Bonus points if the dolls in question are of a size to do some real damage.

NECA‘s 1:1 life-size replica of the robot doll from the hit film M3GAN serves as a good example of life-sized dolls that unleash serious punishment. The Model 3 Generative Android (M3GAN) was designed to be a parent’s greatest ally and programmed to be a child’s best friend…but, well, the sassy robot comes with her own host of sinister problems.

Whether scaring your friends and family or serving as a good horror marathon companion, here’s a handy list of killer doll horror movies that M3GAN and life-sized killer dolls like her would approve of watching this Halloween season.

M3GAN 

M3GAN reunited producer James Wan and screenwriter Akela Cooper, responsible for 2021’s highly entertaining Malignant, and put Housebound’s Gerard Johnstone at the helm. It resulted in a murderous killer doll with style and dance moves, ensuring the year kicked off with a meme-able horror comedy that had everyone talking. This pick is for those looking to catch up on 2023 horror offerings and those looking to prepare for the Halloween season; the fashionable doll will surely dominate the costumes this year.

Magic 

The ventriloquist dummy at the center of this horror film, Fats, was so creepy that the TV spots had to be taken off the air during the promotion of Magic. The 30-second ad featuring Fats was enough to cause nightmares in children, scarring some for life. Who can blame them? Ventriloquist dummies are a particular brand of horror on their own, but one as menacing as Fats? That he resembles his human counterpart, Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins, who also voices Fats), probably doesn’t help either. Ventriloquists and their dummies have nightmarish co-dependency issues in horror, which drives this fantastic psychological horror feature from director Richard Attenborough and writer William Goldman.

Dolly Dearest

Following in the tiny footsteps of Chucky, this early ’90s killer doll flick saw a family uproot to Mexico after dad acquires ownership of a doll factory. He doesn’t know that a nearby tomb has been disturbed, letting the malevolent spirit of Sanzia loose. It just so happens to take root in the dolls, with which the factory owner’s daughter becomes obsessed. If you were to apply the zany antics of Cathy’s Curse to Child’s Play‘s general setup, you have Dolly Dearest. It brings the B-movie mayhem and stars Denise Crosby (Pet Sematary), Lupe Ontiveros, and Rip Torn.

Dead Silence 

A young widower heads home for answers regarding his wife’s murder, which may be linked to the restless spirit of a ventriloquist. While Mary Shaw had many dolls, ventriloquist dummy Billy was by far her favorite. Billy cut out Jamie’s wife’s tongue in the opening sequence, and it was Billy that haunted him more frequently than any other puppet. Before Annabelle’s first appearance in The Conjuring, James Wan practiced scaring audiences with Billy. The vengeful ghost of Mary Shaw might be just as spooky. Dead Silence features Billy the most, but the glimpse of Mary Shaw’s vast collection makes you wish this one received a sequel.

Curse of Chucky

Whether it’s to get into the spooky season spirit or brush up on Child’s Play franchise lore, it’s a great time to watch this fantastic reboot entry. In Curse of Chucky, the doll gets a makeover and mysteriously shows up at the house of paraplegic Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif). Only in the third act are ties to the previous installments revealed. The introduction to franchise mainstay Nica and a reinvigorated commitment to scares make this franchise sequel stand out. Also look for Carrie‘s Summer H. Howell in her first on-screen role.

Annabelle Comes Home

The third entry in the Annabelle spinoff series feels like a spooky trip through a carnival haunted house. Mckenna Grace stars as young Judith Warren, who’s in for a night of terror when her parents leave her alone with the babysitter. The babysitter’s pal accidentally unleashes Annabelle, who in turn wakes up all the other Warren artifacts, forcing the girls to fight for their lives. It’s a funhouse of horrors that lets all sorts of spirits get in on the horror, but the doll is the mastermind.

You can bring M3GAN home now, if you dare.

The post From ‘M3GAN’ to ‘Magic’: 6 Killer Doll Horror Movies That Will Haunt Your Halloween appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Every day across social media the online film community seems to litigate “the state” of Hollywood.

Superhero fatigue. Franchise fatigue. You know the discourse. Personally, I take as much of a nonchalant attitude with all this stuff as I can. I have my peccadillos. I have my areas of agreement regarding “the state” of Hollywood. But at the end of the day I’m just…a dude. A dude who just wants to watch movies and hopefully have as good a time as I can doing it. All of the fracas regarding the industry is, at the end of the day, mostly noise to me.

If a movie looks good, I’ll see it. That goes for Superhero Movie #852 or the latest under the radar indie gaining buzz.

So what does all of this waffle have to do with Curse of Chucky? Well, relatively speaking, I consider Curse one of the most successful franchise reboots we’ve gotten since the trend kicked off in earnest all the back in 2005 with Batman Begins.

Yes, I’m serious.

After almost a decade off screen, our favorite ginger-haired killer doll came back with the 6th installment in the Child’s Play series after the critical and commercial failure of Seed of Chucky. Franchise creator and steward Don Mancini stands by Seed, and since its release it has gained more appreciation over the years for its daffy, dark, and whacked out satirical looniness. It was clear, however, that Curse would be the first movie in the franchise to go straight-to-video/VOD, and the history of horror franchises that once occupied theaters being relegated to straight-to-video carries with it a certain stigma of cheapness and cynicism. Going from the big screen to the small screen is a sure sign that your franchise has officially run out of gas.

Then something unexpected happened. Curse of Chucky started getting good buzz after its Fantasia Fest premiere. It was largely hailed as a return to form, an unexpectedly confident and clever comeback from a once-popular horror franchise everyone had put in the rearview.

Like many successful reboots of the past 15 years, Curse took a drastically different approach with its tone, with Mancini stripping the story down to a cast of core characters, one location, and an emphasis on making Chucky sinister again.

Working with a lower budget and short shooting schedule, Curse of Chucky is crafted as a Gothic horror. There are clear Dario Argento-esque influences on display here in regards to camera work and lighting. This is a well shot, stylish film and despite some rough around the edges effects work, it could have easily been released in theaters.

But how does Curse of Chucky go about rebooting the franchise? Well, by continuing the franchise.

Nica (Fiona Dourif) is a paraplegic young woman who lives with her mother Sarah (Chantal Quesnelle) in a sprawling, secluded house. One day they receive a package containing a Good Guy Doll. Not knowing who sent it or why, Nica decides to give it to her niece Alice (Summer Howell) as a gift. That night Nica discovers Sarah dead from an apparent suicide.

But we know it wasn’t a suicide.

Nica’s sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti), niece Alice, husband Ian (Brennan Elliott), nanny Jill (Maitland McConnell), and local priest and family friend Father Frank (A Martinez) arrive for the funeral and to support Nica.

Soon family drama, old resentments, secrets, and bodies all start to pile up as Chucky’s beef with this family is revealed.

Mancini makes a bold move in keeping Chucky silent and his movement off-camera for half the film. We mostly see him playing the ‘Toy Story’ game as he enacts his sinister plan. We know it’s Chucky. We know he’s alive. Keeping the audience so far ahead of the characters in a story can knee-cap a film before it even takes off, but the rub here is waiting for the why.

Fiona Dourif as Nica is an instantly likable and easy to root for protagonist and the family drama that unravels throughout the film is filled with Mancini’s darkly humorous touch. The cliche of “is dad sleeping with the nanny?” is subverted with a smirk and characters you may expect to hate end up actually having a bit more dimension to them.

Who really fares best here is Chucky as a character. Fans often gripe about the rough around the edges design and effects work in Curse not being near on par with the theatrically released films. He’s less expressive and has a far more plastic sheen to him than the earlier films. The animatronic work is just a bit more basic, but it’s still recognizable as Chucky and it’s still good work for a direct-to-video/VOD film.

The character himself gets back to his darker roots as a plotting and scheming villain who relishes in the pain – both mental and physical, that he imparts on his victims. Brad Dourif hasn’t lost a thing since he began playing the character since the original film, and for my money Curse is probably the most genuinely scary Chucky has been since Child’s Play 2.

Despite the film being largely well received, it does irk some fans who feel Chucky’s motivation in the film is lackluster and commits the sin of adding backstory where none is needed.

It’s revealed through flashback that before his death, Chucky befriended Nica’s mother while Nica was in the womb. He develops an obsession with Sarah, kills her husband and kidnaps her, expressing a desire to become a family. The police find his hideout. Assuming Sarah somehow tipped the cops off, Chucky stabs Sarah in the stomach (which causes Nica’s paralysis) and flees. He’s chased to the toy store and gunned down on that fateful night in the 80s.

On one hand I understand this new exposition dump being hard to swallow for some. This is a significant retcon for the series as a whole, but it’s not entirely out of the realm of verisimilitude in my opinion, as one of the more interesting quirks of Chucky as a slasher icon is that he had a whole life before he possessed the Good Guy Doll. He was out and about with his own history as a flesh and blood serial killer well before his second life as a murderous toy, leaving his past a bit more open for exploring in ways that don’t feel hacky or reaching.

The delivery of this exposition is a bit undercooked, however. Perhaps if Mancini teased it out a bit more throughout the narrative it would have landed better, or even if he dedicated a bit more screen time to the flashback- but as it stands it’s an admirable, if somewhat sloppy, new wrinkle in Chucky’s story that injected new potential moving forward.

That potential is what resurrected the franchise and is what should be applauded. Of all the slashers that carved up the 80s, it’s rather surprising and delightful that Chucky is the only one with a continued, unbroken narrative going strong today.

Jason was rebooted in 2009 and has been stuck in movie purgatory ever since due to labyrinthian legal issues, among other things. Time will tell if the announced Crystal Lake series from Bryan Fuller comes to fruition.

Freddy has also been stuck in dreamland since his remake in 2010 put audiences to sleep.

I don’t think I need to explain to anyone reading this just how wild the branching timeline of the Halloween franchise is.

But Chucky? Not even his remake was enough to put a stop to his primary timeline. His story is ONE story, still going strong well into 2023. In fact, the third season of his awesome TV series for USA and SYFY – simply titled “Chucky” – just premiered this week.

2023 appears to be a good year for old Chucky. A third season of TV, the 10th anniversary milestone of the film that injected new blood into his fading franchise, and the 35th anniversary of the original Child’s Play. To quote the doll himself, I guess he’s our friend ‘till the end.

The post ‘Curse of Chucky’ – Celebrating the Unlikely Franchise Revival Ten Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Is Curse the greatest direct-to-video sequel of all time? That’s a question for the Halloweenies to answer — and they do. Elsewhere, they also discuss Mancini’s direction, Chucky’s new face, the leading chops of Fiona Dourif, Universal 1440 Entertainment, the glory of Winnipeg, all of those great graphics, and more.

Stream the episode below or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. New to the Halloweenies? Catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, and The Evil Dead.

You can also become a member of their Patreon, The Rewind, for hilariously irreverent commentaries (e.g. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Gremlins, The Blob), one-off deep dives on your favorite rentals (e.g. Saw, The Conjuring, The Changeling), and even topical spinoffs like their recent Fortune & Glory: An Indiana Jones Podcast.

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The post ‘Curse of Chucky’ Is the Best Direct-to-Video Horror Sequel to Date [Halloweenies Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This week’s streaming picks belong to the killer doll subgenre. These pint-sized homicidal maniacs deliver plenty of scares, heart, humor, and occasionally a great fashion sense.

As always, here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Asylum – Fandor, freevee, Plex, Pluto TV, Roku Channel, SCREAMBOX, Shout TV, Tubi

This Amicus Production feature sets its wraparound in an asylum, where a doctor arrives for a job interview. His interviewer subjects him to an unorthodox interview process, which entails four tales of terror. The final segment before the epilogue, “Mannikins of Horror,” introduces a mad scientist type in Dr. Byron, who reveals his experimentations in transferring the human spirit into tiny automaton dolls. The reign of doll terror spills over into the wraparound, with the creepy human-like mannequin getting murderous and sparking a grim finale.

Curse of Chucky – Starz

With the Halloween season looming on the immediate horizon, surely that means a new season of “Chucky” is also around the corner. Or perhaps that’s wishful thinking. Whether it’s to get into the spooky season spirit or brush up on Child’s Play franchise lore, it’s a great time to watch this fantastic entry. In Curse of Chucky, the doll gets a makeover and mysteriously shows up at the house of paraplegic Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif). Only in the third act are ties to the previous installments revealed. The introduction to franchise mainstay Nica and a reinvigorating commitment to scares make this tonal reboot sequel stand out.

Dolls – Pluto TV, Tubi

“Toys are very loyal, and that’s a fact.” From the perspective of little Judy, a sweet little girl with a love of toys, the Gothic mansion belonging to Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke is a dream come true. Not only are they far kinder than her father and stepmother, but the estate is filled with dolls, puppets, and toys. However, if you’re a jerk adult, the mansion is a death trap. While this Stuart Gordon-directed fairy tale draws clear lines between the innocent and the morally corrupt deserving of their fate, it’s still really creepy to see them meet their doom at the hands of the dolls. Even creepier is what happens to them after the dolls attack.

M3GAN – Prime Video

M3GAN reunited producer James Wan and screenwriter Akela Cooper, responsible for 2021’s highly entertaining Malignant, and put Housebound’s Gerard Johnstone at the helm. It resulted in a murderous killer doll with style and dance moves, ensuring the year kicked off with a meme-able horror comedy that had everyone talking. This pick is for those looking to catch up on 2023 horror offerings and those looking to prepare for the Halloween season; the fashionable doll will surely dominate the costumes this year.

Magic – AMC+, Crackle, freevee, Kanopy, Peacock, SCREAMBOX, Shudder, Tubi

The ventriloquist dummy at the center of this horror film, Fats, was so creepy that the TV spots had to be taken off the air during the promotion of Magic. The 30-second ad featuring Fats was enough to cause nightmares in children, scarring some for life. Who can blame them? Ventriloquist dummies are a particular brand of horror on their own, but one as menacing as Fats? That he resembles his human counterpart, Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins, who also voices Fats), probably doesn’t help either. Ventriloquists and their dummies have nightmarish co-dependency issues in horror, which drives this fantastic psychological horror feature from director Richard Attenborough and writer William Goldman.

The post Five Killer Doll Horror Movies to Stream This Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, and Cult of Chucky are all coming to 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on July 25, Scream Factory has announced this morning.

You can pre-order all four movies today, individually or bundled together.

In Bride of Chucky (1998), “Chucky, the doll possessed by a serial killer, discovers the perfect mate to kill and revive into the body of another doll. Tiffany is born.”

And then in Seed of Chucky (2004), “Chucky and Tiffany are resurrected by their child and hit Hollywood, where a movie depicting the killer dolls’ murder spree is underway.”

Later in Curse of Chucky (2013), “After her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that Chucky may be the key to recent bloodshed and chaos.”

And finally in Cult of Chucky (2017), “Chucky returns to terrorize Nica. Meanwhile, the killer doll has some scores to settle with his old enemies, with the help of his former wife.”

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September has been a very busy month for us Horror Queers! First, we took a trip to Poland to analyze the trans allegory in the mermaid horror musical The Lure before heading back into the twisted mind of Clive Barker to discuss his infamous directorial debut, Hellraiser. Last week, we’re doing a deep dive into Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 classic Suspiria but now we’ve got the episode to end all episodes as we do a deep dive into the Chucky franchise with the creator himself: Don Mancini!

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 197: A Chucky Extravaganza! feat. Don Mancini

Sorry, Jack…Chucky’s back! With the second season of Chucky premiering on SyFy next week, we thought we’d take a look back at the franchise that spawned the successful television series. And who better to walk us through memory lane than the creator of the franchise himself: Don Mancini!

Join us as we do a deep dive into the franchise with Mancini (specifically the entries from Bride of Chucky and onward), covering all manner of topics like, oh, we don’t know, turning one of the biggest horror franchises into a super queer empowerment story?

We discuss things like “too much Jennifer Tilly” (what?!), the return of Glen/Glenda (and why they’ve been absent from the franchise for almost 20 years), retcons, Britney Spears, Katherine Heigl and how Hannibal paved the way for the Chucky series. Not watching Chucky? Chucky says “move your ass” and hop to it!

Cross out our Chucky Extravaganza!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re heading back into erotic thriller territory with a look at Paul Verhoeven’s controversial hit Basic Instinct. Is it biphobic? Is it misogynistic? We shall discuss!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 200 hours of additional content! This month, we’ve got episodes on the film adaptation of My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Disney’s legacy sequel Hocus Pocus 2, Hulu’s Hellraiser reboot, the final(?) entry in David Gordon Green’s Halloween series Halloween Ends, and an audio commentary on Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, just in time for its 20th anniversary!

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Honeydew also marks the lead acting debut for Sawyer Spielberg, son of filmmaker Steven Spielberg. He plays Sam, one half of the central couple, alongside Malin Barr as Rylie. But Spielberg’s appearance isn’t the only casting surprise within this idiosyncratic mood piece. As the madness reaches a shocking fever pitch, an unexpected cameo sends the chaos into overdrive.

Cameos serve many purposes. Some are meant simply as a wry wink to the audience or to catch viewers off guard, and others, it’s merely an actor having fun. Then there’s the cameo that enriches the worldbuilding, narrative, or tone with just a brief appearance. It’s the latter for Honeydew, whose late-game cameo only bolsters the peculiar sense of humor at play.

Honeydew released this week on VOD, Digital HD and DVD. In celebration, we look back at ten of horror’s most unexpected cameos.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein – Vincent Price

In the first of several horror-comedies that featured the comedic duo taking on Universal Classic Monsters, Abbott and Costello got caught up in a battle between Dracula and the Wolfman. The former of which saw to revive Frankenstein’s monster to then wield as a weapon. The match ends with all monsters perished and the plucky humans leaving the island in a boat. Except, the boat isn’t as empty as it appears. Abbott and Costello dive into the water and swim away as soon as the Invisible Man makes his presence known. The Invisible Man is heard, not seen, and is played by one of the most iconic horror actors of all time- an uncredited Vincent Price. Leave it to Price to leave a lasting impression based on audio alone.

Guardians of the Galaxy – Lloyd Kaufman

James Gunn’s Marvel film isn’t a horror movie by any stretch, but the filmmaker does harken back to his Troma horror roots with a surprise cameo. Gunn has often credited the Troma founder for launching his career, even co-writing Kaufman’s biography. Kaufman is no stranger to the cameo appearance and has even popped up in previous Gunn efforts like Slither. But no one expected him to pop up in a big budget MCU feature. Look for Kaufman in the chaotic prison sequence.

Darkman – Bruce Campbell

Much like Gunn and Kaufman, it’s now expected that any Sam Raimi-directed effort will likely come with a Bruce Campbell cameo. That wasn’t always a forgone conclusion, however. Especially not at the beginning of Raimi’s foray outside of the horror genre. While Raimi heavily paid homage to Universal horror, Darkman is essentially a dark superhero film starring Liam Neeson as a disfigured scientist with a talent for disguises. Initially, Campbell was set to play the character, but the studio balked at the idea. All of which to say that no one expected Campbell to appear. Raimi snuck him in anyway as the final disguise, as Darkman loses himself in the crowd.

Trick or Treat – Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne

This satanic panic heavy metal horror film revolved around a teen outcast haunted by his fallen rock hero. The metal rocker made a deal with the devil and aimed to make his way back to the land of the living on Halloween night, courtesy of a possessed record. Kiss co-founder Gene Simmons makes a brief cameo as the radio DJ responsible for lending the teen the record in the first place. Ozzy Osbourne’s cameo offers the bigger surprise as his TV evangelist rages against heavy metal. Look for his character to pop up again in a post-credit scene.

Sleepwalkers – Clive Barker, Joe Dante, John Landis, Tobe Hooper

Horror directors often cameo in their films as a fun in-joke to fans. John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and M. Night Shyamalan among them. Mick Garris decided to up the ante with his adaptation of Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers, a wild shapeshifting vampire story. Instead of putting himself on screen, Garris enlisted four horror masters and featured them nearly all at once. Look for Tobe Hooper and Clive Barker in a crime scene that places focus on an overzealous character played by Stephen King. Then look for Joe Dante and John Landis to appear at the police station.

Jason X – David Cronenberg

Did any have “Horror master David Cronenberg gets slaughtered” on their Bingo Card for the tenth entry in this popular franchise? A sequel that sends its horror icon into space, no less. Thanks to the cameo-heavy Freddy’s Dead and the shocking opening kill in Scream, surprising audiences with a celebrity cameo became a lot trickier. Yet Cronenberg pulled it off, demonstrating a flair for camp in his opening sequence death at Jason Voorhees’ hands.

Curse of Chucky – Andy Barclay

Sometimes a cameo is a character callback, rather than stunt casting. Guided by Don Mancini, the Chucky series continues to evolve in surprising ways after leaving protagonist Andy Barclay behind after Child’s Play 3. By the sixth entry, the killer doll seemed to have forgotten his former nemesis thanks to his own family drama. He then moved past that for what appeared to be a soft reboot of sorts. In Curse of Chucky, the doll gets a makeover and mysteriously shows up at the house of paraplegic Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif). It’s only in the third act that ties to the previous installments are revealed. Then, in a post-credit scene, Chucky surprises us all with a visit to his original enemy, Andy Barclay, played by original actor Alex Vincent. This unexpected reunion delivered a massive jolt of excitement.

Sleepy Hollow – Christopher Walken

Between the initial trailers and familiarity with the classic Washington Irving short story, no one expected Tim Burton would give his headless horseman a head. Or rather, no one expected that the head would be in the form of a recognizable and well-regarded actor. Throughout the film, the Headless Horseman is played by Ray Park. It’s only in the climax, where the villain reconnects with his long-lost head, that we finally see Walken, complete with sharp teeth and icy eyes. His portrayal is now widely known, but at the time, this uncredited cameo made for a more shocking finale.

Zombieland – Bill Murray

During the zombie apocalypse, the makeshift family of four makes their way to actor Bill Murray’s mansion. They split up in pairs to explore and run amok. One pair encounters the still alive Murray, who dons a zombie disguise to stay safe. Murray’s tasked with playing a prank, but it ends badly when a scared Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) shoots the actor, not realizing until far too late his error. Murray’s extended cameo takes a meta approach to enhance the comedy of his over-the-top death. It proved such a hit with viewers that Murray cameoed as himself again for the sequel.

Cabin in the Woods – Sigourney Weaver 

An underground lab orchestrates an elaborate sacrificial ritual that sees five unsuspecting victims select the monstrous means by which they’re to die. It eventually gets revealed that the sacrifice appeases Ancient Ones and wards off the apocalypse. However, the lab engineers lose control of their sacrificial lambs quickly, but they don’t realize it until they get a call from The Director. When all hell breaks loose at the facility, the Director appears to make one final attempt to course correct. That cameo is played by Ripley herself, Sigourney Weaver. How do you catch viewers off guard after throwing in an onslaught of monsters? With a commanding appearance by Weaver, of course.

Discover Honeydew‘s cameo now on VOD, Digital HD and DVD!

The post ‘Honeydew’ and 10 of Horror’s Most Unexpected Cameos! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Mancini said in a statement to SYFY, “As a tasty aperitif in anticipation of Chucky’s upcoming savory 8-course SYFY/USA TV series, we’re super-excited to announce that fans will be able to experience Chucky’s entire 7-film (and counting!), 33-year (and counting!) legacy in a single marathon event of pure terror on April 1 on SYFY! Nothing foolish about that!”

The marathon kicks off at 7am EST on April 1, and SYFY breaks down the full schedule today:

• 7:00 a.m. EST — Child’s Play (1988)
• 8:58 a.m. EST — Child’s Play 2 (1990)
• 10:57 a.m. EST — Child’s Play 3 (1991)
• 1:00 p.m. EST — Bride of Chucky (1998)
• 3:02 p.m. EST — Seed of Chucky (2004)
• 5:00 p.m. EST — Curse of Chucky (2013)
• 7:00 p.m. EST — Cult of Chucky (2017)
• 9:00 p.m. EST — Child’s Play (1988)
• 11:00 p.m. EST — Child’s Play 2 (1990)
• 12:59 a.m. EST —  Child’s Play 3 (1991)
• 3:01 a.m. EST — Bride of Chucky (1998)

SYFY’s website also notes, “Curse of Chucky and Bride of Chucky will also re-air the following afternoon (Friday, April 2) at 12:30 p.m. EST and 2:33 p.m. EST, respectively.”

The post SYFY Airing a ‘Child’s Play’ Marathon on April 1st Including Every Movie from the Original to ‘Cult of Chucky’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That shy babysitter Laurie Strode inspired a rise of final girls in her wake following the release of Halloween. No one would’ve thought that Ash Williams would’ve been the last man standing at the outset of The Evil Dead. And then there are the unique heroes that have disadvantages before the horror even sets in, heroes like the pregnant police officer and a partially blind man who wakes up confused in an ambulance in Deadsight.

In the film, the unlikely pair find themselves needing to work together to survive and escape Grey Country, site of a deadly virus spreading at a rapid rate. RLJE’s Deadsight is now on DVD, VOD, and Digital HD. For the release, we look back at some of horror’s most unique heroes.

Regan Abbott – A Quiet Place

Thanks to extraterrestrial creatures with hypersensitive hearing and protective armor that makes them near impossible to kill, most of the Earth’s human and animal population has been wiped out. The Abbott family have set up an intricate, silent way of living to survive in this new, dangerous world. After a tragic accident that leaves eldest sister wracked with guilt, and her father’s consistent desire to tinker with her cochlear implant to restore her hearing, her deafness makes her feel like an unwanted outcast. Yet, it proves to be the very thing that could save them all.

Susy Hendrix – Wait Until Dark

A recent car accident left Susy Hendrix blind. That major life adjustment would be enough for anyone to deal with, but Susy’s troubles are exacerbated by a trio of criminals that believe their stash of heroin, hidden in a doll, is in her home. First, they con their way into her home, but when their ruse doesn’t work, they get violent. Susy is forced to rely on her wits and level the playing field if she hopes to escape with her life. This tense thriller based on a play earned Audrey Hepburn an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress as Susy.

Marty Coslaw – Silver Bullet

Dealing with a vicious werewolf is daunting for anyone, let alone a young paraplegic boy named Marty Coslaw. His rural town of Tarker’s Mills, Maine, is dealing with a string of violent murders. No one knows who is behind it until Marty sneaks out one night in his custom-built motorized wheelchair, the Silver Bullet, to play with fireworks. He uses those fireworks to fend off a surprise attack by the werewolf, which leaves the werewolf wanting revenge. It’s up to Marty and his terrified older sister to save his town. Most people don’t survive an encounter with a werewolf. Marty survives two.

Nica Pierce – Curse of Chucky

Like Marty, Nica is a wheelchair-bound paraplegic. Following the mysterious delivery of a certain Good Guy doll, Nica’s family begin dying all around her. No one should be surprised that it’s Chucky, but getting to the bottom of why he’s targeted her family is a whole new mystery. That Nica isn’t nearly as mobile as her family members creates a new level of suspense, but it also gives her some unexpected advantages in warding off his attacks. Nica makes for an unexpected but welcome addition to the Chucky franchise.

Kazan – Cube

Six strangers wake up in a mysterious cube shaped labyrinth rigged with deadly traps. The strangers soon learn that each member brings a unique talent or skill to the mix, and they realize the best way to survive is to work together. The true MVP of the group, though, is Kazan, an autistic savant with an uncanny talent for math and prime number factorizations. Granted, he spends most of the film as an underdog with many of his companions feeling as though he’s more of a burden. It turns out to be furthest from the truth; the gentle Kazan has the skill they need to navigate their way out of there.

Ambrose McKinley – Late Phases

Ambrose is a Vietnam War veteran who is fiercely independent. He’s less than amused when his son checks him into a retirement community. Ambrose is also blind. Members of the community begin disappearing, and on the night of a full moon Ambrose hears a commotion next door. It’s his neighbor under siege by a werewolf, setting Ambrose and the werewolf on the path for an ultimate showdown. Ambrose’s training and very keen hearing are major assets in his ongoing fight with the werewolf. Even when no one else believes him, Ambrose’s fearlessness and determination save the day.

Maddie Young – Hush

Maddie is a writer who lives in alone in a rural, wooded home. She’s close with her neighbors, and keeps in touch with her family via internet, but she mostly lives a solitary life. Maddie has been deaf and mute since 13, thanks to bacterial meningitis and a corrective surgery gone wrong. When a masked killer shows up at her door and realizes she’s deaf-mute, he thinks he’s got an easy target. He couldn’t be more wrong. Maddie is one tough cookie, but more than that? She’s extremely intelligent, and her writing actually gives her a leg up in foreseeing various outcomes. That masked killer came to rue the day he targeted Maddie.

Malorie Hayes – Bird Box

Based on Josh Malerman’s novel of the same name, Bird Box sees a world plummeted into post-apocalyptic chaos when an unseen foe drives anyone who sees it to suicide. For Malorie and her two children, this means trying to survive a dangerous world and seek a safe haven, all while blindfolded to avoid laying eyes on the creature that instills madness in its beholder. Malorie’s fierce determination to survive and protect her young gives her an advantage, and she’s the protagonist with which we spend most of the journey. But the reality is that blindness is the true hero of this story. It’s blindness that lets our heroes survive, but more importantly- it’s a (spoiler) school for the blind that provides the last safe haven from the nightmarish world outside.

RLJE’s Deadsight is now on DVD, VOD, and Digital HD.

The post Celebrating 8 Unique Heroes in Horror Ahead of ‘Deadsight’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In Scream 4, Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby rattles off fifteen different modern movies in response to Ghostface’s question regarding “the remake of the groundbreaking horror movie in which the vill…”  She cuts him off to answer, and this particular back-and-forth is likely a favorite moment for anyone who enjoyed the film; it shows how savvy Kirby is as well as allowing Craven and co. to add another dose of meta-commentary about the glut of horror remakes we’ve been subjected to in the last decade-and-a-half. They’re so common now, that it almost feels as if every horror property has been drained dry enough that studios are now finding new ways to remake, reboot, reimagine, refresh, and revive horror. I’m not saying it’s a problem. The more the merrier, especially when they’re good!

We do, however, have a bit of a problem when it comes to how we define or categorize these movies. “Sequel” obviously doesn’t quite do the trick, but lately “remake”, “reboot”, and “reimagining” are also becoming problematic phrases. We simply can’t seem to agree, can we?

I suggest we do a bit of our own reimagining when it comes to horror nomenclature. I offer four unique and identifiable types of horror movie refresh categories: REMAKE, REBOOT, LEGACYQUEL and RE-SEQUEL. Before I tackle them, I want to situate my argument as a locus for discourse rather than an all-out diatribe. These terms are in flux, and it should be fun to try to discuss ways these movies land within a category.

REMAKE

It’s the most obvious of our terms, and certainly the version that’s been around longest. Films of every genre have been remade starting with 1903’s The Great Train Robbery. A remake takes an existing film that deserves a second crack, a new audience, or a combination of both and presents a modern retelling of the primary film. The easiest of these to argue for are American remakes of foreign films. J-Horror pictures like The Ring and The Grudge are the most financially successful of their genre, but films such as Let Me In, Silent House, and Quarantine also received a red, white, and blue coat of paint to varying degrees of success.

But the 2000s were a hotbed for homegrown horror remakes. Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Amityville Horror, Last House on the Left, My Bloody Valentine, When A Stranger Calls, Prom Night, Black Christmas, House of Wax, The Fog, and Piranha are all straight-up remakes. Each of these movies features relatively similar plot and characters, and gives them a modern polish with an occasional injection of contemporary themes. All but two of these films prompted a direct sequel.

Perhaps the strangest of all is the 1998, Gus Van Sant directed shot-for-unnecessary-shot remake of Psycho. The director called it “an experiment,” but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who finds the results in the least bit interesting. The original is a near-perfect horror classic, and Van Sant’s Psycho is perhaps the poster child for unnecessary remakes.

REBOOT

You might have noticed a few big-name franchises absent from the remakes category above. This is no accident. Rather, I find that a second appropriate category is the franchise “reboot.”

Batman Begins is hardly a horror movie. (Though the entire theme of the film is “fear”—perhaps the center of the Batman/horror venn diagram is bigger than most people assume.) It does, however, establish the parameters for a proper reboot. A reboot effectively pulls the plug on an existing franchise, uses the same machinery (characters, settings, themes) and resets the canonical timeline. The intention of a reboot is to set a franchise on a different, alternate path, in hopes to re-energize a fanbase and create more sequels. I remember advertisements for Batman Begins that were intentionally vague about the film being a remake. In fact, I believe that if audiences thought Begins was a prequel to the 1989 Batman, Warner Brothers was more than comfortable with that misconception. As it turns out, the film rebooted Batman to extreme financial and critical acclaim, and it spawned one of the most beloved sequels of all time.

2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre actually did it first. The plot follows a similar trajectory to the original film in the way a traditional remake does, but TCM was always intended to give the franchise a new beginning (not to be confused with Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a prequel to the 2003 film.) The TCM franchise is a bit of an anomaly that includes three sequels, two prequels, a reboot, and a film we’ll talk about later in this article. The 2003 film didn’t birth several sequels, but for its efforts, it’s absolutely a reboot.

In 2007, Rob Zombie’s polarizing Halloween was frequently referred to as a “reimagining” of John Carpenter’s original vision, most likely as a result of remake fatigue. By all means, however, it’s a reboot. Zombie has stated that he envisions his film in three acts; the first being Young Michael Myers’s backstory, the second being his time at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, and the third seeing his return to Haddonfield—during which we witness a consolidated version of the original film. Zombie’s new Halloween, complete with the filmmaker’s occasionally extreme idiosyncrasies, is a unique take on the remake formula. More specifically, though, his film received a sequel, and even warranted talks of an unmade third installment, positioning 2007’s Halloween as a reboot.

Two other movies fit squarely in this category, despite the fact that they were ultimately unsuccessful at kickstarting a line of sequels: 2009’s Friday the 13th and 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. The former is of particular interest because there isn’t a singular source movie that gets the remake treatment. Rather, Friday 2009 remixes elements of the first four films in the franchise. It’s certainly not a sequel, and the events of the original film are relegated to mere exposition. Thus, we can’t call it a remake at all. The only thing left to call it is a reboot. 2010’s Elm Street actually hews closely to its source material, even naming its central protagonist Nancy. Without the legendary Robert Englund as Freddy, though, the film couldn’t recreate the tone and magic of the original. It was critically reviled, and despite enough box office success to at least get people to consider a sequel, hardly anything developed.

This category has been the least active as of late, especially when it comes to the horror genre. There are astronomically more one-off horror films than franchises, which makes for fewer reboot possibilities. Needless to say, we’re in dire need of both a Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot… again.

LEGACYQUEL

I began with Evil Dead and Scream 4, because they highlight a new, alternative take on the remake formula. Legacy-Sequels or legacyquels are a new phenomenon, and are not really remakes at all. The term was coined in a Screen Rant article in 2015. For all intents and purposes, a legacyquel is an in-continuity, canonical sequel to the film or films in the series that precede it. The twist is that the plot of the new movie is strikingly, and often purposefully, similar to the first one. The filmmakers hope that the audience’s love of the plot, the “legacy” of the first one, will add additional appreciation to the new film. Legacyquel isn’t an industry term yet, but these obvious nostalgia cash-in attempts are far from accidents.

Jurassic World is easily the most famous and most profitable horror legacyquel. The simple plot, “cloned dinosaurs escape and attack humans”, is given a steroid shot of CGI, star power, and easter eggs. It’s the same plot, again, twenty years later.

If Jurassic World is the biggest legacyquel, Evil Dead is certainly the most beloved. I’ve seen it atop several “best horror remake” lists, and five years later we’re still talking about the movie. The original The Evil Dead is the quintessential cabin-in-the-woods horror flick. Fede Alvarez’s 2013 film removes the humor of the original trilogy, injects a relevant and modern drug abuse and recovery theme, and amplifies the scares, all while maintaining the simplistic plot that made the first two Evil Dead films work so well. Up until November, we were all willing to call it a remake, but the idea that the Necronomicon can manifest repeated haunts and events adds a layer of depth and intrigue to the franchise. Turns out one of the best remakes, is actually one of the best sequels in a franchise rife with mythology.

Scream 4 might be better than you remember, and it’s because it knows it’s a legacyquel. Not only is the relatively simple whodunnit plot reimagined for a modern audience, but the meta plot, in which the teen characters are literally attempting to recreate the events of the first film, drips with irony and intrigue. Of course, we know Scream 4 is a sequel, but the film’s satirical riff on remakes is better than any of the other obvious attempts to lambaste the remake format. Scream 4 is actually scary, it evokes the tone of the original, and it properly shines a blinding light on remakes.

Curse of Chucky is one of the better legacyquels, in that it resets the tone of the franchise to its scary roots. After the original Child’s Play films, the mystery of whether the doll is actually a killer is dropped in favor of essentially making him the central plot motivator in Bride and Seed of Chucky. The plot of Curse of Chucky doesn’t follow the original, but its tone and intent are a return to form. There’s a central mystery, and the driving force of the film is terror rather than comedy. Personally, I wondered if the movie was a total reboot until the third act revealed the same old Chucky we know and love.

RE-QUEL

The latest attempt to breath new life into a dormant franchise is the re-quel. Films of this ilk blend features of reboots and legacyquels. The idea is that, rather than blowing up an entire continuity and starting fresh a la a reboot, a legacyquel maintains a franchise’s continuity, but takes place within a canonical timeline rather than at the end of it. It’s such a new idea, that I can only identify three instances.

The worst example is undoubtedly 2013’s Texas Chainsaw (3D). The film was heavily advertised as a direct sequel to the original film, but if the idea was to create a new timeline, it didn’t work. Only four years later, the franchise produced an even less successful direct-to-digital prequel.

The Halloween franchise has famously done it twice. Forgive the recap, but in 1998, Halloween: H20 eschewed the plots of Halloween 4-6, refocusing on Laurie Strode, and serving as the third film in her story. Last year David Gordon Green’s Halloween did it again, this time taking the timeline back one movie prior; a direct sequel to the 1978 original. This has been discussed ad nauseum, but I highlight it here, because the fact that it’s happened twice in a franchise (that also received the reboot treatment) is unprecedented. Reviews for the film were mixed, but generally positive, and it’s only a matter of time before re-quels start popping up in other franchises.

These terms—remake, reboot, legacyquel, and re-quel—are only my best attempt to arrange a subgenre of horror film too vast to fully categorize. But it’s a start. There are, of course, films I’ve listed in certain categories that share elements of others. In some ways; Halloween is a legacyquel, Curse of Chucky feels like a reboot. I’ve also made some glaring omissions. What about prequels? What the hell is Evil Dead II? Ultimately, we’re talking about rhetoric. What these films give us is an opportunity to talk about how they and their directors, writers, and producers make designs on us. If we can expedite the process of organizing these films, and agree upon the nomenclature, we can skip ahead to critiquing more effectively, and perhaps find new ways to appreciate a type of horror movie that’s often criticized for its lack of originality.

The post [Editorial] As Horror Franchise “Remakes” Evolve, Let’s Talk About How to Classify Them appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

At the Screamfest Q&A for the 20th anniversary screening of Bride of Chucky, Mancini revealed what happened to his remake.

“There was a brief time when we were talking about it because that was so en vogue,” Mancini said. “This was when Jason got his reboot and Freddy got his reboot.”

From Platinum Dunes’ 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to their 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the ‘00s were dominated by remakes of classic horror films. The problem is, even if most of them made money, fans of the franchises didn’t exactly love them.

“They didn’t really make that much of a splash, so then people started to rethink that,” Mancini said. “We thought with Curse we could have our cake and eat it too. We made it sort of a tonal reboot that turned out to be a sequel in disguise if that makes sense.”

Curse of Chucky was actually positioned as a reboot of sorts. It was still Brad Dourif as Chucky, but the idea was he was terrorizing a brand new character, Nica (Fiona Dourif). Only in the middle did it turn out Nica had some connection to Charles Lee Ray, and by the end, Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) and Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) returned.

“I think that’s one of the most unusual things about our franchise is that we actually have 30 years and seven films and counting,” Mancini said.

“This is an incredibly complicated history of all these characters. We then start bringing people back. We brought Andy back in Curse and Kyle back in Cult. Stay tuned to see who else comes back.”

As for that other remake in production, it won’t affect Mancini’s plans for an official Chucky TV series, and he maintains his position on that other movie.

“I don’t know her,” Mancini said.

Screamfest continues through Thursday, October 18.

The post Why Universal’s Planned ‘Child’s Play’ Remake Never Happened appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“We deliberately ended Cult with a bunch of cliffhangers to set up a TV series,” Mancini said.

“Because there are so many different threads now, television could best accommodate that so that was done intentionally. At the same time, we have a whole new world, a bunch of new characters which we can say nothing about.”

Cult of Chucky introduced Chucky’s ability to possess multiple dolls simultaneously, and ultimately take over Nica (Fiona Dourif)’s body. Nica/Chucky runs off with Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) who may still be in actor Jennifer Tilly’s body from Seed of Chucky. Andy Barclay has been left behind in the institution and his foster sister Kyle (Christine Elise) even showed up.

Kirschner suggested that the new characters of the TV series would return to the concept of the original Child’s Play, with Chucky terrorizing a child in the guise of his favorite toy.

“The only thing I think we can say is from the original film that Don wrote, Child’s Play, we are playing with that concept again, the idea of child’s play,” Kirschner said. “I’ll let you guys fill in the pieces of that.”

Mancini filled it in. “It involves children,” Mancini said.

The Chucky series has constantly reinvented itself. Bride made it a self-referential comedy, but Curse of Chucky brought it back to the horror/thriller world. Cult expanded the voodoo mythology even further. Television is the next frontier for Chucky, and shows like Hannibal, which Mancini wrote for, show that horror can be just as effective on television, and perhaps even more so.

“We saw that after seven movies, how can we flip again?” Mancini said. “So this time not by merely changing genre but by changing medium. This will give us a different kind of canvas, a much bigger canvas to explore characters and relationships.”

Screamfest continues through Thursday, October 18.

The post “Chucky” TV Series to Return to ‘Child’s Play’ Roots and Introduce New Characters! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But what about the horror titles *leaving* Netflix in October? We’ve been provided with that list today, and it includes a handful of films you may want to stream while you can…

Leaving October 1:

Curse of Chucky

Let Me In

Red Dragon

Scream 2

The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence

The Lost Boys

Leaving October 2:

The Human Centipede: First Sequence

Leaving October 14:

The Babadook

Leaving October 17:

Donnie Darko

Leaving October 24:

V/H/S 2

The post A Handful of Notable Horror Movies Are *Leaving* Netflix in October, Including ‘Curse of Chucky’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Chucky has stayed constant for almost 30 years, even as the series ebbed and flowed with pop culture through the 80s, 90s and 2000s. From the pure terror of his 1988 introduction in Child’s Play, to (arguably) the series’ tonal and quality peak in Child’s Play 2, the mediocrity of Child’s Play 3 (or “Chucky Goes to Bootcamp”), the shift towards the comical in Bride of Chucky, the expansion of Chucky’s family in Seed of Chucky, the return to its horror roots in Curse of Chucky, and finally, the gleeful weirdness of the most recent outing, Cult of Chucky.

Here we present a definitive list ranking all of Chucky’s (and his family’s) kills throughout all seven films, from worst to best. We ranked them based on creativity, gore, filmic qualities, and how memorable they were.

Needless to say, many spoilers are ahead…

56. A gravedigger is shot in the head, Bride of Chucky

It seems that when Chucky is rushed, his kills suffer as a result. On his way to his own grave to retrieve the Heart of Damballa amulet, Chucky quickly shoots the gravedigger tending to the grave, in the head. The method and execution lacks Chuckiness; it feels like he was pressed for time here or just merely lazy. We also do not see the gravedigger or get to know anything about him before he is suddenly killed. For these reasons, this murder is the nadir of Chucky’s murderous escapades.

55. (+54) Three men are killed off-screen, corpses fall out of closet, Seed of Chucky

It’s great when Chucky goes on his little killing sprees! But not so great when they happen off-screen, and we merely get to see the end result via some anonymous dudes falling out of a wardrobe. One had some blood on him, another had a bag over his head. That’s all well and good, but at least a montage of these blokes getting offed would have been better than what we got. The earlier films treated each of Chucky’s kills as a meticulously crafted sequence, with tense beginnings, middles, and brutal ends – this was bad.

53. Nurse Ashley gets a stomach ache, Cult of Chucky

Cult’s worst kill suffers as a result of lack of creativity and for being another off-screen death. Blonde bombshell asylum nurse Ashley meets her end via a drill to the stomach. Further to the detriment of this kill, the perpetrator is not even technically Chucky, but Multiple Malcolm, another inmate possessed by the spirit of Charles Lee Ray. If Ashley’s death was given actual screen time it would have ranked higher on this list.

52. (+51) An old man and woman are shot for their RV, Bride of Chucky

Another multi-kill where we only see the aftermath. At least here, we are treated to an essential element in Chucky kills: the macabre after-death corpse shot. Tiffany opens a door in the RV they just carjacked, revealing the mouth-agape visages of its previous occupants: a nameless old man and woman. Chilling, but one element of a Chucky kill is still lacking all the others: the creepy pre-murder stalking, Chucky springing to life, and the kill itself. For this reason, this double murder ranks quite low.

50. Nameless Carnival guard is shot in the head, Child’s Play 3

This security guard at the carnival didn’t believe little Tyler about Chucky being alive, which is a running theme throughout the series. You don’t believe Chucky is alive, you die. Another example of Chucky losing his flair for creativity when he’s running short on time, the poor guy gets shot in the head. Again the audience doesn’t get to witness the murder, netting this kill a low rank.

49. Jennifer Tilly is killed by having her soul replaced with that of Tiffany, Seed of Chucky

Okay this one is weird. The actress Jennifer Tilly plays herself in the 5th movie, while also voice-acting the evil Tiffany doll, who was originally human (and played by Jennifer Tilly in the 4th movie) until her soul got transferred into a doll too. Seed ends with Tiffany successfully transferring her soul into that of Jennifer Tilly, effectively killing Jennifer but allowing Tiffany to live on in the body of a woman who looks strangely like her past human self. The breaking of the fourth wall here is a massive tonal shift from the previous films, which diminishes the death’s overall rank.

48. Officer Robert Bailey meets Tiffany and her nail file, Bride of Chucky

A quick, cold, brutal introduction to Tiffany. Before being turned into a doll herself, Tiffany first obtains Chucky’s corpse in order to reanimate him. A quick throat slash from Tiff’s sharpened nail file spells the end for Officer Robert Bailey. Sucking the blood off her fingers was a nice touch, but this was too quick and uncreative to rank higher on the list.

47. Officer Stanton meets Tiffany and her nail file, Curse of Chucky

Ditto Officer Stanton. Jennifer Tilly makes a cameo in the most recent film by recreating her introduction – a quick slash to a cop’s throat in a police car. The motive is largely the same this time: liberating Chucky. The surprise factor here allows this one to rank slightly higher on the list, as Tiffany had not made an appearance in the film until gloriously erupting from the back seat of said police car.

46. Nameless asylum security guard meets Tiffany and her nail file, Cult of Chucky

The most recent Tiffany nail-file kill is the best one since it’s now officially a running theme. Slicing the throats of law enforcement dudes with her nail file in the vicinity of cars. Still, these rank quite low overall, as Tiff once admonished Chucky for a perceived lack of creativity in his kills in Bride.

45. Claudia’s mother meets Glen in Glen’s nightmare, Seed of Chucky

This kill loses points based purely on the fact that it didn’t really happen, and was merely Glen’s dream; a manifestation of his innate evil. Filmed from Glen’s POV, a rich English family is tormented violently, culminating in the Psycho-style stabbing of Claudia’s naked mother in the shower.

44. Claudia’s father meets Glen in Glen’s nightmare, Seed of Chucky

Claudia’s pompous father is stabbed violently in the chest while holding Glen, proceeding to plummet from the 2nd floor balcony. As mentioned, these “kills” would have ranked significantly higher if they actually happened in the canon of the Child’s Play universe. Instead, they existed merely in the dreams of Glen, serving as an introduction to the conflicted character.

43. Fulvia learns not to bad-mouth Glenda, Seed of Chucky

At the end of Seed, Tiffany inhabits the body of Jennifer Tilly, and is raising the twins Glen and Glenda, themselves the split souls of Chucky and Tiffany’s offspring – makes sense, right? Their housekeeper Fulvia is suspicious and distrusting of Glenda, who she fears has psychopathic tendencies. Tiffany/Jennifer allows her to start leaving, but then proceeds to bludgeon her violently to death using the Tiffany doll, itself a vessel that her soul used to inhabit. A quick death which pales in comparison to more creative kills which happened to more unpleasant individuals throughout the series.

42. Harold Whitehurst redeems himself via grenade sacrifice, Child’s Play 3

Whitehurst’s character actually had one of the stronger subplots in the weak third film – a nerdy army cadet who initially shows fear by refusing to tell Andy about witnessing Chucky moving around and killing. He redeems himself by throwing himself on a grenade thrown by Chucky during the wargames exercise, overcoming his cowardice but dying for his efforts. Here’s to you, nerdlinger.

41. Stan the chauffeur takes a knife for his unrequited love, Seed of Chucky

In a similar vein to Whitehurst, Stan – Jennifer Tilly’s chauffeur in the silly fifth film – is killed right as he redeems his character arc. In Stan’s case, this is telling J.Till of his love for her. A knife thrown by Chucky at Tiffany is the method here, hitting Stan in the chest as he foolishly jumps in its way. Choking on his own blood, he manages to tell Tilly of his love before succumbing. Still, this kill is brought down by the fact that Chucky probably didn’t even mean to kill poor Stan here.

40. Sarah Pierce is visited by an old family friend, Curse of Chucky

Curse shone a light on some previously unexplored relationships from Charles Lee Ray’s past, namely his twisted connection to the Pierce family. The apparent suicide by scissor-stabbing of matriarch Sarah Pierce, which kicks off the events of the sixth film, is far from its best kill due to it happening off-screen. However it is propped up slightly by virtue of Chucky’s revealed connection to the family – unsurprisingly, one of murder and demented obsession.

39. Officer “Needlenose” Norton is exploded, Bride of Chucky

The old lit rag in the gas tank trick turns Needlenose’s police car into a Molotov cocktail. A meddling and smug cop who tried to make life difficult for Bride’s protagonists Jesse and Jade, Needlenose’s fiery death is slightly let down by its suddenness and lack of an aftermath shot. A horrified scream of realisation is this kill’s best feature just before Norton goes boom-boom.

38. Truck turns David Plummens into a meat explosion, Bride of Chucky

While technically not a direct Chucky or Tiffany murder, David’s sudden death can be deemed a ‘Chucky-by-proxy’ kill. In a state of aghast disbelief, hapless David steps out onto a busy highway, only to be met with a big truck. Squish.

37. Joanne Simpson’s corpse is discovered, Child’s Play 2

The weakest kill in CP2 is still damn effective. Andy’s foster mum’s death adheres to the classic horror trope of a gruesome corpse being discovered sitting in a chair, with a spooky swivel revealing Chucky’s cruelty – eyes open in terror, throat cut.

36. Angela’s corpse is discovered, Cult of Chucky

An off-screen kill which is salvaged by virtue of Chucky’s sheer deviousness here. Angela, an inmate in the asylum, is murdered during the night by having her wrists slit open – using Nica’s wheelchair spoke, potentially implicating her in the murder. The Chuck can certainly mess with your mind.

35. Lt. Brett Shelton gets a surprise during team war-games, Child’s Play 3

Shelton probably deserved a more elaborate, painful send-off on the basis of being one of the series’ more unlikeable characters: he made Andy’s life hell during his stay at Kent Military Academy. What we got was the Chuckster switching out fake rounds for live ones in the war-games exercise, and Shelton being shot dramatically in the chest. Clever on Chucky’s part.

34. Eddie Caputo blows himself up, Child’s Play

A cold, calculated kill spurned on by Charles Lee Ray’s desire to tie up loose ends: Caputo was his partner and abandoned him prior to Ray’s own ‘death’. Chucky’s little hands can be seen turning on a gas pipe, prompting Caputo to shoot blindly and incinerate himself and his house in the process. Loses a few spots due to the lack of Chucky’s reveal to the victim.

33. Britney Spears meets a fiery end, Seed of Chucky

The peak of Seed’s silliness. Chucky and his son Glen are on a joyride when they run into Ms Spears on the road; she’s run off the road and turned into a fireball. Too ridiculous to be either terrible or great. Chucky witticism: “Oops! I did it again!”.

32. Jennifer Tilly’s agent Joan is “fired”, Seed of Chucky

Joan was cute and innocent, which makes her horrifying death all the more upsetting. A candle and hairspray combo sets her alight, followed by a screaming fall from a balcony. Glenda is the perpetrator here, highlighting this side of the conflicted doll’s dual personality as the more psychotic one.

31. Nameless doll technician is electrocuted by Chucky’s evil eyes, Child’s Play 2

The spirit of Charles Lee Ray lingers within the Chucky doll at the start of CP2. A hapless technician meets his end as strange electricity emanating from the doll’s eyes send him flying across the room. Great bloody-faced post-death shot, but otherwise a fairly bland kill.

30. Nurse Carlos meets multiple Chuckies, Cult of Chucky

May as well spill the beans here, we said there’d be spoilers: there are multiple Chuckies in Cult of Chucky. Turns out Chucky learned a new voodoo incantation allowing him to separate his soul into multiple vessels (hence, the cult!). Asylum nurse Carlos is the unlucky recipient of the wrath of three Chuckies at once, who gleefully stab, drill and slice him in a horrible frenzy.

29. Garbage man is crushed in his own garbage truck, Child’s Play 3

Chucky will murder you if you’re innocent or guilty, as this unnamed garbage man found out. The dude was just doing his job when Chucky tricked him into entering his own garbage truck’s compactor. A horrible scream, a crushed arm, and bloodstains are the result. Chucky’s kills are more fun when he goes after unpleasant individuals.

28. Lt. Preston meets Chucky’s spawn, Bride of Chucky

The end of Bride features the reveal of a disgusting little bloody goblin: Chucky’s child. Found in a field by the grizzled Lt. Preston, the burnt corpse of the Tiff doll somehow gives birth. The ‘child’ screeches and lunges towards the policeman’s face, with a cut to black. Though his death is technically inconclusive, we can only assume that his face was probably chewed off.

27. SFX legend Tony Gardner loses his head, Seed of Chucky

In an example of Seed’s propensity to break the fourth wall, Chucky and Tiffany gruesomely murder the special effects maestro Tony Gardner with piano wire, causing his decapitated CGI head to fly through the air. Tony worked on effects for the Chucky film within the film, as well as the actual film itself. Clever, but this was the series becoming too silly and light-hearted.

26. Father Frank loses his head, Curse of Chucky

A darker, more effective decapitation than the one preceding it. After Chucky devilishly sprinkles rat poison into only one guest’s dinner bowl, the priest Father Frank becomes the unlucky diner. Excusing himself to drive home, Frank’s state causes a horrifying vehicle crash. The aftermath is seen, with Frank’s head seemingly sliding off his body. Chilling.

25. Sgt. Botnick meets Chucky, Child’s Play 3

Underrated character actor Andrew Robinson plays the demented barber Sgt Botnick, who loves tormenting the recruits of Kent Military Academy in CP3. Following the classic Child’s Play murder formula of Chucky suddenly springing awake, Botnick meets his end when he decides he wants to cut the doll’s hair for some reason. A straight-razor to the throat is Chucky’s tool here. Lots of blood and a great death-shot of Botnick sprawled across the barber’s chair follows. Chucky witticism: “Presto! You’re dead.”

24. Multiple Malcolm has something in his eye, Cult of Chucky

Poor Multiple Malcolm. A schizophrenic suffering from multiple personality disorder, Malcolm eventually joins the cult, and is imbued with part of Charles Lee Ray’s soul. Seemingly wishing to impress the now-similarly-possessed Nica, he even murders poor nurse Ashley. Chucky doesn’t care. Malcolm gets a drill through the back of the skull as a reward, with the drill gruesomely emerging through his eye in what is surely one of the series’ goriest kills.

23. Tiffany takes her last bath, Bride of Chucky

Tiffany’s death as a human is a testament to her and Chucky’s volatile and demented relationship. Tiff meets her end via Chucky furiously throwing a TV into her bath, but what brings this death up in rank are some minor details: Bride of Frankenstein is playing on the TV, as well as the bubbles as she flails around helplessly.

22. Ian loses his jaw, Curse of Chucky

We’re into the good stuff now. Ian from the latest film was a truly unpleasant character; he laughed at the idea of Chucky being alive and hindered the main character by tying up Nica. Ian’s death is protracted and chilling: after viewing the footage from the nanny-cam that he himself planted on Chucky, he learns the truth, but by then it’s too late. He’s bowled over by Nica’s wheelchair, and gets an axe to the jaw mid-scream. Brutal.

21. Colonel Francis Cochrane has a heart attack, Child’s Play 3

Another Chucky-by-proxy kill. Cochrane incurs Chucky’s wrath by throwing him into a garbage can. As Chucky jumps out with a knife, Cochrane’s heart gives out, robbing the Chuck of doing the deed himself. A kill which explored the terrifying concept of simply seeing a doll spring to life.

20. Madeline checks out, Cult of Chucky

Madeline is a true tragic figure in Cult, and her death is equally poignant and gruesome. An inmate who was institutionalised for murdering her own baby, Madeline turns one of the Chuckies into a surrogate, before the doll/s reveal their true selves. After attempting to do to Chucky what she did to her child, Madeline is placed on suicide watch. Seemingly unable to deal with reality, she asks the now-fully-alive Chucky for an escape. Chucky grants her wish by sticking his little hand down her throat and pulling out a chunk of spine. Chilling.

19. (+18) Russ & Diane have a honeymoon to remember, Bride of Chucky

Obnoxious honeymooners Russ & Diane meet their end via a champagne bottle being thrown at a mirrored ceiling by Tiffany. Shards of glass ruin their consummation night, exploding their waterbed in a sea of blood and.. water. A housekeeper discovers their gruesome corpses, providing the necessary post-death aftermath shot.

17. Phil Simpson falls on his neck, Child’s Play 2

The archetypal ‘doesn’t believe in Chucky’ character, Phil was Andy’s reluctant foster dad up until the moment Chucky trips him with a fireplace poker while ascending some basement stairs. An all-time great Chucky witticism follows as Phil is suspended upside down momentarily: “How’s it hanging, Phil?”. A fall and a neck-break later, and the pyjama-clad Mr. Simpson is gone.

16. Redman loses his guts, Seed of Chucky

Rapper Redman was inexplicably cast as himself in Seed, in a possible sign the franchise needed a reboot. After failing to bed Jennifer Tilly, Redman becomes the catalyst for Tiffany giving into her addiction to murder. A fillet knife to the stomach causes the rapper’s intestines to plop onto the floor, steaming. Tiff at her sadistic best.

15. Jill Taylor is electrocuted in a state of undress, Curse of Chucky

One of the oldest horror tropes state that if a cute girl appears in her bra and panties voluntarily, she must die. Sexy nanny Jill found this out when a late-night webcam session turned into a nightmare via Chucky and an overturned bucket of water. What brings this kill up is that the electrocution somehow inexplicably overloaded her eye.

14. Dr. Foley gets his head smashed, Cult of Chucky

Truly a vile character, Dr. Foley – the head of the asylum in Cult – takes a sick personal interest in Nica, with the knowledge that her paralysis makes her vulnerable to his advances. It’s fitting then that possibly the series most violent and bloody death should befall such a morally bankrupt individual. Nica, now possessed by Chucky and having full use of her legs, stomps the doctor’s head in until it resembles a rotting pumpkin. Satisfying and disturbing simultaneously, this kill proves the almost 30-year old series is not afraid to push some boundaries in gore.

13. John Aelsop Bishop is voodoo-ed to death, Child’s Play

The voodoo master who taught Charles Lee Ray about Damballa and soul transfers had a change of heart, calling Chucky an “abomination”. Big mistake. In one of Chucky’s most original kills, a voodoo effigy is used to supernaturally break Bishop’s limbs and stab his chest. Ouch.

12. Damien Baylock welcomes Chucky back for the 4th time, Bride of Chucky

You have to give it to the late Alexis Arquette. He played the obnoxious goth Damien Baylock to a tee in Bride, virtually begging to be killed by poking fun at Chucky, even humping him at one point. Tied up and helpless on a bed, old mate Damo gets his lip ring gruesomely ripped out before being suffocated with a pillow, all the while Chucky and Tiffany share a loving reunion.

11. Barb Pierce loses an eye, Curse of Chucky

Curse spent a lot of its time establishing the unpleasantness of its expendable characters, with the domineering and unfaithful Barb as its most death-worthy individual. “Mommy’s sick to death of all of you”, Nica’s sister exclaims, shortly before Chucky appears to stab her in the eye in gruesome close-up. The film’s best death doesn’t end there as Barb later appears again, shambling eyelessly, to tumble down a flight of stairs and further traumatise poor Nica before finally dying.

10. Claire loses her head, Cult of Chucky

Even though the newest film’s best kill is a recreation of an older murder, it surpasses the original by being better in almost every way. Meddling Claire, who blames Nica for the string of bizarre occurrences within the asylum, is sedated and tied up on a gurney. Chucky makes his entrance, and in a tribute to Bride’s honeymoon glass ceiling murder, launches an air canister at the ceiling… which is again made of glass. A gorgeous slow-mo minimalist shot of glass falling follows, alongside a single tear rolling down Claire’s face as she watches her doom descend. To top it off, the glass perfectly decapitates her, resulting in a kill which is not only filmically well-done but turns up the gore-factor too. Top notch.

9. Pete Peters’ face is burnt off with acid, Seed of Chucky

The great cult film legend John Waters provides Seed’s best death, portraying the opportunistic paparazzo Pete Peters. A run-in with a murderous Chucky and a tentative Glen in his own dark-room ends in horror as Peters is tripped and stumbles into some chemicals, with a vial of sulphuric acid burning off his face. An excellent cameo coupled with a fantastic effects shot combine to make the highest point of arguably the series’ lowest point.

8. Maggie Peterson is the first to meet Chucky, Child’s Play

An intense and genuinely frightening build-up underlines Chucky’s true introduction in the series. We see Andy’s innocent babysitter Maggie stalked and unsettled by an unseen entity before Chucky makes his terrifying first appearance. A simple hammer to the face causes Maggie to fall out of the 6th storey window. The same hammer to the face causes Chucky to be instantly embedded in the nightmares of many children for years to come, this author included.

7. Mattson has a date with a plastic bag, Child’s Play 2

Slimy toy executive Mattson never made it to his hot date, since the newly-resurrected Chucky hitched a ride in his car. The insult that sealed Mattson’s fate could have been him banging Chucky with his car boot, but the Chuck probably would have killed him regardless. Chucky torments the doomed businessman with a toy gun, before suffocating him with a plastic bag. Chucky’s demented cackling throughout this murder set the tone of this sequel as “the first film but turned up a notch”.

6. Grace Poole makes some photocopies, Child’s Play 2

Foster center manager Grace Poole meets her end through a rather mundane method – being stabbed a couple of times. It’s the small details around her death that bring this murder into the top 10. First, Chucky’s exclamation of “Amazing, isn’t it?!” as he springs to life in Grace’s arms, followed by her shocked expression, is simply perfect. Secondly: after being stabbed, Grace falls into a nearby photocopier for some reason, managing to activate it and making some copies of her grotesque deathly visage in the process. An example of the first sequel being playful and horrifying at the same time.

5. Christopher Sullivan is tormented by his own toys, Child’s Play 3

The second sequel starts with a bang and gets progressively worse. Sullivan, the greedy CEO of the company behind the Good Guys dolls, reboots the infamous toy line, resurrecting Chucky in the process. For his troubles, he is sadistically stalked in his own home by Chucky, who proceeds to torture Sullivan with ballbearings, a golf club to the head, a dart to the back, before offing him with a yo-yo, of all things. A sequence made all the more terrifying by Chucky’s slow reveal, and all the more satisfying by the nature of Sullivan’s smug, pompous personality. A Chucky torture tour-de-force.

4. Chief Warren Kincaid gets a face-ful of nails, Bride of Chucky

The late, great John Ritter portrays Police Chief Warren Kincaid in Bride’s highest point, and possibly the series’ most gruesome, protracted death. The chief’s snooping in the van which hides Chucky and Tiffany causes the dolls to improvise a devious murder plot: an airbag combined with some nails. When activated, the Chief gets a faceful of embedded nails, providing one hell of a post-death shot.

Except that he’s not quite dead yet. He comes back later, exploding screaming from the container hiding his presumed-dead body, only to trip and fall onto his own face, still embedded with nails. Six knife stabs to the back from Chucky later, and the series achieves arguably its most macabre moment.

3. Dr. Philip Ardmore gets a taste of his own medicine, Child’s Play

In the first film’s most satisfying moment, the psychiatric doctor who locks up Andy and scoffs at the idea of Chucky is first incapacitated with a scalpel to the leg. In a fiendish twist, Chucky then places an electroconvulsive device on his head, overloading it and frying the good doctor to a crisp. Throughout the series one finds themselves either siding with the protagonists against Chucky, or rooting for Chucky against horrible individuals – this instance marked the first occurrence of the latter.

2. A doll factory technician gets a new set of eyes, Child’s Play 2

It’s odd that a nameless character would be given the honor of 2nd best death in the series, but the sheer fun of this kill cannot be overstated. During the 2nd film’s final showdown in the doll factory, a machine which inserts eyes into dolls is overloaded; a tech is called to investigate. Immediately we know this schmoe is doomed. A slice to the cheek from Chucky sends this poor guy tumbling into the doll-eye machine, which proceeds to smush two googly doll eyes into his actual eyes. Possibly the greatest post-death shot of the series follows. An expert combination of horror and humour.

That’s not the final time this guy makes an appearance, too! He comes back later, his corpse suspended upside down from a hoist, and is used to knock down Kyle during the final showdown. Amazing.

1. Miss Kettlewell meets Chucky, Child’s Play 2

Several factors combine here to create the best kill in Child’s Play franchise history. One is that Andy’s teacher Miss Kettlewell is played by excellent character actor Beth Grant, famous for portraying overbearing and annoying characters (Kitty Farmer in Donnie Darko, among others). Another is the archetypal Chuckiness of her death: she doesn’t believe in him, and is menaced before the big reveal.

Yet another is the inventive method of her death; she’s stabbed in the midsection with an air pump and pumped with some air, which begs the question of what would actually happen if that was to occur. Chucky’s terrifying, gleefully evil figure descending on Kettlewell while stating “You’ve been very naughty Miss Kettlewell!” has become an iconic image for the franchise. The shot through the window of the yardstick wielded by Chucky as it comes down again and again also bears mentioning as a great cinematic touch. To summarise, this death represents Chucky at his most devilish, much as this film represents the series at its most fun.

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Earlier this year, I wrote at length about my love for Don Mancini’s Curse of Chucky, which completely restored my faith in a franchise I wasn’t all that into in the wake of the one-two punch of Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky.

With Curse, released in 2014, Mancini went back to basics, scrubbing most of the over-the-top silliness from the franchise in favor of a darker, gothic sequel that remarkably managed to continue literally all of the series’ main storylines while completely resetting the overall tone.

Curse of Chucky is as legit suspenseful as a Chucky movie can probably be, and with it Mancini pulled off something that was seemingly impossible at the time…

The sixth installment in the franchise actually made Chucky scary again.

But we’re here to talk about gory kills, and Curse of Chucky has one in particular that stands out. Towards the end of the movie, heroine Nica Pierce and Ian, her sister’s husband, are (seemingly) the only ones left after Chucky slices and dices his way through the rest of the characters. Nica of course survives, while Ian meets a gruesome fate.

Lying on his back after being knocked to the ground by Nica’s wheelchair, a helpless Ian is approached by an axe-wielding Chucky. The killer doll lifts the axe up over his head, and you assume he’s going to crack it down into Ian’s chest or forehead. Instead, however, Chucky brings the axe down onto Ian’s mouth, literally splitting the bottom of his jaw off.

As an added touch, Ian’s tongue wags around in his mutilated mouth before he expires.

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Towards the end of the slasher boom in 1988, MGM released Child’s Play, written by Don Mancini and directed by Tom Holland (no, not that Tom Holland). Unlike some slasher flicks that tease out the true nature of the villain, with this one, it’s unambiguously clear from the very first scene that the soul of a serial killer, Charles Lee Ray, has entered a Good Guy doll via a Voodoo spell. That doll winds up in the hands of the adorable Andy Barclay, and it turns out that the spell has super specific rules whereby you can only transfer your soul into the body of the first person who you reveal your true nature to. After a few obligatory ‘80s slashings, Chucky is ultimately thwarted in his attempt to possess the boy, and the film ends with the doll being shot and burnt to a crisp after Andy utters one of the great pre-kill one-liners in cinema: “This is the end, friend.”

All in all, Child’s Play holds up as an enjoyable slasher with some effective kills and a memorable villain in the foul-mouthed Chucky. He’s not particularly funny in the first film outside of the novelty of seeing a doll uttering swear words, though the scene of him cursing out two strangers in an elevator is clearly intended for a laugh. But the reason the movie works as well as it does isn’t because of Chucky; it’s because of Andy. A killer doll movie is only as strong as its primary human character, and with Andy, Mancini successfully taps into the anxiety we have as children that adults won’t take us or our fears seriously. It’s horrifying to contemplate the idea of being harassed by a supernatural creature but being unable to get others to sympathize, as they all laugh when you tell them the truth. In contrast to the murders of Jason and Freddy, being hunted by Chucky is a profoundly lonely experience.

Child’s Play was a box office success, and so Chucky’s reign of terror would continue into Child’s Play 2, in which the doll is rebuilt because the PlayPals toy company wants to prove that they’re not at fault for the murders that took place years prior. Thanks to them, Chucky continues where he left off, still being driven by the same mission of possessing Andy because those Voodoo rules from before continue to apply. We pick up with Andy as someone whose life has been torn apart by Chucky. Karen was put into psychiatric observation never to be seen again for the rest of the series, and so Andy is moved to a foster home, where Chucky returns to swap himself out for another Good Guy. Chucky gets Andy in a whole lot more trouble, and the poor kid is on his own in this ordeal until the third act, not having his mother around to believe him anymore. Along the way, Andy forms a bond with his new foster sister, Kyle, who has been in numerous homes and encourages Andy to be self-reliant. Christine Elise is pitch perfect here, and it’s the affecting relationship between Andy and Kyle that anchors the movie.

Chucky has a lot more screen time in this sequel, and he’s a bit funnier, with crude jokes about women drivers and lines like “how’s it hanging, Phil” said to a man hanging upside down. At the same time, the franchise is continuing to treat the threat posed by Chucky seriously, and the moments of levity never undermine that. It all ends in a spectacular factory showdown where Chucky is unable to possess Andy and has molten plastic poured over him. Child’s Play 2 is definitely more of the same, but it succeeds thanks largely to the last half-hour and thanks to the performances of Christine Elise and Alex Vincent. The original Child’s Play is superior, but there’s an argument to be made that Child’s Play 2 is a more entertaining watch. It’s the A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 of this series.

Things are looking up for Andy at the end of Child’s Play 2, as he has apparently disposed of Chucky and has a new mother figure in Kyle. But eight years later, in Child’s Play 3, Andy has been sent to a military academy after not functioning well in several foster homes. What happened to Kyle is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, the Good Guy factory for some reason decides to recycle Chucky’s old parts, and so Charles Lee Ray winds up with a brand new body, which he uses to hunt Andy down yet again. Chucky is even more comedic the third time, and the comedy verges on being too much. But even so, at no point are we meant to laugh off the danger posed by the doll. As with any slasher series, the kills have to keep escalating, and so Child’s Play 3 features some iconic ones that are actually somewhat unnerving, such as the unforgettable garbage truck death.

At this point in the series, Don Mancini decides to change up the formula a bit, first by setting the movie at a military academy and then by giving Chucky someone new to go after. Because Charles Lee Ray has a fresh Good Guy doll body, the Voodoo rules evidently reset, and this time a little boy named Tyler is the one he first reveals himself to. So while the two films saw Andy as the prey and a young woman as the guardian, now the guardian is Andy himself, who must look out for Tyler as Karen and Kyle looked out for him. As sensational as Child Play 2’s factory sequence was, Child’s Play 3 comes close to topping it with a visually dazzling haunted house finale that’s ideal for revisiting around Halloween. After needing help taking down the doll the first two times around, it’s all on Andy as he shoots Chucky dead and throws him into a fan to save a young kid just like Karen and Kyle helped save him. There’s even a shot of Andy grabbing Tyler that mirrors Kyle reaching out to him in Child’s Play 2. As Andy has finally taken his life into his own hands, it feels like the franchise has come full circle.

That could have easily been the end of the series, and it was for seven years. But in 1998, after Wes Craven made horror-comedy cool with Scream and Scream 2, Child’s Play returned with perhaps the most bizarre mainstream horror sequel ever released, Bride of Chucky. Much has been made of the fact that the franchise shifts fully into comedy here, and indeed, Bride borders on self-parody in contrast to the sporadic goofiness of its predecessors. These jokes seem intended to undercut the movie’s very concept rather than to entertain us between legitimate scares; Tiffany attempts to resurrect Chucky while reading a “Voodoo for Dummies” book, for instance. But that’s not even the movie’s most fatal flaw. The biggest issue is the fact that Bride gives far too much screen time to the dolls, and it’s only with this film that it becomes clear just how important Andy was in keeping us grounded in the first three installments.

Those movies were focused primarily on Andy (and on Karen, Kyle, and Tyler), not necessarily on Chucky’s antics. That’s key because, in a film with such an absurd premise, we need believable protagonists to keep us tethered to reality, even if comedy is the primary objective. Here, the movie devotes a huge portion of the first act to Chucky and his bride, Tiffany, with the other characters feeling less significant. This creates some issues because Chucky and Tiffany are both so ridiculously over the top that scenes just consisting of them interacting without anyone else present become a bit much to take. The balance shifts as the movie goes on, and the other storyline involves a young couple, Jesse and Jade, who become murder suspects. Things definitely improve in the second act when Chucky and Tiffany are given some people to play off of. But Jesse and Jade aren’t nearly as compelling as Andy was, and some of their key character beats are interrupted by shots of Chucky smoking weed or making jerk-off motions, so it’s difficult to become invested or see things from their eyes. We ultimately don’t care about them in the same way that we cared about Andy, and as a result, the stakes are fairly low.

Needless to say, Chucky no longer makes much of an impact when he’s displayed so prominently so often. In the original trilogy, we usually only saw Chucky when he was doing something related to the plot, but here, we just sort of hang out with him, watching him play with a Speak & Spell or rock out to the radio in scenes that are only mildly amusing. It’s not dissimilar to how the Scary Movie franchise might spoof the first three Child’s Play movies. Even during kill sequences, we’re often in Chucky and Tiffany’s perspective, and so any possible tension is lost. Take the death of Warren, for instance. If this were to happen in the first three movies, we would mainly follow Warren as Chucky sneaks around or lies dormant and finally jumps out for the kill. Here, there’s a whole 45-second long bit beforehand where Chucky and Tiffany debate what weapon should be used to kill him. All in all, the horror doesn’t really work, and if the film is primarily intended to be a comedy, there should be even more humor than there is.

Unfortunately, Mancini only doubles down on all of this in the next installment, Seed of Chucky. With Jesse and Jade gone, the human protagonist is actress Jennifer Tilly. But it’s Glen, Chucky and Tiffany’s son, who is really the movie’s main character, and the story is all about his life as an orphan wanting to know about his parents and learning to reject their violent tendencies. The film is less interested in Jennifer and more interested in Glen, as evidenced by the fact that she does virtually nothing in the third act and it’s Glen who has the final showdown with Chucky. The thrust of c is a totally baffling puppet soap opera that is so patently ridiculous that the fact that it is even being put on screen is somewhat amusing until the joke wears thin. It’s kind of fun to describe but not as fun to sit down and watch, and without any believable human character to guide us, the whole thing feels rather pointless.

At least Bride of Chucky took the Jesse and Jade storyline somewhat seriously, but here, even the Jennifer Tilly plot is played for laughs, and so there are few elements of the film that feel rooted in reality. Obviously, pretty much all horror has been drained from the series by this point, but to be fair, Seed of Chucky isn’t exactly a horror film. Mancini doesn’t attempt many scares, with the primary focus being the gags like Tiffany calling the widow of a man she murdered or Chucky not liking violins. A dark comedy with a slasher villain at the center is not entirely without merit, but it’s not Child’s Play, and for that to truly work, the jokes should be more clever than Chucky not knowing what gender his kid is. Though we might have theoretically been tuning in for the villain in the first three Child’s Play movies, by the end of two films built around Chucky and his wacky family, it’s hard not to grow tired of it all. These most recent two entries are like a stew with too much spice and not enough meat or vegetables.

Seed grossed about half as much at the box office as Bride did, and though it ends with a cliffhanger, this embarrassing effort was enough to kill the franchise for almost a decade. To be fair to Chucky, Child’s Play was not the only slasher series that had been driven into the ground and had nowhere else to go. So in the ensuing years, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th were all revived with remakes that disregarded the dumber sequels in an attempt to recapture the spirit of the original. It would have made sense to do the same with Chucky, putting out a new film called Child’s Play that’s just a pure remake of the 1988 classic in order to get audiences back on board and erase all memory of Bride and Seed.

But there was a problem with this new era of remakes and reboots: it always felt somewhat disrespectful to completely toss aside the series that we grew up with as if it never happened, especially when it wasn’t necessary seeing as few of the franchises had definitive endings in the first place. While a retooling might be appropriate, must the storyline and the characters that we loved be wiped out of existence? In this case, surely there’s a way to correct the problems of Bride and Seed without ignoring the beloved killer’s 25-year history and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, right?

In 2013, that’s precisely what Don Mancini did with the utterly brilliant Curse of Chucky, a movie in which he thoughtfully considers our criticisms while also allowing the entire franchise to remain canon. The movie gets back to horror, becoming the first Chucky film in over 20 years to be built around scares. They’re pretty good scares at that, with one journey up an elevator in the dark standing out. Mancini even goes for some different kinds of horror, such as a tense sequence where the audience is aware that one character has been poisoned but we don’t know who it is. Like many revivals of horror franchises, Curse also makes clever use of modern technology, having a character place a nanny cam on Chucky and looking at the footage later on.

Far more pivotal than Mancini’s decision to get back to horror, though, is his decision to center the film around a human character again. The protagonist of Curse is not a doll but a paraplegic young woman named Nica Pierce, whose life has been unknowingly damaged by Charles Lee Ray. We immediate sympathize with her as we did with Andy decades earlier and hope that she’ll overcome, though the dynamic is different. While Andy was an innocent child whose bright future Chucky was on pace to destroy, Nica is a girl who is at the end of her rope but is presented with an opportunity to take some agency and get revenge on the man who took everything. Once again, one person becomes aware of Chucky’s true nature but they’re living in their own personal hell of no one believing them, which is the sweet spot for Child’s Play. And thankfully, that person, not a doll, is the lead of the movie.

We soon discover that unlike remakes like A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), the basis of this film was not Don Mancini asking himself how he could retell the same story; it was him asking himself how he could flesh out the story that he already told. Why was Charles Lee Ray running from the police in the opening scene of the first Child’s Play? That question remained unanswered, but as this film explains, it’s because he was in love with a woman named Sarah and murdered her husband. She called the cops, and this led to the chase scene that started it all. That doesn’t necessarily ruin any of the mystique of Charles Lee Ray. It’s just a creative way to make Curse of Chucky feel like a relevant story worth telling in the existing Child’s Play universe.

It’s so common in franchises to erase certain poorly-received sequels from history, whether it’s Halloween: H20 pretending nothing but the first two films exist or even Jurassic World only acknowledging the original and not its sequels. But although Curse of Chucky is in some ways a rejection of Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky, it does not fully abandon those films and instead incorporates some of their positive elements, primarily Jennifer Tilly as well as Chucky’s messed up look. The film actually uses our belief that it will likely ignore the previous two entries to set up an unexpected and shocking twist: Chucky’s cleaner appearance suggests that only the first three movies are canon, but it’s later revealed that he has been wearing makeup, and he retains the same stitches from Bride and Seed. As it turns out, this movie is a direct sequel to Seed and not a reboot at all.

Mancini also plays with our expectations of what a Child’s Play movie even is, setting up a little girl who we assume will be the primary target of Chucky’s terror since she’s the first one to interact with him. In reality, this girl disappears for the whole third act, and Chucky’s attempt to possess her happens as sort of an afterthought. This time, Chucky wisely hides the girl away from everyone else, and his plan seems to involve waiting to go after her until he’s killed all of the adults. After being interrupted by adults so many times, Chucky has finally learned a lesson on how to handle possessing little kids. Mancini manages to build a final half-hour that is fresh and doesn’t recycle exactly what we’ve seen several times before. He also leaves us on a dark note by for the first time ending a Child’s Play movie without the death of Chucky. The doll remains “alive” as Nica is hauled away to a mental institution.

With Cult of Chucky, Mancini looks to be making all of the right decisions. Rather than shifting focus back to Tiffany or Chucky, the main focus seems to be remaining on Nica, a fantastic character whose journey will apparently center this series and keep us anchored as Andy did in the original trilogy. And speaking of Andy, he’s set to return to help Nica like Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Whether Mancini can keep the franchise going in the right direction remains to be seen, but the movie’s trailer suggests that we’ve got another worthwhile sequel on our hands.

Even if Cult does not meet the standard set by Curse, Child’s Play is a franchise that can teach some valuable lessons about revitalizing a dying brand. After three fun slasher flicks that occasionally peppered in some dark humor, Don Mancini erred by shifting the focus to the villain and not centering the film around anything resembling reality. The result was two films of mediocre self-parody that desperately lacked a compelling lead character. But with Curse of Chucky, it was immensely gratifying to see Mancini bring the series back to its roots while embracing its rich history, respecting our memories of the original and expanding on what came before. As studios look to bring Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and hopefully Freddy Krueger back on screen in the coming years, they should look to Curse of Chucky to see how it’s done.

The post How the ‘Child’s Play’ Franchise Went Wrong, and Then Right Again appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Thus we have this October’s Cult of Chucky, the seventh installment in the Child’s Play franchise.

With six films released, one on the way and the potential for many more doll slasher adventures to come, it’s time to give this franchise its due. Child’s Play is the best horror franchise of all time. There. It was said, and it will not be taken back.

These films have a secret weapon that similar killer-centric franchises don’t, and that secret weapon goes by the name of Don Mancini, who has long been the captain of the ship. It’s incredibly unusual for a horror franchise to have one creative mind behind each film in some way. Wes Craven was in and out of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, John Carpenter parted ways with the Halloween flicks early on, and other franchises similarly change hands behind the camera, sometimes with each individual sequel.

This can lead to a standalone nature to the films that make up many of the various horror franchises we love. The movies don’t always necessarily grow on previous work or evolve in any significant way. They can end up being basic retellings of the same story, only through the lens of a different director.

This is not the case with the Child’s Play saga.

Don Mancini has managed to be behind the camera on every single adventure of his killer doll. He’s received solo writing credit on each installment except for the first 1988 feature, which he has stated was rewritten in parts to change it from a psychological horror flick to more of the cut and dry, good vs. evil movie it became. He’s been there from the beginning pushing Chucky through the original trilogy of films, which concluded in 1991 with Child’s Play 3 and then he was behind the reinvention of his franchise with 1998’s Bride of Chucky, directed by Ronny Yu.

From there, Mancini took full control of the ship by writing and directing every following feature – Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, and the upcoming Cult of Chucky. Mancini’s voice being present in each film has made it a unique horror franchise in that there is no rehashing of stories. Each movie genuinely grows and builds upon the last. When Mancini sits down to carve out a new Chucky screenplay, he sits with the memory and history of each film behind him – and it shows.

Mancini’s long-standing presence in the franchise is also what helps the Chucky films to have what all the best horror flicks have – character. The horror movies that stick with us are the ones that present us with characters so well developed and eerily relatable that they worm their way into our brains and never leave. Think of Norman Bates from the original Psycho or Jack Torrance from The Shining. Unfortunately, character can be missing from a lot of our favorite horror franchises. Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and others are always fun and interesting to watch, but the characters around them are usually interchangeable from film to film, there to serve the purpose of providing our villain with something to do…. or, rather, someone to kill.

There are of course exceptions to the rule, like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween or any of the characters making up the ensemble of the original Nightmare on Elm Street, but those characterizations and the various emotional developments don’t typically last over multiple films. It can happen here and there (think Heather Langenkamp reprising her role in the Nightmare franchise), but we are typically stuck with characters inside a 90-minute feature that don’t particularly stand out or have memorable emotional arcs to go on.

The Child’s Play films, again, are different. Mancini is a lover of the horror genre and he understands that the tales that stick with us are the ones with characters that take residence in our mind and refuse to leave. 

This October’s Cult of Chucky sees the return of Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), the original boy to be tortured by Chucky in Child’s Play in 1988. We’ve already seen the character through the original three films develop, and he made a cameo appearance in Curse of Chucky in 2013. This sort of consistency is what helps give each of these films gravity.

We’ve seen Andy live out a child’s nightmare when he faced off against a killer toy in 1988, and then we saw him live the horror of believing something happened that all those around him told him wasn’t real in 1990 (Child’s Play 2). Now he’s an adult and Barclay carries with him the weight of years and events we have been witness to.

Also returning in Cult of Chucky is Fiona Dourif. The wheelchair-bound heroine from 2013’s Curse of Chucky is back in the newest feature, now residing in an insane asylum facing the same roadblocks Andy did years ago after facing off with Chucky.

This sort of characterization and development is what helps the Child’s Play franchise stand out and have more weight than its competitors. Even Chucky has evolved as a character through the various films. Sure, he still wants to grab the nearest knife and indulge in some good old-fashioned slicing and dicing, but we’ve seen actor Brad Dourif be forced to move beyond the screaming and one-liners and express real emotion through Chucky. Through six films we’ve seen our favorite killer doll became a husband and a father. A lot of it was played for laughs in Bride of Chucky and Seed, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant to who the character is now.

Another unique benefit to this franchise remaining under the rule of original creator Mancini and never going through the full reboot or remake treatment is that it stands as a fascinating chronicle of a filmmaker’s career and evolution as a creator.

Mancini has expressed himself as an artist almost exclusively through the Child’s Play films. He is credited with writing one other movie under a different name, and he has worked on television shows like “Tales From the Crypt,” “Hannibal,” and “Channel Zero.” Other than that, it’s been all Chucky, all the time.

While some might see working with the same character for twenty-nine years as a chore or a grind, Mancini is clearly as passionate about the franchise as ever. Each film may have DNA from the previous flicks, but Chucky is always being reinvented in some way. Since Mancini hasn’t gone outside the franchise too often, we’ve been able to watch him play with various genres and themes that interest him at different points through the tales of Chucky.

His using the franchise as a platform to express his various interests as a filmmaker is what has led to the subversive and comedic Bride of Chucky and the wacky, off the wall farce that was Seed of Chucky, as well as the toned down, psychological horror of Curse of Chucky. Mancini has taken his character down so many different alleys that one is hopeful that his continued interest in making sequels will mean just as many surprises to come as have been laid out for audiences before.

Saying Child’s Play is the best horror franchise is not a knock against what are some absolutely amazing pieces of art by other filmmakers within various other horror sagas. It’s merely a recognition of a franchise that perhaps doesn’t get enough credit for doing what almost no other horror franchise has been able to do. Cult of Chucky lands this October not as an attempt to cash in on a marketable name or a bid to reboot or retell the same story we’ve already seen, but rather as the next chapter in a long-running novel of horror that has made many of us both gasp and laugh, sometimes in the same movie.

The franchise remains one epic saga, making it something truly special for horror fans.

The post Why ‘Child’s Play’ is the Greatest Horror Movie Franchise of All appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

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!

The post The Complete Timeline of the ‘Child’s Play’ Franchise appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Like Phantasm, Child’s Play is one of the only long-running movie franchises that has been overseen by its original creator throughout its entire run. Don Mancini wrote the original Child’s Play in 1988 and he went on to write every subsequent film in the series. He also directed Seed of Chucky, released in 2004, and returned to the director’s chair for 2013’s Curse of Chucky.

Mancini wrote and is currently directing this year’s Cult of Chucky.

Of course, the franchise has evolved quite a bit since its debut in the ’80s. In 1998, the series took a turn for the comedic and self-referential with Bride of Chucky, and those over-the-top hijinks continued with the even more outlandish Seed of Chucky – a film that saw Chucky and Tiffany give birth to a baby boy… or was it a girl? It would be unfair to write off either film, as I’m well aware that some fans consider Bride of Chucky to be one of the franchise’s best, but personally speaking, I could do without them. They’re not without their laughs, and there’s definitely fun to be had in each of them, but the one-two punch of Bride and Seed mostly killed my interest in ever seeing another Chucky movie again. And then, much to my surprise, Curse of Chucky came along.

Originally billed as a full-on remake, Curse of Chucky turned out to be a direct sequel to, well, every previous film in the surprisingly coherent franchise. But one thing the direct-to-video sequel did remake, so to speak, was the tone of the early films in the series; Mancini himself has described it as a “tonal reboot.” Mostly doing away with the comedy on display in both Bride and Seed, Curse returned the pint-sized killer doll to his scary stalk ‘n slash roots, and if you’re asking me, Mancini delivered exactly what the franchise needed at that point in time. In the wake of Chucky going to Hollywood, killing Britney Spears, masturbating to Fangoria Magazine, and having an androgynous child with a Scottish accent, the low-budget, back-to-basics approach of Curse of Chucky was a huge breath of fresh air. A fusion of old fashioned suspense and gory slasher thrills, Curse of Chucky is unquestionably one of the best horror franchise “reboots” of all time.

The most brilliant thing about Curse of Chucky, however, is that’s it not actually a reboot at all; tonally, yes, but definitely not in the storytelling department. Made with the love that could only come from the guy who created the whole damn thing, Curse of Chucky impressively managed to tie together the entire series, despite initially seeming like a remake. For much of the film, Chucky looks as he did in the first three installments, suggesting that Curse of Chucky is going to ignore the events of both Bride and Seed. But in the final act, it’s revealed that Chucky has been wearing “makeup” to disguise the gnarly scars we had become accustomed to seeing. Jennifer Tilly even pops up for an appearance as Tiffany, as does Alex Vincent as a grownup Andy Barclay.

And then there’s the new mythology that Curse of Chucky brings to the table, which comes courtesy of flashbacks that effectively de-age Brad Dourif and provide us with new insights into the life of Charles Lee Ray (the serial killer whose soul inhabits Chucky). We learn that paraplegic main character Nica (played by Brad’s own daughter, Fiona) has been wheelchair bound since birth because of Charles Lee Ray, who stabbed her mother in the stomach prior to her birth. Curse even returns us to the opening scene of the original Child’s Play, arming us with the new knowledge that Charles Lee Ray was running from police after the stabbing of Nica’s mother. It was a whole new layer to an old story, and in a world where all of our favorite horror franchises get remade rather than directly continued, it was pretty damn cool to see Mancini going back to the beginning and building upon what we had already seen and what we thought we knew. Similar to what Rogue One did for A New Hope, Curse of Chucky made it impossible to ever watch Child’s Play again without thinking of that new context, which is a real cool treat for longtime fans.

Curse of Chucky is so good that it makes you wish every horror franchise could be brought back to life with the same passion and genuine care for the characters and mythology. It also makes you wonder if maybe the low-budget, direct-to-video approach isn’t such a bad idea for other villains like Jason, Freddy, and Michael. Sometimes, giving the fans what they want to see is the best way to go with beloved franchises like Child’s Play, and with Curse of Chucky, I can honestly say that Don Mancini gave me everything I wanted to see. Father knows best, as they say.

What’s next? Chucky, Andy, Tiffany, and badass new heroine Nica will all come together in Cult of Chucky, filming now and hopefully being released sometime later this year!

The post How ‘Curse of Chucky’ Completely Restored My Faith in the Franchise appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

What you see below is Mancini standing outside the setting of the sixth Child’s Play, Curse of Chucky, which he also directed. The house belonged to Fiona Dourif‘s Curse character who survives the doll’s bloody massacre.

The tweet teases that “Chucky is finally coming home,” with Dourif being tagged alongside Summer H. Howell, Jennifer Tilly and Alex Vincent, star of the first two Child’s Play films who returned in a shocking post credits sequence in Curse. The film ended as if Mancini planned to tie the previous three films – Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky and Curse of Chucky – together in a seventh film, which has been in development for the better part of the year.

For those who haven’t been keeping up, after Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) failed to transfer his soul into Andy’s body, he retrieved the Heart of Damballa in Bride of Chucky with the help of Tiffany (Tilly), his ex who he transfers into the body of a female doll. The two have doll sex, resulting in the birth of Glen (or Glenda?) who was left out of Curse of Chucky. Chucky returned in Curse, which looked like a reboot, only Mancini was fucking with the audience; the new look was to cover up the stitched together and scarred plastic hiding underneath. When the film concluded, Mancini teased the return of Tiffany (back in her human body) and Andy, who appears to have been waiting for Chucky since 1991.

I’m insanely excited for the family reunion in Chucky 7 and love that it remains one of the only authentic in-canon franchises left.

When will we receive official news? I have no clue, but I am hoping that he’s scouting the location for a shoot early next year. We’ll report back with official news as it comes in.

#Chucky IS FINALLY COMING HOME @fionadourif @1_SummerHHowell @Jtillathekilla2 @alex_vincent pic.twitter.com/A2rNDjeU9p

— Don Mancini (@RealDonMancini) November 11, 2016

The post Don Mancini is Standing on the ‘Curse of Chucky’ Set… appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Classics

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Anyone who has ever taken a film class has undoubtedly already seen Robert Wiene’s German Expressionist silent film, but now that it’s available on Netflix so a re-watch is in order! The film tells the story of a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) who runs around Holstenwall committing murders at the behest of a hypnotist (Werner Krauss). Running at a brief 71 minutes, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is mandatory viewing for any horror fan.

The Exorcist

William Friedkin’s adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel is one of the best films ever made, horror or otherwise. The winner of two Academy Awards (and nominated for eight more), The Exorcist is the rare horror film to earn widespread acclaim from audiences and critics alike. It is also one of the scariest films ever made.

Hellraiser

The film that introduced the world to Pinhead and his fellow cenobites still shocks to this day (though I’m partial to Hellbound: Hellraiser II). Clive Barker’s tale of a puzzle box that will grant its solver unlimited pleasure (or pain) is a classic for a reason. Jesus wept.

90s Horror

Cape Fear

Robert De Niro stars in this intense thriller as a rapist who is released from prison only to go after the defense attorney (Nick Nolte) he deems responsible for putting him there. While not a horror movie per se, it features enough horrifying elements to merit a spot on this list (just try not to get the chills during De Niro’s flirtatious scene with a teenage Juliette Lewis (the actress was 21 at the time of filming, but her character is definitely a teenager).

Event Horizon

Some people love it, some people hate it. Either way, you’ve got to give Paul W.S. Anderson’s space nightmare some credit for its truly haunting imagery. The special effects don’t really hold up after all these years (all of the CGI anti-gravity effects look cartoonish by today’s standards), but Event Horizon is a pretty freaky mind-fuck of a film.

From Dusk Till Dawn

El Rey’s television adaptation may be all the rage now, but you just can’t beat the original. Robert Rodriguez’s crime-vampire flick is a hoot and a half. Starring a George Clooney (just one year before Batman and Robin happened to him), From Dusk Till Dawn follows two robber brothers (Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) as they kidnap a family and seek refuge across the Mexican border in a bar (aptly named the Titty Twister) that just so happens to be run by vampires. It’s even more fun than it sounds.

Slasher Sequels

Curse of Chucky

After the stinker that was Seed of Chucky, who ever thought we would get an above-average sixth installment of the Child’s Play franchise. Curse of Chucky returns the series to its horror roots and while it’s not without its flaws, it is a serious improvement over its predecessor. The only issue with watching this one on Netflix is that you lose the fantastic post-credits stinger, so make sure you don’t deprive yourself of that luxury if you watch it.

Scream 2

Scream 2 is a near-perfect slasher and a perfect sequel. End of story.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Wes Craven was on fire in the 90s. New Nightmare is essentially his meta precursor to Scream, and it mostly works. In the film, the Freddy Krueger entity has escaped into the real world after the Nightmare on Elm Street films stopped getting made and started attacking the actors and crew that have worked on the film, with his prime target being actress Heather Langenkamp (Nancy from NOES 1 and 3). While the film could use a few more kills, it’s still whip-smart. It was just released a few years too early.

Foreign Horror

The Host

While we all wait patiently for a sequel (seriously, does anyone know what happened to that thing?), check out Bong Joon-ho’s original 2006 masterpiece The Host. This is how you do a creature feature. The simplistic story follows the Park family as they go on the hunt for the youngest daughter in the family that has just been taken hostage by a creature that suddenly jumped out of the Han River. The Host is more than your average creature feature, as it focuses more on the close bond forged by the Park family (as opposed to the creature’s antics) as they try to rescue one of their own.

Battle Royale

The Hunger What? Kinji Fukasaku’s adaptation of Koushun Takami’s novel of the same name is the original child vs. child story, and boy is it tough to watch. In the near future, the Battle Royale Act was enacted when 800,000 students walked out of school. As part of the act, one class is selected to participate in a death match where only one student will be left standing. It’s a brutal, harrowing film and one of the best films to come out of the 2000s.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Otherwise known as “The first Iranian vampire-western,” Ana Lily Amirpour’s visually striking film (shot entirely in black and white) is also one of the most feminist horror movies to come out in quite some time. The plot is relatively simple, but it also a very sweet story of the love between a lonely vampire and a human misfit.

Modern Classics

The Babadook

The Babadook gets a lot of hate from mainstream moviegoers, and I can understand why. It’s mostly due to the obnoxious child, but I’ve come around on the film since being so hard on it a couple of years ago. It is a rather scary allegory for grief and learning to let go. The creature design on the titular boogeyman is fantastic (even if he’s barely on screen). If you found yourself not liking this one, give it another watch with your expectations in check. You may find yourself having a new appreciation for it.

Housebound

One of the funniest films of 2014 came to us courtesy of New Zealand. When Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) is placed under house arrest at her parents’ home, she begins to suspect that the house is haunted. What follows is scares and laughs galore with a few twists thrown in for good measure (one of which was stolen by this year’s The Boy). If you want something to watch with friends, Housebound should be your top choice.

The Den

One of the few movies to truly unsettle me this decade has been Zachary Donohue’s The Den. The majority of the film is told from the viewpoint of webcams, but unlike other films with technology gimmicks, The Den actually creates a believable (and totally creepy) situation. Running at a brief 81 minutes, The Den flies by and will have you thinking twice about signing in to Skype or Chat Roulette.

New(ish) Releases

We Are Still Here

While it may be a bit too slowly paced for some, We Are Still Here is a moody and atmospheric horror film that focuses on a quartet of adult characters for a change. Set in 1979, the film follows a couple grieving the recent death of their son who move to a new home in New England, only to come under attack from some crispy spirits.

Hush

While not popular with quite a few readers here at Bloody Disgusting, Hush is nonetheless a tense and exciting experience (my review). The latest film from Oculus director Mike Flanagan (at least until Before I Wake finally gets released in September) is a fun little potboiler of a film that sees a deaf-mute woman get stalked around her house by a psychotic killer. It doesn’t really reinvent the wheel, but it spins that wheel remarkably well.

Starry Eyes

If you saw The Neon Demon and walked out underwhelmed, give Starry Eyes a watch. The Kickstarted film chronicles Sarah’s (Alex Essoe, a revelation) journey to becoming a famous actress. Though a slow burn, Starry Eyes has plenty of cringeworthy body horror elements that will be sure to have you squirming in your seat.

Let Us Prey

This British-Irish horror film was a huge surprise for me last year. The film tells the tale of a mysterious stranger named Six (Liam Cunningham, aka Davos Seaworth from Game of Thrones) who is arrested and put in a prison cell, only to cause the criminals and police officers inside to come to terms with their sins. The ultimate reveal of Six’s true identity may be a bit predictable, but the road there is a gory blast.

They Look Like People

The feature film directorial debut of Perry Blackshear is less an outright horror film and more an intense look into mental illness. Running at a brief 80 minutes, the film stars MacLeod Andrews as a man who believes that the world is being taken over by evil creatures. You will have to watch the film to find out whether or not he is correct, but suffice it to say that the film leads to an appropriately disturbing conclusion.

The post The 20 Best Horror Movies on Netflix Right Now! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In recent years, post-credits “stingers” have become synonymous with Marvel’s films, often used as a way to tease future installments in the company’s cinematic universe. But extra scenes at the very end of movies are not exclusive to superhero films, and they certainly weren’t created by Marvel. In fact, a handful of movies from the ’70s and ’80s, long before the superhero boom we’re currently in the midst of, gave viewers a reason to stick around through the end credits.

Horror movies are no exception. Here are five with awesome post-credits stingers!

THE LOST BOYS 2: THE TRIBE

Once upon a time, it was rumored that both Corey Feldman and Corey Haim would return for the decades-later sequel The Lost Boys 2: The Tribe, though when the movie was released in 2008, Haim was nowhere to be seen. If you stuck through the end credits, however, you saw that Haim reprised the role of Sam Emerson for a brief scene that revealed he had become a vampire in the years since the events of the original film. The scene cuts to black just as Sam and Edgar Frog are about to engage in a battle-to-the-death, though it ended up being a fight we never got to actually see. The late Haim did not appear in the franchise’s third installment, but it was revealed that Edgar killed Sam in that battle.

ZOMBIELAND

Perhaps the best cameo in the history of cinema can be found in Zombieland, wherein Bill Murray pops up for an appearance as himself. Humorously, Murray disguises himself as a zombie so he can walk freely outside (and golf) without being attacked, and he of course ends up getting shot when Columbus mistakes him for a real zombie. The hilarious cameo reunited Murray with his Kingpin co-star Woody Harrelson, and in the post-credits scene, Murray and Harrelson’s Tallahassee together recite an iconic line from Caddyshack. Au revoir, gopher.

CURSE OF CHUCKY

Released in 2013, direct-to-video sequel Curse of Chucky brought the Child’s Play franchise back to its horror roots, successfully merging the continuities of both the original trilogy and the subsequent horror-comedy sequels. At the end of the film, a young girl finds herself in possession of Chucky, teasing that she will be the main character of the next installment. The post-credits scene, however, takes the franchise in an entirely different direction. In the stinger scene, Alex Vincent reprises the role of Andy Barclay for the first time since Child’s Play 2, telling his old friend to “play with this” before blasting him away with a shotgun. Now that’s what I call fan service!

EVIL DEAD

If you’re asking me, Fede Alvarez struck remake gold with 2013’s Evil Dead, an insanely gory franchise reboot that stayed true to the original films and introduced an ass-kicking female Ash (so to speak) in the form of actress Jane Levy’s Mia Allen. Of course, Bruce Campbell himself didn’t actually make an appearance in the remake, and while some fans weren’t too happy about that, he at least did pop up for a brief post-credits stinger that seemed to tease he would soon be returning to the series – and indeed he did just last year, courtesy of Starz series “Ash vs. Evil Dead.” After the credits, the remake comes to a close with Campbell reminding us just how groovy Ash Williams is.

THE THING (2011)

A companion piece to John Carpenter’s classic film, the 2011 version of The Thing is essentially both a prequel and a remake, telling the story of what happened at the ill-fated Norwegian outpost before MacReady and friends arrived to investigate. Loaded with poorly-realized CGI, the prequel is little more than a reminder that the horror genre just isn’t the same without the practical effects of the 1980s, but it does at least end on a satisfying and smile-inducing note. The end credits of The Thing 2011 lead directly into the events of Carpenter’s 1982 film, allowing for them to be seamlessly watched back-to-back. Pretty cool, even if the prequel was a computer-generated shell of Carpenter’s gruesome masterpiece.

Other horror movies with post-credits scenes include Dawn of the Dead (2004), House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Howling, Planet Terror, See No Evil, Slither, The Stuff, Texas Chainsaw 3D, and Wrong Turn.

The post Five Horror Movies With Awesome Post-Credits Scenes! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

*This is for films on American Netflix as of February 20, 2016.

Hellions

Our own Chris Coffel wrote a fairly positive 4-skull review of Hellions, and while there may be a few opposing opinions out there, you could do a lot worse than Hellions, the latest film from the director of Pontypool (a film that actually made my last “Netflix Gems” list). The film centers around Dora (Chloe Rose), who must face off with a bunch of mysterious masked children on Halloween while also dealing with a rapidly accelerating pregnancy. It isn’t the most coherent film, but it sure is visually stunning and has several creepy moments.

The post 10 MORE Horror Gems On Netflix! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Curse of Chucky

“What in the freckled hell” should have been the tagline for this movie. I’m just saying. Technically, the little “monster” is back out of the cardboard box.

Faces in the Crowd

This is a very stupid summary, much like the movie it is describing. Seriously, it’s awful. Don’t watch it.

Honeymoon

Honeymoon is about aliens. There are no ghosts in this movie. I suppose you could argue that the aliens are haunting the cabin, but that’s a bit of a stretch.

Oculus

I’m pretty sure every character in the movie is looking in the mirror from one side. Just to be clear, no one ever enters the mirror in this movie. They are all looking at it from one side.

Open Water 2: Adrift

Really? We’re going to completely rip off the Alien tagline? Alright.

The Pact

This is a nice, creepy little movie that is completely undersold by this tagline. It just sounds so silly! If you read it in the voice of the Honest Trailer guy, it sounds even worse.

Scream 2

First of all, “Guess who tags along with them” should have a question mark at the end of it, not a period. Also, the GPA thing has nothing to do with this movie.

The Factory

This summary sounds like it’s for a Nicholas Cage or Sylvester Stallone movie, except it stars John Cusack. Also, it’s a terrible movie.

The Houses October Built

What if, in the end, they didn’t get exactly what they came for and they all just went home without having been scared?

Venom

Venom is a movie about a man who becomes possessed by the spirits of a bunch of serial killers after is is bitten by a bunch of snakes. I get that the plot summary can’t give away the whole movie but this is ridiculous. It makes it sound like a creature feature!

Have any other Netflix plot summaries made you bust out laughing? Let us know in the comments below or feel free to shoot me a Tweet!

The post 10 of the Funniest Horror Movie Plots Summaries on Netflix! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

However, there’s an explanation for this: the Netflix version of the film is the R-rated cut while the post credits scene only appears with the unrated version. So, don’t take it personally or think that Netflix has it out for you.

That being said, the scene is available to be seen below, although it is a pretty massive spoiler if a sequel is indeed made!

The post Netflix’s ‘Curse of Chucky’ Doesn’t Have the Post Credits Scene appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

When the event returns to Worcester, MA from October 17th through 19th, those attending can nab a photo with the cast of both Child’s Play (1988) and Curse of Chucky (2013)!!

Posing with you next to a screen-used authentic Chucky doll are Child’s Play and Curse of Chucky stars Brad Dourif (the voice of ol’ Chuckster), Fiona Dourif and Alex Vincent.

Prices range from $30 to $40 for individual shots, group shots are more like $50 to $70 depending on how many actors are in the shot, explains the site.

Full details here.

The post Take a Photo With An Original Chucky Doll, and the ‘Child’s Play’ Cast! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I really loved the past year of horror. Not only did independent films shine through the ever-growing VOD platform, but the studios took some big chances that landed them some mighty rewards.

The biggest hat-tip goes to Warner Bros. and New Line for having the guts to release James Wan’s The Conjuring in July, dead smack in the middle of summer. We haven’t seen a summer horror films succeed in years, and to see Conjuring become one of the top supernatural grossers of all time is huge for the horror scene. Until a few flop, expect the studios to take a chance in that July slot in the coming years…

It was also the year of the apocalypse, with not one but three end-of-the-world films landing in my top ten! This year also rocked with Metallica, got stranded in space, and shit out a stress demon in an homage to the 80’s (horror comedies are making a comeback!). It was so jam-packed with goodness that, for the first time in years, I had trouble narrowing down my list. But alas, only ten can be highlighted, leaving me with the following list of my favorite films of 2013…

*(Also note that films like Maniac, Stitches, You’re Next and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane were in my top 10 in previous years, which is why you don’t see them mentioned here.)

MR. DISGUSTING’s TOP 10 OF 2013

Honorable Mentions:

As I stated before, this year was overflowing with goodness that started all the way back in January with the Guillermo del Toro-produced Mama, which would have made my top 10 had not for the CGI abuse. Stoker is one of the more underrated films of the year. Personally, I found it to be a gorgeous art horror thriller from one of the greatest directors of our time, Park Chan-wook. So odd that Mandy Lane came out the same year as Jonathan Levine’s Warm Bodies, and both are worthy of your time. Warm Bodies was a fun new take on the zombie genre, even if it was a bit “hipster”. You know the year was good when Fede Alvarez’s insanely violent Evil Dead didn’t make my top 10. For years we expected nothing but the worst from the remake of Sam Raimi’s classic, and thankfully we were treated to a reinvigorating start to what could be an entirely new franchise. Lastly comes Savaged, an indie film from Canada’s Raven Banner that none of you have seen or heard of. Patrick Cooper correctly raves in his review about this female Crow-esque indie thriller that’s insanely violent. Write this title down as you’re going to want to hunt it down ASAP.

Bonus. Gravity (October 4; Warner Bros.)

You can argue that this isn’t horror, but I’d be damned if this wasn’t the most intense and frightening movie I’ve seen in years. One of my biggest issues with modern blockbusters are the self-indulgent scopes inflicted by directors. While Gravity does take place nearly all in space, there’s a smallness to it that makes it extraordinarily claustrophobic. Alfonso Cuarón’s directing prowess is mind-boggling, taking the viewer on a circus tightrope act of terror in zero gravity. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney both deliver emotional Oscar-worthy performances that give the film a very human spirit. While Gravity may look like a huge summer blockbuster like Transformers, it’s actually a very tight-knit story that breaks into the scope of all emotions, from terror to compassion. Gravity is a modern masterpiece.

9. Escape from Tomorrow (October 11; Cinetic Media)

Critics were way too harsh on this experimental art film that was looked at, for whatever reason, like it should have been some perfectly generic Disney-themed thriller. It’s anything but generic, and goes for the throat with its trippy imagery, demonic spirit, and blatant attack on consumerism. Randy Moore’s commentary on how Disney sells “happiness” is right on the money, and his depiction on a nightmarish vacation is something that I’m sure many people can relate to. The idea that Moore snuck into Disneyworld and EPCOT in Orlando, Florida to film this is to be commended on the highest accord, and the end result is something that’s about as magical as Disney itself. This is a discovery film, one that you find and brag to your friends about seeing first. Even if you weren’t the first in line, I’m quite sure that the lot of you will be enchanted by this Willy Wonka-esque ride through the Disney parks. Personally, I’d enjoy this “dark ride” an infinite amount of times.

8. Curse of Chucky (September 24; Universal)

Written and directed by the franchise’s creator (Don Mancini), Curse returns to the Child’s Play roots and delivers a darker sequel that was teased at the end of Bride of Chucky. What’s so interesting about the sequel is that it’s played like a beginning to a saga, a slow-burn with multiple reveals. “Curse of Chucky shows serious restraint, which is rare for a fifth sequel. Instead of jumping right in, Mancini works his way to the reveal, treating the film like an introduction to a completely new, younger audience,” I explain in my review. In fact, “Curse of Chucky may just be the best home video sequel since Wrong Turn 2. It’s alarmingly good, which puts pressure on Universal to answer as to why they didn’t let Mancini shoot this for theaters…Chucky fans should rejoice, though, as Curse of Chucky is clearly going to re-ignite the franchise for years to come.“ The best part of the release is Universal’s newly minted Blu-ray box set including the entire franchise!

7. The World’s End (August 23; Universal)

Even though I’m a huge fan of Shaun of the Dead, I somehow didn’t see this until it was on home video, and was shocked to see it wasn’t as overhyped as I thought it would be. Edgar Wright gives insane homage to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise in this hilarious, action-packed alien horror story about a town overrun by robotic alien slaves. What’s more so beautiful is Wright’s reflection on age, and how we feel as we get older. Those readers 30 and above will feel a more personal connection to World’s End than the newer generation of horror fans. Even with a disconnect, I think all horror fans will appreciate the unrelenting pace, constant drinking, and stunningly well-coordinated fight sequence that fill the screen with blue alien gore.

6. Pacific Rim (July 12; Warner Bros.)

While a bit overrated, IMO, Guillermo del Toro’s giant robot vs. monster film was still one of the best of 2013. “Pacific Rim, beyond its flaws, is truly a gorgeous, stunning and magnificent summer spectacle,” I explain in my review. “It’s balls-to-the-wall batshit crazy – a must-see summer extravaganza that delivers more than what’s promised in the trailers, and will also tickle that childhood nerve that begs to be nurtured.” If you’re a fan of Robot Jox you will absolutely love this monster-sized action flick, now on video (and thankfully you don’t have to watch it in 3-D).

5. Prisoners (September 20; Warner Bros.)

What I loved about Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners was that it wasn’t trying to be anything but a solid thriller, and never tried too hard to attempt to force twist down the viewer’s throat. Even with Paul Dano and Hugh Jackman, the movie was carried on the shoulders of Jake Gyllenhaal, who has become one of the best actors of our time. Prisoners may not be as gritty as Seven, but it’s an intense and well-made as they come.

4. Metallica Through the Never (Sep. 27; Picturehouse)

I will never understand the negativity surrounding this musical masterpiece. I grew up a mega Metallica fan, and am one of the more recent haters. Still, I love their pre-1990’s albums so much that I listen to them daily, and would see them in concert any day of the week. I celebrate that the band used their own money to deliver one of the greatest music-inspired theater experiences ever. Even if it were a major flop financially, Through the Never is historical in the sense that I doubt you’ll ever see anything like it again. And let’s be honest, the wrap was awesome – I can’t even sit still through a live concert, let alone in a movie theater. Nimród Antal’s gorgeous and stunning apocalyptic chase through barren streets (with the awesome Dane DeHaan leading the way) was a breath of fresh air between song sets. Fuck the haters, Metallica Through the Never was a cinematic orgasm, especially in 3-D. I feel for those who missed this IMAX opportunity.

3. Bad Milo! (August 29; Magnet)

Harking back to cheesy 80’s movies like Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case, Bad Milo! was the surprise indie of the year delivering tons of gore, laughs, and of course the underrated Ken Marino. The concept of an evil demon that comes out of a man’s ass is just the tip of the iceberg as this genre film proves that, despite what history says, horror and comedy can live together. Bad Milo! is a must-see for all horror fans, and is even worthy of owning for those “what should we watch tonight?” parties.

2. The Conjuring (July 19; New Line)

If you hated Paranormal Activity, James Wan’s The Conjuring is the opposite horror experience as it’s a high-budget, well-made horror in the vein of Poltergeist. In fact, it’s so good it may be the best supernatural horror since The Ring, and maybe even one of the best all-time. It also cements Wan as the best genre director in the past decade, and makes him one of the greatest ever. “For a brief moment, James Wan had reconnected me with my youth and rattled me,” I explain in my review. “It’s a core-shaking sequence that’s so viciously terrifying, yet you barely see anything. It’s a master artist painting the most wonderful picture.”

1. This is the End (June 12; Columbia)

Until Gravity (which I put as a bonus, being that it’s more sci-fi than horror), Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s apocalyptic comedy This is the End was a shoe-in for my favorite genre film of 2013. One giant inside joke, the horror comedy (and it is a horror film, so don’t even try and argue against that) featured the likes of Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Aziz Ansari, Emma Watson, Jason Segel, David Krumholtz, Michael Cera, and even Rihanna in a gut-busting laugher that also has some tremendous horror-themed elements. “Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg directed the living shit out of their screenplay. It’s rare to see a genre crossover like this, but Rogen and Goldberg stunned me with their understanding of the horror genre, the beats, and how to scare the audience,” I state in my review. “While This Is the End may be a comedy – one of the funniest this decade – it’s still an insanely competent horror movie that’s going to blow your collective minds.”

Updated Dec. 4, 2018, because I decided that Gravity shouldn’t be officially on this list. 

The post Mr. Disgusting Picks the Best Horror Films of 2013! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

For fans of the film, Curse was a wonderful return to the franchise roots, while also delivering a ton of twists and turns that connected it to the previous five films. But in the end, a lot of you guys appeared to be confused. “What happened to Alice,” everyone keeps asking me, as well as writer-director Don Mancini on Twitter.

Mancini, who created the Child’s Play franchise, while also writing and directing the previous two installments, took to Twitter to reveal some breaking news: “To the fans who’ve asked questions about Alice and the end of #CurseofChucky: All will be answered in part 7!“

By no means does this confirm that a seventh Child’s Play is already greenlit by Universal, but it does suggest that Mancini has begun work on the next film’s screenplay, and that it will revolve around Alice (played by Summer H. Howell).

The Child’s Play series is the only “name” horror brand left that’s still connecting to the roots; it has the same iconic killer and the same people involved. It’s incredibly exciting to watch as it embarks on a seventh film that I hope brings Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) – as a human or doll, I don’t care – back into the fold as a regular.

What do you want to see in Child’s Play 7?

To the fans who've asked questions about Alice and the end of #CurseofChucky: All will be answered in part 7!

— Don Mancini (@RealDonMancini) December 2, 2013

The post BREAKING: Chucky Will Return In Seventh ‘Child’s Play’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This, plus the fact that I watched the original Child’s Play again last month, puts me in a prime position to rank the films in order of my personal preference. So I figured I’d do so while they were still hot on my mind.

Head below for the 6 Chucky Movies Ranked From Worst To Best!!!

It was surprising for me to learn that I didn’t outright dislike any of the movies, even though I could have resented them after 8 hours straight of viewing them. Child’s Play 3 is a decent film, just a little rushed. I love the idea of Chucky loading real bullets into the military school rifles before the war games. And Perry Reeves makes a strong debut as De Silva. One of the issues could be that the formula just wasn’t as fresh and some of the ideas are half baked (this installment hit theaters a mere 9 months after Child’s Play 2 was released). But the main problem with the film is that Tyler (pictured above) is without a doubt the dumbest and most irritating character in the Chucky-verse.

I know a lot of you guys hate this one, but I sort of dig its batsh*t crazy shenanigans. Billy Boyd (helped immensely by his accompanying puppet) is strangely compelling as Sh*tface/Glen/Glenda. That being said, the inside Hollywood jokes don’t really play and the narrative is somewhat lurching – which kind of diminishes the film’s replay value.

Fifteen years (Jesus) after its release, Bride Of Chucky remains a funny and highly entertaining installment in the franchise. It’s a film that is everything it set out to be, so it’s definitely a success on its own terms. And I totally get why its some people’s favorite. The fact that I’m ranking it in 4th place can be chalked up to the fact that I’m just not always in the mood for its jokey tone.

This brand new “tonal reboot” has a lot going for it. It’s incredibly suspenseful (the chili scene) at times and it keeps even the most die-hard fans on their toes when it comes to anticipating how all of this ties into the narrative flow of the preceding 5 films. Fiona Dourif is great and Don Mancini’s direction is patient and assured. The limited location and deliberate pace might diminish replay value, but it’s a very satisfying entry and I can’t wait to see where the story goes from here.

I can already here you yelling at me. Look, I love this movie. It has so much going for it. But, as I stated in this controversial article, “[it has] the suspense, intensity and wit we associate with Chucky’s best moments, but the surrounding elements still aren’t fully nudged into the Chucky-verse. I’d argue that the series had yet to find its true identity and that ‘Child’s Play’ is peppered with slight tonal miscalculations that keep it from really coming into its own.”

This thing just speeds along at such a great pace. The outshines the first film in that regard as well as in terms of tone. Again, I fully understand and respect why 99% of you like the first film more – I just gotta speak my own truth here. I’ll once again quote my Child’s Play 2 vs. Child’s Play 1 article when I say, “The film is brighter, more colorful and runs at a brisk pace. The initial kill, a technician being electrocuted during the process of restoring (reanimating) Chucky perfectly sets up the film’s mix of youthful whimsy and adult cynicism. [And] the film’s finale in the makeshift funhouse of the “Good Guy” assembly line embodies the success of the piece in a nutshell. It’s exploding with color and inventiveness. It’s violent and bloody, but playful. It has a nice sense of momentum and is able to oscillate between humor and menace in a deft manner. Thematically, it brings Chucky sort of full circle in his demise (at least in terms of his 2nd life as a doll). And it sums up how John Lafia’s Child’s Play 2 outshines the original Tom Holland film a bit – it manages to have its cake and eat it too. That’s what Chucky’s all about isn’t it?”

But what about you? What’s your favorite Child’s Play film? Vote in our poll!

The post The 6 Chucky Movies Ranked From Worst To Best!!! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Universal Home Entertainment’s Curse of Chucky, the newest installment of the chilling Child’s Play franchise,is out now everywhere! Curse of Chucky reunites franchise creators Don Mancini and David Kirschner as Chucky returns to horrify viewers in an all-new, unrated chapter of the blood-soaked suspense saga.

Read my review here!

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares, check out this awesome Chucky Megamix!

Mike Realm has taken all 6 Chucky movies – including Child’s Play 1-3, Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky and Curse of Chucky – and created a “bloody” good mash up!

Written and directed by Mancini, Curse of Chucky finds a family imperiled by the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares – determined to finish a job that was started long ago. The film stars Fiona Dourif (The Master, “True Blood“), A Martinez (“Longmire,” “General Hospital“), Danielle Bisutti (Get Smart, “CSI: Miami“) and Brennan Elliott (“Flight 93,” Double Jeopardy), with Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) once again providing the voice of Chucky, the homicidal plaything inhabited by the spirit of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray.

“He’s back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the pint-sized doll possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer. When a mysterious package arrives at the house of Nica (Fiona Dourif, “True Blood“), she doesn’t give it much thought. However, after her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to the ensuing bloodshed and chaos. The return of America’s favorite toy, voiced again by Brad Dourif, is unrated and full of more blood-splattered thrills and chills.”

Bonus Features Exclusive to the Blu-ray:
· Living Doll: Bringing Chucky to Life: Featuring the award-winning work of animatronics company Alterian, this featurette shows the pain-staking detail involved with bringing Chucky to life and the army of people behind the process.
· Voodoo Doll: The Chucky Legacy: More than six films and a quarter of a century, Chucky, the possessed Good Guys doll, has been the playmate we love to hate. This featurette looks at why we’re still frightened by the red haired terror and recalls some favorite moments from the previous films.
· Storyboard Comparisons

Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Features:
· Deleted Scenes
· Gag Reel
· Playing with Dolls: The Making of Curse of Chucky: From scripting, to casting to shooting, this featurette proves that playing with dolls is definitely not child’s play! Follow the cast and crew of Curse of Chucky as they bring the newest and scariest chapter in the series to the screen.
· Feature Commentary with Director Don Mancini, Puppeteer Tony Gardner and Star Fiona Dourif

The post Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of ‘Child’s Play’ With the Chucky Megamix! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Even better? The film is included on Universal’s Chucky: The Complete Collection which collects ALL of the Chucky movies on Blu-ray! In fact, I’ve got it in my hands right now and it looks to have some rad special features as well as unrated cuts of Seed Of Chucky and Curse Of Chucky.

To celebrate we’re going to do a live tweet marathon starting with Child’s Play 2 and going straight through the day up until the end of Curse Of Chucky. For complex reasons we’re going to skip Child’s Play and head straight into sequel-ville. If you want a head start, watch the original film starting at 8:20AM PST.

You can follow the live tweet marathon at @BDisgusting starting at 10AM PST/1PM EST. Feel free to tweet at us and interact! If we temporarily exceed our tweet allowance we’ll switch to @EvanDickson before switching back. Let’s use the hashtag #ChuckyBox The schedule is as follows:

Child’s Play 2 – 10AM PST
Child’s Play 3 – 1135 AM PST
Bride Of Chucky – 105PM PST
Seed Of Chucky (Unrated) – 240PM PST
Curse Of Chucky (Unrated) – 415PM PST

The post Join Us For A Chucky Marathon Tomorrow!!! ‘Child’s Play 2’ All The Way Up To ‘Curse Of Chucky!’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Figure states, “The original Child’s Play films were some of my favorites growing up. With the new Curse of Chucky movie coming out directed by the original directer Don Mancini and Chucky being voice by Brad Dourif again .. I quickly decided to make a ode to the little fucker with a knife. Enjoy!”

Curse Of Chucky comes out today on Blu-ray and DVD. Check out our review here.

Got any thoughts/questions/concerns for Jonathan Barkan? Shoot him a message on Twitter or on Bloody-Disgusting!

The post [Free Download] Figure Release “Child’s Play (Original Mix)” In Honor Of ‘Curse Of Chucky’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

So when I was offered the chance to speak with Mancini about the film, I jumped at the chance. We talked about the return Curse makes to more suspenseful horror as well as his plans for continuing the franchise. Last, but not least, I got him to discuss which installments in the franchise he would rank the highest.

Head below to check it out!

In terms on continuity this is a sequel, but in terms of tone it’s a reboot.

Yeah, exactly. We called it a “tonal reboot.” It feels good to be back, it’s about time. I’ve wanted to get it going for several years, it just seems like it takes longer and longer in the post recession, post strike age. So I’m just glad that we’re here and that people are seeming to like it. We’re getting the best reviews in the history of the franchise, so I’m eager to see how it does.

So from the get-go you wanted it to be darker than the last few installments?

Oh yeah. After Bride and Seed, which of course were comedies, we wanted to take a severe turn back into gothic horror territory. It’s what the fans have been saying they wanted, and after the last two I think we mined the comedic stuff as much as we could, for now. I think Chucky is a particularly versatile character and I think he can be plugged into a number of different forms. But it was time to go back to his roots.

Chucky really enjoys killing people. He takes a palpable sense of glee in it, can you talk about constructing the kills around that?

It’s definitely an occupational hazard when you write horror movies, particularly if you have a franchise, constantly trying to find new ways of killing people. It’s tricky. Chucky operates a lot differently from most horror villains whether it’s Freddy or Jason or Dracula or Frankenstein’s Monster. All of those villains are sort of marauding, they come at you and you run away. Chucky is different, he hides in plain sight. He’s a doll. So is MO is generally surprise attack and sabotage.

Right off the bat it sort of suggests you get a little more creative with your kills. In the comedies, Bride and Seed, the murders in those movies were deliberately stylized and over the top. But with this one, because I wanted to make it scary again, I wanted his murders to seem more plausible. “If a doll could kill people this is how he would do it.” It’s a matter of wanting to balance the plausible quotient with the clever glee quotient.

The poisoning was a new one. That’s kind of a set piece that had abstractly been in my mind, not necessarily for a Chucky movie. I realized that it could be a fun, suspenseful set piece – someone poisoning one bowl of soup or one bowl of chili and we don’t know who’s going to get it. And that was specifically very Hitchcock-ian as well. I wanted a lot of this movie to be about suspense.

How did casting Fiona Dourif come about?

I had met Fiona glancingly as she was growing up but I never spent any substantial amount of time with her. But, being friends with Brad, I was always hearing about what she was up to and I knew she had become an actress. She came in initially and read for the role of the sister and I was watching her thinking, “maybe I’m crazy but she’d be great as the lead.” I’d seen a lot of actresses for that role and a lot of them were excellent but they just weren’t quite right for a number of reasons. I didn’t believe a lot of them in the wheelchair, but somehow with Fiona I really bought it. Perhaps some of it was that she had actually played a paraplegic before in a TV movie. There’s also a haunted quality she has, it’s hard to describe but I believe supernatural things would happen to that girl.

It seems like Chucky is primed for more installments after this one.

We’ll see how it goes but that was definitely part of the plan, to kick off a new phase of legitimately scary Chucky movies. That is our hope and our fingers are crossed.

In what order would you rank the prior installments?

I would be an idiot not to put Curse Of Chucky at the top of the list right now. Take that with whatever sized grain of salt is appropriate. I would rank the first movie, Curse and Bride – those are my favorites, but I like [everyone’s work on all the films]. And that’s all I’ll say. And I’ll never join the chorus of voices who don’t like Seed Of Chucky.

The post [Interview] ‘Curse Of Chucky’ Director Don Mancini On Returning To Suspense, Sequel Plans And Which Installments Are His Favorite! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In an incredible cross-promotion with Universal Home Entertainment for the release of Curse of Chucky, Movieclips has digitally inserted Child’s Play‘s Chucky into classic horror films such as Psycho, The Purge, Mama and even Drag Me To Hell. All four of the below mash-ups are must-see enjoyment for horror fiends like us!

Don Mancini’s Curse of Chucky, now on VOD, arrives on home video everywhere this Tuesday!

Read our positive review of Curse of Chucky here!

“Nica (Fiona Dourif) is grieving over the gruesome suicide of her mother when her domineering older sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti) arrives with her young family in tow to help settle their mother’s affairs. As the sisters butt heads over Nica’s plans for the future, Barb’s young daughter comforts herself with a grinning, red-haired talking doll named Chucky (voiced again by Brad Dourif) that recently arrived mysteriously in the mail. But as a string of brutal murders begins to terrorize the household, Nica suspects the doll may hold the key to the bloodshed. What she doesn’t know is that Chucky has a personal score to settle. He’s determined to finish a job he started more than 20 years earlier, and this time he’s going to see it through to the bloody and shocking end.”

The post [Random Cool] Watch Chucky Invade Other Horror Flicks, Like ‘Psycho’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Additionally, Chucky: The Complete Collection Limited Edition is also available on Blu-ray and DVD on October 8. For the first time ever, Chucky fans can experience all six movies in one must-own set, including Child’s Play, Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3, Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky and Curse of Chucky.

Bloody Disgusting has been provided with (5) copies of Curse of Chucky on Blu-ray, as well as (1) copy of the Chucky: The Complete Collection Limited Edition on Blu-ray!

TO ENTER: All you need to do is E-mail submit@bloody-disgusting.com and put CHUCKY in the subject line, include YOUR FULL NAME, ADDRESS, and why you’re the biggest Chucky fan, and we’ll randomly select 6 winners over the next week. No PO Boxes. U.S. only.

Written and directed by Mancini, Curse of Chucky finds a family imperiled by the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares – determined to finish a job that was started long ago. The film stars Fiona Dourif (The Master, “True Blood“), A Martinez (“Longmire,” “General Hospital“), Danielle Bisutti (Get Smart, “CSI: Miami“) and Brennan Elliott (“Flight 93,” Double Jeopardy), with Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) once again providing the voice of Chucky, the homicidal plaything inhabited by the spirit of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray.

Bonus Features Exclusive to the Blu-ray:
· Living Doll: Bringing Chucky to Life: Featuring the award-winning work of animatronics company Alterian, this featurette shows the pain-staking detail involved with bringing Chucky to life and the army of people behind the process.
· Voodoo Doll: The Chucky Legacy: More than six films and a quarter of a century, Chucky, the possessed Good Guys doll, has been the playmate we love to hate. This featurette looks at why we’re still frightened by the red haired terror and recalls some favorite moments from the previous films.
· Storyboard Comparisons

Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Features:
· Deleted Scenes
· Gag Reel
· Playing with Dolls: The Making of Curse of Chucky: From scripting, to casting to shooting, this featurette proves that playing with dolls is definitely not child’s play! Follow the cast and crew of Curse of Chucky as they bring the newest and scariest chapter in the series to the screen.
· Feature Commentary with Director Don Mancini, Puppeteer Tony Gardner and Star Fiona Dourif

Curse of Chucky synopsis: “He’s back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the pint-sized doll possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer. When a mysterious package arrives at the house of Nica (Fiona Dourif, “True Blood“), she doesn’t give it much thought. However, after her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to the ensuing bloodshed and chaos. The return of America’s favorite toy, voiced again by Brad Dourif, is unrated and full of more blood-splattered thrills and chills.”

Chucky: The Complete Collection Limited Edition Synopsis: “Set a play date with Chucky as all six movies come together for the first time in the chilling Chucky Complete Collection Limited Edition. The killer doll torments his original victim, young Andy Barclay, in Child’s Play, Child’s Play 2 and Child’s Play 3. Then the ruthless redhead teams up with his dream doll, Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), in Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. Chucky is back again in Curse of Chucky to terrorize a family with whom he shares a mysterious connection. Oozing with hours of bonus materials, the Chucky Complete Collection Limited Edition is a thrilling, chilling, campy, must-own set. Wanna play?”

The post WIN ‘Curse of Chucky’ or ‘Chucky: The Complete Collection Limited Edition’ on Blu-ray!!! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But what makes a good franchise? A great first film helps, and a lot of these have GREAT first films. But that’s not all it takes. For a franchise’s legacy to endure it requires an unholy (and sometimes contradictory) mix of consistency, variety and history. It’s entirely possible to have a flat-out classic as your first film but then taper off into highly unremarkable territory.

Head inside to see how your favorite franchises stack up and to vote in our poll! Needless to say, my list is highly subjective and I welcome differing opinions. Also – please note I stuck to franchises with 5 or more entries (including remakes)!

Of course Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original is a classic, a truly beautiful film. And his 1986 sequel is a masterpiece of gonzo universe reinvention. But man are parts 3 and 4 abysmal. The 2003 remake was decent enough (though I didn’t care for its prequel) but there’s not a lot of the original franchise to left to chew on. Once you get to this year’s remake/sequel you’re seeing this series push up against its limitations (though I agree with one of my friends who asserts that 3D would have been a much better film if they’d had the conviction to drop the “modern day” angle and keep it in 1994 – which was clearly the original intention).

This feels sort of nuts because it has bar none the best film out of any of the franchises that beat it. John Carpenter’s 1978 Halloween is without question one of the best horror films ever made, and certainly the best slasher. But, deep in my gut, I can’t muster much enthusiasm for this brand as a whole. Sure Halloween 2 is okay and Halloween III: Season Of The Witch is pretty great but the subsequent Michael Myers installments (I’m including the remake and its sequel in this assessment) just kind of all fade together. The 4th film is pretty good but it begins a slow bleed out and the way the mythology is expanded just doesn’t interest me. I’m not a fan of H20 or Resurrection at all and can’t relate to Rob Zombie’s take on the material either.

Perhaps the diminishing returns can be boiled down to one fact. The more you explain Michael Myers, the further you get away from the point of the original film – that evil simply is. Of course, I think we’d all welcome a visceral new installment that got back to basics.

While none of the films in the Child’s Play franchise come close to hitting the highs of the original Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Don Mancini’s enduring creation gets points for consistency. Even if you don’t like the direction taken by Bride Of Chucky or Seed Of Chucky, you still feel like they’re an (admittedly weird) extension of the original story. The newly released Curse Of Chucky also carries some surprises in that department. Like it or not, the Child’s Play films provide their villain with a complete journey – something that oddly satisfies me.

The same can be said for A Nightmare On Elm Street and its sequels. While the quality of the films (especially in terms of scares) begins to decline after Dream Warriors (hey, I like Freddy’s Revenge) they still present a complete arc for Freddy. On top of that, they’re not lazy about exploring the milieu of the dream world and the ability of Freddy and his victims within it. As horrible as Freddy’s Dead was, it was preceded by 5 movies that all felt like part of a larger story that really worked towards developing whatever ideas its universe offered. The first and third entries are legitimately great (with a case to be made for the second), and the creativity of the two subsequent disappointments actually earns the franchise points as a whole. Not even the aforementioned Freddy’s Dead or the widely hated 2010 remake can take that away.

Perhaps the messiest franchise of them all, this one earns points for variety as well as its compelling history, legacy and cultural impact. I’d argue that Jason Voorhees became the most famous modern slasher through this franchise’s sheer force of will to survive (if not quality). Jason’s journey is much more fractured than Freddy’s or Chucky’s, but it still breaks down in an interesting manner. You’ve got a good first film in which he’s only alluded to (save for the end). Then Parts 2-4 form an interesting “living Jason” semi-trilogy that traces our antihero’s evolution from myth to actualized killer to dead special needs case. Then you’ve got your Tommy Jarvis trilogy (sharing part 4 with the semi-trilogy). The continuity between all of these films can be shoddy, but there’s at least a narrative thrust here that I can get behind. After that we get a variety of (almost) stand alone takes on the character that reward different camps within the overall fanbase, culminating with Jason X.

The series also gets points for unpredictability. It doesn’t suffer from the slow decline that most franchises do. While the original Friday The 13th might be the weakest first installment out of any of the series listed above, none of them had what was arguably their best moment six films in. Part 2 is great, The Final Chapter is even better and Jason Lives is (for me) the best. It also doesn’t hurt that the 2009 remake is handily better than the Chainsaw, Halloween or Elm Street remakes. Bonus? You can throw on an F13 movie any old time. People just don’t say that about Halloween: Resurrection or Freddy’s Dead.

But don’t take my word for it! Vote in our poll below! I’ve also included a few additional franchises to choose from (like The Howling and Hellraiser – IMO the quality of their sequels weighed them down. Evil Dead and Scream are great but didn’t have enough entries etc… so I put them in the poll instead).

The post The 5 Top Horror Franchises!!! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The new clip from Universal Home Entertainment’s Curse of Chucky, the newest installment of the chilling Child’s Play franchise, reveals that Jennifer Tilly makes an appearance. How does she tie in? Well, you’ll have to see what the “Bride” is up to by renting the Don Mancini-directed flick, now available On Demand. You can get the Blu-ray or DVD October 8.

Read my review here!

Curse of Chucky reunites franchise creators Don Mancini and David Kirschner as Chucky returns to horrify viewers in an all-new, unrated chapter of the blood-soaked suspense saga.

Written and directed by Mancini, Curse of Chucky finds a family imperiled by the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares – determined to finish a job that was started long ago. The film stars Fiona Dourif (The Master, “True Blood“), A Martinez (“Longmire,” “General Hospital“), Danielle Bisutti (Get Smart, “CSI: Miami“) and Brennan Elliott (“Flight 93,” Double Jeopardy), with Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) once again providing the voice of Chucky, the homicidal plaything inhabited by the spirit of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray.

“He’s back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the pint-sized doll possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer. When a mysterious package arrives at the house of Nica (Fiona Dourif, “True Blood“), she doesn’t give it much thought. However, after her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to the ensuing bloodshed and chaos. The return of America’s favorite toy, voiced again by Brad Dourif, is unrated and full of more blood-splattered thrills and chills.”

Bonus Features Exclusive to the Blu-ray:
· Living Doll: Bringing Chucky to Life: Featuring the award-winning work of animatronics company Alterian, this featurette shows the pain-staking detail involved with bringing Chucky to life and the army of people behind the process.
· Voodoo Doll: The Chucky Legacy: More than six films and a quarter of a century, Chucky, the possessed Good Guys doll, has been the playmate we love to hate. This featurette looks at why we’re still frightened by the red haired terror and recalls some favorite moments from the previous films.
· Storyboard Comparisons

Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Features:
· Deleted Scenes
· Gag Reel
· Playing with Dolls: The Making of Curse of Chucky: From scripting, to casting to shooting, this featurette proves that playing with dolls is definitely not child’s play! Follow the cast and crew of Curse of Chucky as they bring the newest and scariest chapter in the series to the screen.
· Feature Commentary with Director Don Mancini, Puppeteer Tony Gardner and Star Fiona Dourif

The post New ‘Curse of Chucky’ Clip Carries Monster Spoiler, Should Be Avoided… appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

There was a time when suggesting such a thing seemed like heresy. For years I’ve just assumed that my childhood enthusiasm for the Child’s Play sequels was nothing but a youthful flight of fancy. I had it in my head that the first film was the only true important component of the franchise (with Bride Of Chucky being an interesting postmodern footnote). But as I began revisiting this series last month I began to see a real case developing for the enduring quality of Child’s Play 2 (unfortunately I can’t say the same for the rushed Child’s Play 3 – though I applaud that film’s effort to change the scenery a bit). Is it the perfect Chucky film?

For years the fanbase has been carrying the torch that the 1988 original film is the only one that is “truly scary.” I’d contend that none of the films are actually scary. That’s not to say they’re not good – it’s just that the best Child’s Play movies are exemplary “fun” slashers. You can take the kills kind of seriously, but the pleasure you derive from them usually stems from their inventiveness more than anything else. There’s gore, but you’re not grossed out. These movies scratch the horror itch in a big way, but they’re not going to haunt your dreams.

The first film might take itself slightly more seriously at times, but it’s still certainly in on the joke of having the world’s most diminutive foul-mouthed killer. The moments where the film acknowledges this (such as Catherine Hicks’ first violent encounter with Chucky) are its most successful. They’ve got the suspense, intensity and wit we associate with Chucky’s best moments, but the surrounding elements still aren’t fully nudged into the Chucky-verse. I’d argue that the series had yet to find its true identity and that Child’s Play is peppered with slight tonal miscalculations that keep it from really coming into its own.

Child’s Play 2 manages to strip away all artifice and still manage to be an effective slasher. It knows it’s dealing with a sassy killer doll, and it fully embraces that path. It doesn’t have to hide Chucky’s true nature from us like the first film did in its first few acts (and initial marketing campaign). In fact, it begins at the “Good Guy” factory and seems to ratchet up the more playful elements of the universe from frame one. The film is brighter, more colorful and runs at a brisk pace. The initial kill, a technician being electrocuted during the process of restoring (reanimating) Chucky perfectly sets up the film’s mix of youthful whimsy and adult cynicism.

Andy’s new foster parents, Joanne and Phil (played by Jenny Agutter and Phil Simpson), are painted in broad strokes. She wants to nourish Andy back to emotional health, he wants the kid out of the damn house. But you can sense just a hint of the warmth that must have initially bonded them as a couple (and Joanne’s grief over the later loss of Phil is palpable). Again, we get a youthful shorthand with just enough layering added to not make it a farce (a different dynamic with a similar balancing act informs Andy’s relationship with his foster sister, Kyle).

Then, you have the kills. Almost every one of them makes expert use of Chucky’s size, available tools and skill set. From the sleazy “Good Guy” exec to Beth Grant’s disciplinarian teacher to Phil’s untimely demise. Where a few of the kills in the first film took place from Chucky’s anonymous POV (before his reveal), here we really get to see him relish the art of murder. It’s something he really enjoys and that joy, sick as it is, works incredibly well when shared onscreen.

The film’s finale in the makeshift funhouse of the “Good Guy” assembly line embodies the success of the piece in a nutshell. It’s exploding with color and inventiveness. It’s violent and bloody, but playful. It has a nice sense of momentum and is able to oscillate between humor and menace in a deft manner. Thematically, it brings Chucky sort of full circle in his demise (at least in terms of his 2nd life as a doll). And it sums up how John Lafia’s Child’s Play 2 outshines the original Tom Holland film a bit – it manages to have its cake and eat it too. That’s what Chucky’s all about isn’t it?

The post Is ‘Child’s Play 2’ Better Than ‘Child’s Play’?! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The clip carries an extreme spoiler and should probably only be watched by those of you who want to know one of the film’s big reveals. I suggest you just wait until you can see the entire movie.

Read my review here!

Curse of Chucky reunites franchise creators Don Mancini and David Kirschner as Chucky returns to horrify viewers in an all-new, unrated chapter of the blood-soaked suspense saga.

Written and directed by Mancini, Curse of Chucky finds a family imperiled by the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares – determined to finish a job that was started long ago. The film stars Fiona Dourif (The Master, “True Blood“), A Martinez (“Longmire,” “General Hospital“), Danielle Bisutti (Get Smart, “CSI: Miami“) and Brennan Elliott (“Flight 93,” Double Jeopardy), with Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) once again providing the voice of Chucky, the homicidal plaything inhabited by the spirit of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray.

“He’s back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the pint-sized doll possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer. When a mysterious package arrives at the house of Nica (Fiona Dourif, “True Blood“), she doesn’t give it much thought. However, after her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to the ensuing bloodshed and chaos. The return of America’s favorite toy, voiced again by Brad Dourif, is unrated and full of more blood-splattered thrills and chills.”

Bonus Features Exclusive to the Blu-ray:
· Living Doll: Bringing Chucky to Life: Featuring the award-winning work of animatronics company Alterian, this featurette shows the pain-staking detail involved with bringing Chucky to life and the army of people behind the process.
· Voodoo Doll: The Chucky Legacy: More than six films and a quarter of a century, Chucky, the possessed Good Guys doll, has been the playmate we love to hate. This featurette looks at why we’re still frightened by the red haired terror and recalls some favorite moments from the previous films.
· Storyboard Comparisons

Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Features:
· Deleted Scenes
· Gag Reel
· Playing with Dolls: The Making of Curse of Chucky: From scripting, to casting to shooting, this featurette proves that playing with dolls is definitely not child’s play! Follow the cast and crew of Curse of Chucky as they bring the newest and scariest chapter in the series to the screen.
· Feature Commentary with Director Don Mancini, Puppeteer Tony Gardner and Star Fiona Dourif

The post An Extremely Spoilery ‘Curse of Chucky’ Clip Gets Stitched Up appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Read my review here!

Curse of Chucky reunites franchise creators Don Mancini and David Kirschner as Chucky returns to horrify viewers in an all-new, unrated chapter of the blood-soaked suspense saga.

Written and directed by Mancini, Curse of Chucky finds a family imperiled by the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares – determined to finish a job that was started long ago. The film stars Fiona Dourif (The Master, “True Blood“), A Martinez (“Longmire,” “General Hospital“), Danielle Bisutti (Get Smart, “CSI: Miami“) and Brennan Elliott (“Flight 93,” Double Jeopardy), with Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) once again providing the voice of Chucky, the homicidal plaything inhabited by the spirit of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray.

“He’s back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the pint-sized doll possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer. When a mysterious package arrives at the house of Nica (Fiona Dourif, “True Blood“), she doesn’t give it much thought. However, after her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to the ensuing bloodshed and chaos. The return of America’s favorite toy, voiced again by Brad Dourif, is unrated and full of more blood-splattered thrills and chills.”

Bonus Features Exclusive to the Blu-ray:
· Living Doll: Bringing Chucky to Life: Featuring the award-winning work of animatronics company Alterian, this featurette shows the pain-staking detail involved with bringing Chucky to life and the army of people behind the process.
· Voodoo Doll: The Chucky Legacy: More than six films and a quarter of a century, Chucky, the possessed Good Guys doll, has been the playmate we love to hate. This featurette looks at why we’re still frightened by the red haired terror and recalls some favorite moments from the previous films.
· Storyboard Comparisons

Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Features:
· Deleted Scenes
· Gag Reel
· Playing with Dolls: The Making of Curse of Chucky: From scripting, to casting to shooting, this featurette proves that playing with dolls is definitely not child’s play! Follow the cast and crew of Curse of Chucky as they bring the newest and scariest chapter in the series to the screen.
· Feature Commentary with Director Don Mancini, Puppeteer Tony Gardner and Star Fiona Dourif

The post Three ‘Curse of Chucky’ Clips Tap Into Classic Roots! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The first footage begins when a little girl receives her very own Good Guys Doll, which creepily asks her “what’s for dinner?” The best moment is when Chucky’s pupils dilate.

Read my review here!

Curse of Chucky reunites franchise creators Don Mancini and David Kirschner as Chucky returns to horrify viewers in an all-new, unrated chapter of the blood-soaked suspense saga.

Written and directed by Mancini, Curse of Chucky finds a family imperiled by the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares – determined to finish a job that was started long ago. The film stars Fiona Dourif (The Master, “True Blood“), A Martinez (“Longmire,” “General Hospital“), Danielle Bisutti (Get Smart, “CSI: Miami“) and Brennan Elliott (“Flight 93,” Double Jeopardy), with Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) once again providing the voice of Chucky, the homicidal plaything inhabited by the spirit of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray.

“He’s back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the pint-sized doll possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer. When a mysterious package arrives at the house of Nica (Fiona Dourif, “True Blood“), she doesn’t give it much thought. However, after her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to the ensuing bloodshed and chaos. The return of America’s favorite toy, voiced again by Brad Dourif, is unrated and full of more blood-splattered thrills and chills.”

Bonus Features Exclusive to the Blu-ray:
· Living Doll: Bringing Chucky to Life: Featuring the award-winning work of animatronics company Alterian, this featurette shows the pain-staking detail involved with bringing Chucky to life and the army of people behind the process.
· Voodoo Doll: The Chucky Legacy: More than six films and a quarter of a century, Chucky, the possessed Good Guys doll, has been the playmate we love to hate. This featurette looks at why we’re still frightened by the red haired terror and recalls some favorite moments from the previous films.
· Storyboard Comparisons

Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Features:
· Deleted Scenes
· Gag Reel
· Playing with Dolls: The Making of Curse of Chucky: From scripting, to casting to shooting, this featurette proves that playing with dolls is definitely not child’s play! Follow the cast and crew of Curse of Chucky as they bring the newest and scariest chapter in the series to the screen.
· Feature Commentary with Director Don Mancini, Puppeteer Tony Gardner and Star Fiona Dourif

The post Watch Chucky’s Pupils Dilate In First ‘Curse of Chucky’ Clip! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The film premiered at both the Montreal-based Fantasia Film Festival, as well as FrightFest in London. Universal Pictures put together a featurette from the London event that mixes in new footage with interview with the cast and crew, and more importantly, the fans. Watch it below>

Written and directed by the franchise’s creator, Curse returns to the Child’s Play roots and delivers a darker sequel that was teased at the end of Bride of Chucky. What’s so interesting about the sequel is that it’s played like a beginning to a saga, “Curse of Chucky shows serious restraint, which is rare for a fifth sequel. Instead of jumping right in, Mancini works his way to the reveal, treating the film like an introduction to a completely new, younger audience,” I explain in my review.

In fact, “Curse of Chucky may just be the best home video sequel since Wrong Turn 2. It’s alarmingly good, which puts pressure on Universal to answer as to why they didn’t let Mancini shoot this for theaters.

“Chucky fans should rejoice, though, as Curse of Chucky is clearly going to re-ignite the franchise for years to come.“

The post Video From the ‘Curse of Chucky’ European Premiere at London’s Film4 FrightFest!! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Here’s a super fun piece of non-news that will have your horror-filled-brain daydreaming “high concept slasher” for the rest of the day.

Last night the FrightFest UK film festival played host to an early screening of Curse of Chucky, the sixth film in the Child’s Play saga. Don Mancini, franchise creator and Curse director, was on hand to for a special Q+A where he talked about iconic slasher team-ups. After joking off the idea of the “obvious” Leprechaun vs Chucky, Mancini pitched audiences his idea for Freddy vs. Chucky, which is says would make a lot more sense than Freddy vs. Jason (he’s got a point).

“It all just seems too obvious to me,” Bleeding Cool reports Mancini said in regard to Leprechaun vs Chucky. “I mean Freddy vs. Jason, I thought that was a fun movie… But for me the problem with that team up is that Jason doesn’t really have any personality and doesn’t talk. If Freddy and Chucky got together that would be a really funny double act. If you did a Child’s Play on Elm Street and did it like a horror movie version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

He continues, “So Chucky and Freddy meet and Freddy says, ‘Chucky I’m a big fan of your work.’ Chucky says, ‘Freddy I admire your technique.’ And they decide that Elm Street is too small for the two of them so they have to have a contest to see who can kill the most teenagers before sunrise.“

Curse of Chucky (read our review) arrives on VOD September 24 with an October 8, 2013 DVD and Blu-ray release via Universal Home Entertainment.

Banner image courtesy of Tugera.

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They say that, inspired by the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release of Curse of Chucky, the eponymous scare-zone will bring the terrifying pint-size doll, possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer, to life. Having made special appearances at past “Halloween Horror Nights,” this is the first time the sinister doll has commanded his own scare-zone to shock and terrify guests for his amusement.

The box-office blockbuster, The Purge, will come to life as “The Purge: Survive the Night.” As guests enter the theme park, they will be thrust into the depraved world of The Purge, a sordid tale in which all crime is declared legal and no one is safe for one single night; a story, in which all criminal activity, including murder, is legal for 12 hours. Ironically, the gates to “Halloween Horror Nights” swing open at 7:00 p.m. sharp; the same time havoc is reaped upon the citizens in The Purge. “The Purge: Survive the Night” scare zone will push guests to the limits as they become engaged in the film’s most memorable scenes while trying to run for their lives.

This year’s haunted attractions will also include: “The Walking Dead: No Safe Haven,” based on AMC’s Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy Award-winning TV show, “Evil Dead: Book of the Dead,” inspired by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s chilling remake of the cult classic, and “Black Sabbath 13 3D,” inspired by the darkest lyrics from the multi-platinum rock band’s 43-year history of Heavy Metal music. “Insidious: Into The Further” was also recently announced alongside a “The Cabin in the Woods” scare zone.

“Halloween Horror Nights” 2013 at Universal Studios Hollywood brings together the sickest minds in horror to immerse guests in the living, breathing, three-dimensional world of the most notorious and terrifying creatures and features a slate of unrivaled film production quality mazes, terror-filled Scare Zones and a fully re-imagined “Terror Tram” experience, uniquely themed to today’s most definitive horror properties.

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I got an early look at the film and was blown away with how great it was for a direct-to-disc sequel.

Written and directed by the franchise’s creator, Curse returns to the Child’s Play roots and delivers a darker sequel that was teased at the end of Bride of Chucky. What’s so interesting about the sequel is that it’s played like a beginning to a saga, “Curse of Chucky shows serious restraint, which is rare for a fifth sequel. Instead of jumping right in, Mancini works his way to the reveal, treating the film like an introduction to a completely new, younger audience,” I explain in my review.

In fact, “Curse of Chucky may just be the best home video sequel since Wrong Turn 2. It’s alarmingly good, which puts pressure on Universal to answer as to why they didn’t let Mancini shoot this for theaters.

“Chucky fans should rejoice, though, as Curse of Chucky is clearly going to re-ignite the franchise for years to come.“

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Curse of Chucky, written and directed once again by Mancini, returns to the Child’s Play roots, and finally delivers on that promise way back in 1998.

On the franchise’s 25th anniversary, Chucky fans are in for a treat with the latest installment, which puts Brad Dourif’s (the voice of Chucky) daughter Fiona in the lead role. She plays Nica, a born paraplegic, who is tossed in the middle of family drama when a “Good Guys” doll is delivered to her house. Neither her nor her mother knows who or why it was sent to them. Tossed in the trash, that night Nica is awakened to screams, only to find her mother dead on the floor from an apparent fall off the balcony. The Good Guys doll sits in the corner watching. Brooding. Waiting. Classic.

The next day, Nica’s house is infiltrated with family, including her sister (Barb; Danielle Bisutti), brother-in-law (Ian; Brennan Elliott), their young daughter (Alice; Summer Howell) and a live-in maid (Jill; Maitland McConnell). The Good Guys doll immediately enamors Alice, making them best friends forever.

Chucky – for those of you unacquainted, is a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray that became trapped inside the doll (see Child’s Play) – immediately begins his mischievous games, causing bizarre and unexpected deaths to occur. It all needs to look like an accident, which sort of ties Mancini’s hands from being able to do much “slashing”; it forces him to create suspense in other ways, for example, like putting rat poison in a random bowl of the guests’ soup.

Curse of Chucky shows serious restraint, which is rare for a fifth sequel. Instead of jumping right in, Mancini works his way to the reveal, treating the film like an introduction to a completely new, younger audience. And even after ol’ Chuckster is on a path of destruction, Mancini continued to peel layer, after layer, after layer off of the story, blasting the hardcore fans with more hat-tips than they’ll be able to handle.

The new design of Chucky, which will make sense when you see the flick, is crazy scary. Complimented with astounding effects work and puppetry, Chucky has never looked better…

And even though budget appears to have no bearing on Chucky, you can definitely “feel” the constraints, especially since the near-entirety of the film is limited to a single location. Yet, Universal deserves serious props for getting creator Mancini back behind the camera because it was shot with extreme love and care, delivering on quality, classic camerawork and scares that feel intimate to a Child’s Play film.

(Editor’s note: the following contains some spoilerly “references” that you may want to avoid.)

As a hardcore Child’s Play fan, I find the flaws weren’t so overpowering, although I do wish it were a bit gorier. And oddly enough, I really didn’t like what Mancini did with Charles Lee Ray’s backstory, which I felt turned him into a more mean-spirited serial killer.

Speaking of backstory, Mancini ties everything together in Curse of Chucky. It’s a sincere love letter to the fans that really drop the gloves and goes for it. For some, the self-referential model may even be a little too much – but it without question carries the biggest geek-out moments since the 2003 Freddy vs. Jason.

Following the finale, the overly long epilogue plays out like something you’d see in Ocean’s Eleven; and in terms of a payoff, it’s what makes or breaks the movie. Audiences should stick through the end credits for what will be the ultimate sendoff if the franchise were to die tomorrow.

Curse of Chucky may just be the best home video sequel since Wrong Turn 2. It’s alarmingly good, which puts pressure on Universal to answer as to why they didn’t let Mancini shoot this for theaters. Chucky fans should rejoice, though, as Curse of Chucky is clearly going to re-ignite the franchise for years to come.

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While we’ve already shared the film’s trailer, we now have your exclusive first look at the red band version that’s jam-packed with gags from ol’ Chuckster’s big return – Child’s Play fans are in for quite the treat! Those of you in Montreal will be the first to see the sequel this Friday at the Fantasia Film Festival!

Written and directed by Mancini, Curse of Chucky finds a family imperiled by the murderous doll that launched a generation’s nightmares – determined to finish a job that was started long ago. The film stars Fiona Dourif (The Master, “True Blood“), A Martinez (“Longmire,” “General Hospital“), Danielle Bisutti (Get Smart, “CSI: Miami“) and Brennan Elliott (“Flight 93,” Double Jeopardy), with Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) once again providing the voice of Chucky, the homicidal plaything inhabited by the spirit of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray.

The Blu-Ray Combo Pack allows fans to view Curse of Chucky anytime, anywhere on the platform of their choice. It includes a Blu-Ray disc, a DVD, and Digital including UltraViolet for the ultimate, complete viewing experience. Additionally, Chucky: The Complete Collection Limited Edition is also available on Blu-ray and DVD on October 8, 2013 in the United States only. For the first time ever, Chucky fans can experience all six movies in one must-own set, including Child’s Play, Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3, Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky and Curse of Chucky.

Bonus Features Exclusive to the Blu-ray:
· Living Doll: Bringing Chucky to Life: Featuring the award-winning work of animatronics company Alterian, this featurette shows the pain-staking detail involved with bringing Chucky to life and the army of people behind the process.
· Voodoo Doll: The Chucky Legacy: More than six films and a quarter of a century, Chucky, the possessed Good Guys doll, has been the playmate we love to hate. This featurette looks at why we’re still frightened by the red haired terror and recalls some favorite moments from the previous films.
· Storyboard Comparisons

Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Features:
· Deleted Scenes
· Gag Reel
· Playing with Dolls: The Making of Curse of Chucky: From scripting, to casting to shooting, this featurette proves that playing with dolls is definitely not child’s play! Follow the cast and crew of Curse of Chucky as they bring the newest and scariest chapter in the series to the screen.
· Feature Commentary with Director Don Mancini, Puppeteer Tony Gardner and Star Fiona Dourif

Curse of Chucky synopsis: “He’s back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the pint-sized doll possessed by the spirit of a notorious serial killer. When a mysterious package arrives at the house of Nica (Fiona Dourif, “True Blood“), she doesn’t give it much thought. However, after her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to the ensuing bloodshed and chaos. The return of America’s favorite toy, voiced again by Brad Dourif, is unrated and full of more blood-splattered thrills and chills.”

Chucky: The Complete Collection Limited Edition Synopsis: “Set a play date with Chucky as all six movies come together for the first time in the chilling Chucky Complete Collection Limited Edition. The killer doll torments his original victim, young Andy Barclay, in Child’s Play, Child’s Play 2 and Child’s Play 3. Then the ruthless redhead teams up with his dream doll, Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), in Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. Chucky is back again in Curse of Chucky to terrorize a family with whom he shares a mysterious connection. Oozing with hours of bonus materials, the Chucky Complete Collection Limited Edition is a thrilling, chilling, campy, must-own set. Wanna play?”

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In the sequel directed by creator Don Mancini, “Nica (Fiona Dourif) is grieving over the gruesome suicide of her mother when her domineering older sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti) arrives with her young family in tow to help settle their mother’s affairs. As the sisters butt heads over Nica’s plans for the future, Barb’s young daughter comforts herself with a grinning, red-haired talking doll named Chucky (voiced again by Brad Dourif) that recently arrived mysteriously in the mail. But as a string of brutal murders begins to terrorize the household, Nica suspects the doll may hold the key to the bloodshed. What she doesn’t know is that Chucky has a personal score to settle. He’s determined to finish a job he started more than 20 years earlier, and this time he’s going to see it through to the bloody and shocking end.“

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Below is also the previously released trailer that gives us a solid look at the brand new Good Guys doll, which is possessed by serial killer Charles Lee Ray (played and voiced by Brad Dourif).

In the sequel directed by creator Don Mancini, “Nica (Fiona Dourif) is grieving over the gruesome suicide of her mother when her domineering older sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti) arrives with her young family in tow to help settle their mother’s affairs. As the sisters butt heads over Nica’s plans for the future, Barb’s young daughter comforts herself with a grinning, red-haired talking doll named Chucky (voiced again by Brad Dourif) that recently arrived mysteriously in the mail. But as a string of brutal murders begins to terrorize the household, Nica suspects the doll may hold the key to the bloodshed. What she doesn’t know is that Chucky has a personal score to settle. He’s determined to finish a job he started more than 20 years earlier, and this time he’s going to see it through to the bloody and shocking end.“

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In the boxed set, “Set a play date with Chucky as all six movies come together for the first time in the chilling Chucky Complete Collection Limited Edition. The killer doll torments his original victim, young Andy Barclay, in Child’s Play, Child’s Play 2 and Child’s Play 3. Then the ruthless redhead teams up with his dream doll, Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), in Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. Chucky is back again in Curse of Chucky to terrorize a family with whom he shares a mysterious connection. Oozing with hours of bonus materials, the Chucky Complete Collection Limited Edition is a thrilling, chilling, campy, must-own set. Wanna play?”

Head below to check out the art!

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