DVD Review: Child's Play - Chucky's 20th Birthday Edition

Andy's doll isn't just any doll. Who's revealed himself as Chucky via the talking feature of the doll, he's the transferred spirit of serial "Lake Shore Strangler" Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), who, after being mortally wounded by Chicago police Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) in a toy store, utilizes his voodoo training to transfer his soul into the nearest form available: a large "Good Guy" doll. Now home with Andy, Chucky/Charles immediately leaves an impression by killing babysitter Maggie. The crime scene evidence points to Andy's involvement in the crime - at least that's what Detective Norris believes - but it takes another murder (this time, Charles Lee's former accomplice-in-crime upon whom Charles swore vengeance) before Andy is taken from Karen and locked-up for psychiatric evaluation. With Andy out of the way, Chucky is now free to murder his enemies, until he learns that he needs Andy far more than he originally thought.

Child's Play was originally released when I was fifteen years old. I have no qualms about saying that the film scared me to death the first time I saw it. I remember, at the time I had a rather large collection of stuffed animals I had collected through the years. For weeks after seeing Child's Play, I had nightmares that one of them was going to come alive and murder me or members of my family.

Now, watching Child's Play twenty years later, those nightmares are gone. Instead, I can appreciate Child's Play for the remarkably well put together horror film that it is. Writers Tom Holland (also the director), Don Mancini and John Lafia added a level of satire to the film that brought Child's play up a notch from other slasher flicks of the day. The 'Good Guy' brand is everywhere in Child's Play, from an animated kids' show on TV through to Andy's "Good Guy PJ sneakers" whatever they may be. In other words, Chucky is the embodiment of the evil of these marketing phenomena - and, of course, the film was released at the height of 'Cabbage Patch' hysteria wherein ordinary housewives were fighting it out in toy store aisles across the country in order to get their hands on these much coveted dolls. So, the doll idea was genius and it can also be looked at as a statement about what mass marketing can do to our heads.

There's no denying that once Chucky "comes alive," and unleashes a filthy torrent of vulgarities at Karen, his face suddenly transformed into a hideous, grotesque mask, that a new movie star is born. The puppetry work is excellent. However, I can't imagine the film working as well as it does without the voice work of Brad Dourif. Growling in a demonic wail of hatred, Dourif pulls off the tough task of making Chucky both scary and humorous in his line readings. Dourif deserves much of the credit for turning Chucky into a horror film icon.

The anamorphically enhanced, 1.85:1 widescreen transfer is rather good, getting the original theatrical soft-focus look of the film back on line Grain is apparent in many scenes, but not distracting for a film from this period, and except for one or two extremely dark scenes where the blacks just started to waver, but there were no real compression issues. The audio is provided in English 5.1 Dolby Surround audio mix. There are also English, French, and Spanish Dolby 3.0 Surround mixes, along with English and Spanish subtitles, and close-captions.

There are a good amount of Special features included here:

• Two Commentaries - One with Alex Vincent, and Catherine Hicks and her husband Kevin Yagher. The other, screenwriter Don Mancini and producer David Kirschner.
• Evil Comes in Small Packages (25:22) - features three separate interview segments (The Birth of Chucky, Creating the Horror, and Unleashed) with cast and crew of the film that covers the production and release of Child's Play.
• Chucky: Building a Nightmare (9:52) - Gives a detailed look at the construction of the Chucky animatronics.
• A Monster Convention (5:24) - a small snippet of a taping at Monster Mania 2007, where the cast reunited for questions from die-hard fans.
• Introducing Chucky - The Making of Child's Play (6:07) - From 1988, this fraturette gives a general overview of the film.
• The original theatrical trailer - features the voice of recently deceased Don LaFontaine.
• Photo Gallery.