Child's Play (1988)
"Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?"
If you've read my blog religiously by now (and come on, we know you have), you would know that by about 1985-1986, the horror genre was starting to die. It would take until about 1991 to really fully die, but thanks to the media's concern about violence in movies and the MPAA really taking a hard line on violence because of that, horror had to be quite tame for the most part. By 1988, the slasher films were all but dead. The installments of those series were showing less violence and blood for fear of X ratings. Thankfully, Child's Play isn't exactly a slasher film. The body count is pretty low and it's more of a regular horror film. For some reason it gets mixed in with slashers, I guess because the bad guy who possesses the Chucky doll was in fact a serial killer. That's about as close as it gets to a slasher in my mind. This film, if the technology had been available, would have fit right in the with the 1970s horror films like The Sentinel or Legacy.
So here's the story. There's this serial killer, the Lakeshore Strangler aka Charles Lee Ray (made up from killers Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray) played by Brad Dourif. The cops finally chase him down after his partner drives off without him. Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) follows him into a toy store that's closed for the night and shoots Ray. Ray knows that he's dying, but luckily he knows some voodoo (Because what serial killer doesn't, right?), and when he runs into a stack of Good Guy dolls, he uses voodoo to transfer his soul into one of the dolls just as he dies. (And as he dies, the building is struck by lightning and the store kinda... explodes.) Sometime after that, Karen Barlclay (Catherine Hicks) is celebrating her young son Andy's birthday. Andy is sad he didn't get the thing he wanted the most, which is a Good Guys doll that can say 3 different things back to you and is the size of a real child. She can't afford the doll with her salary, but thankfully a hobo is selling one behind where she works for a drastically reduced price. Andy is very happy with his new doll, but when mommy has to work late, her coworker babysits Andy and well, she ends up going through the high-rise apartment window and into a car below. From there, the police suspect Andy, his mother thinks he's going insane, there are more killings...
I've been of two minds about this film since I first saw it about 12 years ago. It's a fun little movie, but I can't take it seriously. Even though Chucky was not yet really comedic relief, and the animatronics look great, I'm always at a loss at how you can get killed by a little doll about the size of a four year old if you're really careful. Now yes, I know that many get killed because they don't know it's alive and a threat. A six year old can tell you their doll is alive continuously and you won't believe them. And if it gets a gun, that could be a problem. There's a scene in the film that's supposed to be frightening, the moment the mother gets to see Chucky come alive, but to me it's just damned hilarious.
How seriously can you take a doll suddenly thrashing and calling the lady onscreen a slut and a bitch? Reminds me of the native guy who goes insane at the end of Brave New World calling the main character a strumpet and a harlot and abusing himself. However, if it weren't for the unbelievableness of it, Child's Play wouldn't work for me. Chucky just isn't very scary to me. But he's darned entertaining. He's quick with a joke as he's killing people. He toys with Detective Norris as he attempts to kill him from the back seat as Norris is driving. Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky, makes the movie at least work on an entertainment level. He's vicious, insane, and really really angry. Apparently Dourif would go around the studio yelling and screaming, working himself up before he recorded his lines, and by the time he was done doing the lines, he'd sometimes be on the verge of fainting. It's interesting to note that most of the cast never even saw Dourif. His lines were recorded earlier, and he was only in the beginning of the film in person. However, he did do rehearsals with Catherine Hicks. One thing I had never noticed before is that as the movie progresses and Ray's soul stays in the Chucky doll longer, the doll's face begins to look more and more like Charles Lee Ray. The hair recedes, the eyes become more full of life, it becomes more expressive, etc. I think it's a triumph of the special effects department that they did this without me noticing. (Or maybe it's bad that I didn't notice? I dunno.)
It's also remarkable that they got a somewhat good child actor to play Andy. Alex Vincent was only six years old at the time he was in this first installment. Sure, he's not as good as an adult veteran actor would be, but he's believable and isn't one of those kids you want to have die very early on just because they're annoying as hell. No, he's very cute and sincere. My only problem with Andy is down to screenwriting. He's very mature for a six year old. At one point he takes the Chicago elevated train by himself (well, the Chucky doll is with him too) to a bad part of Chicago at the behest of Chucky. None of the adults on the train or around him wonder what a six year old kid is doing by himself in the bad part of town? A bit too much suspension of disbelief for me. Now, Chucky told him to go there so he could speak (aka: kill) an old friend. The old friend being the one who left him behind at the beginning of the film. He sets the guy's house to explode, and just as the house is set to explode, Andy, who is outside, is looking for Chucky who walked away while Andy was "taking a tinkle." The kid manages to step into a hole just as the house is exploding behind him. It's like something out of friggin' Keystone Kops. The kid does a good job with crying when he's in the mental institution later on and he sees Chucky outside the building ready to kill him. (He finds out from his voodoo mentor before he kills him that he needs to find the human body he first came into contact with to possess or he'll be stuck as a doll forever.)
The directing of the movie is pretty good. Tom Holland directed this installment. He had directed the great horror-comedy Fright Night three years earlier. (Itself somewhat of a classic now.) That movie too starred Chris Sarandon. Sadly, after this film, his directing career sort of went downhill, the only two films worth note being Stephen King adaptations. (The Langoliers tv movie and Thinner) He made the decision not to show Chucky in full walking and talking mode until halfway through the film. It's an old horror rule mostly used for budgetary reasons, like with Jaws, but also has the effect of creating more suspense and putting the monster in your imagination, or so they say. To me, it doesn't always work. It doesn't really do much in this film. For most of the walking Chucky shots, they used a little person with 30% larger than normal props, set, and furniture. Sadly, it's pretty darn obvious when they used a person rather than the animatronic. The movement is different.
Although this is often considered the best of the franchise's films, it's not mine. It's up there near the top, though. It takes itself somewhat seriously unlike Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky do. In fact, this movie is so far from those two, it's almost like a different series. (You can basically separate the series into the first 3, the 4th and 5th, and the new 6th film.) I'm somewhat surprised this hasn't been remade yet. Not that I would want one. I'm glad it hasn't been. I'm guessing that Don Mancini, the writer, holds his creation's rights? (Actually, pretty sure Universal does.) The movie opened on November 9, 1988 to pretty good reviews. It currently has a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes (albeit with only 6 reviews). Siskel of Siskel and Ebert disliked the film because it relied on the old child in danger trope, which he always railed against. Roger Ebert enjoyed the film, much to my surprise.
On a 9 million dollar budget, Child's Play went on to make a respectable $44.2 million over the Thanskgiving/Christmas season of 1988. When the movie was released, there were protests outside of MGM, the studio that made the film. The protestors were concerned that the movie would cause violence in children. Apparently as the TV crews were starting to arrive to do live news reports on it, a guy working in producer David Kirschner's office said he could handle the group in 10 minutes. He went out, talked to the leader of the protest, shook his hand, and they left. It is not known publicly what was said. Even Kirschner doesn't know how the guy got the group to go away. Sadly when Child's Play 3 came around, the subject would be back in the press. The movie was successful enough to warrant a sequel, which began pre-production pretty quickly. However, it would soon hit trouble. That, however, is for the next installment.
4 1/2 out of 7 stars.
(Anyone else notice how Chucky's face kinda looks like Reagan's in The Exorcist?)
