THE CHILD’S PLAY
FRANCHISE (1988-2013)
Child’s Play came my way in Junior
secondary school. By a stroke of fate I watched Child’s Play 2 first but several class mates had given me the “low
down” on Chucky- that it was a doll possessed by the devil. That wasn’t true of course;
I found out in the first film later that he was a doll possessed by a serial
killer, Charles Lee Ray; who dabbled in the occult and voodoo. Even if I
watched it first and saw the parts where it was vaguely hinted it was Andy( Alex Vincent) behind the killings, I wouldn’t have believed it anyway- not after the dramatic
scene where Charles (Brad Dourif; who also voiced Chucky from then on) took a
doll out of its box and chanted some voodoo words and the camera close-ups on
the doll’s face. The whole time I wondered when exactly would they finally
believe Andy’s story and that scene was unforgettable- Andy’s mother Karen (Katherine
Hicks) discovers the batteries were still in the doll box and Chucky had been
moving his head and chanting, “Hi, I’m Chucky and I’ll be your friend to the
end!” all that time... without the
batteries. She is nervous and tests Chucky by lighting a fire and threatening
to throw him in if he didn’t speak and surprise, surprise... he snarled at her
in Charles’ voice; beats her off, bites her arm and flees! One theme I saw there was
scepticism, who was going to believe a story about a possessed doll? So many
people in the movie were inclined to think Andy needed professional help. I
played this movie on my laptop for my colleagues to watch in the staff room and
they were spellbound; the Geography teacher said something like this could
actually happen but every one else said ‘Rubbish!’
‘Ah,
but evil is real; the devil is real but we have God’s protection,’ was the
answer. Any how, Child’s Play made a
huge impression in my country.
I don’t know people’s opinions about Child’s
Play 3 here but my brothers and I didn’t enjoy it as much as we enjoyed 1 &
2. We saw there’d been a several year jump since 2; Andy was now a teenager (played by Justin Whalen), people
viewing him with suspicion and his mother still at the mental institution.
Chucky decides to try his luck on a younger child and kills a few people here
and there. Andy gets his first kiss and there’s a showdown where Chucky is
ripped to shreds. I don’t know... it just didn’t have what 1 and 2 had, an aura
of suspense.
Bride of Chucky was unexpected and a
disappointment. Oh there was the violence but it wasn’t as dark as part 1 and 2
and Seed of Chucky was complete
rubbish; half the movie was spent guessing if Glen (Chucky & Tiffany’s
spawn) was a boy or a girl and the movie, like most horror movies, ended
ambiguously. I remember thinking if Don Mancini should bring in a new Chucky
story, he should at least let Andy be the one to kill Chucky once and for all.
But with the way Seed of Chucky ended (the human Glen finding his father’s arm in a box); I gave up on the idea.
Then came Curse of Chucky; Don Mancini
returning his story back to its dark roots. The viewers are introduced to Chucky's new main victim Nica (Brad Dourif's real life daughter, Fiona Dourif), got to see an important
part of Charles’ past and then... oh joy!!! We see grown up Andy at long last (a now
32 year old Alex Vincent) aiming a shotgun at Chucky and saying, ‘Play with
this!’ and pulling the trigger.
Will
there be a new one? If so, I hope Andy is in it again; let him be the one to
end Chucky’s circle!
MAGIC (1978)
I
dimly remember Anthony Hopkins’ (I didn’t know his name at the time) 1978 movie
Magic where he played a disturbed
ventriloquist “dominated” by his dummy, Fats (charming name by the way). I’ve
been scared of ventriloquist dummies since then; it’s almost like they have a
mind and a life of their own as opposed to puppets. And Fats is very memorable,
he was the creepiest craved figure I’ve ever seen. No wonder the initial
trailer was pulled away from T.V, apparently it was far too creepy
and children at the time were having nightmares because of it.
Magic is described as a horror love
story and it was adapted from William Goldman’s novel of the same name (he
wrote the screenplay as well). Fats, the dummy isn’t possessed like his much
later counterpart Chucky; it was more like Corky (Hopkins) was possessed by
Fats. A ventriloquist provides the voice of the dummy and chooses it
personality- it could be childlike, solemn, funny or cheeky; Fats was quite
insolent. What was the odd connection between Corky and Fats and why did he
choose to give Fats such a personality to begin with? Apparently, Corky has
multiple personality disorder; Fats is his supposed to be his instrument but he
was actually a means of unleashing his ‘other’ personality - a dominant,
homicidal personality who controls him. Yeesh... sounds somehow like The Ventriloquist in the Batman comics!
Like
Psycho, his ‘other personality’ is jealous of Corky’s lover, Peggy. Corky
imagines Fats ‘telling’ him to kill and he does; his agent and Peg’s husband.
He and Peg have a fight and Fats ‘orders’ him to kill her. But Corky, who we
can see is really mental, commits suicide instead; to save Peggy and I guess
himself ...from Fats’ ‘influence’.
Peggy
has a change of heart and goes looking for Corky; but her voice has creepily
changed to a female version of Fats’ voice... to this day, I still don’t
understand why. Psycho’s ending was
easier to understand than Magic’s.
PINOCCHIO’S
REVENGE (1996)
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First
off, I don’t like the title because I felt children who saw this would probably
see the character Pinocchio from the actual kids’ story in a negative light
from then on. And the movie’s plot is a real head scratcher; at the end of the
film we (my family and I) couldn't draw a proper conclusion.
A
lawyer, Jennifer (Rosalind Allen) gets hold of a wooden doll (or is it puppet?)
that was buried with a boy and his father was executed for the murder but the
lawyer felt the man was hiding something important that could’ve cleared him. The
lawyer’s daughter, Zoe mistakes it for a present for her and takes it for herself;
talking to it like she talks to her dolls. But then things start happening to
people who upset the child... a bully is pushed in front of a bus, her mother’s
boyfriend is injured then later killed. The child says Pinocchio did it, but
the viewers don’t see him do it. We see scenes of her talking to Pinocchio and
he answering back but a video tape at her therapist’s office of her doing so
with no one else around, it glaringly showed the child is talking to herself!
Zoe’s
babysitter ended up beaten to death with a poker, again we don’t see who is
doing it.
The
climatic fight in the house; Jennifer sees Pinocchio with his strings cut and
standing in the room... she runs for her life , he catches up with his knife in
hand and they struggle and at the last minute she body slams him and he crashes
onto a glass table. But hold on, it’s not Pinocchio... it’s Zoe lying there.
Zoe is placed in psychiatric care; she doesn’t look nor speak to her mother and
Jennifer still believes Zoe wasn’t the one who attacked her that night nor was
responsible for the killings.
Like
I said, a head- scratcher. What really happened?
Was
the doll possessed by the devil? The accused child killer... if it was truly the doll who killed his son,
he obviously kept quiet about it because of course no one will believe it. But,
why did he bury the doll with the boy
in the first place if it was responsible for the murder? Was he possessed by
the doll or simply insane?
Who
pushed the bully, who killed David and Sophie; who did Jennifer really fight with
that night; Zoe or Pinocchio? Did Zoe have hidden mental problems or did the
doll drive her insane, like it probably drove the child killer insane?
What
happened to the wooden doll in the
end?
The
movie was just left like that, with the viewers trying to decide who the real
culprit was.
