Welcome to the Dead Parade #12: Chucky Gets Chyerminaydit
Goot do be bach, Dicketkholduhs! If you're wondering why I'm talking like the ex-Governator of Kullyfwornyia, it's because I've been sick for quite awhile. Not to worry, I am not on my way to becoming one of the Dead Parade I so love to invest my cinematic and blogitorial time upon. I have just recently returned from a three-sick-day stay-cation--feel free to start pouring yourself a shot every time you see a hyphen--or minus sign--or a two-for-one dash like this one--. By the time you get done reading this, you will probably be so wasted you may have actually enjoyed it--or forgotten you hated it.
Anyway, that time off included my first doctor's visit in over five years--thank you, ObamaCare--and just in time, too, because I learned that the cough I had been fighting for two months straight turned out to be bronchitis on its way to becoming pneumonia. I just completed my antibiotic treatment--a six-pill plan that they lovingly call a Z-Pack, as though the medical community at large is secretly defending us from an imminent zombie infection by doling out prescription-strength doses of arithromycin. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?
Perhaps, but no more ridiculous than a serial killer using voodoo to transfer his soul into a doll and making certain that accidents do happen. I've reviewed the latest entry in the franchise--titled Curse of Chucky--prior to this, but there were some gaps in continuity that I thought I needed filled in at the time because it had been a long time since I had seen any of the previous films. Chief among these was the over-used source of many false endings in Curse of Chucky: mailing Chucky (a.k.a. serial strangler Charles Lee Ray, played and voiced by Brad Dourif throughout the entire series so far) to his intended victims.
Following his near-death at the hands of Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) and subsequent prayer to the voodoo god Damballah in the original Child's Play (an incantation that instantly brought to mind the "Karu Mari Odonna Loma..." chant from R.L. Stine's Night of the Living Dummy books), Dourif's killer gets a new lease on life as Chucky, a "Good Guy" doll who turns out to not be such a good guy once he starts killing anyone who gets close to Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) and forces Andy to play a game of "Hide the Soul" (another gimmick that persists for the rest of the series) so that he can switch bodies before his doll body becomes fully human--and therefore mortal. Child's Play features plot mechanics that Living Dummy readers might recognize: Andy's repeated claims that Chucky is behind the murders, and other more harmless antics around the house, are taken as childish fantasy by the film's adult characters, including Detective Norris, who initially believes Andy is psychologically damaged enough to be the real killer.
The special effects that give life to Chucky are impressive, even for the technology available at the time, and the suspense is well-built, even to someone who watched the series ass-backward like I did. And the appearance of the charred and skeletal Chucky near film's end hinted that Child's Play may have been intended as a Terminator spoof. Great first outing, though retroactively derivative.
B+
Chucky is re-built by the Good Guy manufacturer in Child's Play 2 to prove to the public that their toys are not dangerous, and Chucky kills the CEO's assistant and several other Play Pals employees for their trouble.
He then tracks down Andy, who is living with a foster family and is still Good Guy-phobic, switching places with, and burying, a Good Guy doll named Tommy. The plot mechanics of the original persist--adults don't believe little kids, Chucky wanting to play "Hide the Soul" with Andy, mounting suspense and grisly murder, etc.
But the suspense factor is increased this time around, with the discovery of the buried Tommy doll, as well as a final showdown inside the Good Guy factory, where thousands of identical dolls wait in a maze of boxes or stand in endless lines to be conveyed through the manufacture process, any one of which could reveal himself as Chucky at any moment. The factory scene also gives a deranged and gleeful nod to Terminator, which, like Child's Play 2, culminates with the villain's death by factory machinery. A decent sequel, but again, derivative, and a little campier than the first.
B
The third film begins with Chucky's remains being melted down (possibly an homage to the final scene in Terminator 2?) and added to a batch of liquid plastic that Play Pals--now fully recovered from eight years of bad publicity regarding the events of the first two films--uses to create a new line of Good Guys, including Chucky, who now technically (or out of plot-based convenience) has a new body.
Once more, Chucky tracks down Andy (now played by Justin Chatwin), who has been enrolled in a military school to learn discipline and work through his Good Guy issues. For the first time in the series, we see the "mail Chucky to his victims" gag as Chucky sends himself to the school to resume his soul-stealing vendetta against Andy. But another cadet winds up in possession (so to speak) of Chucky, and via the aforementioned plot convenience, becomes the object of his "Hide the Soul" game. Despite the elevated potential represented by the mix of Chucky and military-grade weaponry, Child's Play 3 falls victim to Second-Sequel-itis, featuring a relatively uninspired plot and lackluster third act, wherein Chucky is seemingly pureed by an exhaust fan inside a haunted house.
C+
Chucky gets re-animated again when an old girlfriend named Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) has his remains recovered from evidence and stitches him back together in hopes of renewing their relationship. But an argument ensues and Chucky kills her, transferring her soul into a doll as well.
The old Child's Play ways have gone, as Chucky and Tiffany now plan on finding the grave where Charles Lee Ray's body is buried so they can use the voodoo amulet buried with him to transfer their souls into new bodies: those of budding couple Jesse (soap actor Nick Stabile) and Jade (Katherine Heigl, Grey's Anatomy), whom they kidnap and force into a road trip to the grave-site. Some of the old mechanics persist, with Jesse and Jade initially blaming each other for Chucky and Tiffany's crimes and the pursuing cops believing they are a couple on a killing spree, but the rest is insultingly comedic, bone-bare, self-referential witlessness, barely offset by Chucky's terrifying new Frankenstein look, that culminates in the Tiffany doll giving birth. I mean, what the Chuck, and why the fuck?
D-
Things don't get any better in Seed of Chucky, wherein Glen (Chucky and Tiffany's now-six-year-old son, voiced by Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd) leaves his glamourless life as a profanely named ventriloquist's dummy to head for Hollywood in search of his parents, who died at the end of Bride of Chucky. Thankfully for him (and, as it turns out, a waste of film for us viewers), a movie is being made about the murderous exploits of Chucky and Tiffany, and Glen is able to use the Damballah incantation on the animatronic puppets being used for the film.
To give the reformed Amish among you an idea of the kind of juvenile crap we're talking about here, Glen wets himself repeatedly, Tiffany wants to turn him into a girl, Chucky wants to teach him how to kill, Tiffany reads self-help books to get over her "addiction to killing," Jennifer Tilly is playing double duty as Tiffany and herself (introducing a plotline wherein she's sleeping with the rapper Redman in order to prove she's not a slut so she can play the Virgin Mary in Redman's next film project), Tiffany has a fangirl obsession with Jennifer Tilly and seeks to use her as her new host body (which ultimately explains why Tiffany is human again at the end of Curse of Chucky), Glen winds up with a homicidal female split personality, learns Matrix-style martial arts skills from watching old chopsocky kung-fu movies, and winds up soul-swapped into the body of one of Jennifer Tilly's twin babies.
Ticketholders: Please contact your local Ticketmaster (me) and remind him to stop writing ridiculous crap--again.
F (with enough minus signs to give you alcohol poisoning)
There could potentially be material for a follow-up to Curse here, perhaps with a teenage Glen crossing paths with a grown-up Andy? Whatever the plans may be for the future of Chucky, it's clear that regarding his six-film past, they should have heeded the words of Chucky himself: "Don't fuck with the Chuck!"
If you're still conscious at this point, stay tuned for more bloody ludicrous shite as I review Machete Kills in the next installment of Just the Ticket. Oh, and try not to spread the fever this time, okay, folks?
Anyway, that time off included my first doctor's visit in over five years--thank you, ObamaCare--and just in time, too, because I learned that the cough I had been fighting for two months straight turned out to be bronchitis on its way to becoming pneumonia. I just completed my antibiotic treatment--a six-pill plan that they lovingly call a Z-Pack, as though the medical community at large is secretly defending us from an imminent zombie infection by doling out prescription-strength doses of arithromycin. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?
Perhaps, but no more ridiculous than a serial killer using voodoo to transfer his soul into a doll and making certain that accidents do happen. I've reviewed the latest entry in the franchise--titled Curse of Chucky--prior to this, but there were some gaps in continuity that I thought I needed filled in at the time because it had been a long time since I had seen any of the previous films. Chief among these was the over-used source of many false endings in Curse of Chucky: mailing Chucky (a.k.a. serial strangler Charles Lee Ray, played and voiced by Brad Dourif throughout the entire series so far) to his intended victims.
Following his near-death at the hands of Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) and subsequent prayer to the voodoo god Damballah in the original Child's Play (an incantation that instantly brought to mind the "Karu Mari Odonna Loma..." chant from R.L. Stine's Night of the Living Dummy books), Dourif's killer gets a new lease on life as Chucky, a "Good Guy" doll who turns out to not be such a good guy once he starts killing anyone who gets close to Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) and forces Andy to play a game of "Hide the Soul" (another gimmick that persists for the rest of the series) so that he can switch bodies before his doll body becomes fully human--and therefore mortal. Child's Play features plot mechanics that Living Dummy readers might recognize: Andy's repeated claims that Chucky is behind the murders, and other more harmless antics around the house, are taken as childish fantasy by the film's adult characters, including Detective Norris, who initially believes Andy is psychologically damaged enough to be the real killer.
The special effects that give life to Chucky are impressive, even for the technology available at the time, and the suspense is well-built, even to someone who watched the series ass-backward like I did. And the appearance of the charred and skeletal Chucky near film's end hinted that Child's Play may have been intended as a Terminator spoof. Great first outing, though retroactively derivative.
B+
Chucky is re-built by the Good Guy manufacturer in Child's Play 2 to prove to the public that their toys are not dangerous, and Chucky kills the CEO's assistant and several other Play Pals employees for their trouble.
He then tracks down Andy, who is living with a foster family and is still Good Guy-phobic, switching places with, and burying, a Good Guy doll named Tommy. The plot mechanics of the original persist--adults don't believe little kids, Chucky wanting to play "Hide the Soul" with Andy, mounting suspense and grisly murder, etc.
But the suspense factor is increased this time around, with the discovery of the buried Tommy doll, as well as a final showdown inside the Good Guy factory, where thousands of identical dolls wait in a maze of boxes or stand in endless lines to be conveyed through the manufacture process, any one of which could reveal himself as Chucky at any moment. The factory scene also gives a deranged and gleeful nod to Terminator, which, like Child's Play 2, culminates with the villain's death by factory machinery. A decent sequel, but again, derivative, and a little campier than the first.
B
The third film begins with Chucky's remains being melted down (possibly an homage to the final scene in Terminator 2?) and added to a batch of liquid plastic that Play Pals--now fully recovered from eight years of bad publicity regarding the events of the first two films--uses to create a new line of Good Guys, including Chucky, who now technically (or out of plot-based convenience) has a new body.
Once more, Chucky tracks down Andy (now played by Justin Chatwin), who has been enrolled in a military school to learn discipline and work through his Good Guy issues. For the first time in the series, we see the "mail Chucky to his victims" gag as Chucky sends himself to the school to resume his soul-stealing vendetta against Andy. But another cadet winds up in possession (so to speak) of Chucky, and via the aforementioned plot convenience, becomes the object of his "Hide the Soul" game. Despite the elevated potential represented by the mix of Chucky and military-grade weaponry, Child's Play 3 falls victim to Second-Sequel-itis, featuring a relatively uninspired plot and lackluster third act, wherein Chucky is seemingly pureed by an exhaust fan inside a haunted house.
C+
Chucky gets re-animated again when an old girlfriend named Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) has his remains recovered from evidence and stitches him back together in hopes of renewing their relationship. But an argument ensues and Chucky kills her, transferring her soul into a doll as well.
The old Child's Play ways have gone, as Chucky and Tiffany now plan on finding the grave where Charles Lee Ray's body is buried so they can use the voodoo amulet buried with him to transfer their souls into new bodies: those of budding couple Jesse (soap actor Nick Stabile) and Jade (Katherine Heigl, Grey's Anatomy), whom they kidnap and force into a road trip to the grave-site. Some of the old mechanics persist, with Jesse and Jade initially blaming each other for Chucky and Tiffany's crimes and the pursuing cops believing they are a couple on a killing spree, but the rest is insultingly comedic, bone-bare, self-referential witlessness, barely offset by Chucky's terrifying new Frankenstein look, that culminates in the Tiffany doll giving birth. I mean, what the Chuck, and why the fuck?
D-
Things don't get any better in Seed of Chucky, wherein Glen (Chucky and Tiffany's now-six-year-old son, voiced by Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd) leaves his glamourless life as a profanely named ventriloquist's dummy to head for Hollywood in search of his parents, who died at the end of Bride of Chucky. Thankfully for him (and, as it turns out, a waste of film for us viewers), a movie is being made about the murderous exploits of Chucky and Tiffany, and Glen is able to use the Damballah incantation on the animatronic puppets being used for the film.
To give the reformed Amish among you an idea of the kind of juvenile crap we're talking about here, Glen wets himself repeatedly, Tiffany wants to turn him into a girl, Chucky wants to teach him how to kill, Tiffany reads self-help books to get over her "addiction to killing," Jennifer Tilly is playing double duty as Tiffany and herself (introducing a plotline wherein she's sleeping with the rapper Redman in order to prove she's not a slut so she can play the Virgin Mary in Redman's next film project), Tiffany has a fangirl obsession with Jennifer Tilly and seeks to use her as her new host body (which ultimately explains why Tiffany is human again at the end of Curse of Chucky), Glen winds up with a homicidal female split personality, learns Matrix-style martial arts skills from watching old chopsocky kung-fu movies, and winds up soul-swapped into the body of one of Jennifer Tilly's twin babies.
Ticketholders: Please contact your local Ticketmaster (me) and remind him to stop writing ridiculous crap--again.
F (with enough minus signs to give you alcohol poisoning)
There could potentially be material for a follow-up to Curse here, perhaps with a teenage Glen crossing paths with a grown-up Andy? Whatever the plans may be for the future of Chucky, it's clear that regarding his six-film past, they should have heeded the words of Chucky himself: "Don't fuck with the Chuck!"
If you're still conscious at this point, stay tuned for more bloody ludicrous shite as I review Machete Kills in the next installment of Just the Ticket. Oh, and try not to spread the fever this time, okay, folks?
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