Viking Night: Child's Play
By Bruce Hall
October 20, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I haven’t seen Child’s Play since I was in High School. And if you’d asked me yesterday what I thought of it, I’d have told you that it was just another run-of-the-mill entry straight off the ‘80s slasher movie assembly line. I’d have told you that if you had a choice between watching Child’s Play or eating a bowl of your own hair, to flip a coin. But now, I can tell you with complete confidence to go with the best two out of three on the haircut. I’m not calling Child’s Play a classic, because it falls a little short of that. But it is definitely a lot more delightfully bonkers than I remember. And it’s also kind of fun, in the dark, demented way only a movie about a psychotic, bloodthirsty doll can be.
In fact, right off the top I’ll say that while it’s not a bad movie, the place where Child’s Play most drops the ball is the opportunity to go down in history as a legendary work of satire on the level of Robocop, which dropped the previous year. Child's Play revolves around the stab-tastic exploits of a demonically possessed doll named Chucky. He’s part of a fictional line of dolls that are sort of a cross between a Cabbage Patch Kid and a Teddy Ruxpin, both of which caused the aisles of your local Toys-R-Us to run red with the blood of desperate parents back in the 1980s. But instead of taking an obvious shot at the effects of consumer culture on children AND parents, the film takes a more conventional angle that in my mind, weakens it.
But that doesn’t take away from what is a very effective first 45 minutes or so. Not that it’s obvious, at first. Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), Chicago’s notorious “Lakeshore Strangler”, has been cornered in an alley by intrepid, vaguely metrosexual homicide detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon). After being abandoned by his partner, Ray defiantly flees on foot, breaking into a toy store to escape capture. After a brief chase and swearing revenge against his partner, Norris, and the general Great Lakes region, Ray is mortally wounded. Having already emptied all 17 shots from his six shot revolver, Ray dies clutching a doll, muttering a mystic incantation that calls down lightning, exploding the store.
Norris survives with little more than a lightly singed Cardigan and the self-satisfaction that comes with having sent Cook County’s most notorious killer to hell where he belongs.
Or so it seems. Not long after this, the doll is salvaged from the ruins by a street peddler, who sells it to a Karen (Catherine Hicks), a single mother who’s desperately in need of a birthday present for her son, Andy (Alex Vincent). Andy’s favorite television show is based on a line of dolls called “Good Guys.” Each doll is a ghastly animatronic creature that vaguely resembles a little boy, if that little boy had died of a sudden brain embolism and then been immediately dipped in polyurethane. Every Good Guy doll comes with its own name, which it can repeat along with a handful of generically cheerful pre-recorded phrases. It also comes with a a pair of dead, unseeing eyes and a permanent rictus etched on its face.
So of course, Andy loves it. But you can see where this is going. Strange things happen when Karen’s best friend Maggie babysits that night, such as Maggie accidentally getting bashed in the face with a hammer and plunging to her death from the living room window. Hunky detective Norris investigates, and to Karen’s dismay, suspects little Andy as the killer. His skepticism is enhanced when Andy skips school and happens to be on the scene when Charles Lee Ray’s partner is conveniently killed in a spectacular gas explosion the next day. If you ask me, what should be bothering the detective is why the kid was even sent to school at all 24 hours after a dear family friend was brutally murdered outside his bedroom.
But it was the ‘80s. Parenting was different back then. Child’s Play actually IS a run of the mill slasher picture, but the hook is the doll. And the cool thing about the way the plot handles this is that while we all know perfectly well what’s going on, the characters don’t - and the story toys with us by telling the story from their perspective, and the perspective of the doll - without actually SHOWING the doll in action until about halfway through the movie. The result of this is that for about 45 minutes, everyone is ready to believe that poor Andy has gone off his rocker and turned into a six–year-old murder machine.
In fact, at one point, Andy is institutionalized and locked up like a rabid monkey, knowing full well he’s on Chucky’s to-do list. It’s actually kind of sad, and it’s one of the moments in Child’s Play that feels less campy and more like a creepy psychological horror film. It reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll,” starring Telly Savalas as an abusive father who ends up on the wrong end of his daughter’s vengeful doll, Talking Tina. Not that Child’s Play is quite THAT good, but the story’s commitment to narrative subterfuge really makes the first half of the story pop. Come to think of it, despite Chucky’s insolent mugging throughout the last half of the movie, Sarandon and Hicks - both accomplished actors - approach their roles from an entirely dramatic standpoint, which lends the film a bit more weight than it probably deserves.
Karen’s bewilderment over what’s happening to her son is actually kind of palpable, and it’s her dogged insistence on finding the truth that propels the film through the second act. And as Norris transitions from jaded cop to sympathetic bystander to potential murder victim, and Sarandon makes him feel like a professional instead of just another typically moronic horror movie character. For me, a pair of relatively strong leads and the (albeit thin) dramatic undertones make it a pretty engaging experience - for at least part of the film. The last half is a bit more of a conventional slasher picture. That’s okay, because Chucky himself is kind of hilarious, and while the film’s visual effects haven’t aged well, they’re not bad enough to keep me busy looking for strings instead of paying attention to the story.
If you’re interested in horror at all, and you haven’t seen Child’s Play in a while, it’s probably worth revisiting. No, it’s not a classic, and it really does miss an opportunity for some really strong satire. But it’s really not a bad movie, and it’s unexpectedly creepy and effective in ways I wasn’t anticipating. So get a haircut if you need one, but as far as I’m concerned, Child’s Play is pretty well worth your time. But if you really need the protein, have a snack, too. Just do yourself a favor and pour a little milk over it first.