So far on the Marathon we’ve covered such spooky topics as alien parasites, vampires, Frankenstein monsters, some haunted things and at least a couple plain old killers, because the greatest monster of all is man or some such thing. A pretty good spread of classic and modern fare if I do say so myself, but if you really wanted to get down to brass tacks, really find out what monster the kids are talking about while browsing the memeosphere, then look no future than the animate inanimate humanoid object. AKA the killer mannequin. AKA the demon doll. AKA the monster puppet. AKA you get the drift.
Nowadays you can’t search for a video on youtube without finding some shrill-voiced gamer making funny faces and screaming into a camera as animatronic animals try to play peek-a-boo with them, but puppets and their ilk have a long history in the horror genre. In television puppets have popped up every now and then since the days of the Twilight Zone, comics have been menaced by such criminals as Rag Doll, the Dummy and The Ventriloquist, and films like Puppet Master and The Demonic Toys have managed to become multi-film franchises in spite of the fact that they really aren’t all that good (although I love the original Puppet Master). Oh, and there was also Small Soldiers that one time. However, when you’re talking about horror movies with killer puppets, there’s really one that managed to not only make a successful transition to a franchise but snag a place amongst the annals of horror icons. I’m talking about Chucky, and the movie I’m going to talk about is Child’s Play.
For as famous a horror icon as Chucky eventually became, Child’s Play is kind of...weird. It opens with Charles Lee Ray, a murderer known as The Strangler, running away from a single cop (Mark Norris, played by Chris Sarandon) down a empty city street at night. Why a police officer would be chasing an infamous criminal on his own and the streets in the middle of a city would be completely empty I can’t say. After being abandoned by his partner (why a guy known as ‘The Strangler’ has a wheelman I also don’t know), Ray sneaks into a toy store, engaging into a gunfight with Norris. Ray is shot through the chest, and after laying down a heavy deathbed curse on his partner and on Norris, he pulls out some fucking VOODOO MAGIC out of nowhere to transfer his soul into the form of a popular children’s toy known as Good Guys. Which causes the store to explode, I guess because of all the magic. Which begs the question of why Voodoo isn’t this world’s major religion considering magic is fucking real and reproducible. You’d think colonization of the Caribbean would have gone way differently, at the very least.
Eventually the doll containing Ray’s soul comes into the possession of young Andy Barkley as a birthday present (his mom bought it for him off of a hobo), and the newly christened ‘Chucky’ begins his quest for bloody revenge. After the babysitter takes a tumble into a station wagon, Andy himself is under suspicion of being a psycho murderer himself. Will the Barkley family be able to clear Andy’s name, and end Chuck’s reign of terror once and for all, or do the fates have something far more sinister in mind for this terrorized single-parent household?
Unfortunately, I don’t know if Child’s Play ever breaks out of that weirdness to become a good movie. Aside from the major plot contrivances, like why any sane adult would just let a elementary age kid leave school or get onto a bus to the projects completely unattended, the standard slasher movie ‘no one believes anyone about anything ever’ trope or why a kid would hear the sounds of gunshots in a nearby house and RUN TOWARDS IT, the entire voodoo thing is ridiculous and is ultimately unnecessary. In a better crafted film, you would have had just die near the dolls so that when the murders start to happen you could actually introduce some doubt over whether Andy is actually crazy or if he’s being influenced by the doll, and the fact that the murderer is in fact Chucky becomes a pretty entertaining twist. You don’t even need the ‘transfer his soul into Andy’ plot really, which is where the voodoo thing actually comes into relevance, or the ‘Chucky is becoming human’ crap, which doesn’t even make sense. Chucky would be going after Andy because he’s a murderous psychopath, and you’d keep killing him until he’s dead just like you do with Christine and Michael Myers and all those other movie monsters. Nothing important would change, and with the time originally spent setting up the dumb conclusion it might be spent on the actual characters, maybe build the relationship between Norris and Karen (the mom) up a little, since they spend most of the second half together and barely beyond bickering and advancing the plot. The way it is now, Chucky being alive is telepgraphed from the first five minutes, and then you’re stuck waiting the entire movie for the cast to play catchup and figure out what the audience has known for ages. It’s annoying.
That being said, the kills themselves are entertaining and take advantage of Chucky’s attributes, and by the time Chucky really gets into monster mode (conveniently at the end of the film) he’s quite fun. Not to mention the great voice work from Brad Dourif, who brings the character to life even more than the special effects crew in some ways. He’s not as charismatic as then-horror veteran Freddy Krueger, but there’s a strong foundation laid here for the rest of the Child’s Play series to build upon. For all of Child’s Play’s faults, Chucky himself is not one of them.
When it comes to mascot horror movies, Child’s Play gets just about average. Not as demented as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not as inventive as Nightmare on Elm Street, not as violent as Hellraiser, but does just enough to satiate your appetite. If you’re a horror newbie I think that Child’s Play will probably be just the right thing for you this Halloween, it’s just the right mix of scary and stupid to keep you and your friends from getting freaked out. As long as you’re not deathly afraid of dolls and/or redheads, it’ll be a fun night.
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