Mocking Halloween: Child's Play

Though this is sort of a Christmas themed movie, I feel as though many people would be watching it this Halloween since it is a classic slasher movie, though it’s a bit different from others. You see, Child's Play is about a killer that performs some sort of voodoo ritual and transmits his soul into a Good Guy doll seconds before his human body dies. Than, a young boy is given the possessed doll for Christmas but begins killing people. The adults think Andy is going crazy but little do they know that his doll really is possessed by the soul of a Lakeview Strangler. There is a big problem with this movie and it’s sort of in the same vain as Phantasm and it shows that the film hasn’t really aged well with modern audiences.

The problem here is that that killer is a doll! Sure, it’s not as strange as killer metal balls but nevertheless a doll is attacking people!! Personally, every time I see the doll running around with his doll shoes, carrying a knife and jumping up and down I laugh and it takes me out of the movie. Even when the doll begins talking, especially the when it uses vulgarity, it comes off as extremely campy and ham-handed. But perhaps the best parts that are so stupid it’s funny is when Chucky attacks somebody and the person is struggling to get the doll off them. It’s a goddamn doll for Christ’s sake… and they can’t just pry him off? If I were them, I would pull the doll off of me and throw him in the fire or something. It’s a doll. Not a person.

Perhaps today, people want real hardcore killers and axe murderers and that leaves no room for imagination. I am sure that if you show this movie to a kid or even a pre-teen today they would scoff and laugh at it and rightfully so. It’s very corny but than again, isn’t that what made some horror movies great?

Introducing... Child's Play!

As you can tell by the title of this post this is going to be about the introductions to the Child’s Play movies. Of course I mean the two sequels and the original or the shitty ones after Child’s Play 3. Yes, as trivial as the introductions may seem… to me they are some of the most memorable intros to a horror movie (or any movie) that I have seen. I know there are a few people that I have spoken to that understand where I am coming from and why I think so. I am going to try to do my best to explain my reasoning.

Child’s Play 2

The beginning shots of the movie show extreme close-ups of workers scraping off all the burnt wax off the Good Guy (Chucky) doll. They polish up his metal framework and clean the burn wax out of his mouth, then they proceed to put a fresh rubber cover over his metal skull. They spray paint the brown eyebrows and freckles on his face and then they assemble his body parts and put clothes on him. They put batteries into his back and they prop him and Chucky is reborn.

I guess the reason why I enjoy this opening so much is because of how precise and careful the shots and the actions are, especially before the actual doll assembly. You are watching the birth of a killer take place but at the same time it’s still a little happy and somewhat clowny. When it comes to the assembly of the doll parts, I loved the camera angles because they were either canted or they showed the object in perspective, giving the picture a stylized comic-book feel to it.

Child’s Play 3

I will probably remember this one the most out of all the Child’s Play movies because of what it was. It starts off with people coming into the old Good Guy doll factory and cleaning up the place. They use a claw to pick up the melted body of Chucky so that they could throw him out, but as they hoist the melted remains some blood drips into a vat of boiling wax. What happens after is a montage of some really grisly, raw and bloody shots of the max molding and melting back into the doll as the blood spins around it.

It was the photography and the effects that won me over with this opening. The photography is beautifully lit and darkened, giving the picture that grisly macabre feel to the film. We are watching the second re-birth of a killer who is at his wits end and it’s gory, sick and grotesque. Shots of spinning wax and melting blood give the montage this chilling atmosphere. The effects were actually pretty good and some shots (the spinning wax, the ribbons of blood) I wonder how they did it. I loved that they used high-speed film and reversed it for the end shot where Chucky’s head is being remade.

A friend of mine, Jeff Olsen, best described why opening credit scenes can be good for a movie: “[it] gives you a chance to get a drink, get comfy, then enjoy the flick.” I could not agree with him more on this. It sets the mood and the tone of the film and these credits do exactly that. Honestly, they are probably one of my favorite parts in the whole film and it’s something that I always look forward to when the movie starts.

Chucky vs. Pinocchio

A few nights ago, I took a trip down memory lane and re-watched Pinocchio’s Revenge. I had seen this movie back in the late 90s when I used to rent a lot of my movies from Hollywood Video. Then, I wasn’t too afraid of this movie and I thought it was entertaining but I after seeing it again after all those years I found myself enjoying it for it’s cheese value. It’s not a good movie but it’s entertaining. What I did notice was how much it borrows from the Child’s Play movies. Although this post may come off as saying that Pinocchio’s Revenge is subpar as compared to Child’s Play, I want to state that my comparing and contrasting is due to my realization that Pinocchio’s Revenge is a second rate Child’s Play.

Chucky:
First off, I know his real name is Charles Lee Ray. Now, here is why I think the doll worked for Child’s Play but why it failed to deliver for Pinocchio’s Revenge. The main reason why Chucky is so creepy is because he was based off of the scary looking My Buddy dolls and in the film they are called Good Guy dolls. The other reason why Child’s Play delivers the scares is because of the brutality of Chucky and that he is way more lethal. You never actually see Chucky kill people but you see POV shots of him running around and you see his hands holding the knife, but it’s almost as though it’s keeping you in anticipation before you actually see him kill.

Pinocchio:
I guess for me, when it came to Pinocchio, seeing that doll going around killing people wasn’t really scary because it’s hard to convince me that the doll was scary. It looked more childish than funny and even after you see the doll animated it wasn’t really scary, it just looked cheesy. Pinocchio wasn’t really brutal at all, in fact he killed two people and only one was with a fire poker. The whole thing just didn’t seem as violent as Chucky can get. Pinocchio’s Revenge also is lacking in the suspense that Child’s Play has, you see Pinocchio running around and it doesn’t really offer the audience anticipation so when you finally see Pinocchio… it’s like we already saw him. It’s anticlimactic.

I think that Pinocchio’s Revenge is an entertaining movie but unfortunately it comes off as a poor man’s Child’s Play and I think that is it’s main problem. Although just because it is a second rate Chucky movie doesn’t mean that it should be watched for cheese value. In my opinion, it was hard not to compare this to the Chucky films because I saw a lot of similarities. What baffles me is: what exactly did Pinocchio get revenge on?