Child’s Play: Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition | DVD Review

It’s hard to believe that Chucky, the malevolent, murderous “Good Guys” doll, turns twenty this year, but it says right here that this new budget-priced and feature-laden DVD release is “Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition”. Chucky certainly doesn’t look his age, and neither does the film…a particularly impressive feat when it’s considered it was made before the advent of CGI.

Anyone still reading at this point is either a fan of the Child’s Play franchise or is a friend or relative of the reviewer, so we’ll dispense with the synopsis and go out on a limb and say that this is the best doll-possessed-by-dying-voodoo-practising-serial-killer-hellbent-on-re-inhabiting-a-human-body-at-any-cost film ever made. One of the last true horror films before the 1990s ushered in a slew of teen-targeted self-aware fright flicks (a group that subsequent Chucky films are guilty of being a part of), Child’s Playdoesn’t so much inundate us with buckets of blood and gore for gore’s sake…the film scares us on a more visceral, primal level, namely every child’s fear that their toys will come to life and perform evil deeds. Of course, when this actually happens to little Andy Barclay’s (Alex Vincent) Good Guys doll, nobody believes him until his mother (Catherine Hicks, TV’s 7th Heaven) discovers that Chucky’s (voiced by Brad Dourif, The Exorcist III) battery compartment is empty, yet he can still talk. Is it too late to convince cop Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon, Bordello of Blood) that Chucky’s alive? Will Chucky succeed in his bid to “transfer” into Andy’s body? We all know the answers to these questions, but it doesn’t make Child’s Play any less fun to watch again after all these years.

Director Tom Holland (Fright Night) turns in a solid horror film, but the real kudos here are reserved for Chucky’s designer Kevin Yagher and his team. Using animatronics, puppetry, and even little people on scaled up sets, it is Yagher (and Dourif, of course) who brought Chucky to life and made him believable – as believable as a killer doll can be, of course. It also helps the atmosphere of the film that Chucky isn’t played for laughs, as has increasingly been the case with the sequels, especially Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. They were good, funny, and even gory films, but they just weren’t scary, and that’s what horror films should really be about. It will be interesting to see what they do with the upcoming “franchise reboot”. Will they go for scares or laughs? Hopefully the former.

Presented in 1.85:1 widescreen with a nice 5.1 Dolby Surrond mix, the film looks and sounds a helluva lot better than it ever did on video. The picture is crisp and the multi-speaker setup is put to good, if not mind-blowing, use.

Audio commentary with Alex Vincent, Catherine Hicks and “Chucky” designer Kevin Yagher
Mother (Catherine Hicks) and son (Alex Vincent) re-unite for this feature-length commentary track. We hear them reminisce about how they bonded when making the film, and it’s more than a little strange to hear Andy Barclay as a grown-up. They’re joined by Chucky designer Kevin Yagher, who goes into great detail about the trials and tribulations of creating a menacing doll before the advent of CGI in films. Oh, yeah…he also happens to be Mr. Catherine Hicks, and we get more than enough information about how they met on set and fell in love. C’mon, guys, it’s a horror movie, not a Harlequin romance! Seriously, though, this commentary is a refreshing change of pace from the techno-geek stuff that seems to be the norm…

Audio commentary with Producer David Kirschner and Screenwriter Don Mancini
…Not that there’s anything wrong with the techno-geek stuff. In this commentary track, we’re treated to some fascinating tales from screenwriter Mancini and producer Kirschner about the making of the film. Of note is the fact that Mancini wasn’t even on the set during the making of the film due to the writer’s strike that was happening at the time. There’s also the fact that they can’t really discuss any of the sequels to Child’s Play, including the upcoming “franchise reboot”, due to thefact that they are the “property” of another studio. Despite this, the commentary is actually chock full of juicy tidbits about the making of the original.

Scene Specific Chucky Commentary
It’s a good thing Chucky wasn’t available for a feature-length commentary, as it would have become very repetitive very quickly. But four scenes is perfect with Brad Dourif, in character as Chucky, fondly recalling how he delighted in terrorizing Andy and his family. The best of the bunch is when he’s joined by Mancini and they begin to talk more realistically about making the film (with Dourif still in character). Funny stuff.

Evil Comes in Small Packages Featurette
This is actually a mini-documentary in three parts: “The Birth of Chucky”, “Creating the Horror”, and “Unleashed”. The first part explores the early stages of development, with Don Mancini’s original script having a more anti-consumerism message, only to be re-written by director Tom Holland and John Lafia. Admittedly, Mancini’s original story seems far more interesting and dark, but he seems only slightly bitter that his story was changed so much before they shot the film. We are then treated to a short middle frame covering the creation of Chucky, with some detailed information on the shooting of certain scenes, followed by “Unleashed”, which explores the cultural impact of the film at the time of its release up to today.

Chucky: Building a Nightmare Featurette
This in-depth look into the creation of the Chucky character, from conception through to the final product, is perhaps the best special feature on the disc. It’s amazing to see how Kevin Yagher, 25 years old at the time, was able to come up with the system used to bring Chucky to life, without the help of any computer-generated graphics. Everything was done through robotics and puppetry, including an early version of motion-capture technology to ensure that Chucky’s jaws and mouth moved accordingly when he spoke.

A Monster Convention Featurette
This is a short interview segment from a horror convention where Alex Vincent, Catherine Hicks and Chris Sarandon discuss making Child’s Play. Almost everything said in this segment is a repeat of something that is said in other features on the disc. This really wasn’t necessary.

Introducing Chucky: The Making of Child’s Play Vintage Featurette
This classic making-of featurette from 1988 just goes to show how much more goes into producing these featurettes now that watching a movie on DVD means having to know everything that happened while a film was being made. It’s still an excellent featurette, though, if only for the cheesy voice-over and the hairstyles sported by various crew members on the set. Viva La Mullet!!

Also included are a still photo gallery and the theatrical trailer for Child’s Play. There are also a few easter eggs that aren’t too hard to find (thankfully, as they’re also not that exciting).

It’s difficult to say why Child’s Play is an R-rated film; there have been so many more bloody and violent films that have received a PG-13 rating. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it is truly scary to anyone who’s ever worried about their toys coming to life and wreaking havoc (c’mon, we’ve all entertained the notion at least once, right?….right?). Regardless, this 20th anniversary DVD is the best video transfer of Child’s Play to date and it has more than enough features for fans of the franchise to justify owning another copy of it, especially considering the budget price. A must-own for any self-respecting horror fan.

Movie rating – 3.5

Disc Rating – 3.5