The Test of Time: Child's Play (1988)

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

We all have certain movies we love. Movies we respect without question because of either tradition, childhood love, or because they’ve always been classics. However, as time keeps ticking, do those classics still hold up? Do they remain must see? So…the point of this column is to determine how a film holds up for a modern horror audience, to see if it stands the Test of Time.

DIRECTED BY TOM HOLLAND

STARRING BRAD DOURIF, CHRIS SARANDON, ALEX VINCENT, CATHERINE HICKS

Be honest y’all. How do we really feel about a CHILD’S PLAY reboot without the involvement of franchise originator Don Mancini? I know I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand, to make a Chucky flick of any sort without the creative blessing of Mancini is downright sacrilege. The dude created the entire Chucky brand and kept it alive and well for three decades or so. He deserves to have a goddamn say in the matter. Now, on the other, I do appreciate Orion’s attempt to restore the intensely mortifying tone of the first two flicks by stripping away all the cartoonish camp and kitsch (as they did with the IT redo), and returning to the ferocious vibe of the franchise before Chucky became a silly, wise-cracking self-parody. That said, I’m not too thrilled about the newfangled doll design, nor am I too pumped about the directorial choice of Lars Klevburg, who’s only other feature, POLAROID (2017), has apparently yet to secure a U.S. release. Not exactly inspiring confidence there, is it?

All this to say, with Tom Holland’s original CHILD’S PLAY (GET THE BLU RAY HERE) celebrating its 30th anniversary last November, we feel the need to revisit the original in the lead up to the release of this highly dubious remake. We must assess whether or not the original has aged so bad that it warrants a remake. We must judge how the film holds up not only on its own merits, but how it’s paved the way for such a formidable horror franchise foe – the iconic Chucky doll – and how the context of the original plays into the larger mythos of the character. Above all else, we shall see just how well Chucky and CHILD’S PLAY has withstood or faltered against The Test of Time!

THE STORY: With the working title of BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED (for excellent reasons we’ll break down below), likely changed due to Spielberg’s family-friendly sci-fi flick of the same name released one year prior, the next working title of the film was BLOOD BUDDY. This would confirm, as writer Don Mancini would later corroborate, that the conception of the Good Guys Doll was a direct satirical reference to Hasbro’s “My Buddy” toy line of doll, which has almost the same physical appearance as Chucky in the film. Also inspired by the classic Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll,” Mancini’s original idea was to be a social commentary about the commercialization of toys and how harmful the marketing was to children. Over time, the script morphed into an outright horror tale.

Of course, it starts as a crime picture, with police officer Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) chasing the Lakeside Strangler Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) through the streets of Chicago at night. Here’s where it might be wise to mention the two alternative openings of the film; the first involving Norris in drag in order to trap Ray (notice Sarandon ditch the dress in the opening shot), and the other involving the voodoo priest placing a hex on the doll. Either way, we end up in the well-dressed toy store, where a shootout renders Ray all but dead. In desperation, he falls on a pile of Good Guy dolls, pulls one out of its box and starts chanting an ancient curse. You know the rest. Ray channels his murderous spirit into the doll and becomes immortalized as a 3-foot piece of plastic.

Not to jump the gun, but one of the things that holds up well is how instantly relatable and sympathetic Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) and his mother Karen (Catherine Hicks) are. The opening scene of Andy clumsily making inedible breakfast-in-bed for his mom is adorable and innocent in a way you can’t help but respond with likeability. Same doubles for Karen, a single mother willing to do whatever it takes to ensure Andy gets what he wants for his birthday, including a shady business transaction in a dingy black-market alleyway. Watching the film yet again yesterday, this sense of easily identifying with the protagonists really goes a long way in terms of rooting for their survival from the get-go.

Karen brings the Good Guy doll home. Andy’s ecstatic. Maybe even a little too obsessed. One of the original story ideas was to keep the audience in the dark with the ambiguity of whether or not Andy was really the killer or if Chucky was truly possessed. The first half of the film toys with this notion, particularly in Maggie’s death scene, in which we do not see the identity of the killer. I like this psychological slant a great deal, as we’ve seen it in MAGIC and PINOCCHIO’S REVENGE, among others. Alas, Holland and Mancini opted to ditch the mystery angle in favor of an outright killer-walking-talking-doll. In addition to slaying all who stand in his way, Chucky’s main intention is to kill his partner Eddie Caputo (Neil Giuntoli), whack Norris, avenge Dr. Death (Raymond Oliver), and return his soul to human form in the visage of Andy’s body.

WHAT HOLDS-UP: It’s actually quite remarkable how durable the entirety of CHILD’S PLAY remains to be 30 years after its release. The original cut was well over two hours, and one of the things that hold up is the wisdom to cut the flick down to an eminently entertaining, never-boring 87 minutes. Sure, you sacrifice a lot of killer standalone scenes, including a subplot in the mental hospital involving a little girl Andy befriends and is betrayed by, but you end up with a better overall product as a result. And aside from the sheer brilliance of the premise alone – about a killer doll who may or may not be the murderous manifestation of a little boy’s fractured psyche – to our eyes there are three major cornerstones that have preserved the flick like a cryogenic freeze. We’re talking about the design of the doll and its concomitant menagerie of FX to achieve it, the centerpiece battery sequence between Karen and Chucky, and the assortment of brutally violent death scenes. Let’s carve these bastards up, shall we?!

The practical, special and visual FX work in CHILD’S PLAY absolutely holds up extremely well today. Part of this is due to the wise decision of mixing mediums to achieve the motion of Chucky throughout the film. A combination of remote-control animatronics, child actors and little people, scene-to-scene cosmetics, motion-capture technology and the like was used to achieve the look and movements of Chucky onscreen. His facial expressions were rigged to a remote control operator that could be altered at the press of a button. Several dolls were made for specific movements needed in the film. As Chucky morphs from a toy-like doll to a humanly figure from first to third act, the technology to realize such is downright seamless and still one hundred percent convincing. Sure, Chucky is a little clunky in some of the longer walking shots, but on the whole, the FX work spearheaded by hall of famer Howard Berger (KNB) is, was, and will always be state of the art!

Now we’re getting somewhere. I not only submit that the battery scene in the middle of CHILD’S PLAY is the scariest moment of the entire film, I’d say it’s the crowning achievement of the entire franchise to date. I’ll take it further and claim that it’s one of the most genuinely terrifying horror movie moments of all time. Yeah, I said it. And believe it too. Again, having seen it just yesterday for like the 50th time, I still felt my heart racing and my chest thudding. It’s a masterstroke by Holland and Mancini, which I’m certain is why the film was nearly titled BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED…for this one bone-clattering scene.

You know what’s up, right? Karen doesn’t believe when Andy says Chucky has been telling him evil things. She inspects the doll face to face, confirming her suspicion that it’s just a harmless pile of plastic. “Hi I’m Chucky. Want to Play?” She goes into the kitchen, spots the Good Guys box. She has an inkling to examine the box and when she picks it up, the doll’s batteries fall to the floor, unopened. She peers at Chucky, who’s frozen in a maniacal grin. Karen creeps up to the doll, slowly pulls the clothing over the battery pack and removes the cover. As soon as she sees the empty battery pack, Chucky rolls his head around and cries “I’m Chucky. Want to Play?” Mortified, Karen drops the doll and watches it roll under the couch. F*ck what happens next, this sequence is hall-of-fame worthy for the way it’s masterfully constructed to maximally elicit fear. 30 years later and I’m still pissing my pants over this scene!

WHAT BLOWS NOW: Because Holland and his editors were smart enough to trim all the fat, there isn’t much that sucks about CHILD’S PLAY these days. I will say the subplot involving the Dr. Death voodoo merchant feels a bit extraneous and out of place. Word from Mancini is that about 50% of his original script remained intact in the final version of the film, with this voodoo angle being added by Holland and other scribes. It’s not that the story turn feels inorganic to the rest of the story, it’s that, by comparison, the voodoo death itself feels far hokier than the others in the flick. I mean, my man Chuckster straight electrocutes a doctor’s scalp, hammers a babysitter out of a window (Maggie was originally to be electrocuted in the bathtub), pulls a HALLOWEEN butcher-blade to stab Norris, etc. So no, the voodoo thread doesn’t so much blow as it simply feels incongruous to the rest of the film.

THE VERDICT: Man, 30 year old movies aren’t supposed to be this sturdy. And yet, Don Mancini’s kernel of an idea went on to bloom into a fully functional franchise that continues to bear fruit three decades later. Tom Holland deserves the utmost credit for crafting a movie that withstands the test of time through well-earned sympathy among its central characters, exemplary FX work that runs the gamut from mo-cap to animatronics to practical suits, and remote controlled puppetry, hyper-violent and refreshingly assorted death modes, and a perfectly mounted centerpiece via the battery-pack scare. I’m calling it now. Even if the CHILD’S PLAY redo is as successful as the IT remake was (critically, commercially), there’s no way in hell it’ll eclipse the quality of the original CHILD’S PLAY. Not by 1988s standards, and neither by today’s!