Entertainment
DVD Corner: Child's Play--Chucky's 20th Birthday Edition
Greg Kaczynski |
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 After nine long years, fans get a Child’s Play DVD to be proud of with Child’s Play: Chucky‘s 20th Birthday Edition (MGM Home Entertainment; MSRP: $14.98). Fans have suffered for years with a shoddy version which was full screen, had no bonus features and a disappointing sound mix, but now, MGM has finally produced a quality DVD full of yummy goodness.
Child’s Play tells the story of Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif in a commanding role as the murderer and Chucky’s voice), a.k.a., the Lakeside Strangler. He’s on the run from the police and, in the opening, is gunned down in a toy store. The police think the terror of Ray is over, but what they don’t know is that through voodoo magic, he has transferred his soul into the plastic husk of a Good Guy doll. Good Guy dolls are red-haired, freckle-faced and blue-eyed, the Cabbage Patch Kids of the film’s universe, and they want to be your best friend.
Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), a 6-year-old who’s obsessed with the Good Guy dolls, wants nothing more than one for his birthday. His single mother, Karen (Catherine Hicks), knows this and, unfortunately, acquires the murderous doll that Ray transferred his soul into.
As the bodies mount, Karen convinces police officer Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) that Chucky the doll is responsible, and the two of them chase it down to a thrilling climax as Chucky tries to transfer his soul into the body of young Andy.
 A horror film from the heyday of the late ’80s, Child’s Play is the epitome of scary doll movies, going several steps further than the third chapter of Karen Black’s infamous Trilogy of Terror. Many kids of my generation suffered countless sleepless nights after witnessing the furious freckled pint-sized murderer, Chucky. The movie is scary, violent, bloody and occasionally funny; a true classic.
The transfer itself is lovely, the epic toy story now in glorious widescreen and the sound remixed in 5.1 Dolby Surround. The extras are varied and numerous, adding up to about an hour of featurettes, plus the obligatory trailer, photo gallery and a silly collection of select scenes with Chucky commentary.
The scene-specific Chucky commentary adds up to about 25 minutes, and what MGM has done is pull out four different Chucky-heavy scenes and have Brad Dourif do commentary over them as Chucky. They’re okay; Dourif retains the irreverent charm of our favorite murdering doll, but it ultimately feels slim, and the final scene throws in producer David Kirschner, creating a distracting dichotomy as the fourth wall is summarily shattered.
The featurettes are interesting and contain a wide variety of footage and information. “The Birth of Chucky” (7:23) covers details of the original script by writer Don Mancini and the initial gathering of talent around the (then titled) Blood Buddy script. The original concepts are fascinating, and one can’t help but wonder what Mancini’s ideas would’ve been like unchanged.
 “Creating the Horror” (12:01) deals with the casting and touches on the amount of work put into the multiple Chucky dolls designed and created by special effects wizard Kevin Yagher (best known for his work on Elm Street denizen Freddy Krueger). The most intriguing bit of footage here is the rehearsal process involving Dourif crawling around on the floor as Chucky while Hicks and Vincent work with him.
Finishing up the trio of main featurettes is “Unleashed” (5:53), which details the premiere and reception of the film. Kirschner and Mancini memorably reminisce about how they lined the hallway to the theater with boxes of Good Guy dolls--talk about setting the mood.
Also included is “Chucky: Building a Nightmare” (10:04), which goes deeper into the creation of the doll, its mechanics and includes bits of test footage of the development process. In this day and age of lazy, unconvincing CGI effects, it is so satisfying to see the process of these practical effects doing the job so well and creepily.
 Somewhat disappointing is the “A Monster Convention” segment (5:26). It’s footage from the 2007 Monster Mania convention where the cast reunited for a Q&A panel. The disappointing thing? Did you notice the length? It seems a bit absurd that they would put what adds up to be a teaser of the full Q&A footage on the DVD. The cast answers maybe four questions before it’s over. Where’s the rest? Boo.
Thrown in for good measure is a vintage making-of segment, “Introducing Chucky: The Making of Child’s Play” (6:11). While most of the footage and info here has already been divulged, the over-the-top announcer and the distinctly ’80s footage is worth the time.
But wait, there’s still more! Included on the film itself are two commentary tracks--that’s the good news. The bad news is that only one of them is any good.
The crummy one is a track including Alex Vincent, Catherine Hicks and Kevin Yagher (married to Hicks since shortly after the filming of the movie). First of all, it’s a weirdly disjointed track in that Vincent apparently did his commentary (a series of personal anecdotes about shooting the film, stories about his family and screening the movie) separately from Hicks and Yagher. Not knowing this, the couple initially seems surprisingly jerk-like as Vincent recounts a lengthy personal story and then they immediately jump into a totally unrelated tangent (usually about the effects or about how cute each other looked on set when they first met). Overall, it’s largely bereft of any uniquely interesting info.
 Thankfully, the studio has also provided a track with Kirschner and Mancini. This track is rife with fascinating trivia about the original draft of the film, on-set issues, bits and pieces about the location, lost footage and various stories about the production process. If you only have time to listen to one commentary, make it this one, although mention of a Child’s Play remake is somewhat worrying.
What matters, though, is that finally, after years of waiting, Child’s Play fans have a DVD to be proud of, and at such a great price, there’s no reason not to add this to your collection.
Child’s Play: Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition is now available on DVD.
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