Happy All-Hallow’s Month! In anticipation of Halloween — which, let’s face it, we’ve been anticipating since last Halloween — Daily Grindhouse will again be offering daily celebrations of horror movies here on our site. This October’s theme is horror sequels — the good, the bad, the really bad, and the unfairly unappreciated. We’re calling it SCREAMQUELS!
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When it comes to modern horror icons, it’s indisputable who the “Big Three” are: Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger have had legendary reigns of terror that have firmly entrenched them into the public consciousness for multiple generations now. Extending an invitation to a fourth member of this group proves to be tricky, though. Should Leatherface get the nod for being the era’s forefather despite some dubious efforts that have left him floundering in the public consciousness? Are two iconic entries enough to enshrine Pinhead even though he’s spent the past quarter-century stuck in direct-to-video hell? Does The Tall Man earn a spot for enduring for nearly forty years, albeit on the cult fringes that have kept him obscure for all that time? Do we just resign ourselves to acknowledging that the goddamn Leprechaun is still with us nearly 30 years later since at least a few normies on the street could identify him? Thankfully, we don’t have to sanction such buffoonery because the most obvious answer to this question has lurked right beneath our collective noses in the form of Chucky, whose diminutive stature belies his iconic status.
Forgetting the relative quality of his movies for a moment, just consider how he’s scratched and clawed his way to remain in the public consciousness, defying the odds with each hack and slash. Hell, his mere existence and the success of CHILD’S PLAY is damn near a miracle, as Tom Holland shaped series creator Don Mancini’s killer doll tale into a genuinely disturbing affair that Universal parlayed into a pair of successful sequels. While many of his more famous contemporaries were on their last legs, Chucky was poised to carry the blood-soaked baton into the ’90s following CHILD’S PLAY 3 until Mancini—who admits he was already running ideas—put him on hiatus as he searched for a new direction that yielded BRIDE OF CHUCKY.
The character’s first comeback, BRIDE reinvented Chucky for a post-SCREAM landscape, injecting him with a more pronounced streak of morbid humor under the guidance of Hong Kong import Ronny Yu. Boasting slick production values and a tongue planted firmly in its stitched cheek, BRIDE OF CHUCKY confirmed its title character’s staying power. Not just a worthy successor, BRIDE is arguably the best of the franchise, and it once again set Chucky up to carry the baton, this time into a new millennium that would eventually resurrect his predecessors. Unfortunately, Universal derailed his comeback by balking at Mancini’s pitch for SEED OF CHUCKY, particularly its LGBTQ overtones. And by the time Mancini willed it into theaters in 2004, it proved to be too out there for audiences and critics alike, once again leaving everyone’s favorite Good Guy doll at a crossroads. Between this lukewarm reception and a shifting genre landscape that saw horror titans reimagined for a new era, it was easy to assume it was the last we’d seen of his original incarnation.
Indeed, Mancini flirted with a remake before announcing CURSE OF CHUCKY in 2012, and, even though he touted it as a sequel, it was easy to assume it’d be a soft reboot of sorts. After all, Chucky was back in pristine condition, the various scars he’d collected over the years wiped away, seemingly signifying a clean slate. For much of its runtime, CURSE obliges by acting as the standalone tale of the cursed doll arriving at the doorstep of Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif), a paraplegic who lives at her childhood home with her mother. Soon enough, Chucky sneakily begins wreaking havoc, first by killing Nica’s mother, then by terrorizing the rest of the family when they gather to mourn. Sporting an all-timer gag involving rat poison and plenty of other macabre nastiness, CURSE OF CHUCKY once again finds Mancini looking to the stuff of vintage horror (in this case, the “Old Dark House” genre) to revitalize his creation, seemingly unburdened by the tangled thorns of continuity.
Slowly but surely, though, Mancini reveals there’s more up his sleeve, tipping his hand with a reference to Andy Barclay and revealing the secret behind Chucky’s deceptively pristine facade. By the time it reaches its climax, CURSE leaves little doubt that it’s a sequel to the original when it flashes back to add an unknown wrinkle to Charles Lee Ray’s sordid end at the hands of the police. Even with this reveal, it was fair to assume this was the extent of the nods, though: after all, the events of BRIDE and SEED were so outlandish that it was even more fair to concede that maybe they had to be shed for the series to move forward.
But god love him, Mancini was having absolutely none of that. Instead, CURSE goes out with a double-barrelled bang that not only acknowledges those later sequels but also reserves an even bigger surprise after the credits. What was a sharp “soft reboot” becomes the type of unrepentant sequel fans never imagined seeing: where Chucky’s contemporaries had been outright remade, he impossibly avoided the chopping block, and CURSE practically doubled as a thumb to the eye of expectations. Mancini would even double down with the next sequel, CULT OF CHUCKY, a gonzo affair that’s arguably even more outrageous than SEED in the way it evokes vintage Eurohorror schlock as it further indulges the franchise’s twisted continuity. For a moment, it seemed as if its various climactic teases might be derailed by 2019’s CHILD’S PLAY, an admittedly fun redux that wiped the slate clean and returned the premise to its unfussy roots.
It’s hardly surprising, though, that this wasn’t enough to lay the original Chucky to rest. This month, he’ll begin terrorizing the small screen as the star of his own SyFy television series, once again proving his resiliency. Just as Andy Barclay and others have spent three decades trying to rid themselves of this menace to no avail, Hollywood hasn’t been able to wrangle and reshape him. Mancini has tenaciously bet on himself and his grandiose vision of a franchise that started modestly enough before becoming a horror saga unlike any other. Chucky has survived controversy, shifting tides of public opinion, and most importantly the DTV arena that has often proved to be a franchise graveyard. For Chucky, though, it was a Lazarus Pit that extended a new lease on life: we’ve seen plenty of remakes, reboots, and sequels during the past twenty years, and CURSE OF CHUCKY is among the best of them. It also left no doubt that we don’t even have a “Big Three” anymore since we clearly have a “Big Four.” He might have taken the crooked path in arriving there, but Chucky’s iconic stitch-covered face is etched into this Mount Rushmore of horror, forever our friend until the end.
Tags: A Martinez, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Brennan Elliott, Catherine Hicks, Chantal Quesnel, chris sarandon, Christine Elise, Danielle Bisutti, Don Mancini, Fiona Dourif, Horror, Jennifer Tilly, Joseph LoDuca, Maitland McConnell, Michael Marshall, Sequels, Summer H. Howell, Tony Gardner
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