“Sorry Jack, Chucky’s Back”: Child’s Play Returns *UPDATED*

The Child’s Play movies were a big part of my adolescent youth…comically that is. Yes, I’ll admit that I was frightened of the first installment as a little kid, but once I re-watched it during my freshman year of high school I found it, and the sequels to be effing hilarious. After the first one, not only did the kills get more ridiculous (stabbing a lady with an air pump and then finishing her off with a meter stick?), but also, our old pal Chucky had a tendency to yell. He yelled when he was pissed. He yelled when killing people. He even yelled while chasing people.

Chucky is a great horror movie icon, probably one of my favorites. He is just a little discredited because his nemesis in the first two movies was an eight year old kid who defeated him…twice. Bad form Chuck.

With the often rumored reboot of the franchise finally getting underway (according to Movie Web), I’m hoping we get something that reinvents the killer doll as the genuine scary threat he was in the first Child’s Play…when I was 7.

The reboot is off to a great start casting the only man to have voiced Chucky in all five of the previous movies; Brad Dourif. I can’t imagine there being anyone else out there who could voice the baddest “Good Guy” around. Dourif has that creepy and harsh quality to his voice that made him great as a serial killer who continues to murder even after his body is transferred into a doll. And who could still turn on his friendly voice when manipulating a kid into thinking he’s his friend till the end… you know, until he tries to steal the kid’s soul.

Another promising tidbit coming from the script writer Don Mancini is that the reboot will have a darker tone and less comedic elements which suits me just fine. As the Child’s Play movies went on it seemed like each sequel insisted on adding little spots of Chucky doing something funny. For crying out loud, he smoked pot in The Bride of Chucky! It became progressively worse and by the time the final installment Seed of Chucky was released I couldn’t take it anymore. So here’s to a clean slate on the Child’s Play franchise as it moves into production this fall!