

Jamie Lee Curtis gets around. Terror Train is another entry on the list that is unexpectedly high quality. It might actually even be considered “good” in terms of actual real life movies.

Featuring a New Year’s train party/murderfest and about 10 minutes of David Copperfield alternately being creepy and showing off, Terror Trainperfectly sums up the slasher boom of the early 80’s.

In conclusion: Nobody is safe. One by one, the slasher genre will claim all of your favorite stars. You never know who might be next!

Word Count: 1170