Completion Anxiety

Year: 2013

Director: Don Mancini

Cast: Chantal Quesnelle, Fiona Dourif, Jordan Gavaris

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As you may or may not have noticed, I have several features up and running that are unfinished. My blog is like a spider web of loose ends that I’m scrambling to pick up between two jobs, an attempt at a normal human life, and my incessant, unquenchable need to consume as much content as humanly possible. Rest assured, I’m working diligently to create these final posts for your reading convenience.

Which brings us to Curse of Chucky, the sixth and, as of this writing, final film in the Child’s Play franchise. Scooting in just under a decade after Seed of Chucky, this direct-to-video sequel comes after the longest gap in franchise history. Not only that, but it’s directed by longitime screenwriter Don Mancini, who also helmed Seed of Chucky, which despite its charms is indubitably the worst of the series. This is a tried and true Julia Childs recipe for cinematic disaster, and yet it turned out to be one of the best sequels in a fascinatingly strong franchise. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Thank you for waiting. You’ve been a real doll.

In Curse of Chucky, horror is back at the forefront for the first time in at least three entries. Nica (Fiona Dourif) is a wheelchair-bound young woman living under the thumb of her overprotective mother in a sumptuous gothic house that would give Guillermo del Toro chills. One day, a Good Guy doll is mysteriously shipped to their front door. Not long afterward, Nica’s mother is found lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs, an apparent suicide.

Two guesses as to what really happened. As Nica’s extended family – her toxic sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti) who wants to sell the house, Barb’s disgruntled hubby Ian (Brennan Elliott), their “sex on two toothpicks” au pair Jill (Maitland McConnell), and their young daughter Alice (Summer H. Howell) – come to stay, mysterious happenings begin, well… happening. Alice befriends the talking doll, Chucky (Brad Dourif), and the residents of the house begin to die one by one whenever he’s around.

You’d think people would have issued a recall on these at some point.

Curse has a lot of what Seed lacked, and curiously I don’t mean money. Despite having less than half the budget of his already shortchanged previous entry, Mancini brings his A-game. Lord knows what he’d been doing since 2004, but whatever drugs he took certainly expanded his visual vocabulary something fierce. To put it simply, Curse of Chucky is downright stunning, tossing Seed’s overlit sitcom aesthetic into a woodchipper and pulling a shadow-drenched gothic dreamscape out of thin air.

The camera pirouettes gracefully over the action, highlighting the aggressively baroque production design, and damn is it ever apparent that this movie is directed rather than merely dumped into a camera. It’s a gorgeous-looking piece, especially in a flashback that allows bold yellow flowers to assert themselves over a crisp black and white frame. This environment provides the perfect atmosphere for Chucky to return to his horror roots, and in fact this is the scariest he’s ever been since his eerie tour de force in Child’s Play 2.

Actually, scratch that. Chucky himself is still very rarely a credible menace (his adorably chubby, bootie-clad legs still fail to strike fear into my heart, incredibly). It’s the movie around him and the situations he creates that provide the true spine-crawling power. The fear is subtle, frequently character-based, and returns the franchise to a very classical horror style. In fact, the single best scene in the movie is straight out of the Hitchcock camp of suspense – one of the bowls of soup at the dinner table has been poisoned, but we don’t know which. It’s playful, chilling, and doesn’t require massive budget expenditure.

Kind of like a date with Yours Truly.

Also despite its budget, Curse of Chucky’s gore is pretty wet and wild. Necessarily, some of the kills aren’t quite so outré, but a solid handful are grotty, glistening pearls. Never say Mancini doesn’t know what people who stuck around a slasher franchise for six entries are looking for.

OK, now that we’ve been as sweet as punch for the longest sustained period Popcorn Culture ahs ever seen, it’s time to get down and dirty. Curse of Chucky is a direct-to-DVD film. An unnecessarily fantastic example of the form, yes, but it is nevertheless beholden to a certain standard of quality. It just can’t match the expressionistic celebration of cinema that was Bride of Chucky, and there are sinewy hunks of filler that stick in your throat on he way down, especially any scene featuring a pre-doll Charles Lee Ray in de-aging makeup that makes him look uncannily like Tommy Wiseau on a hot day.

It ain’t perfect, though it is a perfect vehicle for the lovely and talented Fiona Dourif, who got the part through her dad, but kept it through sheer charisma and skill. At the end of the day, Curse of Chucky isn’t the best Child’s Play sequel, but the fact that a sixth entry in a franchise could be in the top 50 percent in terms of quality is pretty damn remarkable.

Body Count: 7

1. Nica’s Mom is stabbed in the chest with scissors offscreen.
2. Father Frank is decapitated in a car wreck.
3. Jill is electrocuted.
4. Barbie is stabbed in the eye.
5. Ian is axed in the mouth.
6. Cop has his throat slit.
7. Grandma is smothered with a plastic bag.

TL;DR: Curse of Chucky is an astoundingly good fifth sequel, with a gothic aesthetic that far outpaces its direct-to-DVD limitations.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 955
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)

Boy Toy

Year: 2004

Director: Don Mancini

Cast: Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy Boyd

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Hey, remember when I was reviewing Chucky movies? I must confess, I’ve been consuming media far faster than I’ve been able to produce reviews. Especially with the 12 extra commitments provided by my Halloween retrospective and Cardboard Science crossover, writing this blog has been a little like trying to knock down Mount Everest with a hair dryer.

Luckily, now that Halloween is behind us, my rampage shall slow slightly and I’ll have a chance to catch up with the embarrassing number of flicks that are rolling around in my backlog like cheerios in the bottom of a mom’s purse. Of course, we’re barreling full tilt into the Christmas and end-of-year wrap-up season, so this reprieve is but a brief one. Let’s get started,

Seed of Chucky, the follow-up to the spectacularly successful Bride of Chucky, is the first Chucky flick to actually be directed by longtime series screenwriter Don Mancini. It’s also his first film ever, as you can certainly tell. But while it might have the vibe (and budget) of a TV movie, it’s one of the wettest and wildest Chucky entries yet.

The franchise just hit its 16th year, so puberty is kicking in.

The film opens on Sh*tface (Billy Boyd), the bastard offspring of Chucky (Brad Dourif) and Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly). A living doll that looks more like a Tim Burton reject, he’s been making money as the world’s best ventriloquist dummy. But when he sees a promo for a film detailing the exploits of Chucky and Tiffany, he mistakenly thinks the animatronic recreations are his real parents. He heads to Hollywood and, using the same over-the-top voodoo curse that Dourif probably mumbles in his sleep after all these years, restores their souls into these new bodies.

Thus begins another hunt for human hosts. Tiffany sets her sights on the film’s star, Jennifer Tilly (Jennifer Tilly) while Chucky goes after Redman (Redman), a rapper-cum-director that Tilly is sleeping with in order to get the role of the Virgin Mary in his new Bible epic. By now you already have a grotesquely thorough preview of the film’s sense of humor and have likely already decided whether or not it is for you. Oh, and they try to impregnate Jennifer with doll sperm in order to provide a host body for Sh*tface, whom they have named Glen or Glenda, depending on who you ask. His groinal area is totally Ken doll smooth, so nobody knows what gender to assign him.

As far as I know, this is cinema’s first nonbinary character. In a Chucky movie. This is why I love horror.

Obviously, this gender issue is hardly treated with respect and tenderness in Seed, the film where Chucky jerks off to a Fangoria magazine. But it is approached as a valid decision for Glen/Glenda to make, which is fascinating territory for a slasher film to mine. Of course, as driven by psychosexual penetration as the genre is, there’s nary a shred of doubt that Glen will end up as a boy. But the fact that the discussion is even being entertained is one of the most unique elements I’ve ever seen in a fifth franchise entry.

Of course, the entirety of the film is utterly unique, and not always for the better. Here, the post-Scream self-referential humor of Bride of Chucky is pushed to the braking point. There are some undoubtedly clever moments, including any time Jennifer Tilly and Tiffany interact (to their mutual pleasure), but the whole thing takes on the quality of a zany cartoon. It’s enormously difficult to take Seed seriously as a feature film and not an 11-minute adventure laboriously stretched on the rack to ill 80 minutes.

It’s just downright weird, is what it is. Overlit by what could only be three separate lighting kits, the film’s bright wash renders it flat and stagebound, eliminating any clinging wisp of scariness. But the sheer lengths the movie takes to entertain can’t help but work in spurts and starts. Seed has absolutely no place in the canon of the (admittedly goofy) Chucky movies with its wildly divergent tone, but it stays true to itself and never ceases to be diabolically fascinating. Between a John Waters cameo, Tiffany attempting to become a role model by curbing her urge to commit homicide, and Glen’s assumption of his heritage thanks to a stamp reading “Made in Japan,” Seed is the slasher like you’ve never seen it before. And one gag that calls back to The Shining is the most unexpectedly hilarious moment in perhaps the entire franchise.

You could say that Seed of Chucky is The Shining of… toy films? I got nothing.

As you may have been able to piece together, Seed of Chucky is astoundingly cheap. Double cast actors, low rent rappers, and hellaciously basic lighting plots do not a blockbuster make. This low-fi attitude also unfortunately extends to the puppeteering. Or doll-eteering, I guess. While the Chucky animation effects had been exponentially improving since the original film, Seed oversteps its modest means by attempting to breathe life into three entire plastic creations, forcing the quality to take a quantum leap backwards. Once again, the suspension of disbelief hangs from a gossamer thread, rather than the might iron cables achieved by the Bride crew.

Luckily, we’re not skimped on the gore. Though Chucky and his brood might have the lip elasticity of Tara Reid, the blood is just as gooey and gushy as ever. In fact, there may be more carnage in this flick than ever before. Despite the dolls’ attempts at cutting back on killing, they accomplish a truly impressive array of splatter, including one of the best severed heads I’ve ever seen in a low budget film.

In the finale of Seed, Chucky decides that he doesn’t want to possess a human body. It turns out that he quite likes being Chucky. I think this film has come to that realization as well. Instead of being something it’s not, it flings itself bodily into the cesspool of bawdy, loudmouth humor and zany, drippy murder. It’s far from perfect, but it’s Chucky and Mancini reunited to have a blast and push the envelope. 

This entry is often written off as being the worst of the franchise. Well, that might be true, but in a series as inexplicably consistent as this, that’s not a damning statement. Remove your brain and unbox Seed of Chucky. It might just do you good.

Body Count: 10; the first two occurring in a dream, the third in a movie, and not counting three skeletons hidden in a closet.

1. Richard is stabbed in the chest.
2. Mrs. Richard slips and falls in the shower.
3. Santa has his throat slit.
4. Mechanic is decapitated with wire.
5. Britney Spears dies in a car wreck.
6. Pete gets his head dissolved with acid.
7. Redman is disemboweled.
8. Joan is blasted with aerosol fire and falls down stairs.
9. Stan is stabbed in the chest.
10. Fulvia is beaten to death with a doll.

TL;DR: Seed of Chucky is zany and ridiculous, but a charming diversion.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1200

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)

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)

Toy Guns

Year: 1991

Director: Jack Bender

Cast: Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

There comes a time in every young franchise’s life when they must embrace childish things. Specifically, I’m referring to camp and humor, which tend to creep up on even the hardiest of horror properties. It took Nightmare on Elm Street two go-rounds for Freddy to transform into a homicidal stand-up comedian, Jason Voorhees’ fifth turn behind the wheel of the machete was marked by self-referential comedy and even a James Bond homage in the opening credits, and Halloween: H20 featured Michael Myers battling a gaggle of Kevin Williamson-weaned teens.

Although Chucky’s humor heyday was still yet to come in 1992, Child’s Play 3 is a clear transition piece, still utilizing the killer doll as a source of fear, but upping the ante on his already-prevalent sarcasm. As a result, it teeters a bit on the brink of two genres, but returning screenwriter Don Mancini manages to hold it together long enough to see it through to the next phase.

Phase 2: Chucky squares off against Iron Man and whatever Avenger has the cheapest contract.

Child’s Play 3 continues the story of Andy Barclay (now played by Justin Whalin), who has been shuttled through a series of foster homes but had trouble adjusting, probably because they had a severe lack of blondes in rad leather hats. As a last ditch effort, he is sent to military school with the hope that a little straightening out will quell his killer doll fantasies.

Unfortunately for everyone, the greedy Play Pals corporation has restarted production on their popular Good Guys line of dolls, and it just so happens that the plastic used to make the first model was unknowingly spiked with Chucky’s blood. Before OSHA Safety officials could arrive on the scene, Chucky has been resurrected and quickly ships himself off to the Academy. While there, he realizes that this is a new body, so he can transfer his soul into a new person. He picks Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers), an impressionable kid with an absentee father who is desperate for a friend. Now it’s up to Andy to stop Chucky from possessing Tyler’s body, though he must fight through strict military officials and meathead bullies to get there.

Those nine months were hard on him. Stress has a way of aging a boy.

Coming out only a scant 9 months after Child’s Play 2, it’s a miracle that anything in the film works at all. Hell, it’s a miracle that Chucky isn’t just a paper cutout glued to a popsicle stick. And while this is Don Mancini’s least favorite screenplay and certainly his shallowest, it nevertheless scrounges up a decent setting, a handful of engaging characters, and throws in a scant theme or two when nobody’s looking. Even though it could certainly use tightening up and the low budget hobbles the capacity for particularly cool effects, it remains a fun, breezy watch, pepped up by Brad Dourif’s evergreen performance.

Dourif is like a sponge, absorbing any wacky tonal imbalances with no apparent effort and embracing the ludicrous fun yet chilling otherness of being a killer doll. The best scenes are those that put him front and center, where he leads the film from beat to prearranged beat like a demented drill sergeant. The plot itself might just be a tarted-up rehash of the first two films, but he pummels it along at a steady clip, whether he’s frustratedly pursuing his naïve yet slippery quarry or spouting haircut puns while slashing a manic barber’s throat.

However, while the character comedy is spot-on, Chucky’s tendency toward quipping renders the film a bit of a shallow clone of the later Elm Street films. Mancini would find the proper balance for his humor in Bride of Chucky (which I can’t wait to write about), but for the time being we’re stuck with but a shadow of the comic monolith Chucky would become. However accomplished the performance is it can’t completely save a rushed, lackluster script.

It's a tough pill to swallow.

Despite its shortcomings, Child’s Play 3 does at least bring some new elements to the table. The military school setting provides ample opportunity for unique setpieces and a set of characters at least slightly to the left (left, left, right, left) of the typical slasher milieu. Instead of a parent refusing to believe their child’s story, it’s the brass refusing to allow insubordination, and instead of Chucky causing “accidents’ with assorted household objects like a homicidal Martha Stewart, he wreaks explosive havoc with armory equipment. It’s the same set of stock situations, but the new setting (which I believe hasn’t been used since 1981’s plodding Evilspeak) wrings the last droplets of life from them.

The downside of this is that every actor has the exact same outfit and haircut, so they’re about as distinguishable as the members of ZZ Top. But there is also an added dimension of Chucky stalking people trained in the art of combat, although the film’s most promising character (a kick-ass chick with an attitude) is shunted aside in the finale like a ten dollar wedding present.

Salt shakers? That's the last time we invite Jenny and Brad anywhere.

The kills are also only intermittently successful. Whether they were limited by budget or time, they’re generally unremarkable (save Chucky’s gloopy demise, which comes after the film’s longest sustained period of tension – a battle inside a funhouse ride). If I’d wanted to see people keel over without a hint of blood, I’d have watched a 50’s Western instead of a Chucky sequel. Fortunately the circumstances surrounding the murders muster up frissons of fright, especially the very first, in which Chucky uses the various toys in the Play Pals CEO’s office to menace him before taking him out.

So really, though Child’s Play 3 may very well be the weakest of the franchise, I’s still worth a look for Chucky devotees. There’s enough material to render it an affable 90 minutes while the franchise uses it as a stepping stone to greener, bloodier pastures.

Killer: Chucky (Brad Dourif)

Final Girl: Andy Barclay (Justin Whelan) feat. DeSilva (Perrey Reeves)

Best Kill: Colonel Cochran dies of a heart attack before Chucky can get to him.

Sign of the Times: Andy shows up at school with a mullet that looks like he was the victim of a drive-by perpetrated by a gang of Billy Ray Cyrus’ rejected stylists.

Scariest Moment: When Chucky is menacing the Play Pals CEO, he sets two Good Guy dolls on the desk to talk to each other in a continuous loop.

Weirdest Moment: Chucky somehow figures out how to mail himself places

Champion Dialogue: “What are children after all, but consumer trainees?”

Body Count: 8; including Chucky, who sure as hell dies a lot for somebody with six movies under his belt.

1. Mr. Sullivan is strangled with a yo-yo.
2. Garbage Man is crushed in a trash compactor.
3. Colonel Cochran has a heart attack.
4. Sergeant Botnik has his throat slit with a razor.
5. Shelton is shot in the chest.
6. Whitehurst throws himself over a grenade.
7. Security Guard is shot in the head.
8. Chucky is slashed to pieces by an industrial fan.

TL;DR: Child's Play 3 is a decent, if rather generic second sequel.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1224

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)

Two Buck Chuck

Year: 1990

Director: John Lafia

Cast: Alex Vincent, Christine Elise, Jenny Agutter

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Horror sequels get a bad rap. They may be tawdry, craven, or eccentric, but that’s hardly a reason to love them any less. And out of the crop of sequels in a franchise (there’s almost always a franchise, if the first film earned a dime – sometimes even if it didn’t), part twos tend to be the most interesting. A part two is the horror sequel in its purest, most unrefined state. The original actors might still be hanging around (if they haven’t gotten famous, left Hollywood, or found religion) to make return appearances, there’s plenty of money in the coffer, and there’s almost total creative freedom – with only one prior, it’s harder to pick out a pattern to follow.

A first sequel can decide the course of an entire franchise. Friday the 13th Part 2 made the drowned child Jason Voorhees the villain, a putrescently awful idea that went on to make untold millions. Halloween II guaranteed that any attempt to anthologize the franchise without its trademark Boogeyman would be a non-starter. Saw II began the tradition of Jigsaw expanding his torture empire like a less morally bankrupt McDonald’s (zing!), Hatchet II introduced the use of cameras that cost more than five dollars (double zing!), and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge… Well, people like to pretend that that one never happened.

Probe won me a point in horror trivia one month, though. #neverforget

So when it came time for Child’s Play to wrangle itself a part two (two years after its release – a little late for an 80’s horror sequel but these were the waning years of the age of slasher decadence), there was a whole horizon of hope and wonder spread in front of it. What Child’s Play captain Don Mancini (who has penned the script for every single film in the franchise and directed the most recent two films) elected to do was set his killer doll slowly down the path set by Freddy Krueger: from genuine menace to quipping prankster. Because the initial pedestal he had to fall from wasn’t quite so high, this transition was much smoother, but that’s a story for another time. For now, what we’re faced with is the new Chucky’s cocoon, a still horrific tale that’s certainly more vulgar and crass than its predecessor but equally more focused and thrilling.

In Child’s Play 2, young Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) has been committed to the foster system following the institutionalization of his mother. The business with the killer doll Chucky (Brad Dourif) – who was possessed with the soul of the Lakeshore Strangler Charles Lee Ray – has been written off as a flight of childish fancy, nevermind the four corpses left in his wake. Andy has been taken in by Joanne (Jenny Agutter of An American Werewolf in London) and Phil Simpson (Gerrit Graham) as well as their teen foster daughter Kyle (Christine Elise), winner of this film’s Spirit of the 90’s ribbon with her leather hat thick gold chain, and cherry red lippy.

When executives of the Play Pals corporations rebuild the Chucky doll to dispel those hurtful rumors about his nasty habit of attempting to dismember loyal customers, things go about as well as you might expect. Chucky discovers Andy’s whereabouts and takes the place of Tommy – the Good Guy doll Andy has been using to get over his trauma – to infiltrate the house and find a quiet moment to play a round or two of Hide the Soul.

I mean, at least it’s better than Monopoly.

The most important topic when discussing Child’s Play 2 (as it is I suppose, with any of its sequels) is the film’s treatment of Chucky. A serial killing doll is a tough character to pull off at the best of times (why don’t people just set up a child gate or something? He’s two freaking feet tall!), and the turning point of the Chucky films was when they embraced their inherent camp value. However, this film struck a curiously perfect alchemical balance. Now that viewers already knew the extent of Chucky’s supernatural prowess thanks to the mostly played-straight Child’s Play, the doll was free to interact openly with his environment from square one. He still lurked in the shadows whens talking his prey, but this Chucky is a more mobile, active man about town.

Many horror enthusiasts would argue that bringing the villain out into the open dampens the cerebral chill of the unknown, that imagination is always worse than what we can see. They’re partially right. And in scenes like, say, Chucky spanking a teacher with a yardstick, it’s a little harder to take him seriously. But this film’s forays into camp territory are relatively infrequent, and the increased face time with Chucky also maximizes exposure to Brad Dourif’s paint-peeling performance of raw, unfettered malice. Chucky’s slightly improved animation effects also serve to make him a more credible menace, and when that doll roars with anger it will electrify your nerve endings like taking a dip with a toaster.

Don’t try this at home: professional blogger working in controlled conditions.

While Child’s Play 2 may lack Tom Holland’s flair for stacking a scene with gag after gag, it’s also the film in the franchise that most frequently and consistently wrings tension out of its scenario, losing the muddy mystery elements that bogged down the original script like a pair of concrete booties. Whether it’s a switcheroo kill where a weapon turns out to be harmless before Chucky strikes for real, the unendurably slow unveiling of Tommy’s deposed corpse (which was buried under the swing and gets revealed a little more with each kick), or just the world’s creepiest basement, this is an astonishingly well put-together work of early 90’s horror cinema. Mind you, that company includes Leprechaun, Dr. Giggles, and The Ice Cream Man, but I’m not kidding around here. This movie’s got legs.

The script also serves the tone well by consolidating the horror around a single-family home rather than a gritty urban crimescape. It allows for more interpersonal dynamics to flourish as the plot thickens (dad thinks Andy’s crazy and wants to return him like he’s a faulty vacuum, mom is struggling with the fact that she’s barren, etc.), and Andy and Kyle develop a very genuine sibling bond that benefits the emotional impact enormously. Kyle also provides the franchise with its first real crack at a bona fide Final Girl, rising to the challenge with vim, vigor, and punk rock attitude.

When the finale rolls around, just Kyle, Andy, Chucky, and an endless Mary Poppins grab bag of lovely, gooey special effects, it’s tremendously difficult not to have fallen head over heels for Child’s Play 2. Chucky has found his way six feet under once more (this guy has more lives than a cat, and they’re all shockingly gory considering that his only health care option is plastic surgery), but his brief new lease on life has reminded us that yes, killer dolls can be scary, yes, sequels can be great, and no, they don’t have to win Oscars to prove it

Child’s Play 2 isn’t the best film to ever happen to me, far from it. But it’s delightfully easy to enjoy, and that’s an astonishingly rare occurrence in the dark and divisive forest of endless horror franchise. I cherish what I can, and Child’s Play 2 is like finding a forgotten reassure in a dusty old toy box, just begging to be played with all over again.

Killer: Chucky (Brad Dourif)

Final Girl: Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) feat. Kyle (Christine Elise)

Best Kill: After Grace Poole is stabbed, she lands on a photocopier which starts printing copies of her bloody face.

Sign of the Times: Kyle for President

Scariest Moment: Kyle slowly walks down the hall while the sewing machine furiously rattles.

Weirdest Moment: Kyle doesn’t bat an eye when she finds Andy tied to his bed.

Champion Dialogue: You’ve seen dolls that pee? This one bleeds.”

Body Count: 8

1. Worker #1 is electrocuted.
2. Mattson is smothered with a plastic bag.
3. Miss Kettlewell is stabbed with a basketball pump.
4. Phil has his neck broken in a fall.
5. Joanne is killed with her sewing machine offscreen.
6. Grace Poole is stabbed in the chest.
7. Worker #2 has his eyes gouged out by an assembly line machine.
8. Chucky is pelted with malfunctioning doll parts, melted, and exploded.

TL;DR: Child's Play 2 might not be high art, but it's a surprisingly tight and tense entry in the early 90's horror scene.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1446
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)

Census Bloodbath: Valley Of The Dolls

Year: 1988

Director: Tom Holland

Cast: Catherine Hicks, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In what is shaping up to be a summer’s end tradition (thanks to the close proximity of my birthday), I am once again finding myself exploring a horror franchise that’s totally new to me. Last year, it was Saw, an agreeably unpleasant marathon that led to some of my most hilariously sardonic reviews, if I do say so myself. This year is much more enjoyable for me, though the jury’s still out for you guys: the Child’s Play franchise.

Chucky the serial-killing doll isn’t quite as iconic a presence in the horror market as your Freddys or your Jasons (hence his not unrespectable 6 films as opposed to the Big League numbers like 9, 10, and –shudder – 12), but considering the context, he’s lucky to be alive at all, let alone a considerably well-respected member of the second-tier horror pantheon. Tom Holland’s Child’s Play came out in 1988, long after the slasher dynasty had begun to flake and crumble. The subgenre still had some juice during that year (in fact, its most profitable film – A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master – came out in ’88), but that well quickly dried up by 1989, long before Chucky could even squeeze out a measly sequel. 

He was abandoned to the cinematic wasteland of the early 90’s after just one entry, an entry that came out in a year by which the MPAA had already picked every scrap of meat clean off the carcass of the slasher, leaving it a clean, toothless version of what it once as. Without the genre staples of boobs and gore, filmmakers had to get creative, and by nothing short of a miracle, that’s exactly what Child’s Play did.

The secret is that literally nobody in the world likes dolls.

Child’s Play is set in an alternate universe where large talking plasticine dolls known as “Good Guys are incredibly popular. I know it’s an alternate universe, because in the one I live in, any sane person who happened upon one of these dolls in the Target toy aisle would immediately call the cops and try to light it on fire. Young Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) reeeally wants one of these dolls for his birthday because maybe he’s a sociopath, but his mother Karen (Catherine Hicks) can’t afford it. In an effort to appease him, she buys a doll from a vagrant in an alley, not realizing that just last night the notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) used a voodoo curse to pass his soul into the doll after being gunned down at a toy store by Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon).

After a few select murders (including his ex-partner, who abandoned him), Chucky learns that in order to regain human form, he must possess the body of the first person he revealed his secret to – Andy. Of course, by this point Andy has been blamed for the killings because nobody believes his story that “the creepy doll did it.” Alternate universe, remember? Karen and Detective Norris must team up to stop Chucky from reaching Andy in his room at the psych ward… before it’s too late.

And because this is 1988, they don’t get to bang. Disappointing.

The reason Child’s Play was such a relatively resounding success was that it worked around its limitations to bring something new to the table. Not allowed to show boobs? Bam! Set it in a family. MPAA is cracking down on gore? Kazaam! Creative kills don’t have to be bloody. World getting tired of an endless rigmarole of silent, masked killers? Kalamazoo! Killer dolls had been seen before (Talking Tina anyone? If you know what I’m referring to, I’ll give you a moment to unclench your buttocks), but effects had advanced to a point that Chucky was able to gain an autonomy that couldn’t have been dreamt of a decade before.

Mind you, these are the reasons why Child’s Play is a successful and clever slasher film. The question of whether it’s a particularly good slasher film is another story. There’s a reason that the name “Chucky” has gained pop culture longevity, but the title itself has faded into the four winds. You’re not exactly hearing people go, “Now who was that short ginger from the Child’s Play movie?” While I’m legally obligated as a horror fan not to speak ill against any Tom Holland project, Child’s Play is good more in terms of how it was created and the legacy it inspired than its actual content.

In the manner of nearly all slashers with a heavy urban crime element, Child’s Play is somewhat of a letdown when it comes to the scare department. If I wanted to see hardnosed criminals hanging around police substations and wasting guys named Eddie, I’d rent a Scorsese movie. Or My Cousin Vinny. And while, yes, creepy dolls are creepy, Chucky hadn’t quite come into his own yet.

With so many of the early intrigue scenes committed to prolonging the mystery of whether or not he’s a real doll, they forget to provide a genuine sense of danger and he ends up looking rather silly as he toddles around in his chubby little booties. A moment where he threatens the Detective in his car with a knife is terrifically menacing, but there’s so many moving parts at work in that scene, it’s hard to give him full credit. There are scraps of tension scattered throughout the film, but they’re mostly thanks to Holland’s reliable atmosphere rather than (save one instance) Chucky himself.

Frankly, he’s scarier when he’s not moving at all.

When the film finally does slam full tilt into things, it’s a healthy helping of late 80’s fun. And the effects extravaganza of the final 20 minutes is pretty much beyond compare, though they never do figure out how to fit Dourif’s dialogue into Chucky’s stiff little mouth, bless their hearts. The kills (sparse as they are, this being a “story slasher” – gag me with a spoon, right?) are so unique that it’s hard to notice they’re completely ungory – hammers, ovens, electroshock machines… It’s like the Fisher Price playset from Hell. Chucky’s doll identity is only incorporated into one of the kills, which is a real missed opportunity, but the wicked gusto with which he dispatches his victims is captivating enough.

I could do without the vicious underacting from Sarandon and human Brad Dourif (“Oh God… I’m dying.”), both of whom are outpaced by even Alex Vincent, who’s a pretty credible kid lead but does have that child actor habit of sounding like he’s on sedatives half the times. However, once Dourif is wrested from his corporeal form, he Emerils it up a notch and effortlessly reaches his pernicious peak.

At the end of the day, you’ll never waste your time or money by sitting down for a screening of Child’s Play. Just don’t be surprised if you don’t find it to be everything you dreamed it would be, especially if you didn’t grow up with Chucky. Nostalgia is an important factor with this one. In fact, if possible, get in a time machine and show this movie to yourself at six years old, then get back to me. I’ll wait.

Killer: Chucky (Brad Dourif)

Final Girl: Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) feat. Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks)

Best Kill: A doctor’s brain is fried with an electroshock helmet. This effect can also be achieved by marathoning both seasons of Twin Peaks back to back.

Sign of the Times: Nobody bats an eye wen a six-year-old rides the train alone.

Scariest Moment: A six-year-old rides the train alone.

Weirdest Moment: The fact that anybody could possibly think Chucky is cute, even before he tries to stab them.

Champion Dialogue: “I gotta go. I have a date with a six-year-old boy.”

Body Count: 5; including Chucky, because why the hell not – they didn’t know there’d be sequels yet.

1. Maggie is hit in the face with a toy hammer and falls out a window.
2. Eddie perishes in a gas explosion.
3. John is stabbed in the heart via a voodoo doll.
4. Doctor is electrocuted via an electroshock therapy helmet.
5. Chucky is shot in the heart.

TL;DR: Child's Play is an underwhelming beginning to a semi-classic franchise.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1396

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)