When notorious criminal Charles Lee Ray or ‘Chucky’ (voiced by Brad Dourif) as he likes to be known, needs to get quick escape from the cops, he mumbles some hilarious, devilish dialogue and ports his soul into the nearest thing he can find, in this case, a Gordon Strachnesque doll, named the ‘Good Guy’.
However, Chucky will soon become the property of Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) and he soon sees Andy’s body as a way back for into the real world for his soul and promises to be Andy’s ‘best friend’ while committing numerous murders. Andy soon discovers that ‘Hide The Soul’ won’t be as much fun as he originally thought and that Chucky isn’t a ‘good guy’ after all and pleads with his mother (Catherine Hicks) to contact the local authorities, in the shape of Fright Night’s Chris Sarandon, sadly this falls on deaf ears…but once the adults do accept Andy’s story, as crazy as it sounds, is actually the truth, it could be too late.
The film builds up suspense in the beginning and then takes off once Chucky comes to life, but like many originals, it does take a while to set the scene and it is at least 40 odd minutes before you see Chucky in full flow and let’s be honest, if you are anything like me, the only reason you are watching this is to see a 2ft doll swear and curse like a Docker. However, when Chucky does appear, it plays out like a proper horror movie and certainly keeps your attention and there is a great degree of suspense when waiting for Chucky to appear – which rest assured he does!
This is one of those movies that I grew up with and instead of being scared by it, I simply marvelled at it and could not wait to show my father some select scenes that I found hilarious, regardless of whether I should have been watching them at all – I was only 12 or so when I first saw this. The scenes my poor father had to endure, usually consisted of more often than not, Chucky offing a poor soul with a glib one-liner, followed by a menacing laugh – but in my defence, my old man found them just as funny and still does, we still quote the little man to this day.
This really is an interesting horror movie that broke new ground and was so popular that it was cited as a potential money-spinning franchise, and indeed it spawned several sequels over the years, parts 2 and 3 were pretty good, but what followed after, has been deleted from my memory bank.
However, the future for Chucky looks as bright as his hair as the latest instalment, Curse of Chucky directed by the original director Don Mancini realised the ridiculous direction these sequels were going in and reverted to the formula that made the original so appealing, so much so that a seventh movie is in the pipeline and provided Mr. Mancini is involved, which he is rumoured to be, I will be sure to watch it, after all I’ll be Chucky’s ‘friend to the end’….