Editorials
The Complete Timeline of the ‘Child’s Play’ Franchise
The Child’s Play franchise is an unusual and wonderful creature. In its run, it has boasted directing work from Fright Night’s Tom Holland, Lost’s Jack Bender, and Freddy vs. Jason’s Ronny Yu. It brought us familiar faces like Chris Sarandon, Grace Zabriskie, Jennifer Tilly, John Ritter, and Katherine Heigl.
But there are two names that have identified the series throughout its run: writer (and frequent director) Don Mancini and Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky. As of the release of the forthcoming seventh film here in 2017, the franchise will have stretched over 29 years while still retaining the same lead performer and writer, a feat unmatched in any other slasher franchise.
Because of that, the series retains not only character continuity, but narrative continuity as well. The series paid attention to the little details, and it never rebooted or ret-conned anything out; for better or worse, everything that happened in the Child’s Play franchise STAYED in the Child’s Play franchise.
In celebration of the release of the Cult of Chucky trailer and in anticipation of the release of the film in October, this is a breakdown of the events of the entire Child’s Play franchise. Because some of the films reveal information from previous films or from before the series started, this compiles all the events into chronological order.
Naturally, THERE ARE SPOILERS THROUGHOUT.
UNIDENTIFIED TIME, PRE-1988: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS…
Charles Lee Ray goes to John Bishop, aka Dr. Death, to learn how to be a voodoo practitioner. Charles also somehow manages to get his hands on an amulet called the Heart of Damballa. Eventually, though, Bishop realizes that Charles is only interested in finding a way to cheat death.
During this same time, Charles also becomes known as the Lakeshore Strangler for killing a dozen people, including Vivian Van Pelt, and for committing robberies with his partner Eddie Caputo.
OCTOBER 1988: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS…
Charles becomes friends with the Pierce family: mother Sarah, her husband, her daughter Barb, and her unborn child, Nica. Ray is obsessed with Sarah, eventually murdering her husband in an attempt to get closer to her.
NOVEMBER 1988: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS…
Ray kidnaps Sarah, but she manages to call the police on him. In punishment for betraying him, Ray stabs her in the stomach – not to kill her, but to try and kill her baby, Nica. As Ray tries to escape the police, he flees into a toy store where he is shot and fatally wounded. While lying behind a row of Good Guy dolls, Ray remembers his voodoo teachings and uses the Heart of Damballa to transfer his soul into one of the dolls. The ceremony causes the store to be struck by lightning and explode. Detective Mike Norris finds Ray’s body and thinks he is dead.
The next day, single mother Karen Barclay buys a Good Guy doll (now called Chucky) from a guy on the street and gives it to her son, Andy. Of course, it’s actually Ray, who kills the babysitter. Norris is the detective who investigates the murder. After another person Andy visits ends up dead (this time, it’s John Bishop, Ray’s old voodoo teacher), Andy is put in a psych ward for observation. Meanwhile, Ray learns from Bishop before he dies that he has to transfer his soul into the first person he revealed his true nature to: Andy.
Chucky kills the therapist, then chases Andy back home, where he knocks him out and prepares to swap souls.. but Detective Norris and Karen arrive just in time to stop him. They throw him in the fireplace, then shoot him through the heart. The three of them escape, leaving the charred remains of Chucky behind.
NOVEMBER 1990: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS…
Two years later, the sales of Good Guy dolls have suffered as a result of the coverage of the killings. CEO Chris Sullivan of Play Pals (the company that makes Good Guy dolls) orders the old Chucky doll remade so it can be inspected and proven harmless. But when a man dies of electrocution during the rendering process, the CEO tells an employee to get rid of the doll. The employee puts Chucky in his car, then is tied up and suffocated by Chucky, who uses his car phone to locate Andy.
Andy is in foster care now with parents Phil and Joanna and foster sister Kyle. Chucky makes his way to their house, getting rid of the house doll and putting himself in its place. He tries to start the ritual on Andy, but is thwarted by Kyle’s presence, so he follows Andy to school the next day for another chance. He gets Andy in trouble with the teacher, then later ends up killing the teacher himself.
Phil is killed by Chucky, but Joanne believes it is Andy’s fault, and sends him back to the foster center. Meanwhile, Kyle finds the discarded old house doll and realizes Andy is actually in danger. Upon investigating the house, she finds Joanne dead, and Chucky captures her and tells her to take him to the foster center to get Andy. Chucky kills the foster center manager and tells Andy to take him to the Good Guy factory for the soul transfer. Kyle follows, trying to stop the ceremony. She is too late, and the ceremony is complete; but it doesn’t work because he has been a doll for too long. Now he’s trapped in the body.
Chucky gets mad and tries to kill Andy and Kyle, replacing a lost hand with a knife, but Kyle and Andy use molten plastic and an air hose, exploding him to pieces. They leave the factory with Chucky supposedly dead.
1998…
In Chicago, Play Pals opens their factory back up after eight years, figuring the bad publicity is over. They start manufacturing the Good Guy doll again, and once again they bring Ray back to life as Chucky. Chucky tortures and kills CEO Chris Sullivan, using his office computer to find Andy’s whereabouts.
Meanwhile, Andy is 16 and attending Kent Military Academy. Chucky mails himself to the school, then discovers that he doesn’t need Andy anymore; he can use a new kid, Tyler. However, Andy discovers Chucky is there, and continues to thwart Chucky’s plans, so Chucky tries to kill him. Chucky scares the Colonel to death and kills several others, then switches the blanks out for real bullets during their war games.
Chaos ensues, and Chucky tries to attack Tyler, who escapes the grounds to a nearby carnival. Tyler and Andy team up to defeat Chucky, whose face is scarred and whose limbs are chopped off in the process. Andy and Tyler are safe, and Chucky seems defeated once again.
ONE MONTH LATER, STILL IN 1998…
Tiffany, Charles Lee Ray’s old girlfriend and accomplice, gets her hands on Chucky’s leftover parts and enacts a ritual to bring him back from the dead. He comes back in Chucky form, and she is happy to have him back and wants to marry him due to a confusion about a ring Ray left behind after killing Vivian Van Pelt, which she thought was an engagement ring. He laughs at her mistake, she punishes him, and he ends up killing her and then reviving her as a doll for revenge.
Chucky still wants back in a human body, however, so he decides to take a road trip to New Jersey where his body was buried and get the Heart of Damballa back. They pack themselves up and Tiffany pays neighbor girl Jade to take them there. Jade is avoiding her domineering uncle, and Chucky and Tiffany leave a trail of bodies along the way. Tiffany and Chucky even reignite their relationship and have sex at a wedding chapel hotel. Eventually they reveal themselves to Jade and her boyfriend, holding them hostage, then arrive at the scene of the body.
Digging up Ray’s body, they find the amulet and begin the ceremony. Tiffany has a last-minute change of heart, stabbing Chucky to stop him from transferring their souls into Jade and her boyfriend, and the two of them fight until Chucky deals Tiffany a fatal blow. Jade takes the gun from a police officer and shoots Chucky several times, killing him.
The next morning, the officer is looking at the crime scene and pokes at Tiffany’s body to make sure she is dead. She wakes and screams, then gives birth to some monstrous-looking creature and finally dies. The creature attacks the officer.
2005…
Six years later, we see Glen (or Glenda), the child of Tiffany and Chucky, trapped in a sideshow in the UK and pretending to be a ventriloquist dummy. He dreams of meeting his real parents.
Across the world, in Hollywood, Chucky and Tiffany are lifeless animatronic puppets being used in a film shoot called Chucky Goes Psycho, based on the Charles Lee Ray legend. Glen sees them on TV, believes they’re his parents, and heads to Hollywood. He revives them with the voodoo amulet.
Tiffany and Chucky immediately start looking for bodies to possess, and Tiffany decides on Jennifer Tilly, star of the Chucky movie. But she wants Tilly to have babies for her first, so she knocks Tilly and her lover (Redman, playing himself) unconscious and inseminates Tilly with Chucky’s seed.
A handful of deaths later (including Britney Spears), Tilly is pregnant and ready to give birth, but Tiffany and Chucky are having relationship troubles regarding how to raise Glen/da, who has dual personalities. Tilly gives birth to twins Glen and Glenda, and Tiffany is ready to possess her, but Chucky decides he’s not interested in becoming a person again. They fight, with Tiffany trying to possess Tilly, but Chucky kills her. This enrages Glen/da, who kills Chucky with some assistance from Tilly.
2010…
Tilly is throwing a birthday party for her son Glen. She murders her nanny, and her glowing green eyes reveal that Tiffany DID finish the ritual and has taken over Tilly. Glen opens his last birthday present to find Chucky’ s severed arm inside. It reaches up and grabs his throat, starting to choke him.
2013
Sarah Pierce is living with her daughter Nica in a big, empty house. A package is delivered there, and a Chucky doll is contained inside. Later that night, screams awaken Nica, and she finds her mother’s body, apparently having fallen from the balcony.
Nica’s sister, Barb, comes to the house with her nanny, her husband Ian, their daughter Jill, and a minister. Barb is there to convince Nica to go to a care home since Sarah isn’t alive to care for her anymore. Throughout the night, they discuss the issue, with the group staying for dinner and Barb’s family deciding to stay the night.
Chucky poisons the chili which kills the minister on his drive home. The family watches home movies, and Nica notices a mysterious man watching the family in the background. She asks Barb who it is, but she doesn’t know. While the rest of the family heads to bed, it is revealed that Barb is having an affair with the nanny. Nica does some research about the creepy doll in the house, since it keeps popping up in strange places.
She discovers all the killings connected to the doll (with references to each of the killings from the previous films), and tries to warn Barb, but Barb wants to find the doll because Ian hid a camera on it to catch her cheating on him. She finds Chucky, then notices some make-up on his face. She peels it away to reveal all the scars and cracks from Chucky, confirming he is the real Chucky.
Chucky kills her, attacks Nica, kills Ian, and tries to find Alice, who is gone. Chucky throws Nica off the balcony, and while she lays helpless on the floor, he tells her who he is and how it was him who stabbed Sarah in the belly and damaged Nica… and he was the one who killed Sarah by stabbing her.
Nica fights with Chucky, and just as she almost has him beaten, a police officer shows up. He sees the scene and Nica with a knife.
STILL 2013?
Nica is found guilty of the murders and is sentenced to a hospital for the criminally insane. The cop steals the remains of Chucky from evidence and takes them to his car, only to find that it’s still breathing. Before he can do anything, however, Tiffany/Tilly pops up from the back seat and slashes his throat, then takes Chucky with her.
Tiffany/Tilly mails Chucky out in a box again, and he arrives at Alice’s grandmother’s house. Chucky grabs Alice and begins the incantation as the grandmother pops up from the floor with a bag over her face, still alive.
2014 (probably)…
Grown-up Andy Barclay is on the phone with his mother, talking about coming to see her for his birthday. In the background, a knife pokes up out of a package he received in the mail. Chucky bursts forth from the package to find Andy waiting for him, shotgun pointed at his face. Chucky shouts Andy’s name, and Andy shoots.
2017
Nica is still in a psychiatric facility, working with a therapist who is trying to convince her that Chucky was just part of her imagination. Andy is still alive and still not over the events of his childhood. Chucky is back and ready for killing at the institute, and Tiffany/Tilly is apparently still around…
Is Tiffany/Tilly still helping Chucky? Do Andy and Nica meet? Is there more shared history we don’t know about? How does it all end?
Find out in Cult of Chucky, releasing October 3, 2017!
With there being an overlap between wrestling fans and horror fans, it only made sense for WWE Studios to produce See No Evil. And much like The Rock’s Walking Tall and John Cena’s The Marine, this 2006 slasher was designed to jumpstart a popular wrestler’s crossover career; superstar Glenn “Kane” Jacobs stepped out of the ring and into a run-down hotel packed with easy prey. Director Gregory Dark and writer Dan Madigan delivered what the WWE had hoped to be the beginning of “a villain franchise in the vein of Jason, Freddy and Pinhead.” In hindsight, See No Evil and its unpunctual sequel failed to live up to expectations. Regardless of Jacob Goodnight’s inability to reach the heights of horror’s greatest icons, his films are not without their simple slasher pleasures.
See No Evil (previously titled Goodnight and Eye Scream Man) was a last gasp for a dying trend. After all, the Hollywood resurgence of big-screen slashers was on the decline by the mid-2000s. Even so, that first Jacob Goodnight offering is well aware of its genre surroundings: the squalid setting channels the many torturous playgrounds found in the Saw series and other adjacent splatter pics. Also, Gregory Dark’s first major feature — after mainly delivering erotic thrillers and music videos — borrows the mustardy, filthy and sweaty appearance of Platinum Dunes’ then-current horror output. So, visually speaking, See No Evil fits in quite well with its contemporaries.
Despite its mere setup — young offenders are picked off one by one as they clean up an old hotel — See No Evil is more ambitious than anticipated. Jacob Goodnight is, more or less, another unstoppable killing machine whose traumatic childhood drives him to torment and murder, but there is a process to his mayhem. In a sense, a purpose. Every new number in Goodnight’s body count is part of a survival ritual with no end in sight. A prior and poorly mended cranial injury, courtesy of Steven Vidler’s character, also influences the antagonist’s brutal streak. As with a lot of other films where a killer’s crimes are religious in nature, Goodnight is viscerally concerned with the act of sin and its meaning. And that signature of plucking out victims’ eyes is his way of protecting his soul.
Image: The cast of See No Evil enters the Blackwell Hotel.
Survival is on the mind of just about every character in See No Evil, even before they are thrown into a life-or-death situation. Goodnight is processing his inhumane upbringing in the only way he can, whereas many of his latest victims have committed various crimes in order to get by in life. The details of these offenses, ranging from petty to severe, can be found in the film’s novelization. This more thorough media tie-in, also penned by Madigan, clarified the rap sheets of Christine (Christina Vidal), Kira (Samantha Noble), Michael (Luke Pegler) and their fellow delinquents. Readers are presented a grim history for most everyone, including Vidler’s character, Officer Frank Williams, who lost both an arm and a partner during his first encounter with the God’s Hand Killer all those years ago. The younger cast is most concerned with their immediate wellbeing, but Williams struggles to make peace with past regrets and mistakes.
While the first See No Evil film makes a beeline for its ending, the literary counterpart takes time to flesh out the main characters and expound on scenes (crucial or otherwise). The task requires nearly a third of the book before the inmates and their supervisors even reach the Blackwell Hotel. Yet once they are inside the death trap, the author continues to profile the fodder. Foremost is Christine and Kira’s lock-up romance born out of loyalty and a mutual desire for security against their enemies behind bars. And unlike in the film, their sapphic relationship is confirmed. Meanwhile, Michael’s misogyny and bigotry are unmistakable in the novelization; his racial tension with the story’s one Black character, Tye (Michael J. Pagan), was omitted from the film along with the repeated sexual exploitation of Kira. These written depictions make their on-screen parallels appear relatively upright. That being said, by making certain characters so prickly and repulsive in the novelization, their rare heroic moments have more of an impact.
Madigan’s book offers greater insight into Goodnight’s disturbed mind and harrowing early years. As a boy, his mother regularly doled out barbaric punishments, including pouring boiling water onto his “dangling bits” if he ever “sinned.” The routine maltreatment in which Goodnight endured makes him somewhat sympathetic in the novelization. Also missing from the film is an entire character: a back-alley doctor named Miles Bennell. It was he who patched up Goodnight after Williams’ desperate but well-aimed bullet made contact in the story’s introduction. Over time, this drunkard’s sloppy surgery led to the purulent, maggot-infested head wound that, undoubtedly, impaired the hulking villain’s cognitive functions and fueled his violent delusions.
Image: Dan Madigan’s novelization for See No Evil.
An additional and underlying evil in the novelization, the Blackwell’s original owner, is revealed through random flashbacks. The author described the hotel’s namesake, Langley Blackwell, as a deviant who took sick pleasure in defiling others (personally or vicariously). His vile deeds left a dark stain on the Blackwell, which makes it a perfect home for someone like Jacob Goodnight. This notion is not so apparent in the film, and the tie-in adaptation says it in a roundabout way, but the building is haunted by its past. While literal ghosts do not roam these corridors, Blackwell’s lingering depravity courses through every square inch of this ill-reputed establishment and influences those who stay too long.
The selling point of See No Evil back then was undeniably Kane. However, fans might have been disappointed to see the wrestler in a lurking and taciturn role. The focus on unpleasant, paper-thin “teenagers” probably did not help opinions, either. Nevertheless, the first film is a watchable and, at times, well-made straggler found in the first slasher revival’s death throes. A modest budget made the decent production values possible, and the director’s history with music videos allowed the film a shred of style. For meatier characterization and a harder demonstration of the story’s dog-eat-dog theme, though, the novelization is worth seeking out.
Jen and Sylvia Soska, collectively The Soska Sisters, were put in charge of 2014’s See No Evil 2. This direct continuation arrived just in time for Halloween, which is fitting considering its obvious inspiration. In place of the nearly deserted hospital in Halloween II is an unlucky morgue receiving all the bodies from the Blackwell massacre. Familiar face Danielle Harris played the ostensible final girl, a coroner whose surprise birthday party is crashed by the resurrected God’s Hand Killer. In an effort to deliver uncomplicated thrills, the Soskas toned down the previous film’s heavy mythos and religious trauma, as well as threw in characters worth rooting for. This sequel, while more straightforward than innovative, pulls no punches and even goes out on a dark note.
The chances of seeing another See No Evil with Kane attached are low, especially now with Glenn Jacobs focusing on a political career. Yet there is no telling if Jacob Goodnight is actually gone, or if he is just playing dead.
Image: Katharine Isabelle and Lee Majdouba’s characters don’t notice Kane’s Jacob Goodnight character is behind them in See No Evil 2.
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