Franchises: Child's Play. Bride of Chucky (1998)

While I didn't see any of the Chucky movies as a kid, one thing I knew from seeing the VHS boxes at Harold's, and talking with my friends who were into them, was that, at the time, there were only three. And throughout much of my childhood in the 90's, it seemed like that was how it would stay, as there never was a day when I walked in and suddenly, there was a Child's Play 4 on the shelf, as had been the case with other horror franchises. Then, at some point in 1998, I think around the fall, my step-cousin Mikey, who was one of those I knew who was into Chucky, told me that there was another movie coming, and that the title was Bride of Chucky. Even though I didn't really care, since I was still scared of most horror movies from the 70's onward at that point, and was still freaked out by Chucky in particular, my first reaction upon hearing that title was, "Huh?" At first, I thought Mikey was messing with me, and when he assured me that he wasn't, I figured, at the least, the movie was actually called Child's Play 4: Bride of Chucky. But nope, that was the sole title they were going with. Even though I hadn't seen many of the Universal classics at that point either, I certainly knew that the title was a reference to Bride of Frankenstein, but still, it just felt like such a bizarre turn from what I knew of Chucky at the time (which, to be fair, wasn't a lot). In any case, by the next year, the VHS for it had joined the others on the shelf at Harold's, and not long after that came the Halloween weekend where I opened up to all horror films, mostly thanks to seeing the original Child's Play and Child's Play 3. And while Bride of Chucky was only playing on pay cable at the time, I knew I'd probably see it eventually, and as luck would have it, I saw an ad for its premiere on USA some time later. I still wasn't sure what to make of the title, but Mikey had told me that it was a really cool movie, and even really funny. And since I wasn't exactly the most cynical, hard-to-please person in the world at the time (not that I am now, either, hopefully), that was enough of a selling point for me. 

 

I did actually see Bride of Chucky, or a good chunk of it anyway, one night after it officially premiered on USA Network and, sure enough, I did really like it. I already knew from the other movies that there was a funny side to Chucky and so, I liked seeing it emphasized here. In fact, it actually kind of helped me come to terms with and even feel something of a kinship with this thing that had scared me for my entire life up to that point  And to this day, I really do love this flick, putting it third after the original and Child's Play 3 in my personal ranking. Looking at it in retrospect, it definitely marks a significant turning point for the franchise, which would have a very different flavor going forward, and not one that a lot of old school fans care for, either. While I myself may not care for some of the films that followed Bride, I think Bride itself gave the series a much needed change of pace to keep it from getting stale, and I also feel it managed to walk a fine line between the horror and comedy, which some of the later movies and seasons of the TV series didn't do so well.

In Lockport, New York, a police officer named Bob Bailey steals a garbage bag from the police department's evidence depository, planning to meet up with a mysterious woman who promises him money in exchange for the bag's contents. However, when he arrives at the rendezvous point, he's murdered by the woman, Tiffany Valentine, an old flame of Charles Lee Ray. She then takes the bag, which contains the remains of Chucky, the Good Guy doll housing his soul, back to her trailer and sews it together using spare doll parts, before attempting to use a voodoo ritual to resurrect Ray. Initially, it doesn't seem to work, but when Damien Baylock, Tiffany's current lover, arrives at the trailer, Chucky comes to life and murders him, much to Tiffany's delight. However, she later learns that a ring she found the night that Ray was killed wasn't an engagement ring meant for her, as she originally thought, but rather a memento from one of his murders that he was planning to hock. Angry and hurt that he had no intention of marrying her, Tiffany locks Chucky up in a child's playpen. The next day, she presents him with a bride doll as a way of taunting him, but that night, he escapes, murders Tiffany, and, in the ultimate revenge, transfers her soul into the bride. Still wanting to be human again, Chucky offers Tiffany a chance to do the same, saying they have to travel to the cemetery in Hackensack, New Jersey where his human corpse was buried and exhume the Heart of Damballa, a special amulet that was buried with him. To that end, Tiffany tricks her neighbor, Jesse, into delivering the dolls to the cemetery in exchange for $500. Jesse, who desperately wants to elope with his girlfriend, Jade, as her uncle and guardian, Police Chief Warren Kincaid, refuses to let them see each other, agrees but asks for $1,000; Tiffany tells him that her "friend" in Hackensack will give him the other $500 once the dolls are delivered. With that, Jesse and Jade hit the road with Chucky and Tiffany in tow, unaware that the dolls are responsible for a series of gruesome murders that follows in their wake. And as the media and authorities peg the young couple as the killers, and Jesse and Jade themselves begin to suspect each other, Chucky and Tiffany decide they've found their new bodies in them.

Due to Child's Play 3 being a critical and commercial disappointment, as well as the franchise, unfortunately, getting tied to several real-life murders, including the horrendous killing of James Bulger in 1993 (even though there was no actual link was established between the movies and the young culprits' actions), Universal wasn't clamoring for another Chucky movie the same way they were during Child's Play 2's production. So, for a while there, David Kirschner and Don Mancini went off and did other projects (or Mancini, at least, tried to, but none of the many screenplays he wrote during this period got produced). Then, according to Kirschner in the Spotlight on Location featurette on the film (which played after the movie on the VHS tape I had for years), he saw a copy of Bride of Frankenstein in a video store one day and thought that giving Chucky a significant other would be a way to take the series in the fresh new direction it needed to go to avoid getting stale. Mancini definitely agreed and loved the idea, but even though he wrote a story outline and then he, Kirschner, and another producer, Corey Sienega, pitched it to Universal, they weren't all that enthused. It wasn't until after the enormous success of Scream at the end of 1996 and the shot of adrenaline it gave to slasher movies in general that Universal, wanting to cash in, decided to go ahead with Bride of Chucky.

Even though he wasn't yet directing, I feel that Bride of Chucky is where Don Mancini really began to exert much more creative control than he had before. Wanting to steer the series in a completely new direction, and knowing that the idea of a killer doll is an inherently funny one and could become unintentionally laughable if it was continued to be played straight, he decided, especially with the introduction of Tiffany, to just embrace the absurdity. Not only is Chucky himself funnier here than he ever was before, and the kills are much more over the top and ridiculously gory, but the movie itself is meant as a macabre parody of date movies and romantic comedies. And despite the meta elements that were inherent in the Scream movies, this film takes it to a whole new level, something that Mancini would only double- and triple-down on in future installments (which is not necessarily a good thing, though, as I'll touch on elsewhere).

Mancini himself did express an interest in actually directing the film, and David Kirschner endorsed him, but just as United Artists had done with John Lafia on the original film, the higher-ups at Universal preferred to have a more experienced director at the helm. In the end, they went with Hong Kong filmmaker Ronny Yu, mainly on the strength of his fantasy adventure movie, The Bride with White Hair (which I still have not seen), and despite his first American movie, Warriors of Virtue, being a massive flop and looking like a pretty lackluster fantasy adventure, from what I've seen. At first, Yu was reluctant to do Bride of Chucky, since he's never been a fan of the horror genre and was unfamiliar with the franchise (ironically, this is the same thing he would tell Bob Shaye and the other production executives at New Line Cinema when they were going after him for Freddy vs. Jason). But he liked the script and saw how it could potentially be a fun flick, so he agreed to make it, as long as he could bring in some trusted collaborators from Hong Kong, which Mancini and Kirschner were more than amiable about. According to Yu, while he told Mancini that he wasn't going to rewrite the script, he was allowed to shoot the movie however he saw fit. And that's the thing about him: while his movies aren't exactly what you would call high art, he knows how to make stylish, entertaining stuff, with his hyper-kinetic way of filming action scenes, eye-pleasing visual flair, and over the top gore, which he put in both this and especially in Freddy vs. Jason. Sadly, despite the latter movie being an enormous hit, Yu has only done two movies since then: 2006's Fearless with Jet Li, which did well, and 2013's Saving General Yang, which seems to have not gotten much attention. In-between those films, he did an episode of Fear Itself, the short-lived spinoff of Masters of Horror, but not much else.

When she was first introduced in this film, I don't think anybody realized that Jennifer Tilly's Tiffany would become just as iconic and synonymous with the franchise as Chucky himself. And for my money, she proved to be a great addition, at least in this film. In some of the later movies, I find her to be a bit much to take, especially when they start to get overly meta with her and the actual Jennifer Tilly, but here, Tiffany is awesome. She's also interesting in that, both in human and doll form, she's a much more complex character than Chucky. On the one hand, she's just as twisted and psychotic as he is, as she's attracted to murder and the darker side of life, but on the other, she's a true romantic. She talks about how she and Chucky were with each other for a long time, describing him as, "An incredible lover. He was the best I ever had," and about how they planned to get married. Having been pining for him ever since he was killed in 1988, she's gone through the trouble of tracking down his remains, bribing a cop to bring them to her and then murdering him, and resurrecting Ray's soul. When he does come back to life and finds her with that Goth loser wannabe Damien Baylock, Tiffany tells Chucky that she was, "Never actually with him," which was already clear, given how she paid him no attention whatsoever and arranged for Chucky to kill him. She then emphasizes her devotion to Chucky alone: "You know me: I'll kill anybody but I'll... only sleep with someone I love." But, as initially happy as she is to have her old beau back, she's devastated to learn that Chucky was never planning to marry her, and that what she thought was an engagement ring was just something he was intending to pawn off. Realizing that, despite her nice, romanticized memories of him, Chucky was and will always be a bastard, Tiffany locks him up in a playpen she'd bought, thinking they'd have children at some point. This is where the true tragedy of Tiffany's character comes in, as she then tells him, "My mother always said love was supposed set you free. But that's not true, Chucky. I've been a prisoner of my love for you for a very long time," and proceeds to cry herself to sleep while removing the ring, which she said she'd never taken off for the past ten years. The next day, while talking with Jesse, she asks him out for some drinks later on, only to be disappointed when he says he's seeing someone, sadly lamenting, "All the good guys are taken." She encourages him to treat Jade right and not take her for granted.

Tiffany then makes the mistake of taunting Chucky further, acting like she has decided to marry him, only to put a bridal doll in the playpen with him and throw rice in his face while laughing at him. He tells her that he'll kill her this and makes good on his promise that night. He manages to break out of the pen, murder her, and transfer her soul into the bride doll. Absolutely horrified and enraged at what he's done to her, she then has no choice but to listen to him when he tells her that they need the Heart of Damballa to

get out of the dolls, and that they somehow need to get to Hackensack, New Jersey to find it. Tiffany then arranges for Jesse to take them there, offering him $1,000 in exchange for transporting the dolls. Despite their initial animosity, Tiffany and Chucky do grow closer over the course of the trip, with Tiffany encouraging Chucky to come up with new methods of killing people, as she feels his are old-fashioned. She herself proves to be truly twisted in this regard, as she devises a way of sending nails right into Warren Kincaid's face and, later, smashes a glass ceiling,

sending big shards raining down on a couple and tearing them to pieces, which she enjoys every minute of. The latter comes about because Tiffany actually has her own sort of bizarre moral compass, as she's appalled when the couple, Russ and Diane, steal from Jesse and Jade at a hotel and decides, "That thieving slut. She doesn't deserve to wear that ring." And, as the two of them have decided to make Jesse and Jade their human vessels when they get the amulet, Tiffany accepts Chucky's proposal when he declares his love for her after seeing what a twisted and creative murderer she really is, with the two of them then having their own sensual honeymoon. 

However, things start to unravel after they're forced to reveal themselves to Jesse and Jade and take them hostage in order to make it to Hackensack. First, Jesse and Jade manage to start an argument between them that turns nasty really quickly. Then, the RV they've commandeered crashes and explodes, and Tiffany, after getting burnt to crisp and just barely surviving the explosion, is dragged by the hair by Jesse and then has a gun put to her head in order to make Chucky release Jade, whom he's taken hostage. By this point,

Tiffany seems broken, not just because of what she's been put through but also possibly because of how easy it was for Jesse and Jade to turn her and Chucky against each other. Also, for the whole movie, she's clearly wanted what they have, which inspired her to suggest that she and Chucky possess them, but she now seems to realize that's never going to happen, especially with Chucky. After Jesse lets her go and sends her off, she laments to herself, "Why can't I ever get it on with the real good guys?", and also tells

Jade, "You're a lucky girl." And when Chucky flings his knife at them, which Jesse deliberately takes in order to spare Jade, something that Tiffany knows Chucky would never do for her (when she asked him to catch her right before that moment, he let her collapse to the ground and groaned in disgust at how badly burnt she is), this incentivizes what she ultimately does. Just when Chucky has gotten a hold of the Heart of Damballa and is ready to perform the ceremony, Tiffany literally stabs him in the back and tells him, "Look at us. Don't you see? We belong

dead. Goodbye, darling. I'll see you in hell." That last line suggests she was planning to kill herself shortly afterward (a change of heart that's rescinded completely in the next movie, I might add), but she doesn't get the chance, as Chucky attacks her and the two of them get into a fight that ends with him stabbing and apparently killing her. Of course, at the end, both the movie and Tiffany have one more surprise in store.

Don Mancini has said that he wrote the role of Tiffany specifically for Jennifer Tilly, and who can blame him? At the time, Tilly was sexy as hell, and it's small wonder why Chucky found her attractive, why Damien stays with her and does as she says, even though she treats him like dirt, and why even Jesse seems momentarily tempted when she asks him out. I mean, that provocative dance she does to both Damien and Chucky while she's wearing a corset, fishnet stockings, and leather gloves and boots? Need

I say anything else? And like Chucky in the original movie, she goes through her own evolution when she winds up in the doll. Starting out as a living, breathing version of the bride doll, she decides that if she has to be in that body, she's going to do it on her own terms. Thus, she makes herself sexy and stylish, dyeing her hair blonde, putting on makeup, eye-liner, lipstick, and black nail polish, penciling in a love-mark above her mouth, and putting her signature knife-in-heart with Chucky's name tattoo back on her

chest, along with a small golden necklace that says "Tiff" and a small, black leather jacket over the bride doll's wedding dress. She's so stunning, especially when she lights up a cigarette, blows out a puff of smoke, and intones, "Barbie, eat your heart out," that it even gives Chucky a moment of pause. But, during the third act, she gets pretty messed up, as she's badly burned after getting flung into a stove, with her body now charred to a crisp and her hair white, and that's before she gets beaten and stabbed during her and Chucky's final confrontation. 

This movie has one of my personal favorite portrayals of Chucky, as it manages to keep his character consistent from what we've seen in the previous movies, but also introduce some new facets to him. Like always, he's an unrepentant homicidal maniac, murdering Damien Baylock in his first animate scene, and is almost always ready with a one-liner. But we also learn that he's just a straight up douchebag in how he treats Tiffany, especially when he laughs at her thinking that he was going to ask her to marry him, right after his initial reaction, which was, "What are you, fuckin' nuts?" He may have been a great lover, as Tiffany herself describes, and he was jealous and possessive enough to kill any other guy who even looked at her, but in reality, Chucky never truly loved her and was just using her. And upon being resurrected, his first major concern is to, again, find a way to get out of the doll. Unfortunately for him, Tiffany decides to get back at him for her years of wasted devotion by locking him up in a playpen. Chucky spends the night and much of the next day plotting her murder, and when she further mocks him by putting that bride doll into the pen with him, he growls, "You are so dead." He later manages to escape the pen and electrocutes her to death in the bathtub, before transferring her soul into the bride. Telling her that she now needs his help if she wants to become human again, he lets her in on the Heart of Damballa and where it is. Once the two of them hit the road with Jesse and Jade, Chucky shows her how to act like a doll and she, in turn, encourages him to be more creative in his murders. He also proves to have a more cynical attitude about Jesse and Jade's romance and plan to elope than her, sneering, "I think I'm gonna throw up," when they overhear them talking about their plans. And when Tiffany says it's romantic, Chucky snarks, "I give 'em six months... three if she gains weight."

Since this is a horror-comedy, Brad Dourif is able to ramp up Chucky's sense of humor ten-fold, with more one-liners and macabre jokes than ever before. A lot of the humor comes from his interactions with Tiffany, including their first when he comes to life. While sitting on the suffocating Damien, Chucky just casually looks up at Tiffany and says, "Hi," then asks how she's been. When she asks him the same, he answers, "Peachy! Actually, to tell you the truth, I've been kind of out of it." He then sees a fake murder

picture that Damien took to try to impress Tiffany and says, "That is sick." While he's trapped in the playpen, seething in rage, he, among other things, uses the alphabet blocks in there to spell, "KILL TIFFANY SLOW," draws grisly pictures of her murder, and, while playing with a Speak & Spell toy and asked to spell "woman," types out "B-I-T-C-H." And when the device doesn't accept that, he throws it against the bars and retorts, "Shows how much you know." After he's put Tiffany into the bride doll and

she insults him, saying, "I wouldn't marry you if you had the body of G.I. Joe," he retorts, "Hey, Raggedy Ann, you looked in the mirror lately? Now's not the time to get picky." And when he tells her where the Heart of Damballa is and she nonchalantly responds, "Alright, let's go," he exclaims, "Oh, sure. I'll steer and you can work the pedals. We're dolls, you dope!" I especially find the running joke about Martha Stewart to be funny, as does my mom: "You look like Martha Stewart with that thing." "Who the fuck is Martha Stewart?" "My idol." It gets better when he

continually rubs it in her face until she finally decides she's had enough and yells, "Fuck Martha Stewart! Martha Stewart can kiss my shiny plastic butt!" Another moment I like is when Jesse and Jade cause them to get into a fight and Tiffany insults his performance in bed, with Chucky looking genuinely offended at this and then telling Jesse, "I didn't hear her complainin' last night." 

The humor also comes from just how much of an asshole Chucky is. I always think of this moment early on when, after sabotaging Officer Norton's car at a One Stop grocery store, he's crawling back to Jesse and Jade's van, when he spots a guy getting stoned and, for no reason other than he can, flips him off (the guy's utterly perturbed reaction of, "Rude fucking doll," just makes it all the more priceless). Earlier, when he and Tiffany overhear Jesse declaring his love for Jade, Chucky makes an obscene gesture

that offends Tiffany. After they've revealed themselves to Jesse and Jade, Chucky breaks it to them that he and Tiffany are going to possess them by telling them, "And you know what they say about real estate: location, location, location. Well, you guys are definitely in the right place at the wrong time." And when he makes Jade open the coffin housing his long decomposed human corpse and she breaks the neck while grabbing the amulet, he exclaims, "Ohh! Bitch! You broke my neck!" Then there's the humor that just comes from the inherent absurdity of it being a doll

doing and saying this stuff, like when Chucky spots some marijuana in the van, promptly grabs it, going, "Oh, yeah!", and is later seen toking it up; when he reacts to a woman complaining about the effect of violence in movies with, "What is this shit?", before rocking out to White Zombie; and the very thought of him having sex. I also just like the way Chucky laughs in this movie, as it's now very over the top and cackling. And speaking of laughing, I snigger whenever he himself gets scared and screams in fright, like when Kincaid pops up with nails in his face or when he falls into the grave on top of his own human corpse.

Despite how much he was seemingly using her before, as the movie goes on, Chucky does seem to develop real affection for Tiffany. When the two of them are sitting in the van by themselves while Jesse and Jade are tying the knot, Chucky tells her, "Tiff, I'm sorry... for everything." Who knows if he was sincere, but there was nothing influencing or forcing him to say it. Later on, when he sees just how amazing she is at killing, he exclaims, "I love you!", and proposes to her, using the ring on Diane's severed

finger to do so. Even during the scene in the RV, where they're arguing and throwing stuff at each other, when Jade shoves Tiffany into the stove, Chucky screams a horrified, "No!", and shoots at her, before Jesse sends him out the window. He also trades Jade for Tiffany when Jesse is threatening to shoot her in the head, although he's not good enough to catch her when she collapses, groaning, "Ugh," when he sees how she's all burnt and coughing. And just as he's about to do the soul transference and she tells him that she loves him, Chucky, instead of saying, "I

love you too," simply says, "I know." It's possible he didn't mean that in a selfish manner, though, and he does seem willing to live with her once they're humans again, but then, she turns on him. Enraged at this betrayal, he viciously attacks and even fatally stabs her, before venomously pushing her off his blade, saying, "Get off my knife." But then, he doesn't just go about his business; rather, he stands over her, seemingly having mixed feelings about what he just did. Before he's done processing it, he gets knocked into and trapped in his own earthly grave, and is then shot to death by Jade (definitely his most lackluster death in the series, especially after the spectacular ones in the previous movies).

For a while there, it seemed like Chucky's radical redesign in this film would be his look going forward, which was a bummer for me, as I soon found himself wishing for the classic Chucky to return (which he eventually did but not for a while, and only gradually, at that). His scarred, stitched up look, however, is far from bad, and fits well with the movie's Frankenstein aesthetic, with stitches on his hands and face, staples in his head to hold in some strands of hair, his right eye much more exposed than the other, his clothes in tatters, and his left arm taken from a completely different doll. One nitpick that I have is Chucky's doll voice, which sounds really strange here. I know Edan Gross, who did the voice in the original films, was too old by this point, but couldn't they have at least found someone who kind of sounded like him?

While we're here to see Chucky and Tiffany, the movie does give us two very sympathetic protagonists in Jesse (Nick Stabile) and Jade (Katherine Heigl). The two of them desperately want to be together but Jade's asshole uncle and legal guardian, who just happens to be the chief of police, won't allow it, mainly because he sees Jesse as a "trailer trash lowlife." However, from what we see of Jesse, while he does live in a trailer park and seems to come from a rough background, he comes off as a more than decent guy. When he tells Jade that he would do anything for her and asks her to elope with him and leave everything behind, he seems very sincere (granted, some of that is him repeating what Tiffany told him, but still). Meanwhile, Jade has to endure living with a man who, rather than misguidedly looking out for her best interests, just doesn't want her to publicly embarrass him by being with "someone" like Jesse. Thus, they feel they have no choice but to, as their friend David tells them, get the hell out of Dodge and never look back. However, their decision is a very naive one motivated by youthful impatience, seeing as how they decide to elope even though Jesse has basically no money. Though he has $500 at the moment, and is expecting another $500 once he delivers the dolls to Hackensack, even in 1998, that's not going to cover everything they need or plan to do, like get a deposit on an apartment or allow Jesse to get a job that will put Jade through college. But, despite her doubts, Jade does decide to go along with it. And yet, their relationship proves to not be as rock-solid as they thought, given how quickly they begin suspecting each other of being a killer when the bodies start piling up around them, including after they're married in a very tacky wedding chapel/motel. But when they discover the truth of what's going on, they become determined to save each other, with Jesse going to lengths that Chucky would probably never do for Tiffany. In the end, while the two of them are officially cleared of Chucky and Tiffany's crimes, we never learn what becomes of them when they're sent back home.

One character I really like is David (Gordon Michael Woolvett), Jesse and Jade's friend, who acts as the voice of reason between the two of them. Notably, he's the first gay character we've gotten in the series (unless you want to go with Travis Fine's insistence that he played Shelton as closeted gay in the previous movie) and yet, he's not over-the-top or stereotypical about it. Granted, when he poses as a prom date for Jade during the opening in order to help her meet up with Jesse, his cover is blown by some of the stuff he says, like when he says his "athletic scholarship" for college consists of figure-skating, and when he instructs Jade how to keep the orchid he gives her fresh for a week, but it's not used to make a mockery of him. Moreover, the fact that he's willing to go to those lengths to help Jesse and Jade out shows what a good friend he is. He's the one who gives Jesse the idea to elope with her in the first place and encourages Jade when she's depressed about the way things are, telling her, "You get very few chances in life to be happy. You gotta grab the brass ring while you can." And when each of them calls him, thinking the other may be a killer, he first encourages them to go to the police, then decides to track them down and set them straight, feeling that there's a huge misunderstanding going on. He even suggests, fairly logically, that Chief Kincaid may be the one doing the killing in order to frame them. Then, he does briefly think that they are indeed killers when he finds Kincaid's body in the van, pulling his gun on them and making them pull over. He quickly flags down a police car, forcing Chucky and Tiffany to reveal themselves, and David is so shocked by the sight of them that he stumbles into the road and gets hit by a truck.

Because he'd once acted in a film that David Kirschner produced, John Ritter had been slated to appear in Child's Play 3 but his role was removed during the scripting process; thus, his appearance here was to make up for that. Normally, I always enjoy seeing Ritter, and I miss him to this day, but here, he plays an absolute bastard. Chief Warren Kincaid is the worst kind of authority figure imaginable, refusing to allow Jade, his niece and ward, to see Jesse simply because he lives in a trailer park, and goes as far as to have one of his cops keep tabs on her at all times. He's similar to Geoffrey Keen's loathsome character of William Hargood in the Hammer film, Taste the Blood of Dracula, who was similarly cruel to his daughter and refused to allow her to see her boyfriend for no reason other than he could. While Kincaid isn't quite as verbally abusive as Hargood (and he never gets physical with her, at least that we see), he's still just as despicable, making it clear to Jade that he doesn't care about her but rather does what he does for the sake of his own personal reputation: "When you're eighteen, you can go to hell, for all I care, but until then, I'm stuck with you, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let you embarass me by ending up on Jerry Springer with some trailer trash lowlife." Even more loathsome is how he openly says he's not afraid to use his authority to keep them apart, telling Jesse when he says he can't stop them from seeing each other, "I'm the chief of police, sport. I can do whatever I want. Like, for example, if I were to run a blood test on you tonight and the results made you look like Christian Slater on New Year's Eve, do you think anyone would question me?" Jesse says he's bluffing but Kincaid retorts with a smug, "Try me," and later proves he wasn't, as he attempts to plant marijuana in Jesse's van to get him arrested. Fortunately, he's not in the movie long enough to become annoying, as he's killed by Chucky and Tiffany fairly early on (although, his death is so nasty and mean-spirited that it's hard to watch now that Ritter is no longer with us).

Kincaid's subordinate, Needlenose Norton (Michael Louis Johnson), is the definition of weaselly. He's so unapologetic in how slimy he is, with the way he tails Jesse and Jade under Kincaid's orders, and also because he pays him extra, and absolutely enjoys the misery he causes them by pulling them over. His first scene, when he pulls them over and makes them take a breathalyzer test while standing in the pouring rain, waiting for Kincaid, says all you need to know. Then later, when he pulls them over again at the One Stop, and Jade tries to appeal to him to cut them some slack, he mocks her for it, laughing at her until she lunges at him, threatening to kill him, and as Jesse holds her back, he mockingly puts up his dukes with that condescending, smug smile that makes you want to punch him. And when he finds the bag of marijuana that he knows Kincaid planted in the van, he waves it in Jesse's face and tells him he's in trouble. However, Chucky takes care of him by blowing up his car, killing him and domr bystanders at the store.

They initially intended for Marilyn Manson to play Damien Baylock, Tiffany's put-upon, overly Goth boyfriend, but when that didn't work out, they went with Alexis Arquette. However, you can definitely see that Marilyn Manson was an influence in Damien's look, with all the piercings and tattoos galore. And after he's killed and his body is found, you learn he was actually a really geeky guy named Howard Fitzwater, rather than the tough rebel he was posing himself as. Damien's character is actually kind of sad when you think about just how much he wants to get with Tiffany, going as far as pretending to kill someone in order to win her over, and being too blind to see that he's lower than dirt to her. You can also tell he's a real wimp when Tiffany's pet tarantula crawls over his face and he melodramatically wipes at like a sissy after she takes it off. Where Damien really messes up, though, is when he doesn't take Chucky seriously, making fun of him and also committing the cardinal sin of manhandling him, which leads to his face piercing getting ripped out before he's slowly smothered to death. Afterward, Tiffany jams his body into a trunk and dumps it in a river.

Occasionally throughout the movie, you have this character named Detective Preston (Lawrence Dane) pop up on the news, giving his own thoughts on the nature of the murders, but he doesn't show up in person until the climax in the Forest Creek Cemetery in Hackensack. Unlike most other cops or authority figures in these movies, he does actually see Chucky after he's trapped in his own grave. After Chucky's been killed, Preston clears both Jesse and Jade and sends them on their way. However, he loiters around

and approaches Tiffany's corpse, witnessing her give birth and becomes the baby's first victim. And finally, I have to briefly mention Officer Bailey, the cop at the beginning who brings Chucky's remains to Tiffany, only to get his throat slashed. I only mention him because I recognize the actor who plays him, Vince Corazza, as having had a recurring role on The Famous Jett Jackson, which I've mentioned before as having been a show I watched a lot as a preteen. (And I also just now learned that he was one of the original English voice actors for Tuxedo Mask on Sailor Moon; specifically in the Cloverway dub, for those of you in the know).

Thanks to Ronny Yu, as well as his cinematographer, Peter Pau, one of his frequent collaborators from Hong Kong that he wanted to bring over, Bride of Chucky is easily one of the best-looking entries in the series, if not the best altogether. It has a very stylish, slick look that's indicative of it having had the biggest budget of the franchise, at $25 million. Its color palette is wonderfully rich, often with lots of vibrant blues juxtaposed with inky blacks and plenty of shadows. However, on the opposite end of that spectrum is the scene where Chucky proposes to

Tiffany, which is romantically lit by the golden hue of the roaring fireplace, and where more shadow play is used for them having sex, which is just hilarious, as well as nicely shot. And the climax in the cemetery, with the blowing wind and flashing lightning, appropriately gives the feel of a classic Universal horror film. The camerawork and cinematography are also often entertainingly dynamic, with memorable images like a low-angle shot looking up at Officer Bailey as he looks down into the bag housing Chucky's remains right before he's killed, Tiffany

holding up said remains with a shaft of light in the background framed between them, a shot of Chucky walking towards Tiffany's bathroom, carrying the bride doll by the veil, and him pushing his face up against the plastic curtain separating the room from the rest of the trailer, Tiffany's flailing shadow as she's electrocuted to death, Chucky's eye looking into the gas tank of Norton's car, the reflection of Russ and Diane screaming as the wine bottle smashes into the glass ceiling above them, and way too many others to

count. There are also a good number of memorable overhead shots, such as Chucky being placed in the middle of a pentagram on the floor of Tiffany's trailer, a push-in towards the sunroof above her bathroom before it cuts to her in her bubble bath, Chucky standing over the bathtub after he's killed her, and their battle in the cemetery at the end. Notably, both Chucky and Tiffany's entrances are shot very dramatically, with pan-ups starting at their feet and going up to their heads. In fact, Tiffany actually gets

two, one for when she's introduced at the very beginning and after she's given her doll form a makeover. And the editing for the various sequences, which is partially courtesy of another frequent collaborator of Yu's from Hong Kong, David Wu, is dynamic and energetic, yet never to the point where you can't tell what's going on.

This was the first Chucky movie to be shot in Canada (and it wouldn't be the last), and they managed to get a lot of bang for their buck up there, making use of a lot of great locations. The movie immediately starts out with some bangers: the evidence locker from which Bailey steals Chucky's remains, which is filled with plenty of other interesting pieces of "evidence," (I'll talk more about it later), and the enormous, abandoned building where Tiffany murders him and takes the remains. During the first act or so, the most memorable setting is the interior of Tiffany's trailer,

which we initially see is filled with lots of dolls and newspaper clippings about Charles Lee Ray's death and Andy Barclay's claims about Chucky. When it's finally revealed in its entirety, it proves to be surprisingly homey, if a little cramped and cluttered. Some rooms have real style to them, like the bedroom, with the bed's lavender-purple cover and similarly-colored walls, and the elegant bathroom, and both of them are separated from the combo living room/dining room/kitchen by appropriately-styled curtains (the bedroom with lace and the bathroom

the bathroom with plastic). There are some macabre touches to it to be sure, like the fake spider-web covering a sunroof above Tiffany's bed, her pet tarantula named Charlotte, and the Satanic items she uses when she resurrects Chucky, not to mention all of the creepy dolls and the chest full of spare parts she has, but otherwise, it's not a bad place, and its tight quarters are a precursors to the sequences set inside Jesse's van and the RV that Chucky and Tiffany hijack before they reach Hackensack. Not surprisingly, we

see that Jade does have a nice house to live in with her uncle, but his controlling, smothering personality obviously doesn't make it pleasant at all. And the One Stop gas station, where Norton pulls Jesse and Jade over, is memorable for its colorful neon sign and how there are so many people parked nearby, getting stoned.

There are two particularly memorable locations in that feature prominently during the latter half. One is the overly tacky and cheesy-looking Honeymoon Sweets Motel at Niagara Falls, where Jesse and Jade tie the knot (the sequence leading up to it features some helicopter footage of the actual falls). The 24-hour chapel, while not too bad on the inside (save for the backdrop of Niagara Falls behind the minister), looks like a joke on the outside, with its white and red color scheme, neon lights, and a statue of an angel with a blue, neon halo above its head, all

accompanied by a silly-sounding version of the wedding march playing over a speaker. The actual motel, however, is even worse than you can imagine, with its heart-shaped sign on the outside, and Jesse and Jade's room has a black-and-white tiled floor, a waterbed with red, heart-shaped pillows and a bright red canopy above it, what looks like a bench with a zebra-pattern at the foot of the bed, and a red leather couch by the window, where they place Chucky and Tiffany. Russ and Diane's room is even more

overdone, with a big, roaring fireplace and a white bearskin rug, which gets stained red with their blood thanks to Tiffany. The other location is the wind-blown, Gothic cemetery where the climax takes place, which was actually shot in three different locations: a vacant field in Canada that they dressed with fake tombstones, a studio set (for the close-ups and the intricate animatronic work), and, for Charles Lee Ray's grave, a structure they built in an empty parking

lot. I always been able to detect the artificiality to this setting, but it's just so classic, with the wind, the lightning, the gravestones, the little barren trees, and the hanging sheets of plastic flapping in the wind, and because I'm such a lover of those old Gothic horrors, I like it for that very reason.

While he already kind of bent the established mythology in Child's Play 3 by having Chucky able to possess someone other than Andy Barclay thanks to his now being in a new Good Guy body, Bride of Chucky is where Don Mancini really begins to screw with it. The biggest offender is the Heart of Damballa amulet, which Chucky claims he was wearing when he was shot and killed in 1988. Of course, he wasn't, and the newspaper image of Charles Lee Ray lying dead with the amulet around his neck is obviously doctored, but you can let that slide by saying maybe it

was tucked underneath his coat and shirt beforehand. The amulet's purpose is the real ass-pull, though, as Chucky tells Tiffany that they need it in order to transfer their souls into human bodies. First, there's the question of why didn't Chucky need this in the previous movies? At the time, Mancini tried to explain it away by saying Chucky didn't know he needed it before, and that was why his previous attempts to transfer his soul didn't work. However, if you watch those past movies, it's clear that the

transfer would've worked had Chucky not been interrupted or, as in Child's Play 2, he didn't run out of time before the merge became permanent. When I was younger, my head-canon was that, by the time you get to this movie, he'd become so human in his doll body because his soul had been in it for so long that he now absolutely needed the amulet to escape. But then, of course, that doesn't explain why Tiffany, who just became a doll, needs it. Really, the amulet is just a MacGuffin that Mancini came up with so

Chucky and Tiffany would have a reason to be on the road for the movie's second and third acts. The fact that he relegates the intricacies of the mythology, not just the Heart of Damballa but also the "Ade due Damballa" chant in and of itself (which also doesn't function in quite the same way it did before), to being found within the pages of Voodoo for Dummies (if you look closely, you can see that Mancini credits himself as its author), tells you that you shouldn't think too hard about it.

Among other things, Bride of Chucky is meant as a dark parody on romcoms, as well as a satire on romantic relationships in general, with Mancini saying that Chucky and Tiffany go through all of the phases: "They courted, they went on a date, they had sex, they got married, they fought, and they killed each other." The fact that they play the romantic aspects totally straight, especially the scene where Chucky proposes to Tiffany in front of a roaring fireplace and the two of them then have sex in silhouette, with Tiffany even stopping to ask if

Chucky has a rubber ("Look at me! I'm all rubber!"), is what makes it really funny. There's also a bit of a swipe at the traditional romance story in how Tiffany thinks that Jesse and Jade's elopement and naive devotion to each other is really sweet and romantic, while Chucky is not only cynical but shockingly realistic about it, given how they usually don't last. But there's also a dark side to the satire, as we do see that their own relationship is quite toxic and abusive, with Chucky, after transferring Tiffany's soul into the

doll, telling her, "You got your wish. You're mine now, doll. And if you know what's good for you, you are going to love, honor, and obey!" Even before that, when Tiffany is outside with Jesse and they hear Chucky yell from inside the trailer, "Tiffany, where the fuck are you?!", it's suggested that Jesse may think she's in an abusive relationship. Then, during the third act, after they've gotten married, the honeymoon phase promptly ends when they get into a violent argument about Chucky not appreciating

Tiffany, with her insulting his manhood (or lack thereof, according to her), while he proceeds to insult her own bedroom performance, as well as her cooking. And like Mancini said, their difference of opinion turns lethal for the both of them in the end.

The movie is also just filled with dark humor in general, not the least of which being Chucky's first scene after his resurrection, where he and Tiffany catch up while he's sitting on top of Damien's pillow-covered face, as he smothers underneath. And later, after Tiffany is heartbroken to learn that Chucky never intended to marry her, she actually sleeps right next to Damien's body, before cramming him into a trunk and disposing of him the next day. That scene has her get Jesse to lift the trunk, which she says is full of stuff meant for the Goodwill, up into her car,

and when he asks what it is, she answers, "Oh, you know. A little of this, a little of that, stuff that's gone out of style. You ever look at somethin' and realize you are just sick to death of looking at it? That's how I feel about that shit." And when he drops it into the car's trunk a lot rougher than he intended, Tiffany says, "Can't hurt it. Might help." Before Chucky even comes into the picture, Damien attempts to impress Tiffany by showing her a picture of what appears to be the bloody corpse of somebody he murdered, only for her to realize it's just a photo of himself with fake

blood all over his face, given away by his painted fingernails. She's legitimately outraged that he didn't actually kill anyone, and Damien tries to placate her by saying he's working up to it, while trying to find the photo after she tosses it at him, complaining that it took him hours to set it up. Then, there's also the grotesque humor of Kincaid popping up in the back of the van, screaming in pain and terror with the nails in his face, and scaring both Chucky and Tiffany; Chucky having to really fight to get the wedding ring

off Diane's severed finger to give it to Tiffany, ultimately using his teeth; the two of them holding Jesse, Jade, and David at gunpoint, only for the latter to wander into the highway and get splattered by a passing truck, with Chucky commenting, "That works too,"; Tiffany, while baking cookies in the back of the RV, opening up a door to reveal the bodies of the old couple who used to own it, her reaction simply being, "Oh! Excuse me," before grabbing an apron; and Chucky's annoyance at Jade breaking his human corpse's neck while getting the amulet. 

My favorite bit of humor in the whole movie, though, is when Chucky turns on the van radio and the first thing he hears is a woman ranting about how violence in movies and television is one of society's biggest problems, to which he sneers, "What is this shit?" I also find it funny when he then turns it over to a station playing Ska music, groaning, "Jesus, the music scene's gone to hell since I've been dead," but I wonder if that first part was Mancini's response to the controversy the franchise found itself caught up in earlier. In fact, while this was before the furor over

the subject which the Columbine Massacre caused (which, according to Mancini, was actually why it took so long for Seed of Chucky to get made, but we'll get to that), this was still around that same time when critics were trying to find any sort of reason or excuse, be they movies, video games, or extreme music, for violent crimes rather than addressing the real problem. Being against that dumb argument myself, I can't help but think, "Chucky, you're the man," when I see this scene.

Since it was made after the success of Scream and began filming after Scream 2 had come out, the movie has a good number of horror film references, although it's much more overtly meta, since this is itself an entry in the type of slasher franchises that Scream pointed the finger at. Case in point, the opening scene in the evidence depository, where you see Jason Voorhees' hockey mask (or a cheap facsimile), a chainsaw (meant to be Leatherface's, no doubt), Michael Myers' mask, and Freddy Krueger's glove, suggesting that all of these series take place in the

same universe, an idea that I do like myself, even if trying to rationalize all of those timelines and continuities would be impossible. Naturally, you have references to both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, with Tiffany stitching together and bringing to life a potential lover for herself, only for said lover to ultimately reject her. While her actually watching Bride of Frankenstein on TV right before Chucky kills her may seem a bit too on the nose, I do like how she really gets into it and is genuinely

moved by the Bride rejecting the Monster, as if she's seeing Chucky's rejection of her in it, and sheds a tear along with the Monster. It's brought home at the end when Tiffany tells Chucky, "We belong dead," which is what the Monster says to the Bride and Dr. Pretorius before destroying the watchtower. Also, Tiffany dying as a human by being electrocuted is a nicely flipped reference to Frankenstein, and like I said, the cemetery at the end of the film evokes so much classic Gothic horror in and of itself. And Mancini has said that Bride of Chucky itself relates to the previous movies in the same way that the parodying Bride of Frankenstein relates to its more straightforward predecessor. 

I'm not sure, but I think the close-up of Tiffany's wide open, dead eye after she's killed is a reference to that of Marion Crane's after the shower scene in Psycho. There's also a nicely clever reference to The Omen, which is, as I said in a previous review, both one of Mancini's favorite horror films and mine, in Damien Baylock. Damien, obviously, is the name of the Antichrist child in that film, but Baylock comes from Mrs. Baylock, the disciple of Satan who became his nanny and protector, something that only real hardcore fans would get. In a similar vein, Chucky

turning his head all the way around to look at Damien before killing him is a nod to The Exorcist (in more ways than one, since that effect was an articulated dummy of Linda Blair). After Chucky and Tiffany kill Kincaid by launching nails into his face, Chucky comments, "Why does that look so familiar?", a very clear allusion to Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies, but what's especially cool about it is something I learned in Reign of Chucky: the man who designed and applied that gruesome makeup to John Ritter was Paul Jones, who actually applied the Pinhead makeup

to Doug Bradley in two of the Hellraiser movies! The movie even has a nice callback to the series' own history, when Tiffany sneaks into Russ and Diane's motel room. As the two of them start to get it on, you see the door open in the background and then see Tiffany's POV as she enters the room, quickly ducks back from a corner, and then runs around it, with the film then cutting to show her running by their bed. This is an exact mirror of the scene in the original Child's Play when Chucky exited Andy's room and

ran by the living room, where Maggie was sitting on the couch. Finally, the most overtly Scream-like moment is when Jesse asks Chucky how he and Tiffany ended up the way they are and he answers, "Well, it's a long story... In fact, if it was a movie, it would take three or four sequels just do it justice."

Kevin Yagher and his company once again did the animatronic effects and, while they've always been top notch, they're absolutely amazing here, as Chucky and Tiffany both come across as nothing less than living, breathing, thinking creatures. Speaking of which, this time the workload was doubled, as they had two characters to not only create and design but also make multiple versions of, and they met the challenge brilliantly. Because of her much slimmer figure, Tiffany proved especially challenging, as they had to make her internal mechanisms even smaller

than Chucky's already were. They also refined the latter's mechanisms in general, as well as gave him a new skin, this time made from silicon rather than latex, as silicon is much more durable, and the results are quite amazing, especially in the facial expressions for each doll. Not only are they able to run through a broad spectrum of emotions, going from mean and attacking to happy and even sad, but there's an amazing amount of subtlety in their movements that you could miss on your first viewing. The effects are

so great that, when Tiffany is talking to Chucky before she becomes a doll, it feels like Jennifer Tilly is playing off another actor. And thanks to the ever-improving field of visual effects, Yagher's crew didn't have to worry so much about hiding cables and other mechanisms, as they were digitally removed in post. Finally, not only did Ed Gale return to portray Chucky in shots and scenes that the animatronics couldn't do, but he was joined by another dwarf actor, Debbie Lee Carrington, whom he worked with before

on Howard the Duck, as Tiffany. While Gale still doesn't have nearly as much as screentime here as he did in the original Child's Play, you do see him more than the couple of shots used in Child's Play 2. Most notably, you see him when Chucky sneaks and crawls along the sidewalk towards Officer Norton's car, in overhead shots of his and Tiffany's fight in the cemetery, and when he's running around in a panic in his own grave. As for Carrington, her most notable solo moment as Tiffany is in the lead-up to Russ and Diane's murder, when you see her running about in the background.

Although he had a better time here than he did on Child's Play 2, and talks highly of Ronny Yu in his interview in Reign of Chucky, this would end up being the last movie in the series that Ed Gale was involved with. His reasoning really makes him come off as very pretentious, as he objected to a line in this movie where Jade calls Chucky a, "Fucking midget!", and says in the interview that, when it came time to do Seed of Chucky, he said, "They want to hire a midget? Go find a midget. If they want to hire an actor, they can call me, but they'd better come with

some money." I know that little people find the word "midget" offensive, which is why I try not to use it anymore, but he acts like Don Mancini directed that word at him, when it was meant to be an insult hurled at Chucky... you know, the movie's villain? He also cites that he stopped flying after 9/11 as another reason why he didn't do Seed, which was shot in Romania, but that first one really makes me roll my eyes. And before you try to defend Gale, keep in mind that, in 2023, he was investigated under suspicion of being a pedophile.

While the first three movies had some bloody moments but were, overall, surprisingly low on gore, the kills in Bride of Chucky are much more over the top in both their nature and the amount of gore onscreen. Just three minutes in, Officer Bob Bailey gets his throat slashed, with lots of blood pouring out, and not long after that, Chucky rips one of Damien's piercings out of his face, then plants the pillow on him and slowly smothers him to death by sitting on top of it. Tiffany gets electrocuted to death in the bathtub (originally meant for Andy's babysitter in the

first movie), Norton gets blown up when Chucky ignites his car's gas tank, which also kills some innocent bystanders, and Kincaid gets nails launched into his face and Chucky later stabs him repeatedly in the back, with little pinpoints of blood splattering on his own face. The most amazing kill is when Tiffany murders Russ and Diane by throwing a champagne bottle at the glass ceiling above their bed, with the huge shards raining down on them and slashing them to pieces, causing the waterbed to explode in a geyser of water and blood that turns a bearskin rug red and

covers the floor in severed body parts. Chucky finds himself just as awestruck as the audience, and it's not surprising that he then asks Tiffany to marry him. An unlucky maid later finds the couple's mangled remains and, as you can see, it's not a pretty sight. Poor David later gets hit by an eighteen-wheeler, his body exploding into bloody chunks all over the road, a hapless medical examiner gets shot in the back by Chucky, Tiffany gets stabbed all the way through, Chucky himself gets shot up, and Detective Preston witnesses Tiffany giving birth, with blood splattering all over his face, before her wild-looking newborn attacks him. 

Bride of Chucky was also the first of these movies to make not only extensive use of visual effects but also CGI, mostly for whenever Chucky or Tiffany throw something, as well as for other visuals like Tiffany's pet tarantula falling onto Damien's face, the shot from Kincaid's POV of the nails coming at him, the shards of glass raining down on Russ and Diane, and some enhancements for when David gets hit by the truck and when the RV explodes near the end. There are also some obvious instances of blue screen and matte paintings, like this one shot of the Honeymoon

Sweets sign juxtaposed against the night sky and a low-angle shot looking up at Chucky, with storm clouds and flashing lightning above him as he does the chant. And finally, there's one shot of Chucky crawling along the ground at the One Stop that may just be Ed Gale, but it looks like it's awkwardly composited to me. In any case, according to Reign of Chucky, there are sixty effects shots in all, and they required five different studios to complete.

Like the previous movies, Bride of Chucky doesn't waste any time in getting going. After Bob Bailey removes the garbage bag inside the one evidence locker and heads down the road in a violent downpour, he calls Tiffany to tell her that he's on his way to meet up with her. While on his cellphone, he becomes curious as to what's in the bag and leans over to untie it, which causes him to veer over into the wrong lane and nearly crash into oncoming traffic. He swerves back over into his lane, while Tiffany,

having heard what happened, laughs and tells him, "Curiosity killed the cat." After that, Bailey is waiting in his parked car in the abandoned building, lighting a cigarette with a lighter that was personalized for him by his significant other. Getting impatient, and unable to contain his curiosity about what's in the bag, he reaches over for it, when there's a jump-scare, as his radio dispatch suddenly crackles loudly. Startled and aggravated, he switches it off and then proceeds to untie the bag. Looking down into it, he's clearly disturbed by what he sees, but he doesn't get to look

long before he's suddenly grabbed by his hair, his head is wrenched back, and his throat is sliced open. As his body slumps halfway out of the car, Tiffany makes her entrance on the other side by walking up and scraping the blood off her weapon, which happens to be a really sharp nail file, and onto her fingers. She licks the blood off, then looks through the open, passenger side window and takes the lighter when she finds it. She then lifts Chucky's remains up out of the bag and into view, saying, "Well, hello, dolly." With that, she walks off with the bag, as Rob Zombie's Living Dead Girl blares on the soundtrack.

Once again, we've got an awesome opening credits sequence, this time taking place in Tiffany's trailer, as she reassembles Chucky, with Living Dead Girl continuing to play. It starts with establishing shots, showing the enormous collection of dolls that Tiffany has, as well as newspaper clippings about Charles Lee Ray's death in 1988, as well as one about Andy Barclay's claim that his Good Guy doll was possessed by the killer's soul (the only acknowledgement Andy gets here, I might add). Tiffany then searches through

a box of dolls for some spare parts, then proceeds to sew and stitch Chucky up, with one memorable shot being from inside one of Chucky's eye sockets, as Tiffany opens her mouth to reveal a plastic eyeball, which she then sticks into the socket. After that, she leans back and looks at the completed doll in satisfaction, before the film transitions to the Kincaid household, where David arrives.

Later, Tiffany prepares to resurrect Chucky, placing him in the center of a pentagram she made on the floor, which is itself encircled by lit candles. Then, looking through Voodoo for Dummies, she recites the Damballa chant, saying the first lines, "Ade due Damballa. Give me the power, I beg of you," twice as she circles a candle above Chucky, then recites, "Leveau mercier du bois chaloitte. Secoise entienne mais pois de morte," (she doesn't pronounce it nearly as well as Chucky himself, I might add), before

finishing with one last, "Ade due Damballa!", and yelling, "Awake!" And nothing happens. She repeatedly yells awake while slapping Chucky, but still gets no response. Frustrated, she tosses the book over her shoulder, groaning, "What a crock," and blows out the candles. Damien Baylock shows up and she lets him in, and just as she becomes frustrated with his inability to commit murder, she gasps when she realizes something: Chucky's gone. Knowing he's hiding somewhere in the trailer, Tiffany innocently

asks Damien to see if her lipstick is under the sofa, making him crawl along the floor and reach under it. This moment is genuinely suspenseful, as Tiffany anxiously waits for Chucky to make his move, while Damien moves his hand around under the sofa but feels nothing other than some scattered doll parts. Then, Tiffany's pet tarantula, Charlotte, drops onto his face and she picks her up and puts her back in her container. Suddenly, the lights go out and Tiffany, still eager to find Chucky, looks under her bed, while Damien tries to get her in the sack. Just as he takes his

shirt off and slips under the covers, Chucky suddenly appears next to Tiffany on the sofa outside the bedroom. Unimpressed, Damien gets up and, incensed when Tiffany says it's the doll from the murders, proceeds to insult Chucky, then punch him in the face, pretend to hump him, and toss him across the floor.

After asking Damien if he wants to "play," Tiffany handcuffs both his hands and feet to her bed, then prepares to put on a "menagerie a trois." Much to Damien's annoyance, this involves Chucky, whom Tiffany places on his stomach before doing her seductive dance, telling both of them to watch. The camera makes it very clear that Chucky is doing so, with the constant cuts to his face, and Tiffany then tells Damien about her history with Chucky and how he would murder any man who so much as looked at

her. And when Damien tells Tiffany, "He ain't big enough to take care of a woman like you," Chucky turns his head all the way around at him, revealing himself, then says, "It ain't the size that counts, asshole. It's what ya do with it." He turns himself all the way around, rips out one of Damien's piercings, then laughs maniacally and shoves a pillow onto his face, before sitting down on top of it and slowly smothering him. After he and Tiffany have their little reunion, during which Damien finally expires, she picks Chucky up and kisses his forehead, while he

fondles one of her breasts (I've read that one of the puppeteers got a little carried away with that and, when Tiffany says, "Stop it!", at the end of this scene, Jennifer Tilly is actually saying that to him). Of course, things don't go smoothly for very long, when Tiffany learns that Chucky isn't the domestic type and locks him up in the playpen as revenge for the years she wasted loving him when he didn't feel the same way.

The following night, after she puts the bridal doll in the playpen to further mock Chucky, Tiffany is soaking in the bathtub. After watching a newscast about the recent murders she's committed, she briefly turns it over to an episode of Murder, She Wrote, while out in the living room, Chucky uses the ring that came with the doll to gradually rub a hole through one of the playpen's bars. After Tiffany turns the TV over to Bride of Frankenstein, Chucky manages to free himself and drags the doll out by her

veil. He then grabs a serrated knife from the kitchen drawer and walks towards the curtain separating the bathroom from the rest of the trailer, dragging the doll with him. Just as the movie ends and Tiffany is shedding a tear along with the Monster, Chucky comes charging in, wielding the knife. She manages to kick him, sending him flying back across the floor and against the wall, where he drops the knife. But before she can get to safety, he pushes the TV set into the bathtub and laughs maniacally as she's

electrocuted to death. There are some really memorable shots during this sequence, like Tiffany's flailing shadow on the wall, the soap bubbles floating down around Chucky, and a shot of the Bride's face on the TV screen when it bobs up, accompanied by the sound of Tiffany screaming before she finally sinks to the bottom of the tub. Chucky then performs the chant, or part of it, anyway: "Morteisma lieu de vocuier de mieu vochette. Endenlieu pour du boisette Damballa!" Like Tiffany did, he yells, "Awake!" And, like her, gets no response from the bridal doll,

prompting him to yell, "Awake!", again. Still getting nothing, he groans, "What a crock," and looks over the rim and into the tub, at Tiffany's lifeless body. Suddenly, there's a jolt of electricity and her body wrenches up in front of him, freaking him out. At the same time, Tiffany rises up behind him in her new doll form, which she's not at all happy about. She lets out an anguished scream, rips off the veil, and punches Chucky in the face. He just shrugs it off and tosses the ring that came with the doll to the floor, telling her that she belongs to him now.

Once they hook themselves up with Jesse and Jade in order to get to Hackensack, New Jersey, Chucky and Tiffany then have to deal with Chief Kincaid when he tries to break into Jesse's van. Chucky initially opts to take him out the old-fashioned way, when Tiffany encourages him to be more creative. He then goes for a small hammer he finds back in the back of the van, but Tiffany calls it predictable. Looking around, she spots a jar of nails and says, "Aha!" Having gone inside to get something to use to break into the van,

Kincaid succeeds and plants a bag of marijuana under a cushion on a bench in the back. Before he can get out, he hears the sound of Tiffany laughing up front and makes his way up there. He's confused to find no one but the doll sitting in the passenger seat, then looks down to see Chucky lying in the floorboard. Looking up, he sees a row of nails sticking upwards on the dashboard, when Tiffany suddenly yells, "Now!" Chucky cuts a cord and activates the airbag, which sends the nails flying right at Kincaid and

lodging in his face, seemingly killing him. Chucky does compliment Tiffany, albeit backhandedly, saying, "Not bad... for an amateur," when they see Jesse and Jade coming. Unsure what to do with Kincaid's body, they dump him inside the bench, which doubles as a large container. Tiffany then rushes to clean up the blood, while Chucky pushes the airbag back into the dashboard. There's a funny moment where Jesse tosses his bag into the back of the van, right on top of Tiffany, who doesn't have time to react. They then act like normal dolls again, as

Jesse and Jade climb in up front and drive off. They don't get far, though, before Needlenose Norton pulls them over at the One Stop. After Jade's confrontation with him, Jesse sends her inside to get them something for the road, while Norton checks the back of the van for the false evidence he knows that Kincaid planted. He comes very close to opening the compartment where they hid Kincaid's body, but Tiffany stops him by lightly kicking him in the head, causing him to lunge up and knock his crown on the ceiling. While he's distracted, Chucky takes the bag of

pot, which he found and was smoking earlier, and tosses it. Norton sees it and uses it as an excuse to arrest Jesse, much to his frustration. (That leads to a moment that especially makes me laugh, where Jesse kicks his headlight in frustration, accidentally busting it, and prompting him to say, "Shit!", twice in two very different tones.)

Knowing he has to take matters into his own hands again, Chucky has Tiffany give him the cigarette lighter she got from Bailey. Grabbing a blanket, he gets out of the van and makes his way over to Norton's squad car, as Norton tries to find where Kincaid is. Taking the lid off his gas tank, Chucky stuffs a thick rag into it and lights it, before crawling back to the van. He unknowingly drops the lighter out of his pocket as he goes, and also stops to flip off the one stoner. Jesse becomes anxious for Jade to come

on, when Norton smells the smoke filling up his car. Seeing the burning rag stuffed in his gas tank via one of his side mirrors, Norton then looks ahead to see Chucky and Tiffany waving at him from the back of the van. He just has time to scream before the gas tank explodes, turning his car into a fireball, with the explosion knocking Jesse off his feet. The front fender flies through the air and smashes into the One Stop's neon sign, while a flaming tire smashes into a phone-booth, killing the man inside, and the burning emergency lights land right on the stoner's hood. Jade

comes out amid the chaos, with people running everywhere in a frenzy, and yells for Jesse. Getting to his feet, he sees her when she climbs into the passenger seat and he joins her. A bystander accuses them of being behind it, due to Jade threatening Norton earlier, and they quickly floor it out of there, with Chucky and Tiffany watching the chaos from the back of the van. (Unfortunately, filming of this scene didn't happen without incident, as stuntman David Stinson got sandwiched between two cars during the explosion's chaotic aftermath. He survived and made a full recovery, but the force of the accident caused him to have no memory of filming the scene.)

As they zoom down the road, Jesse and Jade immediately start blaming each other for what happened, while Chucky and Tiffany have to stifle their laughter in the back. They then get a call from David, who's watching news coverage of what happened on the TV and informs them that the police do suspect that they're murderers. After he warns them that they'd better lay low for the time being, they head on to Niagara Falls, though neither Chucky nor Tiffany notice that the compartment housing

Kincaid's body is leaking blood. They then arrive at the Honeymoon Sweets Motel and exchange vows inside, while out in the van, Chucky is forced to finish Kincaid off when he explodes out of the compartment and tries to escape. Brutally stabbing him again and again until he expires, Chucky holds up his knife and declares, "A true classic never goes out of style." Later that night, after Jesse and Jade are unknowingly robbed by Russ and Diane, Chucky and Tiffany have to take care of them, ostensibly because the couple needs the money to take the dolls to Hackensack, but

also because of Tiffany's strange morals about stealing. While the thieving couple are making out on their waterbed, Tiffany sneaks into their room and runs past them. Grabbing a bottle of champagne from its bucket, she looks up at the glass ceiling directly above them. And when Diane looks up there herself, she's startled and terrified to see Tiffany's reflection. Russ, realizing Diane's moans are no longer of passion, looks up at the ceiling and sees Tiffany as well. Before they can react, she throws the bottle up

at the glass and the big, razor-sharp shards rain down on them, leading to the very bloody spectacle of the waterbed exploding in a mixture of water and blood, as Chucky watches from nearby. That leads into him declaring his love for her, proposing, and the two of them consummating their union.

The next morning, after an unlucky housekeeper stumbles upon Russ and Diane's mutilated bodies, and her screams attract Jesse and Jade, who are similarly horrified, the couple quickly grab the dolls and pile into their van. Just as they're about to turn on each other completely, David shows up, and as they're heading down the road, he tells them how he believes there's a grave misunderstanding between them and that Kincaid is probably the one who's behind the murders. Then, smelling something nasty, he notices the blood that's been leaking from the bench and,

moving Chucky and Tiffany aside, looks in to see Kincaid's corpse. Now convinced himself that they are murderers, David quickly takes Kincaid's gun from its holster and hides it behind his back. Jesse and Jade thank him for straightening them out, but when the latter goes to hug him, he pulls the gun on her and orders Jesse to pull over. Pulling off to the side of the highway, Jesse and Jade try to talk sense into David but he cocks the gun and accuses them of intending to kill him next. He shows them why he thinks this, revealing Kincaid's corpse, and causing

the couple to turn on each other again. David gets out of the back of the van and yells at a passing cop car, when Chucky and Tiffany decide to drop the charade and reveal themselves. Pulling guns on the three of them, Chucky orders everyone to stay put, but David stumbles backwards into the highway and gets hit by a passing truck. Deciding to go with it, Tiffany orders Jesse and Jade to get the van moving, and they drive away from the scene. The police car that David flagged down chases after them, but Chucky makes

Jade open the van's back doors and he shoots through its left headlight and into the tire behind it, causing it to swerve off the road. Upon passing the New Jersey state-line, they hear over the radio that, because Charles Lee Ray's fingerprints have been discovered at two of the crime scenes, his corpse is going to be exhumed from the cemetery. Realizing they're soon going to miss their chance to get the Heart of Damballa, Chucky decides they need to get a new vehicle. By the time they reach Hackensack, they've gotten a hold of an RV.

En route, after Jesse and Jade manage to start a fight between Chucky and Tiffany, and with the exit to the cemetery coming up, they make their move. Jade kicks Tiffany into the oven, and when Chucky shoots at her, Jesse pushes him out the passenger side window. He shoots on the way, just missing Jesse and blowing out the driver's side window. Jesse loses control of the RV and it goes off the road and down into a ravine, coming to a rest at the bottom. Awakening in the wrecked back, Jade, who's still tied to the chair that Tiffany had her in, finds that Jesse is

unconscious at the wheel; there's also a loose electric cable, as well as fuel spraying everywhere. Then, hearing some scraping sounds in the nearby oven, she looks to see a burnt and very angry Tiffany appear at the window, banging furiously on the inside. As Jesse starts to come to, Tiffany suddenly disappears inside the oven, only to then explode out of it. Screaming, "You bitch!", she bites into Jade's ear. Jesse climbs back there, grabs Tiffany and throws her aside, then cuts Jade loose. He grabs the electric cable to keep it from igniting the fuel and kicks open the RV's side

door. He has Jade jump out, telling her that he'll be right behind her, but when Jade does jump out, she's immediately taken hostage by Chucky, who still has his gun. The fuel then ignites and Jesse has to dive out of the RV, which explodes in a massive fireball. Elsewhere, Tiffany, hurt and barely able to move, reaches for her gun on the ground. However, Jesse steps on her arm, grabs the gun, and prepares to finish her off, when he sees Jade running across a nearby overpass, being forced to do so by Chucky, who's holding her at gunpoint as she carries him. They head to the nearby cemetery, and Jesse quickly grabs Tiffany by her hair and runs after them.

At Charles Lee Ray's grave, Chucky kills the medical examiner digging it up, then orders Jade to get down in it. He next orders her to open the coffin, and when she hesitates in doing so, he yells at her to hurry up. She yells, "I'm trying, you fucking midget!", to which he responds by shooting near her. She quickly opens it up and is disgusted at the sight of the skeleton, which has rats all about it; even Chucky shudders, saying, "Ugh, you really didn't need to see that." Spying the Heart of Damballa around the corpse's neck, he has her take it and throw it to him. Just when

he has it, he's faced with Jesse, who's still carrying Tiffany. The two of them face off with guns, but when Jesse threatens to shoot Tiffany, Chucky opts for a trade, with Jade walking to Jesse while Tiffany walks over to him. Before she goes, Chucky makes it clear that this isn't over, as he tells her, "See ya real soon." Once the two couples are reunited, Chucky, again, proves what a bastard he is, first by letting Tiffany collapse to the ground and then, when he sees Jesse and Jade lovingly embracing and kissing, spitefully taking out his knife and flinging it at them. Seeing it

coming, Jesse swings himself around so that the knife hits him in the back instead of Jade. Under his direction, she pulls it out, and amazingly, his spine isn't severed, nor does he bleed out completely afterward. She tosses the knife to the ground, with Chucky taking it back and then picking up Jesse's gun, which he dropped at some point (I guess when he got stabbed). Now wielding both, he declares, "It's showtime!", and in the next cut, Jesse and Jade are tied together, as Chucky recites the Damballa chant

while holding the amulet. Reaching the end, he prepares to finish the ritual, when Tiffany crawls over to him, embraces him, and tells her to kiss him. But as he does, she removes the knife from his pocket and plunges it into his back. He yells in pain and then rolls away, before groaning and asking her why she did it. She tells him that the two of them belong dead and that she'll see him in hell. Chucky then seems to expire, while Jesse and Jade manage to free themselves, as Tiffany looks on.

But then, Tiffany gets whacked in the back of the head with a shovel by a still alive and thoroughly enraged Chucky. She quickly throws some dirt in his face, grabs another shovel, and they get into a vicious fight, swinging at and slamming each other into the parked medical examiner's van. At one point, the two of them block each other with the shovels and Tiffany bites Chucky on the hand. He falls to the ground, dodges another swing of her shovel, and comes around and whacks her in the head, knocking her back onto the ground. Getting up, Chucky tosses his

shovel away, thinking Tiffany is down for the count, when she suddenly rears up and grabs him by the throat, attempting to strangle him. However, he manages to reach down, grab the knife from where he was lying before, and stab it all the way through her, before shoving her to the ground, seemingly dead. As Chucky stands there, trying to come to grips with what he just did, Jesse takes the shovel and sends him flying right into the grave. Falling face-first on top of his own corpse, he yells in terror and runs for the

ladder leading down into the grave, only for Jesse to pull it out. Detective Preston suddenly appears and draws his gun, telling Jade, who's aiming another one at Chucky, to drop her own. But when he gets up there, he sees Chucky panicking down in the grave, demanding to be let out. While he's distracted, Jade grabs his gun and aims at Chucky again, telling him not to move. Chucky, however, glares up at her and simply says, "Go ahead and shoot! I'll be back! I always come back!" Jade pulls the hammer down and Chucky then laments, "Yeah... but dying is such a bitch," before she opens fire on him. She shoots him with all of the bullets, and he collapses and slides down against his human corpse.

Preston then clears Jesse and Jade of any wrongdoing and sends them home, before turning his attention to Tiffany. Bending down over her, he taps her several times but gets no reaction. Figuring that she's dead, he then goes to pick her up, only for her to suddenly let out a scream, causing him to fall back, yelling in terror. He watches as she flails and writhes around on the ground, then notices something happening around her skirt. Before he knows it, blood shoots out and splatters all over his face. And that's when a squealing, bloody, sharp-toothed baby doll emerges

from Tiffany's womb and flings itself at Preston's face. (I already knew about this scene when I first saw the movie, as Mikey told me about it, but it was still very effective and nightmarish, regardless. However, Mikey also told me that the baby ate Preston, which I didn't believe even then, but when I saw it, I realized what he meant.)

Like the previous two movies, Bride of Chucky did have a slightly altered TV version, though the differences here aren't as major. Aside from the bloodier moments being cut and the strong profanity being dubbed over (when Norton confronts Jesse with the marijuana Kincaid planted in his van, they edited out the part where Norton slams Jesse against the van and says, "You're in a lot of trouble, kid. Now don't you fucking move!"), several new scenes were put back into the movie. At the very beginning, Officer Bailey has to persuade a security guard to leave the

evidence depository so he can go in and grab Chucky's remains. When Jesse and Jade meet up in the back of David's car after he picks her up at Chief Kincaid's house, there's a bit more business between them, with Jesse giving Jade a metal bracelet that he says has been in his family for generations. And finally, when they're sitting in their room at the Honeymoon Sweets Motel, before Russ and Diane barge in, there's a tense moment where they admit that neither of them knows if the other is a murderer or not.

Eight years after he did the score for Child's Play 2, Graeme Revell returned for Bride of Chucky, and just like with that score, I've grown to appreciate this one much more over the years. He starts the movie off with a menacing theme on low, ominous violins that plays over the opening titles and into the first scene,  and is repeated at various times throughout, like in the lead-up to Bob Bailey's murder and at the end, when Preston is looking over the seemingly dead Tiffany. Revell actually manages to be very genuine in scoring the romantic moments between Chucky and Tiffany, creating this erotic, low, twanging guitar piece, accompanied by moaning, female voices, which is first heard when Tiffany is introduced and plays during moments concerning her and Chucky's relationship. He even creates a full-on love theme for them, again on guitar, and which you first hear when they're reunited and also plays during their sex scene. Revell also alludes back to his main theme from Child's Play 2 during the scene where Tiffany has Chucky locked up in the playpen, specifically when he's playing with the Speak & Spell. The moment where she puts the bride doll in the pen with him is also scored in that same childlike manner. When it comes to the truly scary moments, Revell isn't the greatest at it, but what he comes up with does work, especially in the build-up to when Chucky attacks Tiffany in the bathtub and this atmospheric piano piece you hear now and again. He does better with the very dramatic and action-filled scenes, however, like the amazing piece you hear when Tiffany is being electrocuted and the percussion during the chase and fight scenes. Finally, I have to mention that, for a couple of jump-scares, they actually use the scream of the xenomorph in the original Alien when it attacks Dallas in the air vent.

Unlike the first three movies, this one has a very loaded soundtrack, and many of the songs are memorable, albeit not always in a good way. I may not not be a big fan of Rob Zombie's music, or that kind of music in general, but I do think Living Dead Girl is a really cool song and, as I said before, it goes well with the opening credits sequence (however, I don't care for White Zombie's Thunderkiss '65, which is what Chucky rocks out to in the van).. I also really like Boogie King by The Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies, which is a nice, fun, upbeat song that you hear during Jesse and Jade's attempted date at the beginning and during the first half of the ending credits, and See You In Hell by Monster Magnet, which plays during the drive to Niagara Falls and has a melancholy rock vibe to it that I also dig. While I don't absolutely love it, I also don't mind Blondie's Call Me, as it fits with Tiffany making herself up, and I think the use of Judas Priest's Bloodstained during that little chase after Chucky and Tiffany reveal themselves to Jesse and Jade works well too. However, I'm not big on Kidney Thieves' cover of Crazy (I don't like the original by Patsy Cline either, but that's another story) and Slayer's Human Disease, which plays over the latter part of the ending credits, is okay but it's not something I'd ever listen to out of choice.

While many diehard, old school fans may not like the more comedic direction that Bride of Chucky took the series, I personally think it serves as a perfect example of the nice mixture of horror and humor that these movies are capable of, managing to maintain that dark edge while still being quite funny when it has to be. Also, this one is just a bloody good time, literally and figuratively. It's very well-made, has a nicely polished and stylized look to it, moves at a brisk pace, Jennifer Tilly and Brad Dourif are at the

top of their game in their respective roles, the other actors do quite good in their own parts, there's a nice amount of satire on everything from romantic comedies and relationships to other horror movies, the animatronic effects are among the best in the series, the deaths are very over-the-top and gory as hell, the score is nice, and the soundtrack is quite fun, for the most part. While I could probably nitpick it to death if I tried, I honestly can't find any major flaws with this movie. I just really love it, and hope those who see in a negative light may rediscover and appreciate it for what it does right, which is a lot.