Franchises: Child's Play. Seed of Chucky (2004)

Not only did Bride of Chucky's ending set up another movie (and Don Mancini himself confirmed on the Spotlight on Location featurette on the VHS and DVD that there would be more), but also what it would focus on: Chucky and Tiffany's child. And since, from what I could tell at the time, Bride of Chucky was quite a success at the box-office, it was clear that the public was eager and ready for another film... and then, years passed and nothing came of it. I would occasionally look on IMDB and see that the film, unsurprisingly called Son of Chucky at the time, both for obvious reasons and in keeping with the Universal Frankenstein motif, was in production, but there was no word on when it would be released. It wasn't until right before it came out, in November of 2004, that I even knew it had actually been made, as I remember seeing a random TV spot and thinking, "Whoa, they actually made that movie?" I saw some other previews and trailers for it here and there, like in the lead-up to the menu on the Van Helsing DVD and in the previews on the DVD for the Dave Chappelle movie Half-Baked, which I only saw some of because I was visiting some friends who decided to pop it in (I left not long after that), but I didn't see the movie itself until I picked it up the following summer. Even before I did, I knew I was in for a film that, if nothing else, would be quite interesting, judging from what I'd seen and read on IMDB. The plot seemed really bizarre and confusing, as I read that Jennifer Tilly was playing herself, as well as returning as Tiffany, and her and Chucky were living in Jennifer's house with their kid, or something like that. When I finally did see it, my initial thoughts, as I told my mom when she asked me about it, were, "Well, it's definitely crazier and sillier than the last one." As I watched it several more times over the years (this is one of the Chucky movies I've watched the least), my feelings on it became more concrete. While I can admit that it is enjoyable and even clever in some ways, make no mistake, there's no horror here (at least, not in the scary sense); instead, this is just an absolute farcical black comedy that, at the time, seemed to trounce any hope the series had of being taken seriously again. Granted, many may not have taken Chucky seriously before, but I think this pretty much sealed the deal for the majority. Also, like Bride of Chucky before it, this served as another major turning point, as this is when Don Mancini took complete creative control, which he's maintained ever since. As a result, both the franchise and the character of Chucky himself have never been the same, and while some good has come of that, a lot of bad has too, as Mancini has a tendency to get far too wacky and weird for his own good. He proved that right out of the gate with this movie, and has doubled and tripled down in much of what has been made since.

Six years after his birth, Tiffany and Chucky's child is now held captive by Psychs, a cruel English ventriloquist who's dubbed him "Shitface" and uses him in his act in Glastonbury. Unsure of his past or even his origins, Shitface wonders who his parents were, as well as why he keeps having recurring nightmares involving violence and murder, whereas he himself is quite gentle. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, production is underway on Chucky Goes Psycho, a movie based on the urban legend about the killer dolls, starring Jennifer Tilly. Seeing an Access Hollywood special on the film, featuring the animatronic puppets of Chucky and Tiffany, Shitface spots a "MADE IN JAPAN" insignia on the former's wrist, similar to his own, and realizes he's found his parents. He escapes from Psychs and arrives in Hollywood, where he finds Chucky and Tiffany in a studio prop room. Initially inanimate, Shitface reads an inscription on the back of the Heart of Damballa amulet, which he's had for as long as he can remember, and succeeds in resurrecting them. The two murderous dolls are initially shocked to learn that they're parents, though Tiffany takes to it quicker than Chucky. Shitface then sees his parents' homicidal nature firsthand when they murder effects artist Tony Gardner, while Chucky and Tiffany argue about their child's gender, made all the more complicated since he has no genitalia. Chucky decides to rename him Glen, while Tiffany opts for Glenda. After Jennifer Tilly discovers the body and the police are informed, the dolls escape the scene by sneaking into the back of her limo. En route to Jennifer's home, Tiffany decides to transfer her soul into her, while Chucky plans to go into rapper-turned-director Redman, whose directorial debut Jennifer is trying to score a role in. Tiffany also decides to make Jennifer into a surrogate mother for a child body that Glen can inhabit, as well as that she and Chucky need to stop killing since they're parents now. Chucky seems to reluctantly agree to this, but has fingers crossed when he does, and Tiffany doesn't exactly hold up her end of the bargain, either. And between witnessing his parents' violent acts and their bickering over his gender, Glen slowly begins to lose his sanity.

Since Bride of Chucky proved very successful at the box-office and nicely reinvigorated the franchise, another movie was a given, and, in fact, Don Mancini says he wrote it in early 1999. But then, the Columbine Massacre happened that April, followed by the moral outcry of numerous public officials who tried to link that horrible tragedy to violent movies, video games, and metal music like that of Marilyn Manson. And unfortunately, Chucky's "link" to the James Bulger murder got brought back up amid this craziness. Moreover, Universal was one of several major studios whose executives had to testify before Congress about how they marketed violent movies, prompting their then CEO, Stacey Snider, to decide to scale back on the studio's horror output, and that included Seed of Chucky. Besides the moral outcry, another reason for the six-year gap between films is because Universal didn't care for the script, as they felt it was too comedic and, supposedly, "too gay." Even more frustrating for Mancini and David Kirschner, the studio wouldn't allow them to take it elsewhere, and they also didn't go for Mancini's attempt to get around their restrictions by altering the script. Ironically, just like how the success of Scream led to Bride, Seed ultimately got the green-light thanks to the enormous successes of both Freddy vs. Jason and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003. But since the Universal higher-ups still weren't too enthused about the script for Seed, the film was produced and released through Rogue Pictures, the genre wing of Focus Features, a subsidiary of the studio.

Although he didn't get to direct the entire film of Bride of Chucky as he'd hoped, Mancini did shoot some second-unit material and also handled some re-shoots of the ending when Ronny Yu had to leave the country due to an expired visa. And speaking of Yu, while there were rumors at the time that he'd turned down the opportunity to return as director of Seed (given what an enormous hit Freddy vs. Jason was, it wouldn't surprise me if they had tried to get him back for another Chucky movie), Mancini has said that's not the case and it was decided early on that he himself would finally get into the director's chair. Just as Bride was very different from the first three movies, Mancini has said he wanted Seed to be completely different from everything before it. Thus, he went against the expectation that Chucky's child would be as violent and maniacal as he is, and also wanted to put in a lot of LGBT themes with the character. Thus, the movie ended up being rather personal for him, as it touched on his own confusion of identity when he was growing up as gay and the conflict it created with his own father. Besides a parody of domestic dramas, he also intended for the movie to lampoon tabloid television and Hollywood in general, having been influenced by Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Watching candid interviews with Mancini, it's clear that he's proud of this movie and that this is the type of stuff he likes to make, as it fits his personality and sense of humor. But, as much as I can respect what he was trying to do, I feel the movie's a little too crazy, and has a lot of humor that I'm not big on, making it hard for me to fully embrace it. 

Wanting to physically bring her back into the movie, Mancini decided to not only have Jennifer Tilly return as the voice of Tiffany but also play herself... playing Tiffany in the movie, Chucky Goes Psycho. Upon watching this movie, one thing you definitely have to admit about Tilly is that she isn't afraid to make fun of herself or, for that matter, make herself look really awful. For much of the movie, she's a fairly boorish person: a loud-mouthed bitch who's bitter about the trajectory her career has taken ("I'm an Oscar-nominee, for Christ's sake. Now I'm fucking a puppet,"), complaining about having no fan-mail, paparazzi following her, or even a stalker. She's also sometimes downright horrible to those around her, especially her assistant, Joan, and even though she complains about not being taken seriously, she's shallow enough to take a compliment when a puppeteer makes the Chucky animatronic say, "Nice tits." Most of all, she doesn't care what she has to do to get back on the A-list, and that includes sleeping with Redman in order to get the role of the Virgin Mary in his directorial debut. Besides said action just being trashy, she does this despite the fact that she's seeing her limo driver, Stan, and also after she accused Julia Roberts of doing the same thing to get cast in Erin Brockovich. Granted, she only does this when it's clear it's the only way Redman will cast her, as he's already considering Julia Roberts, but like Joan says, doing this in order to snag the role of the Virgin Mary has bad karma written all over it! Jennifer proceeds to fire her after that, and in a pretty nasty manner, too (although, to be fair, Joan got pretty nasty in calling her out). But there is some sympathy to be had for her in that she not only has to deal with finding Tony Gardner's severed head but becomes a potential murder suspect as a result. And then, she unknowingly becomes part of Chucky and Tiffany's plan to become human again, where she's attacked and admonished by the latter, knocked unconscious, and inseminated with Chucky's sperm.

Following that, Jennifer does become increasingly sympathetic, as one horrendous thing after another happens to her. When she awakens the morning after that episode, she takes what Tiffany, whom she thought was her guardian angel, to heart and decides to respect herself. But then, she discovers that she's pregnant, and figures only Redman could be the father. She gets really vulnerable with him about it, too, admitting that her image of being slutty is just that, adding, "You think anyone would cast me in

these sexpot roles if they knew I hadn't been laid in a year?" But then, much to her disdain, Redman not only tells her that he had a vasectomy but that he's not going to cast her if she's pregnant, as he has a "specific" vision for the Virgin Mary. The next morning, she awakens to find herself looking like she's nine months pregnant, which absolutely freaks her out. In a panic, she calls Joan, telling her about it and adding that she feels it's God punishing her for whoring herself out to play Mary. Then, she's

attacked, tied to the bed, and gagged by Chucky, and later has to go through the ordeal of Stan being captured and tied up next to her, before giving birth to twins. Though she manages to momentarily avoid being possessed by Tiffany, Stan is killed right in front of her. After she's rushed to the hospital by the police, Jennifer now only cares about her babies, but learns that, after the story she told the police about the dolls, they think she may be insane. And as if things couldn't get bad enough for her, she's drugged and ultimately possessed by Tiffany. (And if you've seen season two of the TV show, you know that her story got even more twisted and tragic after this movie.)

As for Tiffany, she's portrayed quite a bit differently in this film. Rather than the trashy, murder-loving woman with a tumultuous relationship with her intended lover she was before, here, she's a bit sillier and, surprisingly, softer, albeit still clearly insane. When she and Chucky meet Glen after being resurrected, Chucky makes fun of him (and unknowingly roasts himself), while Tiffany is much more sympathetic towards him, asking him where his parents are and chastising Chucky for his nasty comments. Upon realizing that Glen is her child, Tiffany, although initially shocked, is overjoyed and lovingly embraces him, and throughout the movie, proves to be the more supportive parent. It also turns out that she's a fan of Jennifer Tilly, saying Jennifer playing her in a movie is perfect casting (makes me wonder if anybody ever commented on her being a dead ringer for Tilly when she was human) and thus, decides to possess her body. She also comes up with a plan to get Glen a body all his own by inseminating Tiffany and having her give birth. Most significantly, while she and Chucky brutally murder Tony Gardner minutes after being resurrected, Tiffany decides that, for the sake of their child, they need to stop killing people. And while Chucky, naturally, falsely promises to do so, Tiffany does make an effort to stick to it, even trying to beat it via a twelve-step addiction plan (although, part of that plan has her call up Officer Bob Bailey's widow and admit what she did, traumatizing the poor woman even more). However, when she overhears Redman act like a sleazebag towards Jennifer upon learning that she's pregnant, Tiffany gets the urge to kill him and, in a panic, calls a recovery hotline. What she takes from the call is the old saying, "Rome wasn't built in a day," meaning she shouldn't be too worried about having a slip now and then, and proceeds to gut Redman, unbeknownst to Jennifer. Unfortunately for her, Glen sees this, causing his already fragile sanity to begin to crack, compounded by her arguments with Chucky about his gender and her insisting that he's a girl.

Everything about Tiffany's motivations in this film goes against the decision she made at the end of the last movie, that what she and Chucky were doing was wrong and that they belonged dead, something she actually battled him to the death over. Guess you could say that being resurrected in order to learn she had a child, and was in Hollywood, changed her attitude but still. And that's another thing: she and Chucky sure do settle their differences quickly, seeing as how she betrayed him at the end of Bride and he

killed her as a result. You'd think they would wake up and attack each other right off the bat, but no, they're in love again, becoming enamored with each other when they murder Tony Gardner together. However, like before, it doesn't last long, as she finds out that Chucky has been murdering behind her back and involving Glen in it. And just when they're all set for the soul-transference ceremony, Chucky decides he's had enough and would rather remain a doll, leading to things falling apart, as Tiffany tells him, "It's not

enough for me. I want more...  I'm leaving you, Chucky, and I'm taking the kid." And that's another thing: as softer as she may be here, Tiffany does still prove to be extremely twisted in the end. She's not only intent upon possessing the body of her favorite actor but also sees to it that she gets pregnant with Chucky's child in order to spawn a human host for Glen, effectively imprisoning or perhaps even destroying that child's soul right out of the womb. And even though she gets an axe to the face from Chucky, she ultimately gets away with it! Five years after the main story, it's revealed that Tiffany managed to possess Jennifer, is living the life of a Hollywood star, and both Glen and Glenda have their own human bodies.

As a result of Tony Gardner taking over from Kevin Yagher, Tiffany's design is noticeably different from the previous movie, especially in her face and head. Her skin is paler and almost looks like porcelain, her blonde hair is less wild, and her face seems fuller, with bigger, more expressive eyes and more mascara, and seems able to project a wider range of emotions this time. Also, her figure is wider this time, she never wears the black leather jacket from the previous movie, and she has a black choker around her neck.

This time, Brad Dourif undeniably plays Chucky almost purely for laughs. He's still a cold-blooded, remorseless killer but, personality-wise, he's mainly just a comedian. Not that that's bad, though, as he's still quite funny. I love his reaction when he sees Glen for the first time, snorting when he says his name is Shitface, and, not knowing that he's his son, comments, "It looks like the kid fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. I mean, you gotta feel bad for the parents. I wonder what they must look like." Then, when he realizes Glen is his child, he's immediately in denial, then promptly faints, while Tiffany happily embraces Glen. It's especially amusing to see him cope with fatherhood and be asked difficult questions, such as why he and Tiffany kill. Clearly not prepared to answer that, Chucky tells Glen, "It's a hobby, really. It helps us relax." And when Glen says he heard on TV that, "Violence is bad," Chucky retorts, "Not violence. Vi-o-lins. Violins are bad. That screeching music's gonna ruin the goddamn country!" Other funny moments are his extreme reaction to being cut-off by Britney Spears (though the, "Oops, I did it again," line after he runs her off the road makes me roll my eyes because it's so corny), his insisting that Jennifer Tilly came on to him after Tiffany finds he has her tied to the bed, and his finally getting sick of Tiffany quoting her mother, telling her, "Christ! Enough with your mother, already! I killed that bitch twenty years ago and she still won't shut up!" And as much as I don't care for the scene it leads up to, when Chucky is looking for "inspiration" while in the bathroom, I do like his comments as he shuffles through the mags: "Too tall. Hey, lesbos. Done her." Finally, he settles on an issue of Fangoria with a zombie woman on the cover (a fake issue, by the way) and comments, "Ah, here we go. Come... to... papa!"

Despite all of the comedy, there is some drama to Chucky's depiction here, too. Just like how Tiffany wants their child to be a girl, Chucky is dead-set on him being a boy, as well as a killer just like him. Having crossed his fingers behind his back when promising Tiffany that he'll give up killing, he pressures Glen into coming with him on murder sprees, despite the kid's unwillingness. When Glen accidentally kills paparazzo Pete Peters, Chucky is overjoyed, exclaiming, "Attaboy!... I thought you

weren't ready. Kid, you're a fuckin' natural!", and takes a picture with the two of them posing in front of Peters' corpse. And given the other corpses we later see that Chucky has hiding in the house, it's safe to assume he and Glen went on some more "hunts." When Tiffany learns about this when that photo slips out of Chucky's pocket, he says that Glen has a lot of potential, and is not at all happy when Glen tells both him and Tiffany that he doesn't want to be a killer. While Tiffany is nothing but supportive of this

decision, Chucky exclaims, "Wait a minute! I'm not gonna let you poison our son's mind with your touchy-feely, 12 steps bullshit. If you two don't wanna kill anymore, that's your loss. But don't look down your noses at me. I'm not ashamed to be a killer. I'm proud of it! It's not an addiction, it is a choice! And it is not something that you should have to hide in the closet!" He's even less enthusiastic about Glen saying he might consider himself to be non-binary, immediately yelling, "Uh-uh! No way!" And when he meets Glenda, his son's psychotic female side, he's

downright horrified, despite initially being impressed with the brutal way in which she killed Joan (because he thought it was Tiffany). All of this is definitely the most personal part for Don Mancini, as he's said that Chucky is meant to represent his father who could never accept that his son was gay. And it's brought home in an ironic and gruesome way during the climax, where Glen, rather than Glenda, faces his father and brutally dispatches him by chopping him up with an axe. This is enough to earn praise from Chucky, as he yells, "Attaboy, kid! Attaboy..."

Ironically, for a movie as silly as this, Chucky has probably his most significant instance of character development in the whole franchise. Near the end, when everything is going crazy around him, and Tiffany is yelling at him to do the chant, he reaches his limit and decides, "If this is what it takes to be human, then I would rather take my chances as a supernaturally possessed doll. It's less complicated." He goes on to say, "Think about it: what's so great about being human anyway? You get sick, you get

old, you can't get it up anymore. I'm not looking forward to that... As a doll, I'm fucking infamous! I'm one of the most notorious slashers in history! And I don't wanna give that up. I am Chucky, the killer doll! And I dig it!" I used to hate this, as it seemed like a waste of almost twenty years and five movies of following Charles Lee Ray's fight against being stuck as a doll forever, pursuing three different potential hosts and going through a lot of crap in each instance, for him to just give it all up at the last minute. Also, it felt like it now made it pointless to follow him for any

other movies, as he didn't seem to have any real motivation. Fortunately, what eventually came after Seed of Chucky would follow up on this decision in a satisfactory way. More significantly, I now feel that Chucky's decision ties into what is probably the movie's biggest theme, which is self-acceptance, driven home by how he tells Tiffany, "This is who I am, Tiff! This is me." Thus, he's enraged when she isn't having it, saying it's not good enough for her, and goes axe-crazy on both of them, especially her.

Maybe it's me, but I've always felt that, even though it's that same scarred up design that was introduced in the previous film, Chucky feels different here. Again, it's probably due to Tony Gardner adding his own personal touches to the look, likely with even more expressive animatronics within the face, as well as the vastly different way in which this film was shot and the possible in-story point that the doll has been repurposed as a movie prop, but it doesn't look quite the same as it did before. That's not to say that the design is bad, though, because it's far from it. And Chucky definitely looks better here than he would in any other movie until the TV show.

I doubt there's ever been a character introduced into a slasher franchise more bizarre than Glen (voiced by Billy Boyd). As I said, rather than just a mini-Chucky who's as violent and wild as his father, Don Mancini writes him as a confused, lost little creature who, when we first meet him, has spent his entire existence being abused by Psychs as part of his ventriloquist act, and has no idea where he came from. He's also not a violent person at all, and yet, he's tormented by nightmares where he stalks and murders people. When he sees an Access Hollywood special for Chucky Goes Psycho and recognizes Chucky and Tiffany as his parents, he's overjoyed to know he's not an orphan. He promptly escapes from Psychs and makes his way to Hollywood, where he resurrects Chucky and Tiffany by reciting a spell on the back of the Heart of Damballa amulet, which he's had in his possession for as long as he can remember. But his initial happiness at meeting his parents turns to horror when he discovers that they're murderers, and on top of that, he has to deal with their arguments about his gender, which is complicated since he has no genitalia. Over the course of the movie, all of this pressure, combined with his both seeing Tiffany commit murder after promising not to anymore and Chucky taking him on killing sprees in order to push him into being a murderer himself, gradually ebbs away his sanity, indicated by his left eye twitching. Eventually, he confronts them about it and says he likes the idea of being both genders, and also tells his dad that he doesn't want to be a killer.

Eventually, Glen totally snaps and develops a separate, Cockney-accented, female personality named Glenda, who's every bit as violent and psychotic as Glen himself is stable and kind. The sight of Glenda horrifies even Chucky and Tiffany, the latter of whom has to literally slap some sense into her child. Once Glen has regained his senses, he appears to have no memory of what he just did or said, and is shocked when he sees himself in the mirror, asking Tiffany, "What am I?" It's an

interesting and twisted conceit that the movie, unfortunately, doesn't go further with as, aside from some background craziness from her during the aborted soul transference ceremony, the whole thing with Glenda is dropped until the ending, where it's revealed that each of the personalities inhabits one of the twins Jennifer gave birth to (I'll go more into that in a second). However, it is noteworthy that it's Glen, not Glenda, who completely dismembers Chucky at the end after he apparently kills Tiffany, something that fills Chucky with joy, even if it reduces Glen to tears afterward.

All in all, even though Glen is one of the things this movie is most well-known for, and I think Boyd did a good enough job of portraying him, I feel like he's kind of a missed opportunity. Like I said, while the character does have some interesting facets to him, during the movie's latter half, he gets lost in the madness and the plot comes back around to him only sporadically. Moreover, even though his murderous female identity appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a sign that his mental status is fracturing from

all the stress he's been under, the idea that both Glen and Glenda are inhabiting their own human bodies at the end suggests there were actually two souls within him, which is not at all alluded to, and it doesn't make sense how that would work to begin with (I know I'm now trying to apply logic to a mythology as crazy as this but, like Chucky himself said, there's a limit to how much I can take). And finally, while Glen's issues with his sexual identity and the conflicts they cause with his parents are never played for laughs (at least, not as intentionally as you'd expect, considering

we're talking about living dolls), he's still at the center of some weird and, for my money, not very funny, humor. He wets himself when he gets nervous, leading someone to exclaim, "You're pissing your pants!"; he thinks he and his parents are Japanese because of the "MADE IN JAPAN" etchings on their wrists, which leads him to occasionally speak to them in Japanese and use martial arts against Chucky during the climax, all while stereotypical music plays on the soundtrack; and finally, there's the shot of his completely barren crotch, the root of his parents' arguments and which is just off-putting to look at.

Glen's look is definitely unique, to say the least, and is completely different from both Chucky and Tiffany, something that both Don Mancini and Tony Gardner insisted upon. In the film's special features, David Kirschner said that Mancini specifically wanted Glen to look "haunted," and I think they succeeded, as Glen does look quite troubled. Plus, the sheer strangeness of his look, with its pale-green skin, gaunt, angular face, deep-set blue eyes, dark lips, sharp, dagger-like teeth, and short, reddish hairdo, make the fact that

he's the result of two living dolls having sex even more unsettling and twisted than it already was. Just like his parents, his wardrobe, consisting of a purple shirt and black pants, is also quite memorable. The same also goes for Glenda, whose red lips, blushing cheeks, and mascara-covered eyes, along with her blonde wig and white, silk dress over Glen's clothes get across just how rabid and crazy she is. And the two personalities' human forms (Beans El-Balawai and Kristina Hewitt) do reflect the way they were as dolls... at least, Glen does, whereas Glenda comes across as a more silently psychotic child than the crazed monster she was before.

As is almost always the case whenever a rapper is cast in a horror film, I had no clue who Redman was when I first saw this movie, and I really still don't to this day. And I don't think Mancini did either, as his initial idea for this role of the sleazy movie director, meant to feature a celebrity playing themself, was Quentin Tarantino. He so badly wanted it to be him that he even wrote him a letter promising him, among other things, many make-out scenes with Jennifer Tilly, as well as being in a movie scored by Pino Donaggio (the latter of which Mancini thought might be the clincher, as he knew Tarantino was a big admirer of Donaggio's work). But, while it would've been interesting, Tarantino turned them down, so they instead went with Redman. While he's planning to make a movie about the Virgin Mary, he's an obvious sleazebag and can be seen ogling Jennifer's cleavage when the two of them are reading a scene together. Giving her the usual BS director line of, "You already showed me a side of the character that, uh, I never seen before," he then tells her he's going to go with his first choice: Julia Roberts. That prompts Jennifer to come on to him, which he's more than willing to go with, especially when she invites him over to her house. That night, as they're having drinks, Redman says he loves Bound and is very interested when Jennifer suggests that the of them and Gina Gershon could "hang out together." They promptly start making out when Jennifer asks what it's going to take for him to see her as the Virgin Mary, and he later says it was meant to be because God himself told him so... right before he unzips his fly and puts her face right into his crotch. That's when Tiffany knocks him unconscious and, shortly afterward, does the same to Jennifer. The two of them wake up the next morning, with no memory of what happened, and when Jennifer later tells Redman that she's pregnant, he not only denies being the father, saying he had a vasectomy before he got to Hollywood (probably because he could have as much sex as he wanted), but also says he can't hire her, despite the character being pregnant. His reason? "I have a very specific vision of Mary, and what can I say? She gots to be hot." Not only is Jennifer disgusted with this but so is Tiffany, who promptly guts him under the table while he's eating.

Jennifer's personal assistant Joan (Hannah Spearritt) often attempts to be her moral compass, like when she accuses Julia Roberts of sleeping with Steven Soderbergh and Joan immediately says, "Jennifer, you know that's not true." (According to Mancini, the studio made them add that line to keep Roberts from possibly suing them.) She's also the one who first tells Jennifer about Redman's movie, and while she clearly doesn't think Jennifer fits the role of the Virgin Mary, she does as she says and gets her an interview with Redman. She's also seen writing a bunch of fan letters to Jennifer, either because she's trying to make her feel better after she complained that she doesn't get any fan-mail or gets stalked, or because she's very obsessed with Jennifer, despite seeing her every day. In any case, she really gets on her back about whoring herself out to play the Virgin Mary, saying it's evil and that she could be heading to hell for it. That ultimately gets her fired, but as hurt as she is by it, when she gets a phone call from Jennifer when she discovers she's heavily pregnant, Joan is genuinely concerned. She grows even more concerned when she hears Jennifer get attacked by Chucky and Tiffany, pretending to be Jennifer, says she's just watching Bound. She heads to the house that night to check on her, and she finds Jennifer and Stan tied to the bed, but dies a brutal death at Glenda's hands before she can help.

The most notable member of the supporting cast is John Waters as Pete Peters, a very scummy-looking paparazzo who's among the reporters waiting outside the studio for Jennifer after Tony Gardner is murdered. He immediately asks her what she saw, and when she retorts, "What, do you want me to draw you a picture?", he responds, "Would you? Somebody, give her a piece of paper!" Jennifer then says she's not going to draw a picture for him and he responds, "Oh, don't feel bad. You're an actress, not an artist, huh?" He can also be heard asking her how old she really is, and that night, determined to get a scoop, he shows up at her house while she's having drinks with Redman. He not only gets pictures of them but also sees the silhouette of Chucky masturbating upstairs and gets a shot of that as well, commenting, "Get it, Mini-Me!" He gets a shot of Tiffany knocking Redman out too, and leaves the property shortly afterward. However, Chucky, who already hated him anyway, calling him a "paparazzi scumbag," decides to personally keep him from ruining their plan. He and Glen head over to the studio where Peters is developing his photographs, and Glen ends up accidentally killing him by causing him to fumble backwards into some shelves housing a large jar of acid.

Poor Stan (Steve Lawton), Jennifer's chauffeur and lover, turns out to genuinely have feelings for her but can't bring himself to tell her. Moreover, Jennifer herself apparently senses this but she either pushes Stan aside in order to possibly sleep with Redman to advance her career or turns him off when she vomits after first being impregnated. And after Tiffany kills Redman, she lures Stan over to the house, intending for Chucky to now possess him instead, and he ends up tied to the bed. He's not even able to confess before he's gagged, and just as Jesse did for Jade, he shields Jennifer from a knife that Chucky flings at her, barely managing to get out half of his confession before he expires. 

Psychs (Keith-Lee Castle) is absolutely scummy and unseemly, with his long, greasy hair, tight leather outfit, and foul-mouthed, Cockney accent, not to mention horribly abusive and degrading towards Glen. Besides keeping him in a large cage like an animal and giving him the name "Shitface," his act apparently consists of little more than denigrating him, saying, "This grotesque abomination... he ain't even anatomically correct." Not to mention that he's a total sham of a ventriloquist, since Glen is genuinely talking and coming up with things to say on his own. But where Psychs proves to be really despicable is when he tries to make Glen scarier, putting a rat in his cage that he intends for him to kill. And when Glen doesn't do that, he threatens to "fire" him, holding up a lighter for emphasis. That's when Glen decides he's had enough and escapes Psychs to head to Hollywood when he gets the chance.

An interesting story about one of the movie's cast members is that of Jason Flemyng, who briefly appears as himself playing a role in the movie Chucky Goes Psycho, where he's dressed as a Santa Claus impersonator who gets killed by Chucky and Tiffany. But then, the Chucky animatronic goes haywire and Flemyng, dropping the American accent he was using in the movie and switching to his normal British, storms off the set, calling it unprofessional. Flemyng later infamously said he regretted appearing in this, saying that, as he was filming that scene, he wondered where his career had gone wrong (and like they said in Reign of Chucky, that's quite a statement, considering some of the other movies he's been in). Moreover, producer Guy J. Louthan, the one who convinced him to appear in it, actually plays the director (billed as Don Mancini, no less) who chases after Flemyng in the scene. According to Flemyng, Louthan assured him that no one would see this movie, which says to me that neither of them realized how popular Chucky is.

Finally, I have to mention Nadia Dina Ariqat, who briefly appears as Britney Spears and is run off the road by Chucky after she cuts him off and flips him the bird. As much as that scene badly dates the movie, not to mention Chucky saying, "Oops I did it again," after he kills her, I remember it mostly because of the TV spots that often showed it, followed by a disclaimer that stated in big bold letters, "BRITNEY SPEARS DOES NOT APPEAR IN THIS MOVIE." At the time, I thought that disclaimer was a part of the satire that leaked into the marketing, that she wasn't starring in the movie because she got killed, but what they really meant is that it's not really her in this scene (which I did think it was, to be honest).

Like Bride of Chucky, Seed definitely has a unique visual style to it, though for a while, I wasn't able to put it into words. But after thinking about it really hard, I've hit upon how it makes me think of an early Tim Burton movie, particularly movies like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands. It has that same sort of larger than life, hyper-reality feel about it (before Burton went totally Gothic), particularly in regards to the latter's depiction of the suburban neighborhood. I think the main reason why I'm making this comparison is because of how the

film is often very brightly lit and has a fairly rich color palette, with the epilogue that takes place after Chucky's death especially making me think of those early Burton movies. And speaking of which, doesn't the early scene with Jason Flemyng in a snow-covered graveyard absolutely scream Burton, both in concept and just how it looks? That's not to say that there are no dimly lit, shadowy scenes and setpieces, though, because there definitely are, like Glen's opening nightmare and the scenes in Jennifer's house in the third act, both of which are rather dark

and often illuminated by flashes of lightning, as well as some scenes in the attic where the dolls set up a little home for themselves. The scene in Pete Peters' darkroom is particularly visually striking because of how it's bathed almost exclusively in bright red, which is broken up by spots of blue from his computer screen. Finally, you can just tell this isn't as big-budgeted as Bride was, and even though it takes place in Hollywood, it was shot mostly in Bucharest, Romania, so there's a weird cheapness and artificiality to some of the scenes, as they use green screen and compositing to try to make it look like Los Angeles.

While working with much less money than Ronny Yu had on the previous movie, Don Mancini definitely doesn't shy away from being experimental with the camerawork and editing. The first scene after the opening credits is, as he's said, based on the opening of Halloween, as it's one long shot from Glen's POV as a British girl unwraps him as a birthday present, he gets tossed into a toy-box, then escapes, takes a knife, and stalks about the house, murdering the parents, while the thunderstorm outside gives us an occasional glimpse of his shadow on the wall, and he briefly sees

part of his reflection in the mirror, which is when we get out first real look at him. (Also like in Halloween, it's actually several shots strung together to look like one.) The sequence ends with him being cornered and the girl pointing out that he's wetting himself, before he wakes up from his nightmare. The transition from that is a sudden and jarring one, while the transition from Psychs' ventriloquist show is done more bizarrely, with the screen fading to white and revealing... a guy in a Santa Claus suit trudging through a snowy graveyard. The scene continues with

him getting attacked by Chucky and Tiffany, and it's only at the end that you realize it's a movie being shot. And speaking of noteworthy transitions, when Glen escapes Psychs and heads to Hollywood, Mancini uses an Indiana Jones-style travel montage to show his journey... but then superimposes Chucky's eyes above the plane, which I'm sure is meant to be a reference to a similar visual from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Before Pete Peters gets killed, there's a shot of Chucky hanging upside down, holding his knife in

his mouth, which then turns right-side up. And Glen's attempt to save Peters is done with him running and yelling in dramatic slow-motion. When Jennifer calls Joan, Mancini makes use of a sitcom like split-screen to show both of them, then makes further use when Tiffany joins in, with Jennifer and Joan getting stacked on top of each other to the left, while Tiffany takes up the entire right side. And during Glen and Chucky's confrontation, where Glen does some Kung-Fu on his dad, the editing and camerawork is meant to emulate the style of a classic martial arts flick.

Like I said, despite being set almost entirely in Hollywood, the film was actually shot in Romania in order to make its fairly low budget of $12 million go a long way. It was also nearly completely stage-bound, at Castel Film Studios, with the few exceptions including the ventriloquist stage where Psychs and Glen perform at the beginning, the car chase sequence with Chucky and "Britney Spears," which was done at Griffith Park back in Los Angeles, and an outside shot of Los Angeles Center Studios doubling as a hospital. The sets add all the more to

the movie's bizarre tone, with the first being the interiors of a posh, upper-class British home, which serves as the setting for Glen's opening nightmare, with a nice living room, elegant foyer, winding staircase leading up to an enormous landing, a stark white and light-green bathroom, and a very fancy bedroom for their young daughter. It's definitely not the type of place you expect to see in a Chucky movie. By stark contrast, Glen's real home is the dreary, backstage space at Psychs' ventriloquist stage, where he's kept in a large cage and has nothing more

to entertain himself than a TV set. The set for the snowy cemetery, which is eventually revealed to be an actual movie set, is one I can't help but love, given how classically Gothic and fairy tale-like it is. As for the studio, while it's not focused upon, when Jennifer and Joan are talking early on, they're sitting in front a replica of the interior of Tiffany's trailer from the previous movie. But the most memorable part is the prop room, where Glen emerges from the box he was delivered in by the mail and meets his parents, which

also has some mannequins of Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, and a zombie that terrify Glen when he sees them, and is also where Chucky and Tiffany commit their first murder. And we also get to see Redman's production office, where he auditions Jennifer for his movie, which is something I always like seeing in movies that deal with the actual movie business.

The most extensively used setting, though, is Jennifer's house, which has a pretty tacky, pink- and salmon-colored exterior and matching wall, bluish-colored garage doors, and a lawn decorated with lots of palm trees. During the epilogue, where Tiffany is revealed to have successfully possessed Jennifer, we see the yard full of colorful attractions, rides, and balloons as part of Glen and Glenda's birthday party. The inside is pretty nice, with an upstairs bedroom with white walls and purple curtains running across the ceiling; a foyer with walls colored deep blue; and

a living room with a couch and coffee table, and a big fireplace to the right of them. Even the bathroom looks really nice (although it's ruined by Chucky jerking off in there), with the only exception being the dusty, cobweb-covered attic where the dolls take refuge. The darkroom at Celebrities Uncovered, where Pete Peters meets his nasty end is memorable, again, for the extreme red-colored lighting, as well as for the shelves of hazardous chemicals that ultimately do him in. Finally, as they mention in Reign of

Chucky, the hospital where the climax takes place is about as sparsely-staffed as the one in Halloween II, as nobody comes by to investigate the commotion that goes on in Jennifer's room. And when Tiffany says the Damballa chant, the lights in the room go out, making it as dimly lit as that movie as well.

We're back to using the Heart of Damballa, only this time, it has an inscription on the back that reads, "Ade due Damballa. Awake," which is all it takes for Glen to resurrect Chucky and Tiffany. However, the film never makes it clear if these are the actual dolls recovered from the cemetery in Hackensack, repurposed into movie animatronics, or if these are just replicas and the chant somehow put their souls into them. Given how Chucky and Tiffany's bodies are full of gory innards as soon as they're resurrected, and the rest of their "bodily functions" also work like

those of a normal human, it would seem to be the former (also, the latter would seemingly go against what had been established but, like I've said, with Mancini and his twisting of the mythology, you can never be sure). Like before, the amulet is also necessary to transfer the souls out of the dolls and into human bodies, although here, there are no storm clouds or flashes of lightning; just lights in the room getting blown out by some paranormal force. And it seems that Tiffany has now become more versed in the ways of voodoo, as she knows the ins and outs of a voodoo pregnancy, where a woman gives birth just two days after being inseminated, something not even Chucky himself knew about.

As Don Mancini himself has said, if Bride of Chucky was a parody on romantic comedies and date movies, then Seed of Chucky is meant as a lampooning of family dramas such as Ordinary People and Kramer vs. Kramer. Besides dealing with the issue of a gender-confused child and how their parents react to this, it also goes into family dysfunction in general, with Chucky and Tiffany definitely not having the best "marriage," as they not only fight over what each of them wants for their child but Tiffany forces Chucky into a pact that he's not at all crazy about and

thus, he not only starts going behind her back and committing murders, but also drags Glen into them. It even touches on addiction, with Tiffany deciding to go "cold turkey" on her urge to kill and embarks on a 12 Step program, only for those urges to come back strong from time to time, to the point where she has to call a recovery hotline, terrified that she's going to "have a slip." And throughout all of this, Glen loses whatever sanity he had, at one point even yelling, "You're tearing me apart!", at his parents, a la James

Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. There is a definite absurdity about this being played out by living dolls, and anybody who's a real fan of the pure horror Chucky movies or the line-walking Bride likely won't care for this. I myself am not the biggest fan of it either, although I do think what Mancini is doing here is kind of fascinating.

My favorite part of the satire, however, is when it goes after Hollywood, celebrities, and the tabloids, mostly through Jennifer Tilly and Redman playing exaggerated caricatures of themselves. On Jennifer's side, we have the rather selfish star who doesn't care what she has to do in order to get her career out of the slump she feels it's in, to the point of basically prostituting herself, as Joan puts it, yet wants to be taken seriously as an actor again. This causes Tiffany to experience why you're always told to never meet your heroes, as she's a massive fan of Jennifer and is

as disgusted as Joan over her willingness to sleep with Redman to get a role. She admonishes her for this before knocking her unconscious... and also before asking for her autograph.  At the same time, the film also touches on the crap that you hear women often have to go through in order to get work in the film industry, with Redman embodying the typical sleazy director who's interested in Jennifer for one reason and is, more than likely, stringing her along so he can get with her, then not give her the role she wants anyway. Jennifer complaining about her Oscar

nomination isn't enough to keep her from appearing in something like Chucky Goes Psycho speaks to how easily it can be for an actor to fall from grace for no truly good reason, especially a woman who's approaching middle age. And if you know anything about the Hollywood gossip media, especially the paparazzi, you know that they are complete scumbags who care nothing for anyone's privacy and ask the most demeaning and inappropriate questions at the worst times, as happens here when Jennifer comes out of the studio after having found Tony Gardner's corpse and is asked if the two of them were having a fling, as well as how old she is and such.

However, some of this Hollywood satire does really date the movie, like when Redman says, "Mel Gibson ain't the only one God's been talking to in Hollywood," or the mockery of Britney Spears because of her aforementioned tabloid status at the time (had the movie been made just a few years later, it would've probably been Lindsay Lohan). And while it's a callback to a running joke from the previous movie, Tiffany telling Chucky, "They're executing Martha Stewart this morning," references that period when Stewart got put in jail.

Being a fan of Wes Craven's New Nightmare (as everyone should be, as that movie is awesome), Mancini depicts an actual horror movie being made about characters who, beforehand, only existed in the movies' reality but now, have transcended and become enough of an urban legend to inspire this. Moreover, the very characters the film is based on are on the set itself and kill the makeup effects guy, in a bloody spectacle akin to the one he's expected to create. This leads to a sick example of black humor, where Jennifer finds Gardner's severed head in the

prop room and, thinking that's what it is, goes as far as to play with and kiss it (something that appears to even disgust Chucky and Tiffany) before she realizes it's real. However, this is also where Mancini starts to get a tad too meta for my personal tastes, with the idea of Jennifer Tilly being an actual person in this universe whom Tiffany looked like a blonde version of in human form (as they said in Reign of Chucky, does that mean that Brad Dourif also exists as the voice of the Chucky animatronic being used in the film and also happens to look like Charles Lee Ray?),

the filmmakers apparently knowing what her actual trailer from the previous movie looked like, given how it's a set here, the animatronics having the same special effects man as in our reality, and so on. The very idea that, despite having only been introduced in the previous movie, Tiffany and the doll she's inhabiting have become as big in the urban legend as Chucky himself, warranting being placed in Chucky Goes Psycho, is especially mind-bending, as she was obviously not a well-known killer like Charles Lee

Ray. Wouldn't this sudden addition to the legend and the possible uncovering of who Tiffany was and her connection to Ray make people just a tad bit suspicious? Even if Jesse and Jade (or possibly Detective Preston, as we get no confirmation that he died) were the ones who reported to the authorities that both dolls were at the center of the murders in the previous movie, how would that info get out into the public? And how would none of them be in prison for the murders, especially Jesse and Jade, despite how much Preston went to bat for them?

In the end, as much as I can appreciate a lot of what Mancini was trying to do with this film, what keeps me from truly enjoying it is the tone. It really does feel like a John Waters movie, and I'm not saying that just because he's in it. While I've never watched any of his movies from beginning to end (I've seen enough to know that they're not my thing at all), this comes off as having that same over-the-top, really out there, crazy vibe and nasty, often sexual sense of humor he often brings to his movies, especially in the scenes with Chucky masturbating into a cup (I really

didn't need that shot of his balls in the unrated version; his cackling o-face was more than enough) and Tiffany squirting it into Jennifer Tilly with a turkey baster, Tiffany flashing her breasts at him to give him some encouragement, Glen's tendency to wet himself, and the sheer crassness of many of the characters. For God's sake, the movie begins with a shot of gooey white stuff coming down and covering the screen, followed by a CGI opening credits sequence of Chucky-sperm traveling through  Tiffany's Fallopian tubes and fertilizing an egg (title

aside, that's way more emphasis on Chucky's literal seed than I would've cared for). It's not my thing at all, and I think this movie also highlights what has since become something of a consistent problem with Mancini as both writer and director: he shoves way too much into a given movie and thus, anything meaningful he's trying to say gets lost in the mayhem, as I feel happens with his personal subplot of Glen's gender confusion. And while I know it's his ode to Psycho and especially Dressed to Kill, is it really the best idea to have one half of that issue be a raving lunatic who kills people in extreme ways?

As I've mentioned, Kevin Yagher handed the animatronic effects off to Tony Gardner, a veteran effects artist who's worked on a good number of movies since the 1980's who has done them for every Chucky project since (save for the 2019 remake, of course). I used to wonder why Yagher left the franchise after Bride and, after reading Reign of Chucky, I learned it was a combination of Seed's lower budget and the film being shot in Romania, which would've forced Yagher to leave his studio for a long time, as well as train some Romanian

puppeteers, as Universal wanted to keep costs down by flying over as few Americans as possible. In stepping in to Yagher's shoes fairly late into production, Gardner proved more than capable of the task, especially given how, despite the small budget, the film had some pretty ambitious sequences. Overall, the effects are still top notch, with all three of the characters again coming off as living, breathing, entities, as well as going through fairly complex arcs and emotional anguish. I've read that shots with the

three of them were the most complicated to pull off because of the different mechanics and the coordination of numerous puppeteers at the same time. However, there are some instances where the ambition exceeded the filmmakers' means, like the shot of Glen running away from Psychs, which is an awkward blend of puppetry and green screen work, and the moment during the climax when Glen flips over Chucky also looks wonky. And while Ed Gale declined to return to double for Chucky again, Debbie Lee Carrington, who was the double for Tiffany, did agree to come back, and also shot a scene as herself that was removed from the final film.

The deaths are even more bloody and over the top than they've ever been before, with the father in the opening dream getting stabbed in the shoulder before falling through the railing, and the mother falling over the edge of the bathtub and bashing the back of her head open. During the scene we get of Chucky Goes Psycho, Jason Flemyng gets strangled from behind by a slinky, while Chucky slashes him across the body, then stabs him repeatedly in the chest until it's revealed to just be a movie. Tony Gardner himself is  the first real victim, getting decapitated by a piano

wire, his head flying up into the air, while blood spews out of the stump of his neck, and Jennifer finds and messes with it before realizing it's real. Following that, Pete Peters gets acid poured on his head, resulting in the left side of his face being melted virtually down to the bone; Redman gets his intestines sliced out and onto the floor by Tiffany (though why the sizzle when they fall out is anybody's guess); Joan gets set on fire thanks to the combination of a candle and some hairspray, then falls to her death over the

stairway railing; Chucky reveals some more people he killed offscreen, including one guy with a huge blade sticking in his head, another with a knife in his back, and a third with a plastic bag over his head; Stan gets a knife thrown into him, and Tiffany gets an axe to the head. Finally, hearkening back to the first three movies, and probably in an attempt to make up for his lame death at the end of Bride, Chucky has the goriest death of all, getting hacked to pieces by his son, one limb at a time and culminating in his head. 

There are quite a few visual effects to be found in this movie, from the CGI opening credits sequence to the digital manipulation of certain shots involving the puppets, and the spicing up of some deaths, like when Tony Gardner's head flies up into the air and when Joan gets "fired." However, the worst-looking example of the latter is the digital acid burns that appear on Peters' face before it cuts to the makeup. Most of the time, the visual effects are used to make the exteriors look like Hollywood, often with the sign in the background (it's very obvious which are these

type of composite shots and which were done when the crew returned to Los Angeles), as well as to create a dynamic version of the sky in some shots. And there are some driving shots that are obvious green screen as well, again due to where the movie is supposed to be and where it was actually shot.

The Chucky movies definitely continue their penchant for memorable opening title sequences, with this one showing sperm traveling through the Fallopian tubes, interspersed with random shots of Chucky himself from the previous movie. It then depicts the egg being fertilized, dividing, and forming into Glen (who's randomly born with the "MADE IN JAPAN" insignia on his wrist), before the sequence ends with an apparent POV shot of him making his way through the birth canal and being born with an

ungodly shriek. It then cuts to the bizarre opening scene, with the British girl Claudia receiving Glen as a birthday present, only to immediately call him the ugliest thing she's ever seen. Put off by him staring at her, she throws him into a toy chest and closes the lid. Some time later, he emerges from the box, takes a knife that's still sticking in the birthday cake left downstairs, and makes his way upstairs, hearing Claudia's mother say she's going to have a shower. Reaching the bathroom door at the top of the stairs,

he's about to go in, when he hears and then sees the father coming. He quickly hides the knife in his pocket and stands normally by the door. Seeing him, the father walks up, picks him up, commenting on how ugly he is, and then walks over to Claudia's room, admonishing her for leaving the doll there. Just as she insists she didn't, Glen attacks him, stabbing him in the shoulder and causing him to stumble backwards through the door, crash through the railing, and hit the floor down below. Removing the knife, Glen runs back upstairs and slowly enters the

bathroom, briefly ducking behind the door when the mother calls for her husband. He approaches the tub, yanks back the curtain (marking the first time we've ever seen a naked woman in one of these movies), and brandishes the knife, only for her to knock it out of his hand. He picks it back up, when she tumbles over the side of the tub and hits the floor, dying from a bleeding head wound. Laughing in a wheezing manner, he turns and is frightened to see his reflection in the mirror. He heads on to Claudia's room, approaching the bed, which she appears to be sleeping

in, with her head covered. But when he pulls the cover back, he finds one of her dolls sleeping there instead. Enraged, he stabs into the doll's head, and turns to see Claudia standing by the door. She says, "You killed my Mommy and Daddy," and Glen looks down to see him wetting himself, prompting her to then yell, "And now, you're pissing your pants! You're pissing your pants! You're pissing your pants!" That's when Glen awakens with a scream, and sees Psychs, who's yelling the same thing, before taking him from his cage and out onto the performance stage.

Following that, the movie cuts to the guy in a Santa Claus outfit trudging through the snowy graveyard, talking on a cellphone with his girlfriend, saying he's going to make her a believer. He then stops when she says she's dumping him, unaware that a blade is cutting its way out of the sack he has flung over his shoulder. After she hangs up, he walks on, only to look behind him and become enraged when he sees that the bag has apparently ripped open and toys are lying about. Once he's done, he notices a certain

Good Guy doll leaning up against a tombstone and walks over towards him. Getting down on his knees, he looks closer at him, as Tiffany comes up behind him. He sees her reflection in Chucky's eyes, when he blinks. Tiffany throws a slinky around his neck and yanks him back, while Chucky whips out a knife and slices him across his stomach, exposing a bunch of stuffing he had in there to make him look fat. Chucky yells, "I knew it!", before yanking away the fake beard and yelling, "You're not real!" Santa falls over onto the snow, coughing up blood, as Chucky and

Tiffany admonish him for pretending to be Santa, the former repeating, "Do you have any idea how that can fuck with your mind?! Fuck with your mind!", as he stabs him again and again. That's when it's revealed they're shooting a movie and the Chucky animatronic is malfunctioning, much to actor Jason Flemyng's irritation.

Back in England, Glen sees the Access Hollywood special on Chucky Goes Psycho and realizes that Chucky and Tiffany are his parents. Psychs comes in, telling Glen he needs to be more scary, and decides they should "rehearse." He shows him that he's holding a rat and places it into the cage. At first, Glen is frightened at and backs against the bars, as the rat crawls towards him. But then, much to Psychs' annoyance, he pets the rat rather than killing it. He tells Glen to tap into his killer instincts, pulling out a

cigarette lighter and threatening to "fire" him if he doesn't. But then, the rat bites his other hand, causing him to recoil and fall to the floor. Seeing his chance, Glen hops out of the cage and runs out of the room. He rushes down the road, with Psychs chasing after him, but manages to climb into the back of a garbage truck right as it's leaving from its stop. With that, he's able to lose Psychs and, somehow, gets onboard a cargo plane that flies from the UK to Hollywood. Once delivered to the studio producing Chucky Goes Psycho, Glen gets out of the box in the prop room,

and the first thing he sees is the mannequin of Frankenstein's monster. That causes him to scream, after which he says, "Pardon me, sir." He says the same to the Wolf Man and the zombie when he crawls out of the box, and in the back of the room, finds Chucky and Tiffany, wrapped in plastic. Not knowing that they're dormant, he talks to them, then pulls out the Heart of Damballa amulet and asks them about the words on its back mean. When he gets no reply, he thinks they're shunning him because of how he looks, then begs them to wake up. That's when he looks at the words on the back, with the last being "awake," and reads them aloud. As soon as he does, the lights in the room blow out, sending sparks flying, and both Chucky and Tiffany resurrect.

After coming to the realization that they're parents, and are in Hollywood, Chucky and Tiffany have to go back into "Barbie mode," while Glen hides, when Tony Gardner walks in. Telling somebody over a headset that he's going to have to take the dolls apart, he takes Tiffany, puts her face-down on a table, and starts unbuttoning the back of her dress. While he does, Chucky detaches himself from the puppetry mechanism, pulls a long wire out of it, and walks around behind Gardner. Gardner uses a small, electric

screwdriver to remove the screws on the small panel on Tiffany's back. But when he takes it off, he sees a gooey, pulsating spinal cord. Tiffany spins her head 180 degrees and tells him, "Heads up." Before he knows what happened, Chucky flings the wire around his neck, he and Tiffany each grab onto an end, and they pull, slicing Gardner's head off and sending it flying up into the air. After it comes back down, Chucky and Tiffany, their faces covered in Gardner's blood, fawn over each other, as his headless corpse sprays blood behind them, much to Glen's horror.

Following the first argument over Glen's gender and what to call him or her, they have to hide again when Jennifer Tilly sneaks in to have a candy bar without anyone seeing her (specifically, one she hid in Chucky's overalls). As she stands there, eating, and as Tiffany is starstruck, Jennifer plays around with Gardner's severed head, only to drop it and scream when she realizes it's real.

When Jennifer has Redman over to her house that night, Chucky and Tiffany put their plan to artificially inseminate her into action. While Chucky does his... part in the bathroom upstairs, Tiffany drugs the champagne Jennifer had Joan buy. Unfortunately, she and Redman start making out before they take a sip, much to Tiffany's irritation. As Pete Peters snaps photos of them making out through the window, he spots Chucky jerking it upstairs and decides to take pictures of that as well. Looking back down at the

living room window, he sees Tiffany pop up from behind the couch and continues shooting (I will admit, I do crack up when I think about what must be going through Peters' head when he sees all this weird stuff going on in that house). She finally knocks Redman out when he tries to make Jennifer give him head, and proceeds to admonish Jennifer for her lack of self-respect, before asking for her autograph. Naturally, Jennifer screams in terror and runs for the front door, only to run into Chucky, who's holding the

cup of his semen (randomly, he asks her, "What am I supposed to do with this?"). Jennifer then tries to run out the kitchen door, only to slip and fall on her high heels. She looks behind her to see Tiffany standing there, telling her that she can either take the drugged champagne or be knocked unconscious. Jennifer, again, tries to run for it, and Tiffany flings the award she whacked Redman with, hitting Jennifer in the back of the head and knocking her unconscious, before commenting, "No wonder her career's in trouble." She and Chucky drag Jennifer and Redman

upstairs to the bedroom (Jennifer Tilly again proves she has absolutely no vanity, as Tiffany comments, "Fuck, she's fat. I can't believe that she's not even pregnant yet,"). Upstairs, while Tiffany inseminates Jennifer, Chucky spots Peters leaving the property through the window and decides to take care of him. He goes to Glen, who was having another nightmare about murder, and tells him that they're going to have their own boys' night out; specifically, he says they're going "hunting."

Funnily enough, they hijack Redman's car by doing exactly what Chucky snarked about to Tiffany in the previous movie: he steers while Glen works the pedals. That's when Britney Spears cuts them off, much to Chucky's aggravation, and he tells Glen to floor it. They quickly catch up to her, force her off the road, and her car explodes in a big fireball. At the headquarters for Celebrities Uncovered magazine, Peters is developing his pictures in a darkroom, when he notices something strange about the one he took of

the "masturbating midget." He takes it over to his computer in order to examine it more closely, when he's startled by Chucky's cackling laughter and turns around to see the doll sitting on a counter behind him. Just as he's likely wondering how the doll got in there, he recognizes something, then turns back around and brightens the picture up to see Chucky's face. Once he sees this, he looks behind him again and, sure enough, Chucky isn't there anymore. Terrified, he gets up from his chair and tries to sneak

out of the room, unaware that Glen is hiding under the desk behind him. Also unbeknownst to him, Chucky is hanging upside down above him, holding his knife in his mouth. Seeing his father remove the knife and prepare to attack, Glen runs out, yelling, "No!" This shocks Peters, causing him to back up against the shelves filled with chemicals, with a bottle of sulphuric acid falling and crashing on his head. He screams as the left side of his face burns into a melting mess almost immediately, much to Chucky's delight, as he compliments his son, and takes a photo of the two of them posing with Peters.

The next night, despite considering herself in recovery, Tiffany feels the urge to kill when she hears how sleazy Redman is acting about Jennifer's pregnancy. After calling the recovery hotline, and not getting the best advice from it, she heads downstairs to the dining room. Redman is left alone in there when Jennifer gets a phone call and learns of Peters' murder. At one point, he moves a plate from the table, only to see Tiffany sitting under the glass. Before he knows what happened, she slices him open and

waves, "Bye-bye," at him. He yells for Jennifer, but she angrily yells that she's on the phone, unaware that his sizzling intestines are spilling onto the floor (seriously, how spicy was that food?). Hanging up, Jennifer tells him that she has to leave, as well as for him to "drop dead," which he promptly does. Tiffany giggles, quite proud of herself, when she looks to her left and sees Glen standing there in shock. She assures him, "It was just a little slip," and, just as Chucky did with Peters' murder, asks him not to tell

his father, saying, "It'll be our little secret." Glen's eye twitches for the first time at this moment. The next morning, when Jennifer freaks upon finding she's suddenly nine months pregnant, she calls Joan to tell her, only for Tiffany to enter the call as well, adding to the confusion and Jennifer's anguish. Suddenly, Chucky attacks Jennifer from behind in the bedroom, throwing a sheet over her head. Hearing the yelling and struggling, Joan asks what's going on and Tiffany, pretending to be Jennifer, says she's watching Bound, adding, "Gina Gershon is fingering me." Eventually,

Tiffany hangs up on Joan, while in the bedroom, Chucky subdues and ties Jennifer to her bed. He then leans in to cop a feel, when Tiffany catches them. While gagging Jennifer when she starts yelling for help, the photo of him and Glen with Peters' corpse falls out of his pocket, leading to the argument about what's best for Glen, as well as which gender they want their child to be. And during the argument, Chucky finds Redman's body, which was hidden in the wardrobe, and then sticks it to Tiffany that she's not so perfect, either. Following that, Tiffany calls Stan over, since Chucky now needs a new human body.

In the next cut, both Jennifer and Stan are gagged and tied to the bed. The raging storm outside knocks the power out, prompting Tiffany to light a candle, when everyone hears the sound of someone banging on the door, calling for Jennifer. Looking out the window and seeing that it's Joan, Chucky takes out a knife and prepares to deal with her. Getting no response to her calling, Joan removes a key from under the doormat and unlocks the door, tripping the silent alarm. Once inside, she again calls for Jennifer, but gets no answer. She heads up the stairs, towards the bedroom,

unaware that Chucky is watching her from a hiding spot. Opening the door to the bedroom, she's shocked when she sees Jennifer and Stan tied to the bed, and Redman lying dead on the floor. She's also unaware that Chucky is sneaking up behind her, his knife at the ready. Jennifer finally manages to spit out the gag (which shouldn't have been that hard in the first place) and screams at Joan to watch out. But before Chucky can attack, another small figure comes running out of the bathroom and blasts her with a

combination of hairspray and a lighter. Engulfed in flames, Joan staggers backwards out of the bedroom and falls to her death over the railing. Impressed with this, Chucky, assuming that the killer was Tiffany, attempts to console her, as she appears ashamed of what she just did, and shows her that he has a few skeletons in the closet as well, opening it so three more corpses can tumble out. But when he approaches "Tiffany" from behind, he gets the shock of his life when she turns around to reveal herself to

be Glen in drag, calling themself Glenda. Tiffany walks in shortly afterward, dropping a glass in shock, as Glenda proclaims that she just "fired" Joan and goes on to say, "I'm a real... lady-killer, if you catch my drift. I'm a bona fide bonus baby!" After that, Tiffany has to smack Glen to make him come to his senses.

After that, Jennifer goes into labor, and there's a funny moment where Tiffany tells her, "Push, Ms. Tilly! Push!", and Jennifer screams, "I am pushing, you little star-fucker!" Put off by this, Tiffany calmly tells Stan, "Pay no attention to Little Miss Potty Mouth. She's hormonal." Jennifer then gives birth, as Chucky and Glen anxiously watch from nearby. Swaddling the baby in a blanket, Tiffany tells them that it's a boy, which Chucky is relieved to hear. Tiffany puts the baby in a small stroller, only for Jennifer to start yelling again. Running back to her,

Tiffany realizes she's giving birth to another baby. When it's born, Tiffany tells the others that this one is a girl, which delights Glen but overwhelms Chucky. Putting the girl in the stroller next to her brother, Tiffany tells Chucky that it's time for the ritual. Holding the Heart of Damballa, he begins the chant, but Tiffany stops him, saying Glen/Glenda has to choose which newborn to inhabit. Chucky then hears the sound of the police arriving outside and Tiffany, after realizing that their gender-confused child could possess both babies, yells at Chucky to do the chant.

That's when her yelling, combined with Jennifer screaming at the police, Glenda's rambling, and the babies crying, cause Chucky to reach his breaking point and he decides he doesn't want to be human after all. But when Tiffany doesn't respond well to that, and tells him that she's leaving him and taking their child, he becomes enraged, saying that nobody leaves him. Taking out a knife, he prepares to kill Jennifer out of spite towards Tiffany, but at the last moment, Stan, who managed to loosen his binds,

jumps in the way, taking the blade to the chest. Falling on top of Jennifer and coughing up blood, he tries to tell her that he loves her, but dies before he can get the word completely out. Tiffany takes the knife and throws it at Chucky, getting him in the shoulder and knocking him off the bed, as well as making him drop the amulet. Downstairs, the police break in, find Joan's cooked body in the foyer, and head upstairs to find Jennifer and the babies, surrounded by dead bodies.

At the hospital, following Jennifer's meeting with her lawyer, she's left alone in her room, unaware that Tiffany and Glen are hiding under her bed. Tiffany punctures her IV line with a syringe and fills it with a drug, which hits Jennifer almost immediately. Standing up, she staggers around, her vision blurring, and sees the dolls standing by the door before she collapses. Locking the door, Tiffany prepares to do the chant, when an axe begins hacking its way through the other side. Once the hole is big enough, Chucky looks in, but instead of going for the obvious

reference to The Shining, he says, "I can't think of a thing to say. Fuck it." He continues hacking through, while Tiffany quickly says the chant, finishing with, "Ade due Damballa! And switch! And switch! Switch, switch, switch!" That's when the axe-blade gets her right in the face, with Chucky again saying that nobody leaves him. He pulls the blade out and Tiffany collapses to the floor. Looking up at Glen, before dying, she says, "Be a good girl... or, or boy... whatever. Don't make the same mistakes your mom and dad made... Especially your dad." After she's

dead, Glen says, "Arigato, Oku-san," then turns to face his father. He kicks him across the room, knocking the axe out of his hands and slamming him against the wall. Jennifer regains consciousness and watches as Glen, in a karate stance, challenges Chucky to come at him. Chucky rushes him, only for Glen to jump right over his head, land behind him, grab the axe when Jennifer slides it towards him, and hit Chucky right in the chest. Glen pulls it out and Chucky collapses to the floor, after which Glen proceeds to hack him up one limb at a time, before decapitating him. Glen then falls to his knees, crying, and Jennifer walks over to him and comforts him.

Cut to five years later, where "Jennifer" is raising Glen and Glenda, the latter of whom is so menacing and violent that she prompts the nanny, Fulvia, to quit. Before she leaves, Jennifer bludgeons her to death with a Tiffany doll, revealing that Tiffany did, in fact, manage to possess Jennifer. Afterward, during a birthday party, Glen narrates, "Mommy got her wish: she's a bright, shining star. Now we're the perfect family. I've learned a lot about myself. I know I'm not alone. I know I'm not a freak. And even though we had our differences, I know my dad really

loved me." Glen then gets a birthday present with no indication of who it's from. He unwraps it to find it's a box housing one of Chucky's severed arms. Frightened, he wets himself, then turns and looks back at his mom, with his eye twitching, and when he turns back to the box, the arm grabs his throat. The screen cuts to black and Chucky's laugh is heard. The first part of the ending credits is just as crazy as the rest of the movie, set to a montage of random shots from the movie for each character, before freezing on an unflattering still (Jennifer with a sock stuffed in her mouth, Tiffany with an axe in her head, Joan when she's fried to a crisp, etc.) and naming the actor, as a cover of One Way or Another plays.

By far, the biggest coup that Don Mancini managed to score with Seed of Chucky was getting legendary composer Pino Donaggio to do the music. Given what a huge Brian De Palma fan Mancini is, I know it was something he relished. And make no mistake, Donaggio's music is truly one of the movie's highlights, to the point where even those who absolutely hate this movie have praised it. Not only is it far more sophisticated than anything you would ever except in a movie like this (it was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, a boast that few other slasher movies, straightforward or otherwise, can make), but it's played almost completely straight. That's certainly true of its rather eerie main theme, which serves not only as Chucky's leitmotif this time around but really gets across how Glen's conception and birth during the opening credits was an unnatural, freakish thing that really should've never happened. There's a really crazed, psychotic string piece for Glen, which you hear during the opening nightmare sequence, and his twitching eye is punctuated by a notable, slightly stabbing piece of music. Speaking of Glen, when he manages to escape Psychs and make his way to Hollywood, the music that plays is absolutely evocative of a classic Danny Elfman score, with strings and a vocalizing choir. And when Chucky and Tiffany swoon over each other after murdering Tony Gardner, Donaggio plays a full-on romantic love theme that does help with the satirizing. There's also a slight piano piece that plays during the scene with Pete Peters outside Jennifer's house that makes me think of a similar bit from the score to Bride of Chucky, to where I initially thought they just reused it. And Donaggio even goes electronic at some points, like when Tiffany kills Redman, which is scored like a giallo from the 70's or 80's.

Unfortunately, unlike with Bride of Chucky, I don't really care for any of the songs on the soundtrack. I don't mind the version of One Way or Another by Full Blown Rose that plays over the first part of the ending credits, and the little bit of Get Your Hands Up that they perform is alright too, but that Cut It Up song by Fredwreck Nassar, which plays over the latter part of the credits, about drives me insane.

At the end of the day, I can appreciate what Don Mancini did with Seed of Chucky, which was make a completely different movie from those that came before. And whether you like the end result or not, he definitely succeeded. But, while I would never demand that he apologize for it, as some want him to, I can't say it's a movie that I entirely love, either. On the plus side, the performances of Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, and Billy Boyd are on point, the movie has a memorable style and look all its own, there is some inspired filmmaking within it, some of the satire and lampooning is entertaining, the animatronics for the dolls are still on point, as are the makeup and gore effects, and the music score absolutely rips. But, while I do find some parts funny, the type of humor it often goes for is not to my taste, it gets way too meta for its own good at times, the digital effects don't come off so well, I find that the personal aspect that Mancini went for is delved into nearly as much as you would expect, and in the end, it's so weird and out there in its tone that it's hard for me to completely embrace it. While I don't hate this movie the way I used to, it's not a Chucky movie I put on that often.