Chucky: A killer can't miss

I am going to be real. You might not believe this, but Chucky is great. Incredible at how good it is. Keeps continuity and improves the movies in retrospect. If you cared enough to watch like half of the Chucky movies, you owe it to yourself to watch the show. If you didn’t, I recommend you suffer the movies to experience this show on the electric teevee machine 

That there is continuity with this show that ties in all the movies is insane. Don Mancini, who wrote all the movies and the show, does a phenomenal job of writing his way out of every implausible web from the movies. 

Favorite episode has a crazy meta quality, where the possessed, Jennifer, Tilly becomes part of a sort of quasi-intervention with Gina Guerschon, Joey pants, Meg, Tilly. Chucky like Jose like it’s a talk show or clip show or something. He’s got this wrestler chick with him. He says the Food Network is getting restless because he hasn’t killed anyone or used his 10 F bombs that he gets per episode. Cut to a clip of the wrestler on a podcast saying that she wants to be murdered by checkers. So Chucky starts stabbing her to death and saying fuck repeatedly.

Of course, you get Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky. Always love that guy. Kids include Zackary Arthur, Björgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, and Teo Briones. Never really care about the kids. They further the plot, but the fun stuff is with the legacy characters. Mean girl storyline is weak. She goes from reality show terrible to being totally one of the gang with no arch or anything. 

Former Tiger Beat cover guy, Devon Sawa shows up as various characters in both seasons. Others you'll recognize include Brad Dourif's daughter Fiona Dourif, Alex Vincent, Christine Elise, and Jennifer Tilly from the previous movies. They are all fantastic, especially Tilly. 

Hilarious part when the priest calls the Vatican and tells them what is going on and that he needs assistance for an exorcism on a Chucky doll. You get his said and says stuff like, “yes, of course, I understand.” Then he hangs up the phone and says, “I've been excommunicated,” all with extreme calm.

Overall, it's fun for the casual watcher of these films, and incredible for the fans. Both seasons boast a solid 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. The humor is creative, the horror absurd, the performances solid, and just a great time. All this while keeping the essence and continuity of the franchise alive. Plus, there is a “Little Buff Boy” Chucky that is hilarious.

Alien: Resurrection - Jean-Pierre Jeunet - 1997

★★-Pretty incredible cast is somewhat wasted on this installment. Not as horrible as I remembered, but pretty not great. 

Gist of this is 200 or so years after Ripley died, she and the queen Xenomorph that was inside her in Alien3 are brought back to life to harvest this bioweapon. Yeah, again with the bioweapon stuff. Now Ripley is upgraded to human/alien hybrid clone status. She basically has Matrix powers. She and a group of space pirates are trapped on a spacecraft with 12 aliens. They are trying to kill everyone so the queen can make it to Earth and do her thing down there. 

Love a good basketball scene out of nowhere, which this film has. Ripley has some fundamentals, can dunk, and has acid blood. At 5'11, I'd take take her in the first round if I were a WNBA GM. I remember seeing an interview with Sigourney Weaver and she claimed she made that shot she threw behind her head from 30 feet out on the first take. Looked it up and apparently true, which shocked Ron Perlman, causing him to lose it. 

From Bloody Disgusting: “I watched her training for this sequence, and they were rehearsing this little thing for a month. She never made it once. The camera’s rolling. I’m in the shot where she’s walking away and it goes in.” It indeed would be shocking, I'm sure. However, they were able to cut his reaction out and the shot was able to stay in the movie without being faked. 

Here's the cast...  We've got Sigourney Weaver back from the dead as Ripley. Winona Ryder as the smaller, whinier droid version of Ripley (more or less). The always fantastic Ron Perlman. Perlman plays a great pervy creep. This was sort of his modus operandi back then. One-on-one banter during basketball, then, at one point, Ripley asks, “Who do I have to fuck to get off this boat?” He replies, “I'll get you off... maybe not the boat.” So naughty!

Others include Brad Dourif (you know, Chucky), one Kim Flowers who is there to show off her remarkable ass (I think), the guy that played Tuco Salamanca, Leland Orser who I mostly think of from this and Se7en as the guy that kills a prostitute with a switchblade dildo, Dan Hedaya (Nick Tortelli from Cheers), and Michael Wincott who is sort of having a moment after Nope. Also, Gary Dourdan who looks like this buddy of mine I went to high school with. He's mostly known for the role Warrick Brown on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Finally, one J. E. Freeman as the main evil scientist. He was often a bastard, notably like in the role of mobster Marcello Santos in the David Lynch movie Wild at Heart with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern and as a henchman in the Coen bros dope flick Miller's Crossing. 1990 was a big year for him. 

This movie has a few feels, believe it or not. First we have this horrible bit where the scientists put the eggs in front of these miners to impregnate them with the Xenomorph embryos. Cold blooded. 

This flick also features the saddest of the aliens. Again, they aren't asking for any of this. Born into this bullshit like livestock. Smarter than your average Xenomorph because of the human intelligence it has. Plus it feels a little emotion. It doesn't just want to kill. Then it dies horribly and slowly in excruciating pain after being betrayed during a tender moment with it's chosen mother. Fuck, man. 

This version of Ripley, by the by, is completely different from previous portrayals and is pretty interesting. Sigourney Weaver's performance was widely praised. Her allegiance is questioned because she birthed the queen when they brought her back. Has a connection or whatever. Do you fucking know who she is? Exterminating Xenomorphs is all she does!

When she sees the failed clones is another one of those shockingly moving bits from this franchise. It's kind of surprising that Sigourney Weaver came back for this and put in such a stellar performance. She is a great actress and all. Criminally underrated even. This is sort of trash, yeah, but without her would have been embarrassing, probably. 

In the bad column we've got some “hacking the mainframe” bullshit. They even say it at one point. “I have to hack the mainframe manually. I destroyed my modem.” “I have a neuro-processor that allows me to dream.” Little of that shit. We also get more lazy anti-corporation stuff. The corporate guys, of course, are comically terrible. They are always worse than the aliens, ya know. I think this series did more to hate corporate empires than anything else really, other than what they do in real life, of course. 

The film also ends on a weak note with Ripley finally getting back to Earth. This should have been cool after four movies, a Christ-like death with resurrection, and countless dead aliens, but is sort of like, look at that, Earth, cool, I guess. See what this is about, why not. Bill Bryson must have had this scene in mind when he wrote I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes from a Big Country in 1998. 

The film also has a lot of potential that wasn't fully realized. 

Like Ripley, the queen too is an alien/human mismash and at the end starts giving birth to more hybrids instead of eggs. Cutting out the middleman. An exceptional cool concept that does not deliver in the end. 

This is probably something that has potential to explore, the birthed hybrid killing the queen, it's mother, then taking to Ripley, it's grandmother, who ultimately kills it. But this is too crazy to put that much thought into. 

Overall, it had good pacing and was pretty entertaining. Larger cast than most of the Alien movies, these extras are mostly there to raise the body count. There are some good moments like the underwater alien chase scene that goes on for like several minutes and nearly resulted in actors actually drowning. Then when they finally get out, the facehuggers are there waiting for them. The Xenomorphs look like they would be great in water. The biggest problem with the movie, IMO, is that the tone is all over the place. You have Nick Tortelli here and Chucky yucking it up, then Ripley damn near makes you cry. Likely more too many people giving too much input, like with Alien3. I feel like it could have been really good, but it tries to do too much and fails. 

Trauma - Dario Argento - 1993

★★★--It's no Deep Red. I don't think there is any way to take it seriously. I don't think any idea got thrown out. I loved it!

Gist is the main dude (sort of a combo of James Spaider and Tony Goldwyn) sees a young woman (the lovely Asia Argento) about to kill herself on the ledge of a bridge. He talks her out of it and she eventually lives with him. This girl is like 16 and in some clinic for mentally troubled kids. It's called the Faraday Clinic--basically a decapitation-based sex cult. Turns out she is bulimic which is more or less what the movie is about with some crazy murders thrown in there for fun. 

I like when the dude finds out the girl is bulimic, his friend at the TV studio he works at tells him all about her "anorexia" with such authority. "How do you know some much about it?" "I watch Oprah and Donahue." So a real expert. Not sure how we are supposed to take this, but however we are, it is hilarious. This guy is actually supposed to provide some insight and he got it from watching a few episodes of a talk show. Or, he is supposed to be an idiot with no idea what he is talking about but the main guy takes him seriously. Either way, dude takes this complete nonsense to heart. 

She is staying with him and is obviously infatuated. Should obviously know this, maybe does, but still brings this random coworker of his home to fuck with his door open. He seems to be a groomer type guy--yeah, a pretty unlikeable protagonist--trying to fuck with her mind while white knighting her. Obviously, this is a contemporary interpretation. He does end up having sex with her, by the by. Yeah. 

There is a kid in this movie, this little dork, that I hate so much it is alarming. He almost kills himself when he wraps the complicated murdering tool--this like drill with a wire loop on it that decapitates people--around his neck. When he is interrupted from self-annihilation, he kills this little lizard by squeezing it to death. Fuck this fucking turd. I can't even look at him. Absolutely no need for him in this movie. Also, Argento loves a slow decapitation. 

Finding these movies have these complicated, impossible-to-follow MacGuffiny subplots that speed the action along. Like the movie I watched last night had a bunch of nonsense about chromosomes indicating a propensity for violence and this being world-changing, this in the 1970s, long before DNA testing. This movie is similar with this whole Faraday Clinic/anorexia/main dude saving this young girl business. Clinic just keeps picking her up, she keeps getting broken out, people keep coming for them. This repeats throughout the movie multiple times. I assume this is all metaphorical. 

At some point Brad Dourif shows up. You are instantly like, oh, yeah, he's probably the killer. I won't say if he is or not, but you know it based on reputation. He doesn't disappoint and dials it up a time or two.  

Oh, and by the way, the "trauma" the movie refers to would indeed be the most traumatic thing to ever happen to anyone if it were real. In this bananas flick, the sheer impossibility of it it is so goddamned hilarious. Sorry if you watch it and whatever happens happened to you, lol. 

Child's Play 3 is the worst movie of all time

Don't fuck with the Chuck. So. Movie takes place in the future, I guess. Came out a year after Child's Play 2 but takes place eight years later. The Good Guy Corp is basically fucked when we start the movie. Too many people dying from this Chucky doll shit. But they are on their way back, baby. End up making the first doll on the new assembly line, which has Chucky DNA in the plastic. Immediately comes back to life and kills the CEO, who seems like a real prick. Then it's off to find Andy, again. Well alright. 

Find it funny that the company that makes these dolls is a wear a suit to work kind of place with a board full of hard-asses. I have a fancy corporate job at a no-nonsense company with hundreds of employees. I'm on economic development boards with executives. I'm a member of Rotary. Don't see this level of formality and seriousness like ever. Tight ship they run there at Good Guys, Inc. 

Anyway, life is still incredibly shitty for Andy, now high school age. He's at a military school and it looks like it really sucks. He gets bullied and Chucky is still trying to take his body and shit. But Chucky figures out some technicality and gets to go after someone else now to play "hide the soul" with. Yep. There is also a war games battle between the two groups at the school. It's supposed to be sort of like paintball except with real guns where the bullets shoot paint, but Chucky replaces them 

New kid playing Andy. One Justin Whalin. Played Scotty in the John Waters's movie Serial Mom which I haven't seen in over two decades. Only people you'll recognize are Andrew Robinson from Hellraiser, he is the "Jesus wept" daddy, and Frank the Tank's wife from Old School. 

Overall, this movie is pretty bad, but sort of fun. Really fucking weird. Definitely an outlier for the franchise. This is where Chucky just goes off the rails. Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky, gets the MVP for the "Don't fuck with the Chuck" line. Hell of a line. That shit is killer. I think I mixed up some of the plot with of Major Payne. Not a good sign that I watched it just a few days ago and already forgot almost everything. Shan't be watching again. 

Child's Play 2 is the greatest movie of all time

Sorry Jack, Chucky's back! No Christina Hicks. No Chris Sarandon. No Tom Hollad. Still have Brad Dourif and the kid that plays Andy though. Movie is still pretty fun, and way more bananas than the first one. 

Gist of the movie is that Andy is now in foster care. A bunch of cops saw Chucky come to life at the end of the first flick, but fuck that. Toss that bitch in the looney bin. I assume the Chris Sarandon detective character is also in the nuthouse. Anyway, Chucky gets brought back to life via a little blue lightning, the family Andy is with sort of sucks. The mom, played by Jenny Agutter who plays the female lead in An American Werewolf in London, starts out alright, but when the prick dad dies at the hands of Chucky, she blames Andy, who everyone treats as completely insane. Has a foster sister that is alright, played by Christine Elise from Beverly Hills, 90210, but she's just a high school kid. What the hell is she going to do against a possessed doll trying to steal a boy's soul? 

Only people I recognized were Grace Zabriskie who was Sarah Palmer from Twin Peaks, the health teacher from Donnie Darko (Beth Grant), and Greg Germann who was the Erik Menedez looking dude from Ally McBeal. All had pretty minor parts. 

Anywho, the movie isn't that great and then suddenly it's amazing. The end takes place in the Good Guy toy factory and it is incredible. Spoiler, the way they kill Chucky is first they put him through the toy assembly line where he gets all these limbs attached to him, then they torch his ass, then they stick an air hose in his mouth until he explodes. Whoever came up with that shit is the real MVP of this flick. That shit was dope AF. Posting it below. Greatest movie of all time just based on that shit. Actually, might as well just watch that scene which I'm posting below.

Child's Play is the greatest movie of all time

Andy remember, friends stick together till the end... This is the end, friend! Franchise that immediately gets into the cheese, Child's Play is camp all the way. There are some genuinely scary moments, like when the mom opens Chucky's battery compartment and there are no batteries in it. But how serious can you take a movie with a killer My Buddy? Pretty sure I'm taking that little fucking thing. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Child's Play occasionally stumbles across its tonal tightrope of comedy and horror, but its genuinely creepy monster and some deft direction by Tom Holland makes this chiller stand out on the shelf.

Gist is a kid gets a popular doll for his birthday from his mother which she bought from a homeless guy. Except it came with the option possessed soul of a serial killer, one Charles Lee Ray. Serial killer does what he does. Like that serial killer Charles Lee Ray is really into the dark arts and murder is just sort of his side hustle. I think he's more driven to murder to fulfill his magic and revenge than getting off on it like a real serial killer. 

Directed by one Tom Holland. He hasn't really done a lot of movies but did do this cult classic and one of my absolute faves in Fright Night. Both of these flicks are so fucking fun. 

Stars Brad Dourif as Chucky. Dude is a legitimate actor. Was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, stared in the John Huston adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (what's not to love there), Dune (1984), Blue Velvet, Exorcist III (one of the better threequels in horror), and the Lord of the Rings movies. I feel he is one of the best that guys out there. Alex Vincent plays the little kid Andy. Meh. Catherine Hicks plays the mom. She was apparently the mom on the show 7th Heaven. Never watched it though. And Chris Sarandon, who is the vampire whose sweater game is on point in Fright Night. 

Probably going to give the MVP to Sarandon. I like the way he plays the cop. Guy just doesn't have time for any of this bullshit and thinks everyon is crazy, even though he killed CLR and caught him trying to put his soul in a doll. See this exchange: 

Det. Mike Norris: Mrs. Barclay what are you doing back here?

Karen Barclay: Andy was telling the truth. Chucky is alive and he killed Eddie Caputo. 

Det. Mike Norris: What? 

Karen Barclay: I took him home to my apartment, I was about to throw away the box when we came in, the batteries fell out. Don't you see? He's been moving and talking for days without any batteries in him. 

Det. Mike Norris: What are you talkin' about? 

Karen Barclay: How I found out the doll was alive. See, I threatened to throw him in the fireplace. When all of a sudden, he came alive in my hand. I dropped him and then he ran out of the apartment.

Yeah, don't nobody got time for this bullshit, you crazy bitch. Turns out she was right though. She is a close second to MVP as well. She is as hysterical as you'd expect someone to be if this shit were really going down.