And Another

Play time

This time of year, all the long-running 1980s horror series are front and center, or at least I spend too much time in retailers where copies of the usual suspects are sale priced and prominently placed for my attention. For $6.99 or so I get my pick of Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser, Children of the Corn, and their many sequels.

None of these grew from as poor an initial entry as another mainstay, Child’s Play, which is up to five complete films beginning with the unscary, unfunny first flick in 1988. The script is by Don Mancini, an unusual case: his feature film catalog includes six scripts, a debut (Cellar Dweller, which I will be watching as soon as a torrent pops up) and the entire Child’s Play series. That’s it in total, and it seems like a small triumph for anyone who’s nurtured a pet project for years that Mancini got to make his directorial debut on the oddly autobiographical Seed of Chucky.

After the successful first two, the third installment tanked commercially and critically, due in part to a 1991 release date less than nine months after Child’s Play 2.

Chucky stayed chopped up for years, stitched together again in 1998 with Ronny Yu’s comic, self-referential re-take, Bride of Chucky, which did well enough to justify Seed of Chucky in 2004. Don Mancini, taking over the reins at last, brought the series even farther out into left field with Seed: John Waters, a Britney Spears impersonator, a gender-confused puppet called Glen/Glenda, you get the idea.

Series producer (and credited creator of the Chucky doll) David Kirschner has confirmed a Child’s Play remake in the works. No real details, but the plan is to work from something closely resembling the original script and make it scarier. Brad Dourif suggested in an interview on the set of Halloween that the next Child’s Play would be called Chucky Goes Nuts and that Mancini would again handle directorial duties, but the remake would scrap that slightly promising angle.

As mentioned, the first film was 1988 – so expect a 20th anniversary DVD rerelease early next year, maybe a third DVD box set.

Do not expect much on Chuckwick from the Chucky-obsessed Dr. Wolfgang Von Bushwickin the Barbarian Mother Funky Stay High Dollar Billstir. From a 2005 interview:

KIRK CHRISTIANSEN: Speaking of labels, I heard about your label Dollars-N-Cents. I heard you were planning on doing some DVDs and independent projects on the side. What do you have in mind?

BUSHWICK BILL: I’m getting ready to do a movie based on the Chucky [series]. It’s gonna be called Chuckwick. It’s like Bushwick and Chucky. It’s like twin brothers and I try to warn him of the problems of getting too involved with the character. It’s an independent director.

KC: Oh, it’s not the original Chucky director. Did you ever talk to that guy?

BUSHWICK: Nah, if I did do it with him, it would be cool. I was supposed to meet him when he was working on part two. But there was some discrepancies with how I was supposed to get paid. The people working at the time didn’t understand that until you’re an established actor, you can’t demand a certain amount of money. So, he was gonna get it done in ‘93, but I guess the demand for money was too high. He wanted to do the Mind Tricks movie and Chucky, but back then no one understood Hollywood or how you get paid so they didn’t understand what was going on.

Don’t sweat it, Bushwick, no one understands Hollywood now either.