Some horror films have the bad luck of being stuck using a trick that only affects a select group within a society by playing on their specific phobias. Granted, the horror genre as a whole has a knack for that, but there are some concepts that are funny no matter the situation. For example, a man in a mask with a huge sharp knife lunging from the shadows = scary. It plays to the fear of, well, just not wanting to die. That seems normal enough. But then you have an entirely separate niche of the horror world that has something like spiders (Arachnophobia), sharks (Jaws) and dolls (Child’s Play). Now, Pediophobia, the fear of dolls, is somewhat ridiculous. I apologize if you suffer from if legitimately or just in a film setting, but it has a severe limit on its appeal. With that said. Child’s Play hasn’t aged well and has little lasting impact for new audiences.
When a mother (Catherine Hicks) needs the perfect gift for her son Andy (Alex Vincent) and clothing and small toys just aren’t fitting the bill, she goes out in search of the hottest item out there: an interactive doll. She finally finds one courtesy of a dumpster diving hobo who happens to have rescued one thrown out from the scene of a massive explosion after a police shootout left a local serial strangler dead – or mostly dead. You see, some people have multiple skills. Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), for example, strangled people really well, but he also had a cursory knowledge of voodoo which allowed him to instill his soul into the body of a popular doll. As is to be expected, the doll Charles Lee Ray’s soul inhabited happens to be the one our adoring mother has purchased as a birthday gift.
At first everything seems normal. The doll is fairly interactive so Andy’s tales of the doll’s autonomy come as little more than the cute fibs of an attention-hungry child. Within a night of letting the doll, Chucky, out of his box the family friend and babysitter is pushed out of a window bringing city homicide officer Mike Norris to the scene. Norris begins his investigation as Chucky becomes restless in his “Made in China” body causing him to seek out a voodoo method to transfer to a new vessel – Andy.
How to measure the merit of a clearly aged horror film? The easiest way to grade Child’s Play is to size it up against the sequels – all of which were even worse. Weighed against other films of little evil things, who can safely argue that Child’s Play even comes close to something like Gremlins? It can’t be done. Within its own subsection of the horror genre, Child’s Play can only be looked at favorably from a nostalgic point of view. The performances have that classic horror film feel. There’s no hint of awareness that pollutes many of the slasher films today. It’s not about cheap kill thrills, the film genuinely wants to scare you with a little sadistic doll that jumps out of dark corners. It rarely succeeds, but I guess we’ll give it some credit for purity.
The picture and sound don’t get too much help from the Blu-ray boost, though the picture is sharp and the film still retains its visual charm. If you don’t own it already (which is either because you don’t typically buy horror films) then it might be a consideration if you’re going for a Halloween horrorfest night. But if you have owned it before, you’ve owned it on VHS and DVD and chances are a slight upscaling in resolution is all you need to buy Chucky’s newest hi-def incarnation.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Like the past releases of the film, the Blu-ray version comes strapped with a healthy load of extras and even a DVD copy…for all you who have been wearing out your VHS player. Starting off the nice feature package is a fun title screen menu which has a first-person view with a knife stalking through a house (which is already inaccurate since the film takes place almost entirely in apartments) – but it’s still a really fun way to get viewers in the mood. You can watch the film with two different audio commentaries: the first includes star Catherine Hicks and the designer of the infamous Chucky doll Kevin Yagher or another with Producer David Kirschner and screenwriter Don Mancini. Hearing the interactions between Hicks and Yagher proves to be the more entertaining of the two, so if you have to choose, that’s your best bet. After that you have a whole gamut of featurettes with a retrospective taste looking at the film’s production, direction, the design of Chucky (Yagher returns!), the devoted horror convention following Chucky has amassed and, as always, the good old-fashioned “making of” featurette. For the Chucky fan it amounts to a solid package (even if it was offered previously). For others, a few of the featurettes prove to be quite interesting, but overall you might not want to bother as it’s typically 2 minutes of interesting sandwiched between 4 minutes of things only a diehard fan could love.
I am now officially tempted to watch the first season of 7th Heaven – bear with me – to see if they make any Chucky cracks for Catherine Hicks.
"Child's Play" is on sale September 15, 2009 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Tom Holland. Written by Don Mancini. Starring Brad Dourif, Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent.
