Child's Play 2
I had to continue with the Chucky series. It's too funny to resist, plus, Jenny Agutter, an English actress I've liked for a long time, stars in Child's Play 2 (1990) as a foster mother to Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), son of Karen (Catherine Hicks in the first film, her character just referred to in the sequel since she's in a psychiatric ward). It's likely she's not mentally unstable or hallucinating, since normal societal viewpoints don't accept the notion of a doll killing people.
Andy, too, has problems every time he tells the truth about Chucky, who's been put back together by a doll scientist working at the Good Guys factory. The skin, the eyes, the clothing, the batteries are new, but the malevolent soul of Charles Ray (Brad Dourif), serial killer and voodoo practitioner, is all too mortifyingly real.
Andy gets placed in a foster home with Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham (who gave an excellent performance as a member of the Q Continuum in a memorable episode of Star Trek Voyager). The foster father finds Andy peculiar, especially once Chucky, who's followed Andy to perform the spell that will help him get out of the doll's body, takes the place of the Good Guys Tommy doll, burying him in the backyard along with much cackling.
Jenny is very patient. She and her husband also look after Kyle (a seventeen year old girl in spite of her name), played by Christine Elise. Kyle likes Andy, eventually coming to believe the boy about Chucky. Too late, both parents get the truth about the menacing doll with red unruly hair. Hung upside down in the basement (the father) or garroted with string (the mother), the well-meaning foster parents couldn't wrap their minds around the fact of a doll going around killing people, so they reacted too late to the truth, dying horribly at the hands of a two foot five inch doll.
If there's a lesson in the Child's Play series, it's be open-minded.
In this second film, we see the best set piece so far in either movie: a frantic tour of the Good Guys factory. Operating even at night, mostly through robotic systems, the Good Guys' body parts hang suspended from moving metal spiraling about in a Rube Goldberg-like mega-contraption that includes an assembly line where the Good Guys' eyeballs are jammed into each doll, and a hot box where the limbs are added. Kyle and Andy fight off Chucky, again armed with a knife, running and crawling through the factory maze. Chucky, once again, dies horribly; or does he? Since there's a Child's Play 3 I assume he makes it, somehow.
My favorite line comes when a thwarted Chucky yells after Kyle and Andy, "I'll get you, you fuckers!"
It's a pathetic moment, considering the words come from a doll animated by a trapped and no doubt tormented spirit struggling to be free of an awkward body subject to melting, chipping, and, as he becomes more human, bleeding. In both films, Chucky seethes at times with understandable frustration. I've discovered from looking up the weight of a typical D Cell battery (two of which are snapped into place in Chucky's back) that he's carrying around an extra twelve ounces he doesn't need--since the batteries are for the normal Good Guys mechanical voice element.
The film doesn't address this problem, but I suspect it's a burden for Chucky to endure; especially since he can't remove them because of their placement.
Vic Neptune
I had to continue with the Chucky series. It's too funny to resist, plus, Jenny Agutter, an English actress I've liked for a long time, stars in Child's Play 2 (1990) as a foster mother to Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), son of Karen (Catherine Hicks in the first film, her character just referred to in the sequel since she's in a psychiatric ward). It's likely she's not mentally unstable or hallucinating, since normal societal viewpoints don't accept the notion of a doll killing people.
Andy, too, has problems every time he tells the truth about Chucky, who's been put back together by a doll scientist working at the Good Guys factory. The skin, the eyes, the clothing, the batteries are new, but the malevolent soul of Charles Ray (Brad Dourif), serial killer and voodoo practitioner, is all too mortifyingly real.
Andy gets placed in a foster home with Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham (who gave an excellent performance as a member of the Q Continuum in a memorable episode of Star Trek Voyager). The foster father finds Andy peculiar, especially once Chucky, who's followed Andy to perform the spell that will help him get out of the doll's body, takes the place of the Good Guys Tommy doll, burying him in the backyard along with much cackling.
Jenny is very patient. She and her husband also look after Kyle (a seventeen year old girl in spite of her name), played by Christine Elise. Kyle likes Andy, eventually coming to believe the boy about Chucky. Too late, both parents get the truth about the menacing doll with red unruly hair. Hung upside down in the basement (the father) or garroted with string (the mother), the well-meaning foster parents couldn't wrap their minds around the fact of a doll going around killing people, so they reacted too late to the truth, dying horribly at the hands of a two foot five inch doll.
If there's a lesson in the Child's Play series, it's be open-minded.
In this second film, we see the best set piece so far in either movie: a frantic tour of the Good Guys factory. Operating even at night, mostly through robotic systems, the Good Guys' body parts hang suspended from moving metal spiraling about in a Rube Goldberg-like mega-contraption that includes an assembly line where the Good Guys' eyeballs are jammed into each doll, and a hot box where the limbs are added. Kyle and Andy fight off Chucky, again armed with a knife, running and crawling through the factory maze. Chucky, once again, dies horribly; or does he? Since there's a Child's Play 3 I assume he makes it, somehow.
My favorite line comes when a thwarted Chucky yells after Kyle and Andy, "I'll get you, you fuckers!"
It's a pathetic moment, considering the words come from a doll animated by a trapped and no doubt tormented spirit struggling to be free of an awkward body subject to melting, chipping, and, as he becomes more human, bleeding. In both films, Chucky seethes at times with understandable frustration. I've discovered from looking up the weight of a typical D Cell battery (two of which are snapped into place in Chucky's back) that he's carrying around an extra twelve ounces he doesn't need--since the batteries are for the normal Good Guys mechanical voice element.
The film doesn't address this problem, but I suspect it's a burden for Chucky to endure; especially since he can't remove them because of their placement.
Vic Neptune
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