Bride of Chucky (1998)

Bride of Chucky (1998)

(Anyone notice that the poster is a rip-off of Scream 2's poster?)

     After the great horror wasteland that was the mid 1990s, Scream proved that horror films could be successful again.  However, as Scream was basically a meta-slasher film with more comedy than terror, studios were still playing it somewhat safe.  According to Don Mancini, the writer of all of the Chucky films, he began writing Bride of Chucky soon after seeing Scream and Universal giving him a call.  Universal had noticed the success of Scream and was looking through which horror series they owned.  I guess they decided Child's Play would work best for taking the piss out of.  And Don Mancini agreed.  It had been seven years since the last Chucky film.  The series was considered dead.  Don Mancini thought they'd done all they could with the series and Universal wasn't too proud of the box office on Child's Play 3.  

    So here's the story.  It takes place just one month after the last film.  (Now remember that Child's Play 3 jumped in time from the previous film and was set in 1998, a full 8 years later than than Child's Play 2.  So the real world time has caught up with time in the movie continuity.)  At the end of the last film, Chucky was shredded into many pieces by a gigantic fan.  The beginning of this movie his shredded self is officially evidence in a police warehouse.  One of the cops steals the remains for Charles Lee Ray's (Chucky's) girlfriend Tiffany (played by Jennifer Tilly).  She kills the cop and takes the doll pieces back to her trailer home.  There she sews Chucky back together and does the voodoo spell on him.  At first it doesn't seem to work, but after David Arquette's weird brother (named Damian in the film) comes around and wants to do sexy things with Tiffany, Chucky smothers Damian with a pillow.  (After yanking out his lip ring, which I find the most cringeworthy thing in the series.)  Now, Tiffany brought Chucky back to life because she thought he was about to marry her before he died.  He wasn't.  He tells her so and she traps him.  He gets loose and gets back at her by pushing a TV in the bath with her in it.  Then Chucky puts Tiffany's soul in a doll as more punishment.  And just now we learn that Charles Lee Ray was buried with an amulet that will let his soul return to his own body.  (What a coincidence.  After so many years, he remembers that.)  So Chucky and Tiffany plan to use her next door neighbor Jesse (Nick Stabile) to take the dolls to the place the graveyard is.  However, Jesse has his girlfriend in tow.  (Katherine Heigl)  His girlfriend has a overbearing police officer uncle that she lives with.  Overbearing uncle gets in the way of Chucky's plans by planting marijuana in Jesse's van, so of course Chucky kills him.  Things spiral more and more out of control as Jesse drives towards Charles Lee Ray's grave.

    I decided to stop telling the plot as it'd take forever, and it's not really that important.  The amulet was never spoken of in the series until this movie.  It's basically a dark romantic comedy.  Jesse and his girlfriend Jade are both suspected of doing the murders of everyone that gets in their way although it's always Chucky doing them.  Chucky blows up a police car with a weasely cop in it, he gets an airbag to explode nails all into John Ritter's face, a couple having sex in a bed with a mirror above it get impaled with glass after the mirror breaks...  (Okay, that last one was done by Tiffany to show Chucky she had it in her... and then Chucky and Tiffany have off-screen doll sex.)   Chucky and Tiffany are basically a mirror-version of Jesse and Jade.  This is something Tiffany notices early on, and she roots for Jesse and Jade to elope and live happily ever after.  Chucky thinks young love is stupid and funny.  My favorite scene is after Chucky and Tiffany have revealed themselves to Jesse and Jade and they're on their way to the graveyard in the trailer and a fight ensues between Chucky and Tiffany with Tiffany finally losing it with Chucky.

They kill the gay best friend of Jade and Jesse too.  He eventually thinks his best friends are killers after he finds a body in the van.  He threatens to turn in Jade and Jesse and backs out of the van, which is on the side of the interstate.  He gets surprised by Chucky and ends up getting hit by a big rig.  If you were gay in the 90s, you probably didn't live through a slasher film.  Even if it was written by a gay guy like Don Mancini.  Oh well.  Guy was annoying anyway.  He clearly thought his friends capable of murder.

     The movie takes its title idea from Bride of Frankenstein, the first sequel to Universal's 1931 film.  It also takes its style from that film.  Bride of Frankenstein was basically the first dark comedy ever filmed.  It was a sheer left turn from Frankenstein.  There's a dandy scientist who makes miniature people and wants to continue Dr. Frankenstein's work and the monster wants a bride so he won't be alone.  Oh, and he can talk in that one.  Bride of Frankenstein is a much watch no matter if you want to see Bride of Chucky or not.  But once you watch that film, you'll get what they were going for here.  It's a tragic romance with a lot of comedy involved.  (That's speaking of both films.)

     I need to mention that the soundtrack is pretty great too.  Not the score, which is pretty pedestrian, but the soundtrack.  Basically a lot of metal is in the soundtrack.  Artists like Judas Priest, Bruce Dickinson, Type O Negative, Motorhead, Slayer, and White Zombie are included in the soundtrack.  For 1998 that's pretty amazing as metal was pretty much dead at the time in America.  

    Basically I don't have a lot to say on this film.  It was a success at the box office making about twice it's 25 million dollar budget when it came out October 16, 1998.  The critics thought it was better than the third film, which was easy to say anyway as the third film is pretty lackluster.  Audiences were divided too.  Many loved the new comedy take on Chucky, whereas horror fans were disappointed and hated the film.  (They'd hate the next one even more.)  It's the same situation that director Ronny Yu's other horror franchise film, Freddy Vs. Jason got.  (That one was mostly comedy too, but a bit more subtle.)  If there's one thing Ronny Yu got right here it was not taking the material seriously. After three films of doing that, there was no going back... not yet anyway.  I mean, the opening scene in the police evidence warehouse you see Michael Myer's mask, Jason's mask, some of the Puppet Master dolls, Leatherface's chainsaw...  Not subtle as to it's wink-wink nudge-nudgeness.  I guess I could see this as succumbing to the slasher franchise curse.  By the time Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th got to their later films, they started to make fun of themselves.  At least here they went with it fully and intentionally.  It's hardly horror and the comedy sometimes falls flat, but it was new and interesting for 1998.  Graphic horror would again fall on hard times from 1999 to about 2003 due to Columbine and fears of violence in media, so there wouldn't be another Chucky film for six years.  And when it did happen...  Oh boy. 

Next up, Seed of Chucky.  Along with Child's Play 3, considered the worst of the films.  Stay tuned.