Pseudo Review: Child’s Play – Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition

Why did it take so long for a Special Edition DVD of Child’s Play to come out? Who cares, we got one now and it’s pretty dang great!

If you’re any kind of a horror fan, you know all about Child’s Play: Killer uses some voodoo (or is that hoodoo?) to put his spirit in to a lovable “Good Guy” Doll nicknamed Chucky. Said doll goes on killing spree, and a horror icon is born. 

The flick holds up remarkably well. Things got sillier and sillier as the series went on,  but the original played things very straight. More of a Psychological horror than an out and out slasher, Chucky isn’t even revealed to be an actual killer doll till the halfway point of the film. 

The effects are excellent. Using animatronics for the most part, some shots of Chucky utilized over sized sets and a ”little person” (not trying to be politically correct, just have a hard time spelling migit miget midget) in a Chucky suit. These techniques combined to make a very realistic killer doll, sans CGI. 

At this point in your life you know if you like the movie or not. The only question for Chucky fans is if you can finally throw away that old bare bones disc. I say go ahead and chuck it as this Special Edition is pretty packed with bonus features. You get multiple commentaries (Chucky even gets in on the act on selected scenes), several featurettes, and some horror convention panel footage (I hate con footage by the way). The best special feature, however, is the Evil Comes in Small Packages documentary. It’s a pretty all encompassing look at the film and everything that went in to creating it. Some of the useless trivia I learned:

-The original title was Batteries Not Included. It was changed to Blood Buddies, and finally Child’s Play.

-Star Catherine Hicks married FX artist Kevin Yagher. 

-An actress was brought in to dub Chucky’s voice. Luckily non-retarded heads prevailed and Dourif’s original dialogue was used.

There’s lots of other good stuff as well. Conspicuous by his absence, however, is director Tom Holland. Not really sure if there’s a story behind that or not.   

All in all, this DVD was well worth the wait. I suppose it could have come with an actual possessed killer doll, but for under $12 bucks I’m pretty satisfied.