Franchises: Child's Play. Child's Play (1988)

As a little kid, I was absolutely terrified of Chucky, and that was mostly because of two older cousins who loved to scare and just generally torment me. My first exposure to it was one day when I was around five years old, when they, along with a couple of my real friends, put in Child's Play 3, which they'd rented, as it had recently come to video. I remember not making it past the first fifteen minutes, and I think a big part of why I was so scared was because I didn't really understand it. Being so young at the time, my mindset wasn't very clear. I kind of got that Chucky was some sort of evil, living toy, but I didn't know if he he was a doll, a dummy, or what have you. After that, my only other exposure to these movies during my childhood was when I saw and, out of curiosity, read the back of the VHS boxes at my video rental store, all while being unsettled by the screenshots of Chucky glaring at me. And yet, in a very interesting twist, the original Child's Play would end up being my gateway drug into "contemporary" horror films. I've mentioned before that, up until Halloween of 1999, I watched few horror films that were more recent than the 60's, as they genuinely scared me. Then, on the day before Halloween that year, when I was twelve years old, I came upon the original Child's Play while flipping through channels. While my initial reaction upon seeing it was, naturally, fright, and I promptly clicked away, I couldn't resist that strange curiosity that attracts you to something that scares or disturbs you and went back to it. Still kind of freaked out at first, I nevertheless stuck with it and actually enjoyed myself (although my mom couldn't believe I was watching Chucky, since she herself was still freaked out by it at that time; now, we both really like Chucky). Almost immediately, Chucky went from this thing that terrified me to the character that gave me the courage to seek out all horror films, rather than just those from the old days. 

To this day, the original film amazes me in how it's something of a minor miracle: it takes a story and overall concept that could have, and should have, been absolutely laughable and managed to make an effective, serious, dark horror film out of it. Not to mention that it birthed a bona fide horror icon who's proven to be one of the most entertaining and unique of the slashers. Thus, I find it rather sad to know there was a fair amount of discourse among the key creatives behind the film, with arguments over who created what and who deserved the most credit, which have persisted to this day and led to some real bad blood. But, that doesn't change the fact that, as much as I enjoy most of the movies in this franchise, and despite some flaws I can point out here, this one is definitely the best of the bunch in my opinion.

On a cold, winter night in Chicago, Charles Lee Ray, a serial killer known locally as the "Lakeshore Strangler," is chased into a toy store by Detective Mike Norris after Ray's partner, Eddie Caputo, abandons him. Inside, Norris fatally shoots Ray, who, after swearing revenge on both him and Caputo, collapses into a large stack of popular dolls known as Good Guys. Removing one of the dolls from its box, he speaks an incantation that forms a roaring thundercloud above the store, and a bolt of lightning blasts through the skylight, destroying most of the interior and almost killing Norris. In the aftermath, Norris finds Ray's lifeless body near the doll. The next day, six-year old Andy Barclay is up early on his birthday. A fan of the Good Guys animated television show, he becomes excited upon seeing an advertisement for the tie-in dolls, hoping for one as a present. But when he opens his gifts, he learns that his single mother, Karen, hasn't been able to save up the money necessary to buy the expensive toy. Later that day, while working at her job in a department store, her friend and coworker, Maggie Petersen, brings her out back to a peddler who sells her one for half the price. Naturally, Andy is overjoyed when he receives his Good Guy, but, later that night, when Maggie is babysitting him as Karen works late, she's stalked by a strange presence that hurls a hammer at her and causes her to fall out the kitchen window. During the ensuing investigation, Detective Norris finds small, childlike footprints in flour on the kitchen counter, while Andy begins insisting his new doll, Chucky, is alive and talking to him... and what he claims the doll has been saying to him is quite unsettling to Karen. When another murder, that of Eddie Caputo, happens the next day, Andy, who was picked up nearby after skipping school, is taken to an institution, believed to be the killer, while continuing to insist that Chucky did it. That night, Karen discovers that Chucky is indeed alive, and inhabited by the malevolent soul of Charles Lee Ray. Now, she must try to convince Norris of this and prove her son's innocence, while Chucky learns that, to escape the doll body, which is slowly becoming human, he must transfer his soul into that of the first person he revealed his true identity to: Andy!

Though I've always had mixed feelings about referring to Don Mancini as the "series creator," given how different his original screenplay was from the final movie, especially in regards to the main villain, I can't deny that he is where the core idea originated from. His story, originally called Batteries Not Included and then changed to Blood Buddy, was something he wrote while he was a film student at UCLA and, having been influenced by the craze surrounding the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls in the early 80's, meant for it to be a dark satire on children's marketing. It was also more psychological, with the doll, which comes to life after Andy, in a rite of brotherhood, cuts his finger and mixes his own blood with the doll's synthetic blood, being a representation of his repressed anger and frustration from being so lonely all the time due to his single mother always working. As a result, the victims, whom the doll would pick off while Andy was sleeping, were people who'd been mean to him. And up until the third act, it would remain ambiguous as to whether it was the doll or Andy himself doing the killings. But when producer David Kirschner, who'd just enjoyed a great success with An American Tail, agreed to develop the script into a film, he felt it needed some reworking first, as he didn't care for certain elements of the story. Upon hiring Tom Holland, who'd recently done Fright Night, to write and direct Child's Play upon a recommendation from Steven Spielberg, who'd worked with him on an episode of Amazing Stories, the two of them came up with the idea of serial killer Charles Lee Ray and the doll being possessed by his soul. But at the time, Holland ran into a case of writer's block in regards to how exactly Ray's soul would end up in the doll, and momentarily left to do another movie. Another writer, John Lafia, who was an up-and-comer at the time, was brought in for further rewrites, but then, Holland, after completing his film Fatal Beauty, returned as writer and director and embarked on a further rewrite. This is where he came up with the voodoo concept, which both Mancini and Kirschner have always heavily criticized.

Let's face it, making a scary killer doll movie is a hard task, as the idea is so inherently laughable. Once in a while, you'll get something like the classic Twilight Zone episode, Living Doll (an admitted inspiration for this film), and fun, though not exactly scary, flicks like the Amelia segment of Trilogy of Terror and Stuart Gordon's Dolls, but more often than not, it can be hard to take seriously. Above all else, you need a great director who's really on the ball, and the producers behind Child's Play went through a number of them after Tom Holland's initial departure. Though John Lafia was interested in directing it himself (and would eventually direct Child's Play 2), United Artists wanted someone with experience and went through a number of surprisingly high-profile filmmakers, like William Friedkin, Irvin Kirschner, and Robert Wise, as well as Joseph Ruben, director of The Stepfather, and even Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, the creators of Max Headroom and future directors of the Super Mario Bros. movie. In the end, despite the difficulties and eventual bad blood that would develop between him and Mancini, Lafia, and Kirschner, Holland proved an inspired choice, having written and directed the vampire classic Fright Night, and also done the screenplay for the surprisingly awesome sequel, Psycho II. Sadly, despite his accomplishments, the guy is woefully underrated, and hasn't directed a feature film or anything of note since Thinner in 1996 (mainly because he became ill during the making of that film), save for maybe his episode of Masters of Horror. (And because the actor Tom Holland has now become such a hot commodity, it's not only hard to find images of Holland the writer-director, but people always have to make jokes about them being the same person without fail.)

Where things became tense between Mancini, Lafia, and Holland is when it came to the issue of credit. Holland felt that his final rewrite of the script and the version that was shot was different enough to where he should receive sole screenplay credit, and said as much in an interview with Cinefantastique. Mancini and Lafia, naturally, weren't happy with this, with the latter going as far as to accuse Holland of doing his final rewrite solely to hog all of the glory. The Screen Writer's Guild sided with them, and all three men are credited for the screenplay on the final film, with Mancini getting an additional "story by" credit, but Holland has always maintained that he should've received sole credit and accused the Guild of being discriminatory against writer-directors. As if that weren't enough, Holland had a falling out with Kirschner during editing, specifically over how much Chucky should be onscreen, and after completing his personal cut of the movie, as per DGA stipulations, was removed from the project altogether (Kirschner claims the two of them got into a fistfight, though Holland denies it). Kirschner then brought Mancini and Lafia in to help cut the film down to its release version. As a result of all this conflict, Holland was nowhere to be found on the film's first special edition in 2008, save for an archival interview made during filming; an audio commentary by him, however, was included on Scream Factory's later Blu-Ray and 4K releases. This whole thing is both really strange and sad to me, since we're talking about the guys who helped bring a horror icon to life. I used to think Holland was the one who made Chucky the endearing character he is through his rewrite, but after reading more up on it, especially in the fantastic book, Reign of Chucky, written by the same guys behind the Taking Shape books on the Halloween series, it seems like it was an amalgamation of all their ideas, with one building on top of the other. It's a shame they couldn't iron out their differences, especially since, as I'll get into when we talk about Child's Play 2, Lafia is no longer with us.

What makes both the original Child's Play and the series in general very different from most slasher movies is that they rarely ever involve teenagers (Child's Play 3 being the biggest exception), with most of the actors being in their 20's or around 30, at the youngest, save for at least one little kid. That's certainly the case here, where all of the main actors are adults, save for young Andy. They're all extremely likable, too, especially Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks), who starts off as your typical single, middle class, working mother, doing everything she can to make ends meet and provide for her young son. She's apparently doing a good job of it, too, as she and Andy live in a really nice, high-rise apartment, and her job as a jewelry clerk at a big department store seems like an above average, well-paying gig, despite her dickish supervisor. Her love for her son is apparent from their first scene together, when he wakes her up with breakfast in bed and she, despite being annoyed that it's 6:30, can't bring herself to be mad at him, especially when he's excited about it being his birthday. She also feels bad when he's disappointed about her not being able to get him a Good Guy doll (though, I don't know what she was thinking when she put new clothes in a big box that he would, obviously, gravitate to first), and when Maggie tells her about the peddler who has one, she's willing to pay whatever he wants for it. And when she brings the doll home for Andy, she's clearly feeling like the greatest mom ever when he's overjoyed with it. But that joy turns to horror when she comes home that night and finds her apartment swarming with cops, which scares her to death until she learns that Andy is alright. Then, she's distraught to learn that Maggie's dead, but like any mother, she immediately rejects the idea that Andy could have had anything to do with it. Naturally, she also believes that his claims that Chucky is alive is just a fantasy, and grows disturbed when he refuses to admit as much, no matter what happens, as well as begins telling her some of the stuff he claims Chucky has been saying.

After Andy is taken to a psychiatric ward following Eddie Caputo's murder, you can see when she comes home by herself that night that Karen is beginning to wonder if her son really is insane. Also, while she still doesn't believe that Chucky is alive, she does clearly blame him for what's happened to Andy, believing he's the root of the kid's "fantasies." She becomes quite resentful and angry towards the doll, growling, "Well say something, you little... bastard. Say something, dammit!", and then bitterly prepares to

throw away the box he came in. That's when a pair of unopened batteries falls out of the box, and Karen, in a perfectly believable instance of absolute terror, drops the box and turns to face Chucky. When she checks his battery pack, she finds it's empty, and is promptly frightened out of her wits and then attacked by Chucky, before he manages to escape the apartment. Though she loses track of him, from that moment on, Karen is a mother determined to prove her son isn't insane, even if she's making herself look crazy in the process, and gradually learns what and who Chucky is exactly, before then having to fight to save Andy's very soul when she learns of Chucky's ultimate goal.

For a character who, at this point, has only appeared in this one movie, homicide detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) is very significant in that he's the one who mortally wounds Charles Lee Ray during the opening, forcing him to transfer his soul into the Good Guy and kicking off this whole series. Besides that, rather than a typical, hard-ass cop, he's portrayed as a very likable and reasonable guy. While he does logically think that Andy could be the one who killed Maggie, due to the small footprints in flour on the kitchen counter, he does sympathize with Karen's plight and doesn't totally point the finger at the kid just yet. He does, however, insist that she call him if she learns anything, saying he hates loose ends, and also orders his partner, Jack, to investigate the Barclays' background. Following Eddie Caputo's death, Mike especially feels bad for Karen, not knowing how to break the news to her that Andy is a suspect. And when Andy, despite what his mother tells him, continues insisting that Chucky is alive, unknowingly doing so as a psychiatrist watches through a two-way mirror, Mike just shakes his head in frustration and despair, knowing that the kid just doomed himself. Naturally, when Karen then suddenly begins claiming that Chucky is actually alive and is the murderer, Mike thinks she's desperately trying to clear Andy's name. Despite his disbelief, when Karen goes off to find the peddler who sold her Chucky, he follows her, knowing she's going into a bad part of town. It's a good thing he does, too, as he saves her from being raped by the peddler, and when the peddler admits that he got the doll from the remains of the toy store where he killed Charles Lee Ray, it gives Mike a moment of pause. Still, despite Karen making the connection between Chucky and Eddie Caputo (I'm surprised she didn't make the connection sooner, given that Andy told her that Chucky said he was actually Charles Lee Ray), and warning him that Chucky will be coming after him next, given Ray's threat before he died, Mike is still unwilling to believe her. He does go back to the station and takes Ray's file with him to study, but immediately gets all the proof he needs when he's attacked and nearly killed by Chucky in his car. After that, he reconnects with Karen, now just as determined to save Andy. 

As little Andy Barclay, six-year old Alex Vincent gives one of the most underrated child actor performances ever, as this kid is fantastic. He's not only really cute but exudes pure innocence and comes off as genuinely sweet and lovable, not just in his scenes with his mother but with other characters like Maggie and even Mike. He's also a diehard Good Guys fan, and wants one of those dolls more than anything when he sees a commercial for them. Thus, he's disappointed when his mother breaks it to him that she wasn't able to afford one, but when she then brings home one that afternoon, he's absolutely over the moon. Because of his age and naivety, he doesn't question it when Chucky begins saying things other than the three sentences he's supposedly programmed to say, and just goes along with what he tells him to do, thinking he's his best friend. Despite Chucky's warning that no one will believe him, Andy does insist to his mother that he's alive, upsetting her when he tells her that Chucky said, "Aunt Maggie was a real bitch and got what she deserved." When she starts to become increasingly frantic as he keeps insisting it's the truth, Andy decides to placate her by agreeing to, "Stop making up stories," later telling Chucky that he was right. By this point, it's already quite heart-wrenching just how much Chucky is manipulating Andy, making him into a potential murder suspect and also causing him to look crazy in front of his mother. What's especially awful is when Andy says that Chucky claimed his late father had sent him from heaven so he wouldn't be alone, showing just how much of a creep he is. But then, after Chucky kills Eddie Caputo, Andy has been all but framed, and the kid unknowingly makes himself look truly insane by demanding that Chucky show he can talk. And on top of all that, before he ends up at the psychiatric hospital, Andy tells Karen that Chucky threatened to kill him if he tried to tell anyone the truth. 

By far, Vincent's best piece of acting is in the scene where Andy is in the institution and sees Chucky climbing the stairs outside. After he tries to warn Dr. Ardmore of it, only to be ignored and left alone, the way he slumps down to the floor, hopelessly whimpering and crying, absolutely sure that Chucky is going to kill him for telling his secret (unaware of the more insidious plan he has in store for him), is really sad to watch. (This was also the source of one of the conflicts between Tom Holland and David

Kirschner, as Kirschner and other people on the crew felt Holland went too far in getting that reaction out of Vincent. However, Holland himself has owned up to what he did, and Vincent has always insisted it didn't affect him in a negative way.) However, Andy proves unwilling to lay down and die, as well as quite resourceful for someone so young. He manages to trick Chucky and escape his cell, grabbing the keys he stole and using them to elude Ardmore and the others looking for him. Upon getting attacked by Chucky in

another room, he takes a scalpel for defense, but doesn't get to use it before Ardmore finds and attempts to sedate him. After Chucky kills Ardmore, Andy escapes the building and heads straight for home, listening to what his mother told him he should do when in trouble. He even barricades himself inside the apartment and arms himself with a baseball bat, though Chucky still manages to knock him out and nearly succeeds in possessing his body. Fortunately, not only do Karen and Mike arrive in time to save him, but there's a great cheer moment when, after

being trapped in the fireplace, Chucky tries to keep him from lighting him up, saying, "We're friends to the end, remember?" and Andy, showing that he's not falling for any more of his lies, says, "This is the end, friend!", before dropping the match in. But, in the end, despite Chucky finally being killed, you know that this poor kid is going to be scarred for life, exemplified by that very last shot of Andy looking back at what's left of Chucky, with a haunted expression on his face. Even if there had never been any sequels, this kid will never look at a doll, or any toy, the same way again.

While the film mainly focuses on just our three protagonists and Chucky, there are some notable supporting characters as well. Maggie Peterson (Dinah Manoff) may not have much to do before she dies less than 25 minutes in, but she leaves an impression as a nice but tough-talking, take-no-crap woman who's a good friend to Karen, going out of her way to help her get the Good Guy doll for Andy when she meets the peddler who has one, and attempting to cover for her when she has to come back to work later that night, only to get snidely turned down by their supervisor, Walter Criswell. I especially love her reaction towards the peddler when he makes an obscene gesture towards her when they're arguing about the doll possibly being stolen: "I think I dated him." And when Criswell all but threatens to fire Karen when she tries to explain why she can't work late that night, Maggie tells him, "Hey, chill out, would ya, Walter?" She then agrees to babysit Andy for her, proving to be fairly nice to the kid, albeit a little stern and quick to accuse him of putting Chucky in front of the TV and turning it on in an act of childish defiance. Also, when she hears something later that night while she's in the living room, reading, she naturally thinks it's Andy again, but doesn't bother to check on him in his bedroom first and foremost, despite seeing that the door is ajar. In fact, when she hears a bang in the kitchen and goes in there to find the flour knocked over, she seems to assume it just fell somehow, and tries to steady her nerves. Of course, right after that is when Chucky sends her out the window, to her doom. 

Mike Norris' partner and friend, Jack (Tommy Swerdlow), is also a minor character, present in only a few scenes, but manages to come across as a funny, jokey kind of guy, mentioning what a "spirited lady" Karen is early on and finding it kind of hard to believe that the hammer Mike says he found in the kitchen corner could be the murder weapon. However, he's serious when he has to be, especially when it comes to Andy and what he's being accused of, as well as when he escapes after seemingly killing

Dr. Ardmore. Near the end, he randomly shows up right after Karen has unloaded a revolver into Chucky's burnt up, dismembered corpse, and doesn't take it seriously when Mike tells him that the doll is alive. He completely ignores his warning not to touch the doll's scattered parts, even bringing the head into the bedroom with them and insisting that it's dead. He's then attacked by Chucky's headless body, which nearly tears his throat out, and after Mike finally kills Chucky, he asks Jack, "You believe me now?" Jack simply answers, "Yeah," then adds, "But who's gonna believe me?" Jack Colvin, whom I remember from The Incredible Hulk TV series as Jack McGree, appears briefly here as Dr. Ardmore, the head of the institution where Andy ends up (I'm sure that was down to Tom Holland, who acted in an episode of that show before he began directing). He doesn't have much of anything to do, other than believe that Andy is a troubled young boy and dismiss his claims about Chucky, going as far as to leave the poor kid by himself in his cell, crying his eyes out. When Andy manages to escape his cell, Ardmore and the staff search the building for him, with Ardmore finding him in an operating room. Again not listening to Andy's warnings about Chucky, he disarms him of his scalpel and tries to sedate him, only to then receive what has to be one of the film's nastiest deaths. 

I have to say that Charles Lee Ray's accomplices aren't that smart in dealing with him, as they should know how sadistic he is and that he doesn't take kindly to being double-crossed. Case in point, Eddie Caputo (Neil Giuntoli), his accomplice who abandons him in the opening scene and who he later kills out of revenge for it. Not only should he have realized that abandoning Ray was a bad idea, but he also had to have known about his interest in voodoo, at least a little bit, and that he could've used it to get back at

him somehow. Otherwise, there's not much to say about him as a character, since his only dialogue consists of him saying, "Oh, shit," twice at the beginning, What is interesting is that, while he's not mentioned at all in Curse of Chucky, which flashes back to right before this film's opening (which I once thought was another way for Don Mancini to get back at Tom Holland), he is featured in an episode of the Chucky TV series' first season, where we see that he and Ray met as kids at an orphanage. Even dumber is John Bishop (Raymond Oliver), the man who taught Ray all he knows about voodoo. First, when Chucky shows up at his home, demanding to know why his doll body can bleed, John does tell him, but then makes it abundantly clear that he has no intention of helping him, saying he's an abomination and, "You've perverted everything I've taught you, and used it for evil! And you have to be stopped!", before going to telephone the police in the next room. That was already a dumb thing to do, but then, Chucky finally gets him to talk by torturing him with a voodoo doll of himself. Initially, you might think that Chucky made that, but after he's broken John's leg, he says, "Shouldn't tell your customers where you hide things like this, John. Gets you in trouble every time." So, John not only made a voodoo doll of himself but also told at least one of his pupils and/or customers where it is. Why in God's name would you do that? I just can't imagine what made him think that was a smart idea. And even when he cracks and tells Chucky what he needs to know to keep him from killing him, he kills him anyway. Fortunately, John holds on long enough to tell Karen and Mike of Chucky's plans and how to stop him but, man, can you spell dumbass?

If Tom Holland deserves sole credit for anything, it's for casting Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray and Chucky, having just worked with him in a previous movie. And just like with Robert Englund and Freddy Krueger, it would prove to be a perfect marriage between an actor and a role. As brief as Dourif's portrayal of Ray is here, he still manages to make him come across as a very threatening and menacing character, with how wild-eyed and fierce he looks, never failing to take a shot at Mike whenever he gets a chance during their chase, and when he angrily swears to get even with both Mike and Eddie Caputo. There still is a hint of humanity within Ray, though, as he's truly panicked when Eddie drives off and leaves him, and utterly despondent when he realizes he's been fatally shot, giving way to his rage at Mike. Not at all ready or willing to die (Dourif has said that Ray and, later, Chucky's motivation is that he's terrified of no longer existing), Ray is desperate to "find somebody," either for help or, more than likely, to transfer his soul into them using the voodoo that he knows. That, of course, leads him to put his soul into the Good Guy doll when he has no other options.

As for Chucky, while he would later become known for spouting one-liners and eventually being quite funny in general, here he's portrayed with very little humor, instead mostly coming across as the same cold-blooded, sadistic killer he was as a human. He has a couple of funny lines here and there, like when he comments, "Fuck you," after a woman calls him ugly, and, "Batter up!" before knocking Andy out with a baseball bat, and he's quite amused when he learns that he has to put his soul into Andy, not to mention his crazy laugh, which he does mostly in the middle of the film, but otherwise, he's portrayed quite seriously. He's quite cruel and brutal in his kills, is extremely ferocious when he attacks someone, and even his laugh is a bit subdued here, coming off less like the over-the-top, Joker-esque cackle it would later be known as. And as I said before, Chucky is downright loathsome in his manipulation of Andy during the first half, from claiming that his dead father sent him from heaven to play with him (just think about how Andy had to have told Chucky that his father was dead and he used it to get his hooks further into him), to threatening to kill Andy if he tried to tell anyone the truth, letting the kid take the fall for his murders, and just seeming to take enjoyment in freaking him out. That's to say nothing of how he has absolutely no qualms about possessing Andy's body, even delighting at the idea of being six years old again and able to start fresh in his killings.

In talking about Chucky's design, I don't think I'm alone in saying that the Good Guy doll itself is something that makes your skin crawl. Even when it's a doll other than Chucky, or when he's acting normal, the Uncanny Valley is in full effect, with the way it's always smiling, those blue eyes always staring straight ahead, and especially when it blinks its eyes and turns its head to respond to Andy's voice. In a way, it's more disturbing than Chucky's malevolent form. Speaking of which, while I like his look in the

next two movies more, this first take on his design does have a specific quality all its own, one in the mark on his right cheek from where Mike burns him with his cigarette lighter, which remains for the rest of the movie, and second in how the doll evolves over the course of the story. I think I always subconsciously noticed it but it wasn't until I watched the special features on the DVD and, later, the Blu-Ray, where Kevin Yagher and others confirmed it, that I realized how, because the doll is slowly turning

human, his look changes. His skin goes from being shiny plastic to more flesh-colored, with details like pores and moles appearing; his eyes go from being toy-like to looking more like Brad Dourif's own piercing blue eyes, the eye-sockets become more sunken in; and his hair goes from looking synthetic to more real-looking and even sweaty, and his hairline moves back as well (this is a detail they never redid in any of the sequels, as I've heard it was too time-consuming and expensive). By the time you get to the climax in Karen and Andy's apartment, Chucky is

really beginning to look like Charles Lee Ray, which is quite freaky. And as if he couldn't possibly be any creepier, he's more terrifying when he's burnt to a crisp and continues to attack, as well as when his head and limbs get blown off and his body keeps on crawling. The headless body seems to become a sentient being all its own, with Chucky's head commanding it to kill Jack and then kill them all, before Mike finally puts him down (even for this concept, I felt that was a bit much and came off like something you'd expect from Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson's horror movies). 

Staying on the subject of Chucky himself for a little bit longer, one thing I've always appreciated this movie for is the initial mystery of who's doing the killing, even if it doesn't work as well as it could've. It seems that, even though the shooting script was drastically rewritten from Don Mancini's original screenplay, they did try to retain a little bit of that ambiguity, with even the movie's trailer keeping what was going on unclear (save for Karen's line about the doll coming alive in her hands). But even if you come

into this first film knowing nothing about Chucky or the series (nearly impossible, given what an icon Chucky is nowadays), there would be no doubt at all that there's something sinister going on with the doll because of the opening with Charles Lee Ray. And even if you didn't completely understand it, thinking it was a curse on the doll rather than full-on possession, you'd eventually be tipped off by Chucky's POV as he rushes to Eddie Caputo's house to murder him. It's a shame, too, because the mystery

works rather well up to that point, since you only get POV shots and a quick glimpse of a small figure running in the background behind Maggie a few minutes before she's killed, the latter of which is all the more misdirecting since Chucky and Andy kind of look and dress alike (that was actually Alex Vincent's sister in that instance). It's also not too far-fetched to think that, along with imagining that the doll is alive, Andy put Chucky in front of the TV, just as Maggie accused him, and imagined the flour on the bottom of Chucky's shoes, as well as his head turning

and his eyes closing by themselves when they're lying in bed that night. But then, the movie shows its hand not too long after that, so it becomes a moot point. Holland said conversely that he approached the film from Alfred Hitchcock's basic viewpoint about suspense, which was that the audience knows there's a bomb that's going to go off at some point but the characters don't. Interesting take on a killer doll film, but I still think the pure mystery angle could've been more effective. That said, I do think it's creepy how they subtly portray Chucky talking to Andy during

the first act, with Andy putting his ear to the doll's mouth and hearing something that we don't. And I do think it's eerie when Karen is washing her face in the bathroom and hears Andy softly talking in his room, then goes over and opens the door to find him sitting on the floor, with Chucky sitting in a rocking chair in front of him.

To this day, the original Child's Play remains the darkest and creepiest film in the series, both tonally and visually (though, Curse of Chucky and the 2019 remake come pretty close), thanks to Tom Holland's direction and the great cinematography by Bill Butler. The film has a very subdued color palette, with everything coming off as kind of plain, even in environments like the toy store in the opening, where you would expect to see some color; in fact, the only colors that really stand out are Andy's Good Guys-inspired clothes and Chucky's similar outfit. This

feeling is further emphasized by how the movie takes place during the cold Chicago winter, giving many of the daytime exteriors a gray, overcast feel and also impacting the look of the interiors. And the nighttime scenes are either extremely dark or, at the very least, quite dim, and naturally so, rather than how it tends to look in most Hollywood movies. The best examples of this use of darkness are when Chucky is stalking Maggie in the apartment and the climax there, which looks and feels like it's taking place in a late, wintertime afternoon. As for camerawork, the film

makes great use of POV shots, both from Chucky himself when he's roaming the apartment's hallways and rooms, and when he's running across the road to Eddie Caputo's hideout, and from the other characters when they're creeping around, knowing that they're being stalked. Other nice shots include a two-fer with Maggie on the left side of the screen, telling Andy that it's time to go to bed, while on the right, we see him hear Chucky talking to him for the first time, as he starts to walk away, then turns back, crouches down, and puts his ear to the doll's mouth; a shot from underneath the couch when Karen cautiously looks under there when she realizes that Chucky is alive; and a cool shot of Chucky's silhouette near the end when he gets out of the elevator and walks to the apartment. 

It's interesting that, even though this series is about a killer toy, this was the only one to seemingly take place anywhere near Christmastime up until the 2019 remake, and even then, it's set in November (although, a handful of them do take place in winter and with snow). Still, the time of year and the setting of Chicago make for some nice atmosphere. You can tell it's extremely cold (the day before shooting began in January of 1988, Chicago nearly broke its cold weather record, with the temperature getting down to -14, and that's not factoring in the wind chill),

especially during the nighttime exteriors, with snow everywhere and the actors' breath being very prominent when they speak (Chris Sarandon said that, during one scene, he tried to say his lines but his vocal cords literally froze up because it was so cold). This already unpleasant atmosphere and dreary visual aesthetic adds all the more to those many scenes that take place in the city streets, like the opening where Charles Lee Ray is chased down an alleyway and towards the toy store, and when Karen goes looking

for the peddler who sold Chucky to her. That latter scene is indicative of how the story really gets into the seedier, rundown, crime-riddled side of the city when it needs to, with Karen roaming the cold streets and back-alleys, which are filled with lots of homeless people warming themselves around makeshift fire-pits, and finding the peddler at an encampment for the homeless. It just feels unsafe, and Mike's warning that it's not a good place to be that late at night is justified when the peddler, who already

seemed really scummy, tries to rape her, with Mike saving her just in time. Before this, Andy himself had already been in that bad part of town, when Chucky directed him to Eddie Caputo's hideout, which is this rat-filled, dilapidated old house near a junkyard and a spot with a bunch of homeless people beneath a tram bridge.

By contrast, Karen and Andy's apartment is a very nice, upper middle-class home, with a comfortable, warm, if rather plain, look to it, but once Chucky comes into the picture, it becomes much more sinister, with him hiding and scurrying around the dark hallways and rooms, and later chasing Andy through them. Even simple shots of the door to Andy's room from down the hall become creepy in this context. The building itself, the Brewster Apartments, has a distinctive but also kind of sinister look to its exterior, particularly when the storm clouds

appear above it as Chucky does the chant, as well as the immediate interiors with the cage-like elevator. A similar sort of setting is the toy store at the beginning, Playland, which is kiddy-oriented and welcoming, but takes on a more sinister vibe with Mike gunning down Charles Lee Ray and Ray putting his soul into the Good Guy doll, both kicking off the events of this franchise and completely blowing out the store. But one place that's never welcoming is County General Hospital, the asylum where Andy is taken and where

Chucky later comes for him. This place, looking like it hasn't been remodeled since the 40's, just exudes unpleasantness, with its harsh brick exterior and gray-walled interiors, threadbare cells with bars on the windows and a small cot to sleep on, and dull, claustrophobic corridors and hallways, as well as the cold, clinical room where Chucky kills Dr. Ardmore.

By far the creepiest location is Charles Lee Ray's old apartment, in this crappy-looking, low-income building. The actual apartment is filled with all sorts of freakish stuff, from these really disturbing, Bosch-like paintings on the wall, weird sculptures made up of vaguely feminine figures, a table that seems to be made out of mannequin legs, and weird female dolls around the entrance, giving us an insight into what a deranged person Ray was in life. While there, Karen is not only thoroughly unnerved but finds a message written on the wall, thanking "Mighty Damballa" for

life after death, all but confirming that Chucky had come back there at some point. (On a side note, one problem I have with this scene is that it has an unnecessary attempt at suspense, where a dark figure who turns out to be Mike comes in the doorway behind Karen, stands there for a few seconds, and then says her name, causing her to jump. I don't what the point of that moment was, as we know that wasn't Chucky, and it comes off as cheap.) John Bishop's place, which we see in the very next scene, is a

similarly low-income style apartment, in another poor, slummy section of town, and filled with all sorts of strange objects and idols, but isn't nearly as unsettling as what was seen at Ray's apartment. When we briefly see his kitchen when Chucky comes in through the window, there seems to be a number of herbs in jars all around, and there was also a deleted scene that showed John healing a young boy. That, coupled with John's anger at what Chucky has done with the knowledge he gave him, gets across that, despite how it's typically portrayed in films and how it often comes across here, right down to the cliche of voodoo dolls, this magic is not inherently evil. 

As I touched on before, the use of voodoo here is something that has forever remained a bone of contention for Don Mancini and David Kirschner, with the former having been very vocal about how he feels the whole thing is stupid and contrived, particularly the stipulation that, in order to escape the doll, Chucky must transfer his soul into the first person he revealed his true self to. Having been forever saddled with this mythology since the original, Mancini has had no choice but to work with it, although that hasn't stopped him from messing

around with it as much as possible, either because of his personal opinion about it or because of his lifelong resentment towards Tom Holland. In the first two sequels, it's very downplayed, save for being Chucky's ultimate goal, but starting with Bride of Chucky, Mancini would start playing around with it more and more, and by the time you get to Cult of Chucky and the TV series, there really are no rules at all. Going back to this first film, though, I think the mythology works perfectly fine within the context they come up with. Yes, it's not faithful to actual

voodoo, except for maybe the use of the name "Damballa," which is an actual spirit within the religion (and even then, the chant that Chucky says is just a random hodgepodge of various languages that Holland came up with), and no explanation is given as to why exactly Chucky's doll body is turning human or why he must put his soul into the person he first revealed his true self to (in the following films, it would be specified as the first person to whom he revealed his real identity of Charles Lee Ray), but I

don't think it's really necessary. It gives you just enough to know what's at stake, and how and why Chucky must be stopped. Plus, it makes for an ominous setpiece whenever Chucky does the chant and those dark, lightning-filled clouds begin gathering over his location.

While it may not have been as prevalent as he originally intended, there still is some of that satire on child's marketing and consumerism that Mancini wanted for this film, mostly at the beginning, where we see how much of a fan Andy is of the Good Guys cartoon show, wearing pajamas based on the characters' clothes and pouring a bowl of its cereal (said cereal looks like it would be like eating a bowl of instant diabetes, with its bright colors and how sugary it must be, and that's before Andy adds three spoonfuls of sugar on top of it). Then, we see how

excited he is when he sees an advertisement for the dolls, which the announcer (Tom Holland's voice) says is a special message exclusively for fans of the show, and the Good Guy mascot (who's far scarier than Chucky, in my opinion, and is voiced by John Franklin, aka Isaac from Children of the Corn) shows not only how the dolls work, but also that, "Every Good Guy has a name all his own, so he can be your very own best friend," getting into that notion of how, at the time, corporations were conditioning kids to see these toys as much more than just mere products.

Then, the mascot brings it home by declaring, "So, remember to tell Mom and Dad you want a Good Guy, perfect for birthdays, or just any old time. And remember, you can buy all of our Good Guy accessories too," with the announcer adding, "Brought to you exclusively by Play Pals, makers of Good Guys and other fine toys. Found in toy stores throughout the Greater Chicago area." Thus, the Good Guy cartoon in and of itself, which comes off as the schmaltziest, overly kid pandering show this side of

the Care Bears, is just one big promotion for the toy line, as was the case with a lot of cartoons in the 80's (I like how, despite how much he loves it, Andy takes one look at the episode playing and dismissively complains, "I saw this one,"). And it's a very successful one too, despite how pricey the dolls are, as when Karen takes Andy to school, several kids walk by them, carrying Good Guys of their own.

Considering the modest budget and how new the technology was at the time, the animatronic effects by Kevin Yagher and his crew are still awe-inspiring, even to this day, and made use of various types of rigs that could perform different actions, from walking to gesturing while standing still. The heads and faces are the most impressive, given the amount of expression in them, allowing Chucky to go from looking mean and angry to shocked and even confused within a single shot. By all accounts, these effects were time-consuming and often a pain to get right, with

unexpected problems forcing them to do take after take (the mechanisms were said to be unexpectedly noisy, and you can really hear the rubber and plastic squeaking when Chucky moves, something they would iron out in further films). Not that you would know that while watching the film, as every shot of Chucky was the best possible take they could get, and the result is that the doll looks as though it's alive, walking around, talking, and attacking. While you can tell the difference between the plain, static doll and

the animatronic, as the latter has more detail and the skin looks less like immobile plastic, that, in a way, actually makes it feel more real to me, showing the shift the doll goes from normal toy to when Charles Lee Ray's spirit takes control. The scene that best exemplifies this for me is when Chucky comes alive in Karen's arms and attacks her, going from an average toy to this evil little thing that suddenly starts screaming and cursing while flailing around at Karen, smacking and even biting her. 

Because of how unpredictable and limited the effects tended to be, the filmmakers also often made use of Ed Gale, a dwarf actor and stuntman, dressed as Chucky and wearing a fake head (Gale has said that they shot each scene with both him and the puppets to see which came out better). However, while it opened things up for them, the end results are rather mixed in my opinion. Even though they used Gale mostly in quick glimpses or fairly distant shots, like when Andy sees Chucky climbing the hospital's exterior stairway, when Chucky walks across the floor of Andy's cell,

towards his bunk, or when he hops down the chimney and kicks out the fireplace grill, you can always spot the difference because, no matter how much he may try to imitate the animatronics, the movement is a lot smoother and more fluent. This is especially egregious in the scene when, after Mike gets him off of Karen, Chucky rolls across the floor, takes out his knife, stabs Mike in the side of his leg, and then runs off. There are, however, some more effective moments with Gale, though, like when they cut in a

quick shot of him sitting down on John's counter in-between close-ups of the animatronic, in shots of Chucky's legs when he's walking or running, and when he's set on fire and is charred up afterward (that shot of him menacing Andy after tripping him is probably the best one of Gale in the whole movie). As the movies went on and the technology got better, and the effects artists became more skilled, they used Gale only sporadically, if at all, and eventually, they phased this method out altogether.

While certainly violent, one thing Child's Play isn't is excessively gory, especially when compared to some of the later movies. The first couple of murders, those of Maggie and Eddie Caputo, are completely bloodless, and while other deaths, like that of John, are quite gruesome, they don't really call attention to their goriness or revel in it. That said, John's death is quite nasty, as you see his leg and arm break when Chucky snaps the corresponding limbs on his voodoo doll, accompanied by nasty breaking sounds, and after Chucky stabs the doll in the heart, you see a very

bloody wound on John's chest. By the time Mike and Karen find him, his front-side is almost completely covered in blood and it's pooled beneath his body. Dr. Ardmore's death not too long afterward is the one that the movie does kind of linger on, as you first see a lot of blood gush out of the back of his leg when Chucky stabs him with a scalpel, and then, when Chucky hooks him up to the electroshock machine and zaps him, you see Ardmore's face blackening between shots, along with blood streaming out of his eyes and

mouth before he finally dies. While Chucky himself gets shot in the chest, burned up, and shot to pieces, the only bloody moments with him are when Charles Lee Ray is fatally shot during the opening and Mike blows Chucky's heart out at the end, with some blood splattering on the wall behind him (Chucky's deaths in many of the later movies would prove to be much messier). Visual effects-wise, the only true ones are those shots of the storm clouds which form during Chucky's chants and the flashing lightning, which look a bit archaic but work well enough.

Child's Play has to have one of the best paces possible for a movie. Already short at just 87 minutes long (and it doesn't even feel that long), it literally hits the ground running, beginning with Charles Lee Ray in the middle of being chased by the cops (the latter part of an originally much longer opening), taking shelter inside the toy store, and putting his soul into the doll, and it just goes from there, not wasting one bit of momentum. Never does it feel slow or anything come off as tacked on, which is amazing considering that the first cut is said to have been over two hours. I and a lot of other fans would like to see the material that was cut, since some of it sounds interesting and even fills in some minor holes, specifically about what happened to Andy's father, but, unfortunately, it doesn't exist anymore, save for some stills.

This movie has some really impressive and exciting sequences, some of which you wouldn't expect to see in a movie about a killer doll, like the opening, which feels more appropriate for an action movie, with Mike Norris chasing Charles Lee Ray through an alleyway and out into the street, the two of them repeatedly exchanging shots, Ray diving across the hood of a parked car and firing back over it at Mike, and frantically hobbling for shelter behind a pillar after he gets shot in the leg and Eddie Caputo abandons him.

He then hobbles over to the nearby Playland toy store, shoots open the door, and ducks inside, with Mike following him. Inside, they hide and duck among the toy displays, Ray shooting at but missing Norris, who returns fire and hits him in the chest. Mike then cautiously follows the blood trail Ray leaves behind as he stumbles through the store, before taking cover in a small alcove and swearing to get even with both him and Eddie. He then heads into the back, muttering that he needs to find somebody, before

collapsing into a large display of Good Guy doll boxes. When one of the boxes turns over in front of him and he sees the doll, he smiles evilly, pulls the doll out, and begins the chant to Damballa. Immediately, the storm clouds gather over the store, as Mike follows the sound of the chanting to the back. But right before he finds Ray, he finishes the chant and a lightning bolt explodes through the skylight, causing a massive explosion that sends Mike flying backwards and blows out the windows in the front, sending toys and glass into the street. Once the

explosion has abated, Mike gets to his feet, makes his way through the wreckage, and sees Ray's corpse lying nearby, with an evil smile on his face. The opening ends on an eerie close-up of the doll's face, illuminated by the glow of the fire.

The lead-up to Maggie's death is a nicely suspenseful sequence, beginning with her sitting in the living room, reading. Meanwhile, the door to Andy's bedroom slowly opens and we get the first Chucky POV shot as he runs down the hallway and bolts past the entrance to the living room. Right as he runs past, Maggie clearly hears him, then swings around and calls for Andy. When she doesn't get an answer, she goes back to her reading, while Chucky grabs a chair and drags it across the floor (if you listen closely, you

can hear him panting). He unintentionally pulls the chair's leg across a rug, causing an audible thump when it goes back to the wooden floor. Maggie hears this and slowly gets up and walks to the hallway, again calling for Andy but not getting an answer. She looks to her left and sees that the door to Andy's room is open, then walks down the opposite corridor to the front door, finding the chair up against it. Walking up to it and finding it slightly ajar, she pushes it to and turns the lock, when a loud bang in the kitchen

startles her. She then creeps down to the kitchen and turns on the light to see a container of flour on the floor. Just as she wonders how that happened, she's startled when the phone rings and she answers it to find it's just Karen checking in. Assuring her that everything's fine, she hangs up and gets a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess, while in the living room, Chucky grabs the hammer from the Good Guy toolkit that Andy was playing with earlier. There's a buildup to a false scare where Maggie thinks there's something behind some potted plants, only to remove

one and find nothing back there, although this doesn't really work, since we know that's not where Chucky is. Then, when she turns around, she stops, clearly in shock, and is hit in the face with the hammer (I guess back then, they put real hammers in those kinds of toys?), causing her to stumble back, crash through the window, and fall to her death, slamming onto the roof of a parked car down below. (I will say, though, that her balance is ridiculously bad, given how far she stumbled, not to mention how hard she'd have to have fallen in order to go through the window.)

The following day, Chucky has Andy take him to the slums so he can find and get revenge on Eddie Caputo. Once they get off the tram (I know it was the 80's, but would they have still really let a little kid like that on by himself?), Chucky directs him to the abandoned house where he knows Eddie is hiding (it must've been their go-to hideout). Having to go pee, Andy puts Chucky into a rocking chair in the nearby junkyard and walks off to do it. But in-between shots, Chucky has already gotten up and ran across the road,

towards the house. Heading up the steps and to the front door, he slowly opens it, then walks into the rat-infested kitchen, towards a stove. He opens it with a thump, which awakens Eddie, who's sleeping upstairs. Grabbing his .357 Magnum, he slowly heads down there, while Chucky blows out the stove's pilot light and turns the gas up all the way. Outside, Andy finds that Chucky's gone, while in the house, Eddie creeps down the stairs, with his gun at the ready. Reaching the bottom, he hears some clattering down the hall from the stairwell and swings around and

fires at the doorway. Andy hears the gunshots and runs towards the house, while inside, Eddie kicks a door down and wanders into that room. Hearing Andy outside the window, he swings around, pointing the gun at him, but relaxes when he sees it's just a kid. That's when you hear Chucky laugh for the first time, behind the door to the kitchen, and Eddie walks over to its side, preparing to kick it down. Andy goes around the back, still calling for Chucky, while inside, Eddie kicks the door down and immediately fires, igniting the propane. The entire building explodes into a massive fireball and caves in on itself, with a big chunk of the roof collapsing down into the wreckage.

One of the entire series' best moments is the scene where Karen learns that Andy was telling the truth about Chucky. Just as she's about to throw the box he came in, the unopened pack of included batteries falls out (for once, batteries actually were included). Scared out of her wits, she slowly walks over to Chucky, picks him up, turns him over, uncovers his battery slot, and opens it to find, sure enough, that there are no batteries already in him. Immediately, his head turns around, he says his catchphrase, "Hi, I'm

Chucky! Wanna play?", and Karen drops the doll. He rolls right under the couch and Karen, after getting over her shock, cautiously bends down by the couch and slowly looks under it. When she does, she finds him lying there, acting like any normal toy. He doesn't respond at all when she taps him, or when she pulls him out and shakes his leg. When he refuses to talk, even though she now knows he's alive, she attempts to force him by lighting up the fireplace and threatening to throw him in. That's when he comes to life and viciously attacks her, smacking, kicking, and

even biting her, before she throws him across the couch. When he gets up, he lunges at her, then runs out of the apartment. She chases after him and, when she sees the elevator running, realizes he's inside it. She runs down the stairs, at one point tripping and falling, trying to keep up with it, but when it reaches the lobby and she then hits the bottom of the stairs, she finds that Chucky is already gone. She runs out the building's front door and into the snow, but sees no sign of him anywhere (I don't know how any of the pedestrians out there missed a two-foot doll running out by itself).

My favorite sequence in the film is when Chucky attacks Mike in his car and he has to try to maintain control of the vehicle while also avoiding being stabbed. It's unbelievably well shot and gives you a great adrenaline rush from its sheer frantic pace, with Chucky rising up from the backseat and throwing a pair of cables over Mike's neck and pulls back tight, causing him to stamp his foot on the gas. Mike struggles to get free, his car clipping the corner of another parked car, and reaches for his cigarette lighter, slapping his fingers against the radio in his

desperation. He manages to grab it, pull it out, and jam it into Chucky's right cheek, making him yell in pain and fall back. The car crashes through a mailbox and, just when Mike gets his breath back, a knife-blade suddenly stabs through the back of his seat and he then has to avoid getting stabbed without crashing as well. Suddenly, the stabbing stops, only for the blade to come up through the seat's bottom, very close to his crotch, and Mike quickly positions himself above the seat, the blade stabbing up repeatedly.

Having to drive in this very awkward manner, he ends up going the wrong way, crashing into a burning barrel at a section of the street that's under road construction. The blade finally retracts, and Mike sits down and hits the brake, swerving the car around completely, only for Chucky to push his leg out of the way and jam his hand down on the gas pedal (since Mike apparently couldn't stop before, I used to think maybe that Chucky cut the brake line, but after that, I now think he simply couldn't reach the brake because

of Chucky's constant attacks). The car barrels out of control, Mike futilely hitting Chucky's hand to make him let go, and enters a tunnel, scraping along its wall. Once on the other side, Mike hits something that knocks the car over onto its roof. It skids along the road and finally comes to a stop.

Mike tries to compose himself, when Chucky suddenly hangs down from outside the smashed window, clutching the knife. Instead of outright killing him, he decides to play with him some more, stabbing the knife into a piece of the car right next to his head, then climbing out. He runs around the car and Mike takes a shot at him but misses, as Chucky laughs and tells him that he can't hurt him. Hearing Chucky climb up above him, Mike shoots up, then takes another shot when he sees Chucky run by outside again. Like before, he misses, and things go

quiet for a little bit, as Mike scans the outside, waiting for him to attack again. Behind him, Chucky's hand rises up, grabs the knife's handle, and rips it out. Chucky quickly runs and hides, laughing evilly and scraping the blade along the outside of the car to confuse and panic Mike. After another moment of quiet, Chucky comes roaring at him, ready to kill him, when Mike shoots him, sending him flying backwards and causing him to lose the knife. Realizing he was wrong and that he can actually be hurt, he quickly retreats, dodging another shot, as Mike drops his head back, clearly tries to wrap his head around what just happened.

Following the two back-to-back scenes at John's home, we cut to County General Hospital where Andy is sitting in his cell, when he hears a loud clatter outside. Looking out the window (which, despite having bars, doesn't appear to have any actual glass, even though it's the middle of a freezing cold winter), he sees Chucky heading up a stairwell outside. After calling for Dr. Ardmore, and getting no response, he looks back out and sees that Chucky is now farther up the stairs. Following the scene where Ardmore ignores Andy's warnings, the film cuts to Chucky

peering through a window, at a small workstation. Seeing the number for Andy's cell on the wall, as well as a set of keys on the desk, he sneaks in and takes the keys, unbeknownst to the oblivious man working at the desk with his back turned. He makes his way to Andy's cell, unlocks it, then drops the keys on the floor and, taking out his knife, walks over to the cot. But when he climbs up onto it and removes the bedspread, he finds that the figure beneath it was just a pillow. Andy, who was hiding beneath the cot, quickly runs out, grabs the keys, and flees the room.

Unlocking another door in the hallway, he now has Ardmore and the hospital staff on his tail, while Chucky goes out the cell's window. Andy runs and hides in an operating room, waiting while some orderlies run by outside the door. Once they're gone, he goes to leave, only for a bright light to come and for Chucky to jump down at him from above. Andy falls, knocking over a tray full of surgical instruments, while Chucky rolls across the floor and into the shadows. Andy grabs a scalpel and, backing

up into a corner, slowly creeps along the wall, heading for the door. When he gets to it, Ardmore comes in and grabs him. Disarming him, he attempts to sedate him, only for Chucky to grab the scalpel from the floor and stab him in the back of the leg. After he falls to the floor, Chucky puts the electroshock machine's headband on him and pushes the button, zapping the crap out of him, while Andy watches in horror. He yells for Chucky to stop but Chucky, of course, just laughs evilly, relishing in Ardmore's slow death. Andy then flees, as Ardmore finally succumbs to his hideous injuries.

The climax at the Barclays' apartment is just awesome, with Andy, after escaping Chucky at the hospital, running back home, barricading the front door, and hiding in his room's closet, while Chucky makes his way back there as well. Getting in through the fireplace, he makes his way down the hall, as Andy waits for him in his mother's bedroom, armed with a bat. He manages to dodge a swing from the bat, then chases Andy around a little bit, before coming up behind him in the living room and knocking him out with the bat, yelling, "Batter up!"

He then turns him over and prepares to pass his soul into him, as Karen and Mike arrive outside and rush upstairs to the apartment. They manage to get through the front door and Karen pulls Chucky away right before he can finish the chant. He bites at her, and Mike grabs him and tosses him aside, but makes the mistake of taking his eyes off him. Chucky proceeds to whip out his knife, run in, slash Mike on the side of the leg, and run off. Despite the pain, Mike gives Karen a spare gun and goes after Chucky, while she stays to take care of Andy. Mike goes into Karen's

bedroom, slowly gets down on his knees, and looks under the bed, only for Chucky to come at him from behind with the bat. He jams the end into his gut then, knocks him unconscious with a whack to the head. He prepares to beat on him some more, when Karen comes in and blasts him in the leg, sending him tumbling back against the wall. Unfortunately, the gun jams before she can shoot again, and Chucky rushes at her, chasing her back into the living room, where she hits her leg on the corner of a coffee table.

He's on her instantly, as Andy watches in terror nearby. She manages to fling him into the fireplace, put the grill back in, and reaches up to the mantel for the ceramic container for the matches, all while trying to keep Chucky from escaping, as he crazily pushes against her while yelling and snarling. The matches fall to the floor and Karen, unable to reach them, yells for Andy to help her. She has to yell at him several times to snap him out of his shock, and he quickly grabs one and runs to the fireplace. That's when

Chucky tries to appeal to his innocence and stop him, but Andy, after striking the match, lets him know it's not going to work this time and drops the match in. Chucky screams as he's instantly set ablaze, and Karen and Andy run off to the side, watching as he struggles and flails about. He manages to knock the grill off and frantically climbs across the couch (which, amazingly, doesn't catch fire), before dropping to the floor behind it and screaming and kicking, before finally seeming to die. Hearing Mike yell for them in the bedroom, they run in there to aid him.

Karen sends Andy to get the first aid kit under the kitchen sink, but just as he's running back with it, he sees that Chucky's gone. Dropping the kit, he rushes back to the bedroom, only to get tripped and fall to the floor. Turning over on his back, he sees Chucky, burned to a crisp and smoking, but still very much alive, looming over him. Andy, after softly calling for his mother in terror, scrambles back into the bedroom, yelling for her. Seeing what's happening, Karen closes the door on Chucky, but he manages to get his burned hands through the crack of the door and, as he pushes

against her, offers to let her live if she gives Andy to him. Naturally, that's not happening, and Karen manages to force him completely out. After pounding and kicking at the door, he goes around, through the bathroom and to the other door leading into the bedroom. Realizing it, Karen runs and pulls that door to, just as Chucky grabs the handle. The two of them have a short tug-o-war, with Chucky then stabbing through the door, slicing Karen's palm open and causing her to loosen her grip. He almost gets in as a result, but Karen grabs the door and pulls it to again,

as Chucky repeatedly stabs through the door, each time coming close to getting Karen's face with the blade. He gives up and goes back around to the main door, managing to kick it open. He chases Karen and Andy through the bathroom and out into the hall (Mike seemingly passed out again; it would've been nice if he was still conscious enough to try to grab at Chucky when he runs through). There, she turns and shoots him as he stalks towards them. She first hits him in the chest, which doesn't seem to do anything,

and then proceeds to shoot of his head, right arm, and left leg. His body collapses but continues flailing and crawling around, prompting her to walk up and put the last two bullets into his back, though she keeps pulling the trigger in shock afterward.

Jack then shows up and, after being told by Mike that Chucky is alive, completely ignores what he told him and not only touches the doll's remains but brings the head into the bedroom. He laughs at Mike's claims and pounds his hand on top of the head, when the dismembered body suddenly bursts through an air vent in the wall next to him and grabs his throat. Mike quickly whips out his pistol and Karen wraps her arms around Andy, as Jack struggles to free himself. He knocks Chucky's head off the TV set that he put it on, with the head rolling up against the wall,

screaming and yelling at the body to kill Jack. Karen finally grabs the body, pulls it off Jack, and throws it against the wall, next to the head. After a second or two of inactivity, the body flails about, grabbing onto the window curtain and using that to pull itself up, as the head continues ordering it to kill all of them (I seriously doubt that a little body with no head and only one arm and leg would be able to pull that off). Karen tells Mike to shoot the body in the heart and when he does, Chucky screams as bloody splatters all

over the wall and the body flops up against it before slowly ceasing to move. As everyone watches, there's an eerie moment where Chucky, in Charles Lee Ray's voice, says, "Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?", only for the voice to fade into the normal, childish Good Guy voice, as if the soul is leaving the doll.

Another major asset to the film is Joe Renzetti's awesome score, which, like the film itself, doesn't waste any time getting started, as it opens with a blasting, threatening cue over the credits and maintains that same feeling of dread and unease throughout the entire film. Indeed, the score, which is created through a combination of synthesizers and orchestra, is never light-hearted or comical, but instead acts as a pall of darkness constantly hanging over this story. While there's no main theme to speak of (unlike most of the other slasher greats, Chucky has never had an identifiable leitmotif), there is an oft-repeated, really creepy electronic melody that you first hear when the title comes on the screen, and which plays on the very last shot of the movie to punctuate what's happened to Andy and how this will forever effect him. The slow, suspenseful scenes, like the lead-up to Maggie's death, Karen discovering that Chucky is alive, and the buildup to the climactic confrontation, are often scored with this unsettling, droning sound, and I especially like how, when Karen uncovers Chucky's battery compartment, the music is played to her hands doing so. Other times, the music just goes into full-blown, screeching horror mode, like when Chucky first attacks Karen, when he kills Dr. Ardmore, when he's flailing around after being set on fire, and when he chases Andy, then later him and Karen, through the apartment. There are also some more unusual, offbeat instances of score, like the music that plays when Karen is wandering the streets, searching for the peddler, which gives dark, cold setting a foreboding atmosphere, while the eerie scene at Charles Lee Ray's old home is scored with a subtle, spooky piece that goes well with those unsettling visuals. And the more exciting, fast-paced moments, like the sequence in Mike's car, are made all the more thrilling by the music. Finally, there's an eerie, child-like song, consisting of just a woman's voice vocalizing, that plays over the ending credits and comes off as a kind of strange, slightly sinister-take on the theme for a kids' TV show or nursery rhyme. 

There are also some songs on the soundtrack, although the only two I remember from the movie itself are Second Sight by David Darling, which I think is what Mike is listening to on his car radio before Chucky attacks him, and Is It Really Love? by Michael Lanning, which can be heard on a radio in the background when Chucky sneaks into the asylum. What's really funny is that Joe Renzetti and his friend, Simon Stokes, also wrote and recorded a sort of rapping theme song for Chucky that they intended to be played over the ending credits, but it was vetoed because it was so absolutely ridiculous. The song was played on other trailers and TV spots for the film, and also appeared on some soundtrack albums, and... wow. Look it up on YouTube and you'll immediately realize why it wasn't used. 

While the series as a whole has certainly had its ups and downs, the original Child's Play is a very well-made, inventive, and dark horror flick. It benefits greatly from having a great director who takes the material seriously, a stellar cast, awesome animatronic effects that, along with Brad Dourif's vocal performance, help make Chucky a memorable and entertaining character right off the bat, skillful cinematography, a great use of the setting of Chicago and the freezing cold winter, a pace that doesn't waste a single minute of the running time, and a nicely eerie and tense music score. Other than some less than effective handling of the film's initial mystery, some story elements that are rather contrived and, in some cases, downright dumb, and often less than effective moments where a little person stands in for the animatronic, for a killer doll movie, you couldn't ask for anything better, and it's too bad that there was so much discord between the key creatives that lasted throughout the production and will likely continue for the rest of their lives. Still, that doesn't take away from what the movie gets very right, which is a lot, and if you've come to view Chucky as something of a joke due to his overexposure and the series' direction, I'd highly advise you to check this out for, if nothing else, just a fun, spooky time.