{"id":4078,"date":"2024-09-18T16:44:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T16:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4078"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:04:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:04:37","slug":"childs-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/18\/childs-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Child\u2019s Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Child\u2019s Play <\/strong>(1988)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 UA\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tom Holland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Don Mancini, John Lafia and Tom Holland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Joe Renzetti\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Bill Butler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 9, 1988 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Dinah Manoff, Tommy Swerdlow, Jack Colvin, Neil Giuntoli, Juan Ramirez, Alan Wilder, Raymond Oliver.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $33.2M (US)\/$44.1M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0One year for Christmas, my 3YO nephew got the My Buddy doll he\u2019d been wanting. Once he was face-to-face with it, he was scared of it. When Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> came out two years later, I (jokingly) proposed taking him to see it. Chucky the killer doll is almost a dead ringer for My Buddy. If you want to see for yourself, Google \u201cMy Buddy doll\u201d. The resemblance is eerie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The idea of dolls coming to life and committing evil acts wasn\u2019t new when Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> hit theaters in November 1988. It was the subject of a Twilight Zone episode entitled \u201cLiving Doll\u201d in the 60s. The low-budget shocker Dolls (an Empire Pictures production) beat Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> to theaters by a year. Stories about killer dolls strike a nerve with most people because they exploit one of the greatest fears of childhood, the irrational but legit fear that dolls are really alive and just waiting for the right moment to strike. Kids may not admit to it, but you remember all the crazy, irrational thoughts that went through your head as you lay awake in a dark bedroom waiting for sleep to come. Director Tom Holland (Fright Night) brings that fear to life in Child\u2019s Play<\/strong>, the first movie featuring Chucky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It literally starts with a boom. Chicago cop Mike Norris (Sarandon, Fright Night) has serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Dourif, The Exorcist III) cornered in a toy store. He\u2019s been shot and is very close to death, but don\u2019t count him out yet. He\u2019s a practitioner of voodoo and can transfer his soul into another body. Since there aren\u2019t any people around, he puts his soul in a Good Guy doll. The ritual involves reciting an incantation that causes ominous clouds to gather in the sky and lightning to strike. This causes the store to explode. BOOM!<\/p>\n

\u00a06YO Andy Barclay (Vincent) wants a Good Guy doll for his birthday, but his widowed mother Karen (Hicks, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home) can\u2019t afford the $100 price tag. She ends up buying one (at a substantial discount) from a peddler in an alley behind the department store where she works. The doll calls himself \u201cChucky\u201d. Andy starts behaving strangely almost immediately. That very night, Karen\u2019s best friend Maggie (Manoff, Grease) gets bludgeoned with a toy hammer and thrown out the window a few stories up. Nobody believes Andy\u2019s claims that his doll is responsible. Norris, the lead detective on the case, is convinced Andy did it. The boy also becomes a suspect in the murder of Ray\u2019s accomplice who left him behind to be killed by Norris in the opening sequence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nobody ever believes kids, that\u2019s another idea used to good effect in Child\u2019s Play<\/strong>. Andy claims that Chucky talks, walks and does terrible things. Mom tells him to stop making up stories. The cops wring their hands in frustration. A psychiatrist orders the boy be placed in a mental institution for observation. It isn\u2019t until Karen discovers that the doll\u2019s batteries were never inserted that she starts to think there may be something to her son\u2019s story. When Chucky comes to life and attacks her, that clinches it. The next hurdle is getting people to believe her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> is a good slam-bang B-level horror flick that\u2019s more clever than most of its ilk. It has a few solid jump-scares. For a while, it keeps you guessing whether or not the whole Chucky is really alive thing is all in Andy\u2019s head. Is the kid losing his mind? It isn\u2019t until midway through that this question is definitively answered. Then Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> becomes a dark comedy of sorts. Let\u2019s face it, there\u2019s something funny about a three-foot doll running around, swearing like a truck driver and killing people. It detracts from the idea of a 6YO in deadly peril. For reasons spelled out by Ray\u2019s voodoo teacher (Oliver, Forbidden World), he has to transfer his soul into the body of the first person he reveals his secret to and has to do it before Chucky becomes completely human. If not, he\u2019ll remain a doll forever. Of course, Andy will die in the process. We can\u2019t have that, can we?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> is a fairly slick production. The puppet effects used to give Chucky life are very good. It has a couple of cool kill scenes. Somebody gets fried by an electroshock therapy machine. The voodoo teacher\u2019s demise is also quite gruesome. The acting is pretty good all-around. Dourif is awesome as Charles Lee Ray and the voice of Chucky. Then again, he\u2019s usually awesome. Nobody plays a murderous creep like Dourif. Young Alex Vincent does well in his first acting role ever. He doesn\u2019t overdo the cute kid thing; he\u2019s never cloying or especially annoying. Hicks is good as the increasingly frantic and frightened mother. Sarandon more than holds his own as the baffled cop faced with an unusual case.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> moves at a nice clip. The screenplay is well-written. It\u2019s campy at times, but that\u2019s one of the things that make it so good. The final shot of an open door is probably one of the most telling final shots ever seen in a horror flick. Holland makes great use of genre conventions- e.g. the False Alarm scare- without ever making Child\u2019s Play<\/strong> feel derivative. For a B-movie, it\u2019s particularly well made. It\u2019s also a hell of a lot of fun. It\u2019s one of most enjoyable horror movies of the 80s.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Child\u2019s Play (1988)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 UA\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tom Holland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Don Mancini, John Lafia and Tom Holland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Joe Renzetti\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Bill Butler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 9, 1988 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Dinah Manoff, Tommy Swerdlow, Jack Colvin, Neil Giuntoli, Juan Ramirez, Alan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Childs-Play-1988-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4078"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4691,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4078\/revisions\/4691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}