Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Child's Play

(1988) **3/4

Little Andy really, really wants a Good Guys doll for his birthday. His single mom can't afford the doll, so she buys one from a street person in a back alley. Deep discount. And why? Because the street person found the doll in the burnt out toystore where the Lakeshore Strangler Charles Lee Ray was shot to death. Charles had experimented with voodoo and had been able to transfer his spirit into the doll before the store blew up. Now Charles (aka Chucky) has the perfect cover as he goes about seeking revenge on a former partner and the cop who shot him.

Danged video store! I have a pile of 4 quality horror dvds I'm dying to watch and none of them will work (the DVD player is fine, save your comments). Child's Play was available on demand, and I'd never seen it before, ergo this review. I didn't find the movie especially scary nor especially well acted despite the cast (Brad Dourif is awesome in his short on-screen appearance, the kid is mostly terrible, Chris Sarandon and Catherine Hicks are so-so). The animated Chucky effects were good, but since I didn't care too much about the characters the menace factor was low. If they'd gone with a decent child actor instead of a cute kid who couldn't act, this mighta been a much better movie.

6 comments:

JPX said...

The only good Child's Play films are Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky - they both have a good balance of humor and gore. You can skip parts 2 and 3 completely. Glad you checked this out.

Landshark said...

I'm not sure I've ever seen this whole movie--definitely haven't seen any of the sequels. Always seemed like a silly idea to me.

Whirlygirl said...

I can't imagine any of them would be good. It always seemed very silly to me as well. I think I did watch the first one or at least part of it.

Trevor said...

I think at this point, they're just making these movies to please fans of Jon Gruden.

miko564 said...

Did they ever explain why someone couldn't just pick the little fucker up by the back of his clothes and throw him?

His arms are tiny! It's like grabbing a Lobster, once you take the claws out of play, it's harmless...

Whirlygirl said...

Miko, I always wondered the same thing. It's one reason why I can't watch these movies. It's just too stupid that they can't fling the little bastard.

Malevolent

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