Downloaded from YTS.MX
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Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
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[Evil laughter]
-Thrilling. -Substantial.
-Surprising. -Rewarding.
-Original. -Fun.
-Fortunate. -Amazing.
-Fantastical. -F-U-N, fun.
-Unexpected. -Unique.
-Um, bonkers. -Titillating.
-Wow. -Joyful.
-Deadly. -Terror.
-As an artist, as a creative person, a filmmaker,
I'm interested in this intersection
between horror and humor, and I think Chucky
has turned out to be an ideal mouthpiece for that.
-Chucky is a monster.
All horror is based on being preyed upon
by something with which you cannot negotiate.
Chucky had to be that first and foremost.
-You're dealing with really high stakes.
You're dealing with life and death,
and people are being killed,
and this doll is causing all this terror.
-The idea of an animated doll,
a sentient doll that can keep you company,
is a very strong idea.
I'm sure it goes back through every culture into the cave.
-And there's something so delicious
about the -- about the concept of your plaything coming alive,
especially if it's a murderous doll.
-He makes real the fantasy that we all have when we're children,
that the things that we play with will come alive.
-We tapped into an inherent fear of people
for a doll coming to life and trying to kill you.
-In some way that's very captivating.
So Chucky is always the bad guy, but we -- we also relate to him.
And he secretly acting out our mischievous,
darkest, mischievous bad boyness.
-He has that sassy, you know, fuck you.
-The fact that Chucky is such a full-fledged personality
who has a girlfriend and a child,
and none of that domesticates him.
He still goes on to wanting to turn people
into meat, um, is scary.
-The whole idea was to make it so lovable and so cute
with the dimples and all that stuff.
-I'm your friend to the end.
Hidey, hidey, ho, ha, ha, ha.
-Hey, wanna play?
-No one would ever think it would be a horrible thing.
-You know, like I'm just all Mayberry, but deep down,
I'm, you know, Dexter.
-No, it's just a momentary mix up.
-Chucky still scares me, to be honest.
-You're never going to forget being scared
by this innocent little thing.
-People have nightmares about Chucky.
[Thunder rumbles]
-You know, we've all got to see him evolve,
go through every type of circumstance and situation
life can throw at you.
-People around the world love this,
this little iconic bastard.
-He is considered an iconic horror star.
-I wasn't aware of the impact of the Chucky films
and the fan base, but when I started to travel,
I began to realize that it was this universal thing.
-There's a lot of doll movies, a doll monster movies,
but Chucky is the best one.
Chucky is the king of them all.
-It's because Chucky is part of our primal fear of being prey,
which we all have.
[Echoing] It's universal.
[Thunder rumbling]
♪♪
[Evil laughter, glass shatters]
♪♪
-[Screaming]
♪♪
[Electricity crackling]
♪♪
[Thunder rumbles]
[Woman screams]
♪♪
[Explosion]
[Keyboard clacking]
[Evil laughter]
[Clippers whirring]
[Evil laughter]
-[Screaming]
♪♪
[Thunder rumbles]
-My mother always taught me love would set me free.
♪♪
-Am I going to be a killer?
-[Evil laughter]
[Thunder rumbling]
♪♪
-[Screaming]
♪♪
[Thunder rumbling]
♪♪
[Sizzling]
♪♪
-[Evil laughter]
♪♪
[Film projector spinning]
♪♪
[Evil laughter]
-By the mid 1980s,
the horror genre had successfully attacked moviegoers
with monsters and villains of every kind.
Sensing an opportunity for something different
to make audiences scream,
a young writer crafted a screenplay
with a slightly different bent, a fable-like tale
about a mother, her son,
and the killer doll that comes between them.
It would prove to a new generation
that big terror can come in small packages.
-My original impetus for this idea,
it goes back to my childhood.
My dad worked in advertising,
so I became very aware at a very young age
how cynical the advertising business is.
I wanted to write something, a dark satire about
how marketing and advertising affected children.
-More games, more toys. -Oh, boy.
-♪ I want to be a Toys "R" Us kid ♪
-And this was in the '80s when I was in school at UCLA
and Cabbage Patch Dolls were hugely popular.
But the notion that these dolls, these goofy dolls,
would cause literal riots in the stores when they would sell out.
[People shouting]
-A full-grown woman taking a doll out of a child's hand?
-Being a life-long horror fan,
I, of course, had seen Talky Tina and "Magic"
and "Dead of Night" and "Trilogy of Terror,"
and I realized that using the killer doll trope
would be a great way into talking about the dark side
of marketing to children.
-Don wanted Madison Avenue to be the bad guy here.
Madison Avenue meaning ad agencies.
-When I was a kid, I remember my sisters had,
you know, dolls that would pee or they would cry or whatever.
And I just thought, well, for a horror movie,
what about a doll that bleeds
and you'd have to go out and buy buddy Band-Aids?
It was a dark, twisted marketing conceit
to get kids to buy more shit.
-Each sold separately.
-In my original script,
the doll didn't come to life in the same way.
In my script, the doll was not possessed by a serial killer.
The doll was sort of a manifestation
of Andy's unconscious, his ID, his anger,
and I thought it was very interesting,
the notion that the doll, Buddy, would go
after the kids perceived enemies.
-Trying to figure out who's responsible for these murders,
never thinking for a moment that it could even be possible
that it's a doll, which is Don's original concept.
-The original title was "Batteries Not Included,"
and around that time it was announced
that Spielberg's production of "Batteries Not Included"
was in the works.
So we knew we needed another title.
I wrote that script, and it landed on David Kirschner's desk
in the summer of '85.
-The other projects that I had worked
on were completely child friendly.
"Rose Petal Place," "An American Tail."
I really wanted to prove that I could do something scary.
So my wife and I were in London
and I came upon a book called "The Dollhouse Murders."
And then I remember seeing Talking Tina on "Twilight Zone."
-My name is Talky Tina,
and I think I could even hate you.
-The idea of a doll coming to life was something that I --
I really wanted to play with. -You know, I think my agent
at the time sent the script out.
I don't think I ever knew, like,
who did it go to and who passed or anything like that.
-And I said, well, I'd like to read it.
And there was so much that was so good.
-David Kirschner was a great collaborator.
He was very inventive and a great storyteller.
He had experience in other areas of film,
but this was a new experience for him as well.
-I was intrigued, I thought the writing was great.
All these studios had passed on it,
but back then I think I was just so naive that I liked it.
So why wouldn't other people like it?
-I thought it was creepy and exciting.
-And David was actually the first meeting
I ever had with any Hollywood connection at all.
-Yeah, I mean, John was incredibly young.
Even then, I mean, he had a vision.
He was excited that there was a potential,
especially after all the studios passed on it.
When I first met with Don, he brought a My Buddy doll
that was popular in the '80s,
-♪ My buddy, my buddy
♪ My buddy and me
-He was a cute little fellow.
And in Don's script, Don describes Chucky...
-Red hair, blue eyes, freckles,
stripy shirt, red shoes.
All of that was in my script.
-So I took that notion,
and then I drew the nightmare version of what he looks like
when he's not that sweet toy. =And I think
that was a crucial step.
-What happened was I did not go out with Don's script.
I took 18 pages that I had written up
with changes that I had made
and my drawings of what this monster would look like,
and that's what I used in in my meetings
when I went to all these different studios.
Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal
and then United Artists. I think there's a fifth.
I -- I don't remember if it's Fox or not.
The head of United Artists,
a wonderful man named Tony Thomopoulos,
came to my office and said, "Look, I want to give you a home
where you can not only be successful,
but you can also fail. And we'll do this together."
But the studio wanted someone else to come in and write.
-They brought in other people instantly,
and I knew enough about the movie business that, like,
okay, this is just the way it goes.
-I remember a meeting at my house
and I invited Don to it, and Tom Holland was there.
We were sitting around my my breakfast table
just discussing all of this and what it's going to be like.
-I was very excited to be meeting Tom Holland.
You know, he was, you know, someone I admired.
I loved the script for "Psycho II."
I also had loved his movie
"Cloak & Dagger" that he wrote.
And "Fright Night" I thought was great.
-What happened was I finished "Fright Night" and I took
"Blood Buddy," as it was called at the time,
and tried to get a script out of it, and I couldn't do it.
And that's because I didn't want to disturb the original script.
But there was no bad guy.
-And he was just sort of talking about
some of the changes that they were going to make.
And the first one was the notion
that they were going to make the doll
possessed by a serial killer.
You know, I felt that it was less interesting,
but I think it was deliberate and probably correct
and smart of them to make it simpler in that way,
to make Andy the clear hero and Chucky the clear villain.
So Tom came in initially
and he was going to do a draft of the script,
but for some reason he fell out.
-I couldn't build a story with a rising suspense line,
which I wanted, so I gave up
because I was going crazy trying to get it and couldn't do it.
And I left and I made...
And while I was gone, it went to somebody else.
-They went to John Lafia to do the rewrite.
-And he hit a home run with that script.
I mean, there were notes that the studio had,
but they moved forward immediately.
I mean, it was pretty darn quick.
-With the script in active development,
the next step was finding a director,
someone who not only understood the horror genre
but the kind of terror,
action and drama the movie could create.
-I met with a lot of directors, William Friedkin.
I had so much respect for him.
Irvin Kershner, who directed the second "Star Wars,"
Robert Wise, who directed "The Sound of Music,"
which was shocking that he was even interested.
But he really was. -In this period,
there were a couple of other directors
that Kirschner was flirting with.
One of them was Joseph Rubin,
who had just done "The Stepfather."
Another director possibility was the duo of Rocky Morton
and Annabel Jankel, who had done "Max Headroom."
-They offered it to everybody in town countless times,
and everybody in town turned it down countless times.
-And then it came back to Tom, and Tom came back onto it.
-I saw that he did "Fright Night"
and several other films in the genre,
and I was impressed with his work,
so I felt pretty confident in him.
-I think I loved "Fright Night" so much.
I mean, it really spoke to me
and it just really felt like this guy knew how to do horror.
-[Screaming]
-I was also extremely hot in Hollywood at that moment.
"Fright Night" had come out and it was a solid success.
They were desperate for a director.
They probably would have taken anybody at that point.
-Tom had a vision for the film.
I mean, there was Don's script, there was John's script,
and then his rewrite.
- I was talking to Dean Riesner.
Dean Riesner was a great Hollywood writer,
and Dean said something about, "well, did you ever think
about doing it from the point of view of the killer?"
And then I had more of a story and it started to come.
-I totally get why David Kirschner
and John Lafia and Tom Holland,
why they would change it in the way they did.
And I, you know, can certainly see the upside.
-I went into "Child's Play," which is my title.
-With a director on board,
it was time to search for the film's cast.
In the role of skeptical detective Mike Norris,
Tom Holland landed on someone who understood
the often surprising worlds of drama, fantasy and horror.
-As far as the character of Mike Norris is concerned,
in a way, he's a prototype.
-I was excited by that casting,
and I thought he did a great performance
and he had a hard part as well.
He is the sort of mythical figure, the doubter,
the person who has to be convinced
of this bizarre reality that's occurring in this movie.
-I got The Strangler, Wabash and Van Buren.
[Engine starts, siren wailing]
-I've worked with Chris whenever I can
because he's a brilliant actor
and he's also a wonderful human being.
-There was a period where, you know, it was teetering
whether I was going to do it or not.
I don't remember the pushback particularly,
but I know that Tom and I had did have
a very specific conversation.
And I said to him, go with the guy you feel comfortable with.
-As I understood it,
the enthusiasm was not mutual from the studio.
It was just Tom saying I want him, them saying,
"Well, what about so and so? What about so and so?"
And Tom saying, "No, it's Chris Sarandon."
-I just remember there being a great deal of excitement
that we got Chris Sarandon for this little movie.
Being a huge fan of "The Princess Bride,"
I was like a fanboy.
-I thought, this movie's going to be really
quite an experience,
just a no brainer in terms of whether
this was going to touch some sort of a nerve or not.
-To play single mother Karen Barclay, an actress
was chosen who had already proven her on screen mettle
by surviving in the desert,
making it through a high school reunion
and even helping the Federation.
-I like the script because I like the role of Karen Barclay.
I thought she was complicated.
I knew there was a lot of drama to play.
-Catherine came in.
I think she'd done that movie about the whale.
-What's going to happen when you release the whales?
-They're going to have to take their chances.
-She just seemed like a mom and she came in with that vibe.
I mean, she clearly had given this a good deal of thought.
-She rose to the top because she was attractive,
and she had a kind of homespun-Midwest-mom
quality that we really liked.
-She was likable, seemed like a kind and decent person.
-I think that that warmth that she naturally has I imagine
is what attracted Tom and David to casting her.
-She had a lot to her. It was a big role, complicated.
There was a lot of backstory, very great emotional scenes.
-I think that she sells everything in that movie.
-There was a lot to sink my teeth into.
That's why I liked the project.
I knew it would be a challenge,
so I was pretty happy.
-With mother and detective roles filled,
the film faced the challenge of an arduous audition process
to find Andy Barclay,
the little boy object of Chucky's soul swapping desires.
-I don't remember the first Chucky audition,
but I do remember being flown out to L.A.
to audition against just a couple kids
that were left in the running for the part.
-There was something, a sweetness about him,
but there was also something a little bit depressed.
There was something a little bit guarded
or unhappy in him. -The kids who seemed
most natural were the ones that we picked up on.
Alex pretty much rose to the top.
-I thought Alex Vincent was very, very good.
-Alex did not have that Disney kid kind of vibe
to him of just, you know, constant smiles and whatever,
and he stood out.
-We did the scene where I say the line...
-He said that Maggie was a real bitch and got what she deserved.
-And I didn't want to say bitch in front of my mother
at five and a half, six years old.
So when I got to that line, I froze up
and I said that I don't remember the lines.
-There was no artifice about him.
There was no cuteness about him. He was real.
-More than that, I think it showed the innocence
that they needed from Andy in me.
-How can you say something so horrible?
-I think that line helped me get the part at some level.
-I thought hands down it was the kid that I wanted.
-With the watchful detective,
loving mother and innocent child ready to play,
it was time to get scary
with the film's antagonist, the despicable Charles Lee Ray.
-Brad came on board because of Tom.
That was Tom's relationship, Tom's idea,
and it's clearly been a great idea
since he's the star of this franchise.
-Brad had been the heavy in "Fatal Beauty" for me,
so I knew what he was capable of.
-Kevlar, bitch! [Laughs]
I read the script and, you know,
I talked with Tom about it.
It was a good script, and he asked me
if I wanted to do it, and I said sure.
-That's my memory of it.
We didn't really go through other people.
Pretty much it was Brad all along.
-I also loved Brad Dourif, and I think he's a good actor.
And I think he enjoyed it.
I did "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
and I played a crazy person,
and that's sort of the way people saw me.
-When Brad is playing Charles Lee Ray,
he is such the epitome of an eccentric, bizarre
and also maniacal individual.
-He was generally a sleaze and, you know, a serial killer
who killed women before he became sort of a general,
you know, all sex liberal murderer.
-And Brad slips into that quite easily.
He's an extraordinary human being I think.
A smart, funny and also highly imaginative.
-And it was a blast. It was really a blast.
-[Screaming]
Brad's on his own kind of planet,
which makes him perfect for the character.
-And Chris Sarandon is great.
You know, he's a wonderful actor.
-It's very fortunate that we had two weeks in Chicago
to rehearse this movie.
-You think you can fuck with me?
-When he came out to Chicago and he and I and Catherine Hicks
acting out parts from the film where he got down on the ground,
was crawling around like Chucky.
-Andy, stop her.
-I'm your friend to the end, remember?
-This is the end, friend.
-And I would just squat down low
so that they would get used to --
and I played Chucky, which was actually a lot of fun.
-It was like doing a play. It was drama, drama, drama.
-Either it was impactful
and the movie worked, or it wasn't,
and then the movie wouldn't work.
-Then they would say, when you get to L.A.
you'll -- you'll meet the doll.
And I was like, oh, that's right.
It's, yeah, it's got -- it's got a doll.
It's a little bit of a horror film.
Whatever. Let's go back to working with Brad Dourif.
-All I had to do was be charming.
[Laughs]
[Screams]
-It's impossible at this point
to imagine anyone
but Brad Dourif voicing Chucky.
There was a phase where Tom tried using another voice
for the doll, and it was Jessica Walter.
-That is true. -I didn't even know that.
-The only Chucky voice I ever worked with was Brad Dourif's.
-I had no idea that Jessica Walter
was initially cast as Chucky's voice.
-Her voice was going to be separate
than Brad Dourif's voice.
Brad would be the killer, and she would become the doll.
-The logic being that because a woman, Mercedes McCambridge,
had voiced the devil in "The Exorcist"...
-Now kindly undo these straps.
-I think Tom's logic was he just thought it might be interesting
to hear a woman do this.
-I reached out to Brad Dourif to voice Chucky,
and Brad was not available.
I tried all these voiceover artists,
and none of them seemed
to have the bloodthirsty glee that I wanted.
And then I thought of Jessica Walter,
who's a brilliant actress and who scared the shit
out of me in the Clint Eastwood movie.
-[Screams]
-So I had her come in and I had her do Chucky.
-And it didn't really work.
It was just a little distracting.
-You know, it was
probably really funny and a great deal of fun,
but just wrong.
-It just didn't seem to have enough gravel to it,
for lack of a better word.
-I believe a female voice for Chucky
would have been very counterproductive.
It's not a girl doll, it's a boy doll.
-I'm a gay guy, so I think I'm allowed to say it.
Chucky sounded gay.
-I tried putting filters on -- on Chucky's voice,
and I was just about ready to shoot myself.
So thankfully Brad came back when he was available
and voiced Chucky and it worked perfectly.
-It wasn't that he was so frightening,
but he also captured the humor, the glee.
His inflection, the rhythm of the way he speaks,
Brad Dourif just nails the voice.
-And Chucky became his.
-[Laughs] -[Evil laughter]
-With the human cast locked down, designing, constructing
and operating the film's murderous doll
was a major undertaking.
The responsibility fell to an up and coming monster maker
who had already worked with two titans of terror.
It would ultimately fall on his shoulders
to make this movie's mechanical maniac his third.
-Studio said to me, it's obviously going to have
to be some kind of animatronic that makes this work,
but they didn't seem to trip over it.
-And I knew that he had to start out
being cloyingly cute and sweet,
and I need to have him turn into the devil from hell.
Something out of your worst nightmare.
-Animatronics had progressed to the point
that the doll could do anything that I could write.
They could like, articulate and have emotion.
-It was a very, very difficult to make
because nobody had ever done a puppet movie
asking that puppet to do what I was asking him to do.
-I had met with a host of people,
and Kevin, even his studio was so impressive.
-I grew up on watching all the classic films.
So it was "Frankenstein," "The Mummy," you know,
"Creature Lagoon from the Black Lagoon,"
all those things, And that's what kind of
got my interest in horror.
-And I was just so taken by him and his passion.
-I got a call from the producer, David Kirschner,
who had been talking to makeup effects man named Rick Baker,
who I was a huge fan of.
I got to work on "Thriller"
and all that stuff and got to know Rick.
I had just finished "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3,"
and I turned on the big Freddy snake head,
and it was animatronic, and that impressed him enough.
-I went in and when I met with Kevin,
he felt very strongly that this could work.
-I think he right then just said,
I really want you to do this film.
I'm like, yeah.
-I was working for Kevin Yagher,
and, uh, Kevin came in one day and said,
hey guys, we're going to do this movie
called "Child's Play,"
and we're going to create Chucky.
And I was like, this is going to be cool.
-Howard was like my main right hand man at the shop.
He just had a great bedside manner.
He's a wonderful, funny human being.
-It wasn't a lot of us,
like Kevin had a very, very small crew.
None of us had ever done anything like this before.
So Kevin assembled a great mechanical crew
and a great art crew.
-David sent me the script after we had a first meeting.
He showed me a picture of this doll
that looked very much like the "Magic" doll.
-[Shouts]
-I felt like, okay, that's kind of the flavor
of it, you know, we get.
-His design of the look of the doll,
based on my description, was obviously a very important
part of the ultimate look of Chucky.
Kevin Yagher made contributions to that as well.
-But then you know, Tom Holland, the director,
would come in and David Kirschner,
the producer, would come in and there'd be some changes.
And then Kevin wanted changes and you would see it evolve.
-So we just started saying, make it cuter, make it cuter.
There was a doll out called Corky,
and it was an animatronic doll you could actually talk to.
-Gee, Corky, when you talk about
something, it's almost real.
-I know some great songs, too.
-It was just like it make it as cute as Corky.
I got tired of that phrase.
-I never, ever once thought that the cuteness
of the original doll was going to be a problem.
-I give a dimples and bigger cheeks, you know?
You know, cheeks that, you know, were fuller faced.
And then we changed the eyes blue.
I went to Dave and I said, "Listen.
As he becomes more human,
be really great to make the eyes colder.
Can we go ice cold?" He said,
"We just hired this actor named Brad Dourif.
And the funny thing is, he's got ice cold blue eyes,
so that would work out perfect.
-The movie defines the character.
What happens defines the character.
I thought it was going to be an asset.
-So we changed Chucky's eyes to like, sky blue.
But as he becomes more human in the film,
those eyes go icier cold.
-Kevin gave me a call and told me
me that he was going to be building the doll
for this -- this film.
I started working with him on "Cocoon"
and also Weird Al Yankovic's "Fat" video.
They contacted me originally to make the costumes
for the -- the dolls.
It was going to be maybe 15, 20. It turned out to be 72.
-And I knew that I wanted to go with happy Colors.
It had to feel like it was being done
by a marketing campaign from a major advertising agency
pitching to seven-year-olds.
-I worked closely also with Ron Pipes, who did the hair.
-One day I showed up in the morning
and that's what we did.
We sat in a little room making Chucky hair pieces.
-And I believe we made six hero toy versions.
And then I made 50 vacuform ones
that had hair and stick-on eyes and everything,
and they had full wardrobe for the boxes,
you know, that were in the toy store.
-In the first film
he transforms, he becomes more human
because his hairline started to recede.
We started punching eyebrows into the heads as well.
-And I worked closely with the mechanics
and the puppeteers, because you really have to be
able to accommodate the motors, the batteries.
-The mechanical aspect was massive
because there was so much
that this puppet needed to do. -Because he had
to go from the toy version all the way
to the Jack Nicholson or the Brad Dourif type
with the receding hairline, the darker skin.
Then his eyes became to change, so we had to make those look
as realistic as possible at the end.
So there's five stages of heads.
-We had, like, the yelling head and like the surprise head,
and then the kind face and the good guy doll face.
-And so in each head had to have three puppeteers.
There was one working the cheeks and the brows,
one working the mouth and he had a headgear.
It was like a football chinstrap
that we hooked up to potentiometers
that would then signal the servos inside Chucky's head.
He had 25 to 28 servos inside of his head.
-The first time we finally
got the walking hero puppet up and running.
There was no skin on it, and they turned it on
and that thing just started moving.
I was like, Holy shit, this is amazing.
-I was blown away by what goes in to this creature
moving and talking.
-It was the coolest thing in the world.
Any opportunity I got to fiddle with some of the puppetry stuff
was the coolest thing for me.
-It was so amazing.
That word spread kind of quick that Stan Winston,
multi-Academy Award winner of "Jurassic Park,"
"Aliens," "Predator" called Kevin was like,
I want to come over and I want to see what you're working on.
-Kevin Yagher and the doll
actually performed extremely well.
-He's the guy
whose imagination and whose expertise
created the various iterations of the doll.
-It was, you know, incredibly exciting to see.
This looks super cool and a lot like what I had imagined.
-Kevin brought the character to life.
He's Dr. Frankenstein
and was able to just take a graphite pencil drawing
and bring that to life. -It's alive!
-I look at Chucky as you know, my baby.
I'm sure Don does the same thing and so does David,
and I'm so proud of it.
-And it really worked. People really, really liked it.
So that was cool.
-You knew that a star was born and it wasn't human.
It was the doll, Chucky.
-With a director, main cast and murderous villain,
Tom Holland's "Child's Play"
began filming on January 7th, 1988.
The $13 million film saw its start
by shooting on the streets of Chicago.
-We went into Chicago
in a record-breaking cold winter.
-It was one of their coldest winters in years.
-It was 30 below.
My voice froze in my throat.
-I literally lay in agony
because of the cold burning my esophagus.
-UA brought that up as a reason
we shouldn't go to Chicago,
and the weather is going to be a character in the story,
which I do truly believe it was.
-The original scene that I wrote at the start of the movie
was a helpless woman walking down the street
and she was a female decoy,
and it was Chris Sarandon in drag.
-Wow.
No, I have no recollection of this.
-I think someone made that story up.
-You know what? I had forgotten all about that.
And I just now only vaguely see him doing that.
-The first shot of the movie, as we know it,
is running down Wabash Avenue in Chicago outside the toy store.
-That was one of the scenes that I think,
you know, really created
that sort of sense of,
oh, we're in for an exciting ride.
[Gunshots]
[Alarm ringing]
-For the toy store,
which is one of the first scenes in the film,
um, I knew it was going to be like 10,000 square ft,
and that's a lot of space to fill.
-You couldn't just waltz into a toy store
and, you know, rearrange it.
-So I contacted Toys "R" Us, and I said,
"Give me all of your returns and I'll give you $14,000."
And so nine semis rolled up and we dressed that set
I think in four days.
-We did the vacuum forms.
We painted the forms back in the shop.
We had little stickers for the eyes.
We made little wigs and put those on.
And then we got from wardrobe all the Chucky outfits,
so we'd have stacks of them on one side,
and the camera would change angles,
and we'd put the same 50 on the other side.
-We had to have a lot of boxes
that had to be a big popular thing.
-I do remember being in my hotel room,
you know, I wonder what the maid would say
when she came in with all these Chucky dolls.
-I'm gonna get you, and I'm gonna get Eddie
no matter what!
-The scene in the toy store is what really remains with me,
where he puts himself into the doll.
-I had come up with the notion
that he transmogrifies his soul into the doll.
Tom felt that was not enough
and created the voodoo element.
-[Chanting in voodoo]
-They partied more.
-I never liked the voodoo.
I just found it to be a kind of corny device.
-I was looking for, for some way to justify
the insanity of the serial killer
putting a soul into that of a doll.
The only thing I could think of was voodoo.
-It was a brilliant idea.
It gave a spooky spirituality to the film.
-And all of this was so integral
to the plot of the film.
-You know, I think it served its purpose
in terms of explaining Chucky's life energy.
-The audience wasn't going to go anywhere
until they saw what happened with that doll.
-Great idea, that voodoo,
even though I resisted it for a long time.
♪♪
-The explosion of toy store went really, really well.
-That explosion really was the hook that started the film.
-And also the fact that it
creates a tempo that remains all the way through.
-The audience was sitting,
waiting for the characters in the movie,
especially Karen Barclay,
to realize that the doll was possessed.
-I'm a good guy.
I've just come from the good guy clubhouse.
-I was so excited by the idea
of creating an animated version of what Chucky would be like,
which was a very big deal with the studio,
just for them to spend money on a piece of animation
in the middle of a horror film.
-I was working at Ruby-Spears Productions at the time,
and I know that David Kirschner had been
working with Hanna-Barbera,
so I ended up doing the drawings on the actual animation,
and others did the animation.
-And it was really fun to take kind of the dark elements
of what Don had created for this big trend for kids
that was sweeping the nation.
-The "Good Guys" show that we saw
was very, very typical of the kind of
toy-driven shows that were being done at that time.
-As well as we did a live action piece in the treehouse
and had a whole costume made of Chucky.
-Good guys say three different sentences.
We even turn our heads and blink our eyes when you talk to us.
-And so they contacted me
originally to make the large walk-around version,
which would have a full size person in it.
-I know that Carol Siegel, my assistant,
played Chucky in the doll costume in the commercial.
-Oh, happy birthday, pumpkin. -Thanks.
-I think you really believed their bond.
-We kind of attack relationships and concepts
from a lot of different angles -- humor, horror, drama.
-We did so many scenes between me and my son
about my husband, his dad.
There was a lot of backstory.
-So my father in "Child's Play,"
who was never really seen on screen,
there is a picture frame which was one of Tom Holland's
cameos in the film.
There was some expansion on the idea
that Andy's father had died.
That idea that Chucky was sent down from heaven
by daddy to play with me
I think really helped draw Andy in.
I think the relationship between Karen and Andy
was built on a place of relatability for people.
-Catherine was a complete professional
and she really had to bring that stuff to life.
She had to be a sweet mom
that's on her own, you know, raising this kid.
-The horror fact was really secondary for me as an actor.
-It corresponds more to the way
I originally saw this world
in the home, familiar surroundings
and things turning against you.
-Chill out, would you, Walter, huh?
-Well, I was living in New York at the time,
and I had two auditions.
One was for a movie called "Bloodhounds of Broadway,"
but they don't pay any money.
And then I had this other audition
for this horror movie called "Child's Play"
about this killer doll, but they were paying.
-I had been in the Actor's Studio
with her mother, Lee Grant.
Lee Grant is a brilliant actress, just brilliant.
And Dinah came in and she was really talented
and gave a great reading.
-In my original script, she was a teenager
rather than being a friend of the family.
-I wasn't aware that Maggie was originally meant
just to be the babysitter.
I still would have taken the role. [Laughs]
But it probably would have gone to someone a lot younger.
-When we worked with Dinah, she was incredibly sweet
and we were very excited to get her
because of "Grease" and "Ordinary People."
- I love Dinah Manoff.
We're kindred spirits. We didn't have to do anything
to come off believable as friends.
She is the nicest, prettiest girl in the whole world
and you would want to be her best friend instantly.
-I think the funnest part of making the movie
was having a friend in the department store.
Our opposite natures,
Catherine's being gentler and sweet and mine being,
you know, bossy,
I think you really see that. -I can't just leave my account.
-You want the damn doll or don't you?
-Of course I do. -Well, then, come on.
Come on. -Alright!
-The scene in the alley,
I remember that it was fun.
Okay, show her.
-I don't remember the audition a lot,
but I do remember looking at
who was going to be a part of the whole thing.
I couldn't wait to meet Brad Dourif.
I knew about Chris, and Catherine
was really wonderful too, but working
with Dinah Manoff was an absolute joy.
-Juan was really good, and I remember thinking,
that was a really fun scene to shoot.
-Take it or leave it. Somebody else will buy it.
-I'll take it. -Karen, it's too much money.
-No, it isn't. You have no idea how much Andy wants this doll.
We have struggled, the dad died. It's too expensive.
But I want my child to be happy.
The challenges that came for Catherine were different
because a lot of her stuff she had to internalize.
Here you go, lady.
May it bring you and your kid a lot of joy.
-My role fit into starting this trajectory of the doll.
-People blame me sometimes.
They see me and say, "No, no, man,
you started this, you're the troublemaker.
You're the one who sold it to that poor lady."
-How do we know the damn thing isn't stolen, huh?
-Ah, steal this.
The character of the peddler
found this in the aftermath of this explosion.
-And then this terrible event happens.
She buys the kid a possessed doll and all hell breaks loose.
-A Good Guy.
-I know it. I know you would get me one.
-Hi, I'm Chucky, and I'm your friend to the end.
-I am actually the original Chucky, you know,
because the first time Chucky's introduced
he's a Good Guy doll.
As a child actor, I voiced many cartoons,
movies, things like that.
I actually voiced Corky back in the day.
Hi, pal. My name's Corky. Come on and be my best friend.
-Okay. -Everybody has their favorite
doll growing up, and Chucky
has probably become so many people's favorite doll.
-It's a new friendship in my life
that means a lot to me. -I'll take care
of Andy for you. -Becky, you can't do it again.
-Don't be silly.
It'll be the hottest date I've had in months.
-My favorite chill is probably Aunt Maggie's death.
It's mysterious and domestic, and the whole lead up to that
where he keeps the doll off screen, just like in jaws.
We're seeing the villain's Steadicam point of view.
-And in that scene where I'm reading the book and the doll...
No, everything's okay. Wait, what was that?
-Alex Vincent's sister, Ashley, was in a few shots.
-His sister actually dressed up as the doll,
played Chucky. -She was about four years old,
and the little girl out of focus ran behind the babysitter.
And it is one of the best shots in the movie.
-This was the part of the role
that I was really looking forward to,
because this was the Hitchcockian chance to do the,
you know, wait, I hear something.
Andy, is that you?
[Screams]
[Sighs] What is wrong with me?
And then Chucky comes out and whacks me with the hammer.
Bam! You know, it's really fun.
-And if you look at that, that's a shot moving
with her, that's inserts in the hands,
that's inserts on the feet
and she's going back and hitting the thing.
-Tom had wanted me to do the stunt
of falling through the window,
and I said, can the stunt woman do it first?
And in my recollection, she got cut doing it and I said, nope.
-And I pulled her out and I put the stunt woman in.
And then the stunt woman went out of the window in Chicago.
-[Screaming]
-And then I probably just went over to the craft service table
and got, you know, an apple, some chips.
-Her death scene is so fantastic.
-It was very shocking and well done.
-And that was a huge fall into a bag,
and I had a car down there.
I had a crane above the car and the concrete body hit the car
and crushed the surface which sold the impact.
-I have never seen this movie past where I die.
-I never knew that Dinah never saw the rest of the film
after her death scene. That is funny.
-I just, you know, it's scary.
-Where's Maggie?
-She had an accident.
-Accident? What kind of an accident?
I don't believe I had much time on screen
to deal with her death.
I hope I did it well because it's a
really hard moment to play.
I just remember talking to the detective and, like,
it's just beginning to get weird.
-When Maggie dies, the attention turns to Andy as the killer.
-Andy may have been the one responsible.
Certainly, it's what Detective Norris thinks.
-It looked like footprints, don't they?
Very small footprints.
-What are you implying? -I don't know.
There's no question that Mike Norris is looking at it
very skeptically and thinking,
oh, come on, I know what happened.
I'm an evidence guy,
and this just doesn't -- this doesn't make sense.
-Mommy, I know who was on the kitchen counter.
-Andy, I thought I -- -Who, Andy? Who?
-Chucky. -Your doll?
Tom Holland understood the inherent juxtaposition
between creepiness and innocence.
-This feeds into every childhood nightmare.
[Door slams] -Oof.
-[Whistles] -Ouch. A spirited lady.
-No kidding. -I went up for Chris' role,
and Tom dug me, man, you know?
Tom just got a kick out of me, but he was like, you know,
I want to give you this other part.
You know, it was all based on Tom getting a kick out of me.
-I always found Tommy Swerdlow
was not afraid to express himself as who he is
as the character.
-Jack Santos is a good time, man.
Let me just say that to everybody.
-It helped kind of cement the relationship
between the two cops.
-Chris is kind of great, man.
Chris is great doing that earnest cop thing.
-What is this?
-Possible murder weapon?
-No. -I think it's common that cops
and detectives might not believe someone right away
or suspect maybe that they're lying.
But Andy was faced with that very early on, for sure.
-Chucky directs Andy to leave school secretly,
and he gets on the L.
And the juxtaposition of this innocent little boy put into,
you know, this really seedy area of Chicago
where a murderer is hiding.
-Is that Eddie's?
-So, killing Eddie Caputo was, for Chucky, an act of revenge.
And that's another common Chucky thing.
Anybody messes with Chucky, he cannot allow them
to get away with it. -I remember we went
there, uh, to that location.
I stood there and I thought, Jesus Christ,
this is like a kill zone.
-During that scout, I went to Barry Osborn
and I said, "We can't shoot here."
He said, "Well, I take your point,
but there's no other vacant lot where the house we can blow up
around here unless you can find one."
-There were snipers in the top of the projects
shooting at our furniture,
so we called the police and they said,
this is the day after New Year's.
They won't come down from their high for five days.
They finally stopped, but it was really scary.
-The first time I actually worked on set
with any Chucky parts was the Eddie Caputo scene.
I was doing the first hand
that actually comes around the corner
and reaches around the door and kind of opens the door
a little bit, and then my other puppeteer,
Lauren, would turn the dial, turn the gas on.
-That was all staged stuff.
We probably spent like, you know,
five hours of a Chucky hand turning.
-I don't think we care so much
about what's going to happen to Eddie Caputo.
-He hears something in the kitchen,
and goes and throws open the door and fires.
-Because of Andy's presence there and his proximity
to this imminent explosion,
I think it's very suspenseful.
-Chucky.
-The explosion was fantastic.
I mean, we, you know, we shot with Alex outside.
-It was pretty scary because the explosion almost threw Andy
into a trench we had built, but thank God he wasn't hurt.
-It was fun to film and it was really fun to watch.
-I knew they were going to blow it up,
but I was like, wow.
-You know, I had just graduated, uh, film school.
And I ended up getting a job on, uh, "Child's Play"
As a production assistant.
Yes, we blew up an actual building that existed,
which, you know, how amazing was that?
-The explosion was so much bigger
than anything we ever intended.
-So that was a very memorable moment,
and I'm glad I was alive after it.
-Nobody believes you about Chucky.
Unless you start telling the truth
right now, they're going to take you away from me.
-So Catherine comes home from the police station.
The cops are keeping her little boy,
thinking that somehow he killed somebody.
And she comes home and sees the Good Guy box there.
-There's a brilliant reveal when
the batteries that power the doll fall out of the box,
and then you're left with only one
possible conclusion.
-It's great, and I do like to take credit for that.
That was in my script.
-But the doll has been talking this whole time.
-[Gasps] What?
-I think it's just being in the character.
You're like, oh my, what?
And then you play ignorance, confusion.
-She picks up the doll and she slowly puts her finger
underneath the case for the battery and pulls it open.
And the audience is on the edge of their seat.
-And it's empty.
-That's shocking moment always got a big gasp
from everybody in the audience.
-In that brief second, the doll swings its head around.
-Hi, I'm Chucky. Want to play?
-[Screams]
-I didn't know how to do that shot
because I tried to put monofilament on the doll
so when it when it dropped I could have the gaffer
or somebody yank it under the couch,
but it never looked right.
-We tried and it just wasn't working.
It was really kind of goofy looking.
-And we just couldn't figure out a way to do it.
-And Bill Butler, the cinematographer,
said, I know how to do it,
and he put the floor on a 30 degree angle like that.
-I, of course, lost my mind because I'm like
Bill Butler shot "Jaws," the greatest movie ever made.
-They were able to take the couch
and put it on a rug platform
and just tilt it up enough. So when she dropped it,
you couldn't tell that it was tilted
but it would roll under and it works great.
-Karen leans down to look for him under the couch,
leading with your face to look for Chucky down low.
Bad idea, but it's great. It's really suspense inducing.
-The audience went wild.
It was really, really exciting to see that.
-I would personally pretend it's a snake
because I'm terrified of snakes.
-She pulls the doll out and the doll
doesn't do anything, and she lifts it up.
-I said talk to me, damn it, or else I'm gonna throw
you in the fire. -And then, of course,
just the torrent of filth that pours out of this doll's mouth.
-You stupid bitch! You filthy slut!
I'll teach you to fuck with me! -[Screaming]
-And that's one of those moments.
You have to hit that with everything you have.
That had to be big. That really had to be.
-You just get angry
and you're just sort of fight to get him off you,
as you would in a scene with a bad guy.
-That's a very important part of storytelling.
-It gets a big wow from the audience.
-And we knew that was going to be an iconic moment.
-Your job is to make it work.
You have to block out the cables
when you got him up there, you just you do your job
and deal with the terror of those icy blue eyes.
-She was always up for the task.
She had to work really, really hard.
We really went at it.
"Punch me in the face with the Chucky."
-You become part of the Chucky team.
We have to make this a live doll believable to the audience.
-I think my favorite moments in the film are right there.
-I didn't, in my script, reveal the doll fully alive
until that was like the curtain opener for the third act,
and Tom probably smartly brought that earlier.
-That's the beginning of the end.
It's sort of the end of innocence.
[Screams]
-Karen is really vulnerable
and isn't going to find any help because there's something
so ridiculous about it.
-One of the difficulties with playing
a character like Mike Norris
is that the audience knows what the real deal is.
-Working with Chris Sarandon was so easy,
and he has this ability to be very comforting,
and he's just calm and he's really cool.
Chucky is alive and he killed Eddie Caputo.
-What? -You just play it straight
because it is serious.
It is about a little boy getting killed
and me getting killed.
And I think Chris did a really good job.
-My job as an actor in moments like that
is to remain the skeptic.
If he doesn't, then the belief in the situation
goes out the window.
Good night, Mrs. Barclay.
-One of the things that I disagreed with about the script
is that the audience is ahead of Karen Barclay.
She's forced to do scenes where she, like,
goes to Chris Sarandon and goes...
-He's been moving and talking for days.
-Without any batteries in him. -What are you talking about?
- In retrospect, when I see that,
I wished I tapped into a more specific,
real personal thing in my life to make it deeper and more real.
So I confess that wasn't my best moment.
-It's not enough. What else you got?
-That's all I've got. -All you got?
-What? -The thing about shooting
the scene where I attempt to assault Catherine
is that it is on my turf.
-I'm feeling sorry for the homeless here
all around this freezing night in the fires,
and then I just don't expect that from him.
And, I mean, that's just, oh, God.
Another horrible thing that's happened in our lives.
-It was scary. I mean, it's like, you know,
you really feel the danger in that scene
because it does go beyond me assaulting her.
It goes beyond whether or not
she's going to be making it out of there alive.
-It's incomprehensible,
and I'm powerless and there's no one around.
-Help!
-Hey. -[Groans]
-Christ, he's a cop. -Alright.
What about the rest of you?
You want a party, too?!
-The detective saves the day.
So I definitely think Karen will marry him after the movie.
-I remember Juan Ramirez very well.
I can actually see his face.
He had such a kind of, you know, physical "corpability."
I mean, he was really quite extraordinary.
-I am telling you the truth. Why won't you believe me?
-I find scenes like that to be tricky.
You know, where responsible
adults are like talking nonsense.
-Because I'm saying, Mrs. Barclay, sane and rational.
One of the difficulties with playing a character
like Mike Norris is that,
in a way, he's the person who has to be convinced.
-It's just so frustrating to convince
someone that something happened.
-For the last time, Mrs. Barclay, good night.
-Oh, my. Damn! [Bangs on car]
-And I think Catherine and Chris totally sold that stuff.
I think that the scene when Chucky attacks Mike Norris
in the car is exciting.
-I have a very vivid memory of Chucky in the car.
-And all of a sudden, Chucky comes up behind him
and tries to strangle him with the wires while he's driving.
-[Screams, grunts]
-Good night, asshole.
-We used about everything that we had in that car sequence
and it turned out fantastic.
-I think that was probably the best sequence in the movie.
It was really scary.
-Aah! [Grunting]
-That blade comes up between his legs.
Every male in that audience went, "Aah!"
-I still get men coming up to me and saying, "Man,
you know that scene with the knife
is coming up between your nuts? Jesus!"
-[Screaming]
-What was going on visually
influenced my vocal performance in that case.
The puppeteers did really well, I thought, in that.
[Horns honking] -Aah!
-Geez! Look out!
-There's a lot of action-movie DNA --
car chases and explosions and cops.
-Aaaah!
-So the sequence where Chris Sarandon
gets into the car accident, the car flips over,
all that wide stuff was shot in Chicago.
-We actually took out a Panasonic camera in that scene
because the car skidded on its roof further
than any of us thought,
and we had a camera there shooting the scene
and it wiped out the camera.
-Hi, Mikey!
-There were so many sort of vivid, iconic, in a way,
moments that occurred in that scene.
-We built a little, you know, street, lit it,
wet down the pavement like you do in movies.
And Chris was fantastic. He's upside down.
He never complained about any of that stuff.
-Yeah, well, it wasn't fun.
-We had an elevated platform that had the street
and all the surroundings,
and we did a combination of using the half puppet
and then a little person actor, and we built a suit.
-I also made the costumes
for the human stand-in little person.
-And then we used a Bunraku method,
where we put one of our stuffed dolls in front on rods
that hooked to a puppeteer's legs.
-[Grunts]
-They thought maybe this wouldn't cut together
because inside, outside, upside down car,
how's this going to work, but it all cut together beautifully.
-Almost every scene was a composite of different shots
to fool the eye.
-And that's all piecemeal, put together
piece by piece by piece by Tom and his team.
-[Screams]
Aaaaaah!
-After Chucky attacks Detective Mike Norris in his car,
the very fabric of reality as he knows it has been torn asunder.
♪♪
-Walking in that set with all the voodoo, that is so creepy.
It's so pagan, and, you know, like a devil church.
-And Chris appears and taps her shoulder
and scares the hell out of her.
-Karen. -[Gasps]
-He has this, you would think,
very memorable interaction with this killer doll,
and one would presume would probably be experiencing
some kind of existential crisis.
And yet, when he meets Karen, he doesn't say it.
-She's in Charles Lee Ray's apartment
and the walls are covered with voodoo signs.
It was in there and the dialog was trimmed.
-You know, that's a very interesting point,
that he now knows Chucky 'cause he attacked him,
and he doesn't tell me that.
-These are called "don't ask" moments.
And as an actor, you just have to go with the flow.
-I'm surprised more people haven't noticed that.
Why wouldn't he say, "I believe you now"?
That would have been a great moment.
-Hi.
It's me. Chucky.
What do you think?
-I have to get myself out of that,
or I'm stuck in the doll.
-The more time you spend in that body,
the more human you become.
-That's what he is scared of,
by making him terrified of oblivion.
That was where all of his anger came from.
And that's why you can't negotiate with him. He means it.
-You got me into this. You get me out.
-I can't do that, Chucky.
-I built Dr. Death's kitchen oversized,
and I put a little person in the Chucky suit.
And I had him play a scene with Dr. Death
because he could move up and down the counter.
-The production designer built us -- built sets
that were 30% larger.
-And I had him throwing dishes, and it was a terrific scene.
-And they ended up, you know, cutting all of that.
-You know, I thought something like this might happen.
That's why I prepared for it.
-What are you talking about?
-So the sequence where we kill Dr. Death,
that was a long shoot.
-Today you'd probably do it all CG.
But there was something magical about the puppet.
-There was real specifics, and we utilized all the puppets.
And there was a lot of rigging,
a lot of trickery that we had to do.
-We also had to build a Dr. Death voodoo doll,
which my older brother Jeff, who's a sculptor,
sculpted the head to match the actor.
-Your own personal mojo, Doc.
-Give me that.
-He has the voodoo doll there, and it's in his hands.
-I think that is one of the first iconic moments
of the franchise, is Chucky causing this horrible,
torturous death to someone.
-[Groaning] -[Laughs]
-Yeah. -[Groans]
-It's been fun.
-Why he's able to kill Dr. Death is because he can
and he fucking well feels like it.
-Oh, my God.
-I had to leave him alive
so Dr. Death could tell Catherine and Chris.
-It's the only way -- through the heart.
-It's very creepy, and it's a bit of a spooky scene.
-And that propels you into your third act.
-There is a scene when Alex is in a mental facility.
-I found an insane asylum that had been abandoned
outside of Chicago.
It was built in the 1800s,
which is one of the scariest places I have ever been into.
-The building was very imposing I remember.
It looked very kind of institutional.
-I was looking at the set of where Andy was
and I was like, "Jesus,
this looks like Frankenstein's dungeon."
-The first time all the puppeteers came together
as one was a shot where Chucky is walking outside,
which was literally wired to this ledge,
and Andy looks down and he sees, here comes Chucky.
-He calls out for help.
-Help me, help me! Dr. Ardmore, Chucky's here!
-It's the scene where he has to cry.
I was really worried about how is this kid
going to show deep emotions?
-I was concerned because we have a six year old
that we're dealing with, and my job
is to teach him during the day,
and also to make sure that his welfare is taken care of.
-The hardest part of making the first film
was probably the anxiety leading up to that crying scene.
-[Crying] Please don't leave me. Please.
-I think everybody else's memory
was that Tom was being a little harsh with me.
-There was a certain controversy about that.
-We were talking about things like my parents
getting divorced and things like that.
-Well, in order to get that heartbreaking truth,
it had to be made real to the young actor and it was.
-We spoke with him about what was going to happen
and -- and the sadness that he would feel.
-Alex has a very soft voice, you know,
and he couldn't get the volume up.
And I hear Tom on the other side of the stage,
"I can't hear you, damn it,
I can't hear you, Alex! Louder!"
And he would get louder and louder and louder.
-So I kept having him do it,
and I had him do it again and again and again.
"You got to do this. We need this.
I got to have you go to tears. You got to cry. Again.
No, you didn't go to tears. Again."
He got so upset that he went to tears.
And you really feel for him.
-Part of me says, do what you need to get the moment.
But the director knew information
and was screaming out about this little boy's home life
and got him to cry.
-It was kind of the anxiety,
the moment that really helped me start crying.
-And I turned to his mother and said,
"We can stop this if you're uncomfortable with this,
because he's crying."
And she said, "No, no, it's -- it's fine, it's fine.
This is what he needs to get to that point."
-The cry was real.
I mean, it was just he started slipping down that door
and broke into -- into tears.
And it was a, you know, wonderful moment.
-And I remember saying, "It's okay, Tom,
I'll keep crying," and my memory of it
was that he was just a very intense kind of on set.
And -- And then afterwards, you know, when we weren't on set,
he was much more gentle and sweet.
But I think it was maybe a lot of pressure.
-Alex is great in the scene
and doesn't seem to have suffered from it.
-Ultimately, it didn't go on that long.
It was a small moment. I think it's fine.
-We were concerned that Alex might turn
into a serial killer later in life after this experience,
but obviously he hasn't, so that's great.
-That's absolutely true. There's no -- There's no, uh -- Yeah.
♪♪
-Chucky comes around and he sees one of the attendants,
you know, at his desk.
-At the kickoff party,
Tom, the director, turned and was like,
okay, I'm going to give you a chance to act
and you can be the orderly.
I went from PA to the part of the orderly
for one night of non-PA abuse.
And I had my big scene
and it was like my Ralph Kramden moment where I was like.
-Humina, humina, humina, humina, humina, I mean...
[Laughter]
-I get residual checks from that movie for $7
every two years from cable for my elbow.
-Andy stop!
-Wait a minute. -Stop him!
-I also loved the electrocution of Doctor Ardmore.
It corresponded to the scene in my "Blood Buddy" script
when buddy kills the dentist.
And it's also Chucky using a doctor's tools
of the trade against him.
-He's the doctor who thinks the little boy is mad,
and he wants to give him electric shocks,
and instead he gets it.
-There's something very funny to me
about the way it's shot.
Chucky slashes the doctor when he goes down,
and Chucky runs by him,
and he just pops this little hat on it.
It's almost like, "Here, wear this."
-Unless you see Chucky with your own eyes,
you'll never believe that he's alive.
And by the time you see that he's alive,
it's probably too late to ever tell anyone about it.
[Electricity crackles, Ardmore screaming]
-Yeah, there's like three guys on the face.
There's two guys on the arms.
There's a guy doing the body. There's a guy doing the head.
-[Laughing evilly] [Electricity crackling]
-When I put the electric shock things on the doctor,
I put blood in his eyes so that when he started to go to shock,
the eyes would look like they were bleeding.
-There were things they didn't want me to see.
Doctor Ardmore's death
when they were electrocuting him.
Even though it goes back to me.
-And just the fact that Andy is witnessing it.
Alex Vincent was great the way he's going.
-Stop! Stop! -[Ardmore groaning]
-If I'm not sharing the screen with anything,
I probably wasn't there.
So if it switched to my reaction,
they were able to keep me shielded
from some of the more gruesome things.
-We had an excellent social worker
on the set with a little boy,
and I'm sure she took him away
and protected him from all that.
-That's my important job,
and making sure that he goes to school
and that he is not impacted by this horror movie.
-There's a great scene when Chucky's going up
in a cage elevator,
and a woman comes in and she looks
at Chucky and she says --
-"Ugly doll."
-Brad Dourif ad-libbed lines. I think he said,
-"Fuck you." That was my ad lib.
I just said, wait a minute. [Chuckles]
I think we need to do something here.
-That was brilliant because it fit
and it was appropriate.
It was really great. He's such a great actor.
-You know, I can't predict if it's going to get
a laugh or not, but I know if it's timed well.
-To me, that was the moment Chucky's personality was born,
a really important moment in the history of this film.
-Murder, mayhem and ad-libbed humor aside,
many on the production felt they had at last found their footing
just in time for the film's ultimate showdown.
[Film reel whirring]
-The U8 group wanted us to just end it.
-Tom got the entire crew together
and was asking us for ideas
because he was just kind of burnt.
-I was under such pressure about how to end it.
I originally wanted to end it
with Andy using his toys to fight Chucky,
and there were all the toys around,
including al the battery-powered cars
and trucks and everything.
-Even though the details in my script
were somewhat different from what ended up
in Tom's version in the movie,
it's still the basically the same idea.
We're using childhood toys and games
as weapons and strategy.
-I got real tired of the house.
I thought, is the audience going to get tired
of all we do is in the house?
-It was towards the end of the shooting,
and Chucky was going to end up
on the roof at the end of the movie.
Financially, that became impossible,
so he needed to come up with a new ending.
-I wanted the final showdown to be in the home,
you know, recognizable milieu.
-Give me the power.
I beg of you.
-Andy!
-[Chucky chanting]
No! -[Screams]
-I think Karen, by being a mother,
is by nature strong and protective
and not a girly victim.
[Chucky grunts, knife slices]
-[Mike screaming]
-And he stabs Mike in the leg
and then Catherine Hicks has to take over.
-It was sort of fun. Karen gets to be,
you know, a badass a bit.
-One of my favorite scenes is when Chucky
is thrown into the fireplace and Chucky says,
-We're friends to the end, remember?
-I deliver a line which is one of the iconic lines
of the entire franchise.
This isthe end, friend.
When I shot that scene with Tom Holland
and he really wanted that emphasis on
"This isthe end, friend,"
And he grabbed me and picked me up and threw me up in the air
with excitement after I nailed it.
-We had a rod puppet in there that we could light on fire,
and we had rods coming out the back of the fireplace.
-The only thing that I didn't want to see on set
was them set Ed Gayle on fire.
I was afraid of something going wrong.
-That's Ed Gale in a Chucky costume.
-And now, go. Action! One!
-That was terrifying to me because he was on fire.
-[Screaming]
-We ended up lighting the Makita Chucky
on fire at the end,
and it was a self-contained Chucky
that kicked its hands and kicked its legs,
and the guys had taken a Makita drill apart
and the thing would spin.
It was super loud,
so all that stuff had to be ADRed later.
-ADR was a lot of screaming and yelling
and that kind of thing.
No! Ah!
[Screaming]
It was one of those things where before I did it,
the mic over there, I walked around the room
and I breathed for I don't know how long in that scene,
but it was forever that I was screaming in agony
at the top of my lungs.
-Oh, my baby.
The ending is relentless. There's no killing him.
And that is the horror of the movie.
-I think it was a really well orchestrated finale.
This was the beginning of showing
Chucky's indestructible side.
-Back in the 80s, you know, they never just killed anything.
So this followed suit.
-I'll be back.
-Chucky is very much the Terminator,
and nothing is stopping him.
-It's like the Terminator bunny.
[Gun zapping]
-Very Terminator inspired.
-Well, Chucky is a little mini Terminator.
-You can't kill him.
[Suspenseful music plays]
-Hello, Andy.
-I poured up a black foam latex skin of Chucky,
and I had to put it on the mechanism.
And then I physically took a torch and burned the parts
while they were on this mechanism.
-It's like, okay, well, we should stay tonight
and build all this stuff. We were on set. By the way.
Kevin and I worked through the night
to get all those skins ready, all the melted stuff.
-We added some silicone and different things
to make it look like it was half fleshy, half burnt.
It reminded me of "American Werewolf in London,"
the Jack character at the end, he's rotting and falling apart.
He dies like 16 times, I think, in the end.
-Oh, be serious, would you?
-A lot happens to Chucky, you know.
He gets burned, he gets shot, he gets everything.
-Then, as scripted, Mike picks up a baseball bat
and knocks Chucky's head off. [Glass shatters]
-Chris Sarandon was meant to show up
from the side bedroom with a bat
and knock the head off.
-So that's how we actually shot it.
-I did get the baseball bat out of that moment,
but then I was being forced to cut it.
You can't see it, I've tried to slow it down
and see it, the head just is gone.
And it's Chris hitting the head so hard that it just removed it
and it bounced down the hallway perfectly.
-I blew his head off with a gun.
I blew off an arm.
I shot off a leg.
And then the thing was crawling.
And then finally it seemed like he was dead.
And Karen's helping Chris up in the bedroom,
and her son is traumatized.
-The kid was right.
The doll's alive. He almost got the three of us.
-Come on. What are you talking about?
-Ironically, his partner is the skeptic,
and Mike is now the believer.
-So I was going,
what's the most relaxed, kind of,
"This doll? Give me a break."
Like I was above it, you know.
And then it gets me. -And bang!
[Grater bangs, screaming]
-So I don't know how Chucky got through the air vent.
That, to me, didn't make sense when we were shooting it.
-The way that thing moved. I can hear it.
That was an interesting device.
I'm sure it would work very differently now, you know.
-I'll kill him now.
I'll strangle him! -[Grunting, panting]
Oh! Let go!
-You know, there was a lot of screaming and yelling.
I mean, I said, okay, don't hold back.
You got to threaten this guy with everything you have.
And I screamed.
I don't know, The folks from the studio
thought that maybe that was a little much.
-And everybody's in shock.
Karen is the only one who has the presence of mind.
-Because I was told by the dying voodoo guy --
Shoot him in the heart!
-[Screaming]
-That's what puts him away. And we had a yank line.
And it's great because you see the body react
in a wonderful way, where it almost looks like
he pushes, kicks himself off the floor.
-Hi, I'm Chucky, wanna
[Eerie-childlike voice] plaaaaay?
-And finally Chucky dies.
-I do remember having to do a lot of takes of,
"Hi, I'm Chucky, wanna play?"
And at the end the "play" had to get kind of crazy.
And so they wanted me to do all sorts of different weird,
wacky sounds and sound kind of creepy and evil.
-It takes you to a completely different place as an audience.
Hi, I'm Chucky, wanna [evilly] plaaaay?
♪♪
-I think any movie that ends with a freeze frame
in the horror genre,
it says cliffhanger.
My script didn't end with that.
-I think that freeze frame definitely jettisons you back
to the horror films of the '70s.
-It's one of my favorite shots of the entire first film.
-Then you think, "Okay, we're fine."
And well, we don't know. Is he dead?
-I think that freeze frame at the end of the movie
is certainly Tom's attempt to give you a sense of,
wait a minute, what's behind me? What's over my shoulder?
-That was to let the audience know that that experience
will probably be with that little boy forever.
-As I say pretty often, Chucky told me in 1988
that we were going to be friends to the end,
and that has certainly proved to be true.
[Suspenseful music plays]
-"Child's Play" wrapped at 66 days of shooting
on April 5th, 1988.
Now it was time to put
the killer-doll-movie puzzle together,
something that ultimately had moments more dramatic
than what ended up on the screen.
-I think the best part of making the movie
was probably the first day, [Chuckles]
because there was no anticipation
as to what the difficulties might be,
and the last day,
knowing that it was done. It was a tough shoot.
-Every movie has its own challenges and its own nature.
-It was really a team effort. It really took a village.
-One of the funnest parts of doing "Child's Play"
was flirting with Kevin Yeager.
-So, Catherine, how do you like working on this show?
All right? [Laughter]
-I don't want to talk right now, Kevin.
I gotta crap. -Okay.
-See you. -Bye.
-I would come on set for scenes I wasn't even in,
in a short, short skirt.
You know, he was just so focused.
But I thought that was really sexy.
He was like, "What are you doing?"
-We were dating other people.
So the flirtation that happened between us on set
was very, very calm, peaceful. Nothing ever happened.
-Well, there was a wrap party and I got Tiffany pens
for all the puppeteers, but not Kevin.
And I just went up and said, "Was there anything between us?"
-And I had nothing to say. I was dumbfounded.
So I just took her by the hand
and I pulled her back behind one of the movie flats
and I kissed her, and that was it.
-Just one kiss. And it was like, okay.
-Chucky's a big part of my life.
I mean, it bought my house.
I got to meet my wife on it.
-I lost my heart. And we've been married 32 years.
-The hardest part for me was just the fear of failure.
You're wondering when it's going to break,
because inherently, every puppet will break.
-I would say working with Chucky
and his technical problems was the hardest part.
-One of the things I certainly thought
all through the shoot was, how are they
going to piece all of this together?
Because there were so many different
iterations of the doll.
-David showed me the first cut of the movie,
Tom's first cut, which ran like a half an hour longer.
-We had a wonderful, wonderful editor
named Ed Warschilka that did such a great job.
But when we test-screened the film,
probably the worst moment for me was towards the end.
The head is burned at this point
and someone from the audience screamed,
"Don't touch it, there'll be a sequel!"
And the audience just roared.
And had it not been my movie, I would have roared too.
It's funny, but it wasn't funny when it's your movie.
-So I think that they were getting scared
and so their feeling was, let's cut this to the bone.
-I was under terrific pressure from the studio.
And they made my life hell because they had no belief
or anything invested in the movie,
and all they wanted me to do was cut, cut, cut.
-I felt really strongly that there was too much of the doll
in here by like almost 30 minutes.
-And I kept saying, "No Chucky,
no third act." [Chuckles]
-And when we went back in and edited,
Tom was let go that night, at the screening.
He walked up to us and it was a bad screening.
That was the end of it, and he just walked away.
That was the last time I ever saw Tom.
-There was this tension between us,
and every suggestion he made
was about flattening the movie out.
-Tom can be difficult. He's incredibly charming.
He's this movie star looking guy.
But, you know, he could be difficult.
He can be a hothead. -Yeah.
I was aware that -- that there was friction.
I was very aware of that. It's just really not my problem.
And if somebody made it my problem
or tried to make it my problem,
then I would make that their problem.
You don't fuck with my performance
and I don't fuck with anybody else's.
-There were times when the tension
was very palpable on the set.
It was a really difficult shoot in a lot of ways.
-Tom is a director who probably gets used
to getting his way and getting what he wants,
and David is very friendly, very compromising.
But also, you know, he has a vision, too,
and he puts his all into it.
I know he wouldn't back down from something
if it was important to him.
-Tom did the best he could.
The pressure was on Tom Holland,
I think 24/7.
-You never know if you're going to get it on the screen.
I figure if you get 80, 85%
of what's in your head on the screen, it's a miracle.
-Tom was off the movie.
And so at that point, David invited me in.
It's an unusual thing, frankly, for that to happen,
and it was extremely nice of him.
-We sat with Ed Warschilka and proceeded
to cut out about 27 minutes.
So when he finally comes alive,
I mean, in -- in a terrifying form,
it really makes the audience jump.
-[Childlike voice] Hi, I'm Chucky.
[Screaming evilly] -No!
-[Growls] -Ah!
-There was a lot of stuff that came out of the movie.
Chris Sarandon as the cop character in drag,
and they ended up, you know, cutting all of that.
-Ed Gale, you know, getting up
off the pavement in the background.
And we did one where Ed flips off Chris.
-And I was there when they actually filmed the scene,
which starts off before it goes in the kitchen
and makes this cup of tea.
He's holding a baby
and he's doing incantations.
And I just wonder what happened to that child
all these years later.
-In addition to trimming the film's runtime,
a new composer was brought onto the production,
replacing the original hire who disappeared
before writing a single note.
This change brought forth the musical sound of the film
and the shine of previous accolades.
-I love the score
of "Child's Play" one by Joe Renzetti,
who was actually an Oscar winner for "The Buddy Holly Story."
-Scoring was a bit rushed.
because the film had been completed.
It had been tested not very well.
They thought it was too funny.
So they said, "Joe, whatever you do,
we gotta scare people."
What I did come up with was a sound theme,
if you will, which was this.
[Eerie organ music plays] That was Chucky.
-It's not until you put the music in,
really that -- that a film starts to come to life.
-We recorded "Child's Play" at CBS on Ventura Boulevard.
We had a pretty big orchestra, I'm going to say maybe
60 pieces, complete strings, horns, winds.
-And credits sounds like "Pachelbel's Canon,"
only minor and horror division.
Loved that.
[Eerie orchestral music plays]
♪♪
-It was still the days of where orchestras were preferred,
but it was also the days, we're talking about '87,
where the Synclavier,
which was one of the first great sequencers,
synthesizers, digital, and it was just a mere...
$175,000.
-Joe did a great job on the score.
I mean, it's fantastic.
-My dear friend Simon Stokes and I on our own
wrote a very funny song called the "Chucky" song,
and we played it for the producers and they laughed,
but they said, Joe, we can't use it
because it's funny and we don't want laughing.
-It kind of took you out of the experience
that you just had.
That song just didn't do it.
-♪ He said, "Hi there. Ain't I lucky?" ♪
♪ "Pleased to meet you. Call me Chucky." ♪
-That was it.
It's not really the theme song.
But I'm not going to complain.
-With the film finally locked, scored,
and leaning into its scares,
there was one final hurdle before audiences
would see all of Chucky's terror fill the big screen.
A fairly contentious writing credit arbitration.
-I got co-screenplay credit,
but I did not get co-story credit,
which I always felt was really unfair to me.
-There would definitely be a WGA arbitration
when there's more than one writer.
-So I, you know, eternally grateful to the Writers Guild
for protecting me in that way.
As the creator of this character
and the creator of the franchise.
The rules were stacked against me.
For a director to get co-screenplay credit,
he had to write more than 50% of the script.
-What was more frustrating for me
was Tom's statements in the press
concurrent with the movie coming out,
where he would say,
This is my original script,
even though the credits say it isn't.
-I felt like I deserved it.
-When the film was completed,
I asked Tony Thomopoulos
if we could have a screening for friends and family.
And he said, "No."
And I did something that is so not like me even today.
Um, I did not listen to him.
And with my wife, we went and rented the Academy Theater,
and we invited about 1,100 people,
and I got all the boxes that we had from "Chucky,"
and I made a tunnel that the audience had to walk through.
I mean, Tony almost killed me the next day,
but it was the talk of the town.
-Some of us were allowed to take a Chucky doll box with us,
and I kept it for many, many years.
-Steven Spielberg was there because David had worked
with him on the "American Tail,"
and he was congratulating David, you know, great job, David.
Really, really nice and very scary and all that stuff.
-I think it's Tom's best film.
I was proud to have worked on it.
You know, it wasn't one of those ones.
That one likes to kind of hide away.
It was a it was a good movie.
-I was always pretty confident with what we were making.
But when I saw the final film finished, you know,
with the benefit of having a great sound effects job
and a great score, the movie shined.
-I thought it was really good.
And I thought Chucky was just so intricate.
-It was great to see the effect
that had on the people who were affected by Chucky
and what that did to them.
-I remember seeing it at a premiere in my hometown.
My grandfather rented out one of the theaters
for all of my friends and family to come,
and I was in a tuxedo signing my first autographs for everybody.
And it was thrilling. Obviously, it was thrilling
to see this come together.
-I had no sense whatsoever as to what the reaction
to the movie was going to be,
but I knew that it was going to touch a nerve when.
-When I saw it for the first time,
the audience cringed sometime at this guy, or they gasped.
And so I walked away really, really satisfied.
-When you're working on a film, you just hope it comes together.
I was quite pleased with the way that it turned out.
-I was so lucky. It was super thrilling.
-Although the film was a hit with its cast and crew,
the true measure of success
would come with a paying audience.
But first, the studio had to find a way
to sell this cinematic amalgamation of horror,
action and mystery to the public
while dealing with their own private problems.
-The studio was in freefall at that point.
By the time the film came out, it was a one-man show.
Everyone had been fired.
The studio was having major problems,
there had been a writers strike,
and then there was talk of it being sold.
It just became a mess
and there really wasn't a staff to sell this movie.
-David would start sharing with me the initial advertising,
one sheet concepts.
They had come up with something I loved.
It almost looked like a Broadway Playbill cover.
It was just completely black and in white, a stick figure
and a single drop of red blood.
They went with this other thing.
I wasn't crazy about that key art.
I thought it wasn't very strong.
The most glaring thing about it to me
was that they don't show a doll.
You don't know it's about a killer doll.
-When I went into the movie, I had never seen Chucky.
I had no idea what he looked like.
-In a way, I think that was smart,
because I think you didn't necessarily
go in with the same prejudices you might have
thinking of it as just a killer doll movie.
-So it was all about was the movie
going to be successful financially?
-"Child's Play" opened at number one
on November 11, 1988,
eventually taking in 44 million at the box office,
quickly proving there was a new horror kid on the block.
And while the road to bringing the film to life
may have been filled with physical bumps and ego bruises,
"Child's Play" cemented itself in the lives and minds
of critics, moviegoers, cast, and crew forever.
-The success of the first film was a bit surprising.
-"Child's Play" got pretty good reviews for a horror movie.
Roger Ebert liked "Child's Play."
-The movie is well made, with convincing performances by
Catherine Hicks and little Alex Vincent.
-Kevin Thomas from the LA Times liked "Child's Play."
The New York Times like "Child's Play."
A lot of the big publications and big TV shows recognized
that it was something special.
-And I think when the studio released it,
they were shocked that it did as well as it did.
-The success of the movie, it happened very fast.
It won the weekend, and it was completely thrilling.
-Timing wise, while on the one hand
it would seem like it was a crowded marketplace.
On the other hand, they're doing something
different and new enough here.
-It obviously hit a nerve with audiences around the world.
Chucky is now part of the iconic
horror figures, you know, characters.
He's right up there with Freddy Krueger
and Jason Voorhees and Pinhead
and Leatherface and, you know, it goes on and on.
-You make a movie for many different reasons,
but primarily you make it to make a good film
that's going to make money
and it's going to be enjoyed by your audience.
And so when a film that you've done works well,
you always are happy.
-Being part of the original franchise starter
was wonderful
because it's probably going to be my legacy.
And it was a delight to work on.
-There were a lot of innovations
that took place in the creation of Chucky and in --
in filming Chucky that I had never seen before.
-Bringing Chucky to life was unforgettable.
-It was such a great experience for me
all the way around, you know, it put me on a different map.
You know, it took me from makeup artist to suddenly,
you know, creator of a thing that didn't exist.
And when you finally put those elements together and he moves
and then you add a voice to that, it's magic.
-I went to an audition, one of many.
I was chosen to do a role, a small role,
and it stuck with me all of this time.
-It's always shocking to see
what has lasting power
and ignites the public imagination.
-Being a part of "Child's Play" was,
you know, really wonderful and surprising.
I kind of wish I didn't die so early
so I could have come back in one of the thousands of sequels.
-I'm really shocked that
it's had the kind of life that it has,
and that Chucky has become an iconic character.
I would have loved to have played the definitive
Saint Francis of Assisi.
I never played that, so Chucky will just have to do.
-Being in "Child's Play" was a thrilling experience,
but one that I was just instantly thankful for.
So to be given a part, let alone a good part in a movie
that people love was something that I just
appreciated intensely from the very beginning.
-I'm thrilled to have been
a part of making the original "Child's Play."
Uh, always have been, and I always will be.
-I never realized that I was both the final girl
and the protector,
so I sort of felt a dignity to this project
and a dignity to my character.
I thought all the actors involved had dignity,
and so I thought it was a unique kind of horror film.
-It was the beginning of a 35-year relationship
and partnership with Don Mancini.
-It was extremely thrilling experience for me,
even though I was rewritten,
even though I had to fight for my credit
as creator of the character,
it was still really thrilling and a wonderful experience,
largely due to David's generosity.
-"Child's Play" was a film with puppeteers, cranes,
little people, animatronics, children, effects, etc.
It was a tough shoot, difficult beyond belief,
but it all came together
because of the efforts of a lot of very talented people,
and I'll always be thankful.
It's so nice to think that I'm leaving Chucky behind
for the rest of the world.
[Maniacal laughter]
[Eerie orchestral music plays]
♪♪
-"Child's Play," a movie that defied expectations,
slayed audiences and played its way
to the top of the box office,
quickly seemed destined to follow in the footsteps
of its horror film predecessors.
It was clear the time had come to bring Chucky
back from the dead.
-So David and I were talking
about the potential for a sequel.
And it was a thing in Hollywood
at that time, like horror movies
becoming franchises.
-They said they wanted to do a sequel pretty quickly.
-The reviews were really good. LA Times was fantastic.
-I had a desire to bring back some of the elements
from my original "Blood Buddy" script
that had fallen by the wayside.
-The screenplay was written by Don Mancini, only Don.
-The studio strategically neglected to tell me
that they were simultaneously
developing another script for "Child's Play II,"
written by Mark Patrick Carducci,
who had written "Pumpkinhead,"
and the idea was that the best one would go forward.
I won. [Laughs]
-John and I and David
were all on the same page
that one of the things we wanted to get into the sequel
was that fairy tale vibe that had been lost along the way.
-John Lafia I was so impressed by how he had shaped everything.
And I said, "Would you like to direct the second film?"
-In the beginning, Tom Holland, uh, showed some interest.
-"Child's Play" is so much mine and is so much,
you know, it's not like any of the others.
You can feel the electricity, you can feel it working.
-There's not a chance in hell that would have happened.
That was never even discussed, No if, ands or buts.
-So we were all just kind of united.
And of course John and I being a little bit snot nosed,
we were like, we can do this better than Tom Holland.
Unlike the experience with the first movie,
John allowed me to be around him and learn.
I just shadowed him through everything
and he didn't have to do that.
-I remember David called and said,
"Hey, we're going to do a two, and if we do a sequel,
we're trying to do better than the first one."
We've certainly learned a lot.
If Chucky couldn't walk,
we made him walk in the second one.
-Chucky was more expensive in"Child's Play II."
He was about $1 million, I think, at that point.
-And we were doing new silicone molds
and running the foam skins with the new formulas.
-You're always trying to invent new things
and not just do the same old thing,
not just pull Chucky out of the bag and start shooting him,
but to do something new and different.
-David and John Lafia and I had talked about it.
We knew we wanted to bring Andy back.
-When I found out that there was going to be a sequel,
that I was going to be a very big part of it.
I knew that Andy had a lot of good stuff to do.
I enjoyed the fact that he was traumatized.
-[Muffled shouting] -And now,
it's time to play.
-There was never a thought of of getting rid of Brad.
I mean, he's so cemented that character and made it his.
-I was already contractually required to do it.
I had a three picture deal with them, I was all in.
-Hi, I'm Tommy and I'm your friend to the end.
I didn't obviously know that I would be a part of it,
so it was wonderful to be cast again
as all the good guy dolls and as good Chucky.
I probably was looking forward to saying some bad words
and again, didn't get the opportunity.
-The mother's a different matter.
She backed up her boy's story in court,
so now she's under psychiatric observation.
-I knew Catherine would not be returning
as soon as I got the script, and I was bummed out about that.
Of course, I'm sure she was bummed out about that as well.
-There was a decision made
that Andy would be on his own,
and so the foster system
felt like the most logical way into the story.
-John Mancini's thought was that he really wanted
to explore the fact that Catherine Hicks
had been put into a mental institution
because of everything that she went through.
-I had no respect for that decision.
I don't have to be in it,
but make her be doing something better.
She wasn't crazy.
Yeah, what are you saying? She's crazy?
-I think even Don came and apologized to me.
Like, I couldn't think of a story with her in it.
So he thought of this.
It came to him, and that's how things happened.
-I remember Kevin saying in a very kind fashion,
Chucky will probably go on longer
in this franchise than you will.
-The police were smart. They denied everything.
Which is fine, because now they can't hurt us.
-I'm not sure how I would feel about coming back
to battle Chucky.
First of all, he was a relentless adversary.
And also the making of the movie, which was very difficult.
And I'm very proud of the fact
that Mike still kind of alive and around.
-Without his mother, Detective Norris,
Andy needed someone new to help in his battle for survival.
A younger character who proved to be smart,
strong, and sympathetic.
-I got the audition
for "Child's Play II," the standard way.
My agent submitted me and they brought me in.
I was 24 years old. The character was 17.
I played teenagers for a very long time.
-There was a toughness to her,
but inside she had this wonderful big sister,
maternal element to her.
-I had attitude because I had a job
and I had some power and I was like,
let's get this show on the road.
I need to -- I have somewhere to be.
And I think the added confidence
and the sort of attitude that I had
was why I stood out.
The way I wrote Kyle.
You know, she would had to have a toughness.
Christine had that in spades. She just had that edge.
But she also had the crucial warmth that you needed.
-The sort of misunderstood tough girl with a heart of gold.
It's -- It's my stock and trade.
So Kyle was very much in that sweet spot for me.
This is exactly how I wanted to spend my day off.
Thanks a lot.
-But I didn't break the statue, really.
-Alex Vincent was really easy to work opposite,
and the bond between us was very real.
He's a super cute kid, really precocious, really smart.
-She was so happy to be there.
She just had a great energy that I really loved.
So forming that brotherly sister bond
between the two of us was very, very natural.
-He seems normal enough,
but how has all this affected him?
-I was given a few roles from time to time.
but "Child's Play II" was not one of them.
I had to audition like every other mother's son.
-I was thrilled to work with him
because he had been in a couple of early DePalma films,
including "Phantom of the Paradise,"
which I loved, so just meeting him
was a real thrill for me.
-"I'm alive, I'm alive.
Then the talking cricket said." What did he say?
-I had just done "Rain Man," and it had changed my life.
And one of the first auditions that I was called for
was "Child's Play II."
So I called my friend Dinah Manoff,
and I said, "I'm thinking about doing a horror movie.
I read this script and it's so good."
And she said, "Well, what's it called?"
I said, "Child's Play II."
What do you think? And she said, "Well..."
I suggest that you rent "Child's Play" the original
and you will find that I am in it.
-I totally forgot about that. That's true.
[Typewriter clacking]
-I did go to the audition
because I loved the character,
I knew her.
I was so happy that it worked out.
-With the film well, on its way to production,
the filmmakers were given a surprising
behind the scenes jolt
that would alter the course of this potential new franchise.
-So we developed the script for "Child's Play II" at UA,
but it was a different administration
than "Child's Play" one.
The studio got sold to an Australian company
called Qintex, sort of family-friendly brand.
-My office called and said, "I have some really bad news.
The gentleman that is going to be buying United Artists
does not want to make a film like this, and I was furious.
Here we deliver a film that is the second
highest grossing film of the year for you.
I was really angry and hurt.
-They gave David the rights to it free and clear,
because they had an overall deal with David,
and they wanted to keep him happy.
-I turned to my attorney, and he said,
"Everybody is going to be calling about this film."
-And it landed at Universal.
-Within 24 hours, I get a call from Steven Spielberg
saying, "Listen, you made your first film
with me at Universal.
Can you do me the favor of just bringing it to them first
and giving them your wish list?"
And I said, "Okay, okay."
You know, I mean, anything for Steven Spielberg.
I didn't go anywhere else. I just went to Universal.
-And John and I were thrilled.
It's just Universal and "Jaws"
and all the history of Universal monsters,
that was the place we wanted to end up.
-Thanks to Steven Spielberg,
which is such an amazing thing to even say.
-The surprise shift in film studios complete,
principal photography on Chucky's sophomore outing
at last began on November 6, 1989,
with a 55-day shooting schedule and a $12 million budget.
-The "Child's Play II" set
was a really friendly, happy set.
I think that that tone was mostly due
to John Lafia's kindness.
-My memories of John were polite again, trusting director.
I don't remember him yelling or anything like that.
-It was certainly a very smooth set.
-It looked like he was having fun.
-This was my first experience
being on set and I was there all the time.
-John was of course very busy as the director,
but Don really pays attention.
-He just like a kid in a candy store.
He was just so excited to be around his baby, really.
And to be accepted. too,
you know, not to be an outcast.
-I think all of that contributed
to a really safe environment.
There's a lot of laughing in that behind the scenes stuff.
-The opening sequence, I got to storyboard.
Which was fun, and those are my hands
putting the doll together and everything.
-We all shared this love of like,
the dark side of fairy tales.
-I believe we made the aluminum device
that held his eyes,
and that we had to build a special head
just for the insert of the eyes.
[Electricity crackling]
-[Screaming shakily]
-The actor playing one of the technicians was funny.
It was a fun set. It was great.
I think it was one of the first things we did do.
-My stomach hurts, Mattson.
Is this what you call good news?
-I had an interesting connection to Peter Haskell.
I worked on a soap opera called "Search for Tomorrow,"
an NBC soap opera, and I worked on the tech crew.
But Peter Haskell was on "Search for Tomorrow,"
and he was really nice to me.
-You smother this and you're out of here in 24 hours.
you got that? -His favorite line in the movie.
-Stick it up your ass. -I don't know why he loved it.
He just thought that was hilarious.
-Andy's fine now.
He just wants to get on with his life.
-Grace Zabriskie, one of my heroes,
one of my role models
as a character actress was in the movie.
-The character's name, Grace Poole,
who is a character from Jane Eyre.
The figure was like someone
who is like assigning foster families and such grace.
-She's the greatest.
We hung with the same crowd.
We did and said things that wouldn't bear repeating
on a nice family documentary like this.
One of the things I thought was really interesting
about the script for "Child's Play II"
was that it explored further the issue of family.
In the first one, we had a single mom,
and now we had Andy being taken in by foster parents.
-I think they didn't really care that much about Andy,
and I don't think Andy really cared that much about them.
-Andy, rule number two no running in the house.
-I took him as pissed off about the fact
that they didn't have a child yet.
So this notion of his anger
lent itself to a certain impatience.
You could tell that there's something going on with Phil
that is unspoken.
Bang!
[Water squirts] You're dead.
-[Crying shakily]
-[Maniacal laughter]
-The second film, Mattson's death
was reminiscent of the Chris Sarandon car scene.
I think it was a little bit of a tip of the hat
or homage to that first film.
-In those days, the genre was a little bit camp
and still under the influence of the earlier camp stuff.
"Dr. Phibes" kind of started that,
where it was a little bit campy,
and the murders are, you know...
[Whooshing]
-[Screams]
-...have to be fun and gory.
-I was concerned about the bag, you know,
choking the actor because we had to tie Chucky's hands into it.
And so we had to quickly make sure
he could breathe in between takes
because he was sucking that plastic down into his throat.
I didn't want to kill the actor with the plastic bag.
-Hi! I'm Tommy.
-Shut up, you idiot.
-I heard that the naming was a direct link to Tom Holland,
but I can't deny or confirm for sure.
-Yeah, it's Tom Holland. Definitely. Yeah.
John and I both had a bit of an axe to grind.
"Eat dirt, Tommy."
-Eat dirt, Tommy.
[Laughs]
-The whole bait and switch,
the idea of, like, there being another doll
and Chucky taking his place
and burying the other one in the backyard,
again, there's something very fairytale-ish
about all of that.
-I'm innocent.
-Andy?
-I didn't do it.
-In that home, Andy definitely needed
more help and support
from his foster parents than Christine.
She was practiced already at taking care of herself.
-The scenes that I had with Alex were really fun,
and he had the entire script memorized.
He was difficult to ad lib with.
I'm naturally a little ad-libby.
-I remember that line that I said to her, you know...
-Want to hear me say your name backwards?
Kyle.
-He added that to the script.
At least that's what Alex says.
That's his story. He's sticking to it.
-That was stolen from Mr. Volpi, my music teacher.
[Indistinct chatter]
I had a good scene or two with Miss Kettlewell.
This teacher was kind of a bitch to Andy right from the start.
-She's a control freak, and she won't listen.
Andy does everything he can to try to save the day,
but she doesn't listen.
-Sit down and get comfy.
You're going to be here for a while.
-Miss Kettlewell was the personification
of the obtuse adult...
-Head down!
-...who just won't listen to the kid.
And, of course, she pays dearly for it.
-She was a lot like a P.E. teacher
that I had had and other people that I knew, very rigid.
-We have all had that horrible person
whose way of controlling you is through humiliation.
And we have all been humiliated by teachers.
-To get to play that character who's not listening,
and if she had listened, she would have lived,
just thrilled me.
-Aah! -[Gasps]
[Air pump hisses] [Kettlewell screams]
-That whole sequence of Miss Kettlewell's death,
it's shocking.
-They did have a stuntwoman do the actual fall.
I wanted to do it, but they insisted.
They got her little bun and her same outfit.
And John Lafia really wanted a pretty violent fall.
I mean, she hit 3 or 4 desks at once and then fell over,
and then she had to have the wherewithal
to cover her face with her arm.
-Chucky's gonna kill Beth Grant,
and he emerges from the closet with the ruler and says...
-You've been very naughty, Miss Kettlewell.
-He's got that ruler. It was tough to kind of get him
to smack at the right speed and then also catch it.
-We tried a walking rig that worked really well.
-All the cables ran behind the puppet's back,
and the boom
and all the paraphernalia that went with it
was actually a hole in the wall of the closet.
-I remember John spending pretty much a day
doing like a couple of shots there,
and I think that there was a lot of pressure
from above to like, "Dude, you got to move on."
-Aah!
-Again, a great Don Mancini death.
Whoever thinks of being beaten to death
with a ruler? Don Mancini does.
-That was kind of for all those Catholic school kids.
-Miss Kettlewell's death I was not on set for it,
but I wish I had been.
It was definitely my favorite kill of the franchise.
-Well, it starts off being played for laughs,
and then that, too, gets pretty dismal.
-For me, it was hilarious.
When I'm lying on the ground, screaming, screaming,
but it's the seven guys plus Chucky that are coming at you.
It's quite easy to get into the moment.
When we had to loop the screams
on the looping stage later, I was such a nut.
I mean, I took my acting way too seriously back then,
and I would go over in the corner,
and I would re-create my death,
and I would, "Ohh! Ohh!",
and then I would go to the microphone and go,
"Ahh! Ahh!"
I mean, ridiculous.
-There was a lot of things to figure out.
We had to do a lot of things with camera speed,
walk slower, talk slower and then speed it up.
So we did a lot of those kind of tricks.
-I got to go on set and puppeteer,
and I was his brows, his snarls, and his tongue.
And we also had a joke on that, that I was his liver,
because we would all go on Friday nights and go drinking.
-Joanne, the child needs professional help!
-Oh, stop pretending you're worried about Andy.
You never wanted him here in the first place.
-Jenny's character, she was gonna do her damnedest
to be a good mom,
whereas Phil, the redoubtable Phil,
was not that keen on being a foster dad.
-Phil's death scene is my favorite kill.
It's one of the best moments for Chucky.
-[Screaming]
-It's one of my favorite one-liners of the film.
-How's it hanging, Phil?
-I wanted Brad whispering that in my ear.
"How's it hanging, Phil?"
-That character was a jerk, so he deserved it.
So I was rooting for Chucky in that one.
-That basement set needed 6 feet above the stage floor
for all the puppeteers to go.
-When Phil lands and, pbt!, snaps his neck,
that was shot in reverse.
-[Screams]
-It started with me on the floor,
and a rope around my foot -- action! --
and they pulled me up out of the shot
as fast as they could. And when they printed it,
they ran it in reverse, obviously.
But I never felt --
I mean, I've done some stunts.
I should have listened to that nagging voice on my shoulder
saying, "Are you fucking crazy?
These people are gonna kill you!"
Phil didn't listen, and now he's dead.
-It's one of the best moments for Chucky.
And Jenny Agutter's screams are gut-wrenching.
It's a really great performance from her.
-Oh, God! No!
-Jenny Agutter was very unhappy on this movie.
-She hated her experience.
I think the role embarrassed her.
-I think her relationship with John was a little contentious,
'cause I think she felt that John's attention
was too on effects.
Actors understandably get frustrated
that Chucky's the star, and the puppet
is going to get more takes than the human actors.
-The doll had to get it right.
So you might do 19 takes to have the doll get it right,
and if he gets it right,
they're gonna use that take even if you sucked in it.
♪♪
My favorite sequence is, Kyle realizes
that Chucky is -- actually might be real.
I had just worked with Johnny Depp on "21 Jump Street,"
and I learned a lot from watching him
just commit to things
that might have seemed embarrassing,
but they're only embarrassing if you don't commit.
-My favorite scene in that film is when Christine Elise
is moving up the stairs,
and you're just hearing the sound of a sewing machine.
[Sewing machine clacking]
-John Lafia's approach to making the movie
was extremely dynamic.
-You come into the room, and she turns the chair around,
and you see what she looks like.
♪♪
-Production-wise, it means moving the camera a lot,
which is time-consuming.
-John did a great job directing it. It's really scary.
♪♪
-Aah!
-That was the hardest for me, physically.
They strapped the doll on you,
and it's one of the dolls that just kicks.
So his legs just do this constantly,
and then you've got to sell all the rest of the action.
Throw myself against the walls, throw yourself against the bed.
You know, you feel like a fool.
[Grunting]
And because Don is such a cinephile
and prone to homages,
that was my Catherine Hicks moment in the film.
-What are you looking at?
-People don't realize the doll
isn't inherently mean-looking,
and the puppeteers can make him do anything they want.
So in between takes in the car,
they would have Chucky reaching over and caressing my thigh
and batting his eyelashes at me and being super cute.
And at one point, I turned over,
and I went in for the kiss, and they caught that still.
It's one of my favorite photos from the entire franchise.
-I got to direct Chucky.
I heard that John kind of said, "Okay,
that's enough of Kevin's directing Chucky."
Knowing that he was the star, he was like,
"He's having all the fun. I'm having to direct actors,
and he gets to direct this."
So I noticed my job went from directing Chucky
now to directing cars driving down the street.
[Siren wails, tires screech]
-The cop stuff was shot first,
and it was shot at like 4:30 in the morning,
and we couldn't get around to my stuff on the night.
That got pushed to the end of the schedule,
and I did all my side of that dialogue with the...
-You seen dolls that pee?
This one bleeds.
It's on stage, weeks later.
[Alarm bell ringing]
-Get into my office.
-Grace Zabriskie was an edgy non-ally to Alex.
The most important thing for the franchise
is that nobody believes that Chucky is real,
and I think she pulled that off very well.
-Is this your idea of a joke?
-I had only had a couple scenes with Grace Zabriskie.
The one scene that I remember is right before her death
at the copy machine.
In that room, when we were filming,
a massive stage light fell and landed right on my head.
-Amazing isn't it?
-[Gasps]
[Screams]
-Grace's death.
It's the photocopier that makes it memorable.
-[Screaming]
-She was also an amazing screamer,
and I just thought the idea of someone getting their face
photocopied as they're dying was interesting.
-I think the deaths, on a whole, had a torture aspect to them.
-My initial thought when I was watching that scene was,
God, I wish I had one of those Xeroxes and frame it
and put it up on the wall.
you know, of Grace going...
♪♪
-I don't think there's any particular reason
why Chucky needs to take Andy to the toy factory.
Unless he was maybe trying out a new voodoo spell
that he hadn't really figured out.
It's a good thing to assume
if you need some clarification there.
-The factory was really exciting,
and I was so thrilled that we were actually
gonna be able to put that on screen,
since it had been cut from number one.
-All the stuff in the warehouse
was super fun to shoot.
You know, all these really dark, sinister things are happening
in this incredibly colorful setting.
-Just, like, seeing the various machines and doing the gags,
and, you know, John and I were big "Shining" fans.
-I'm coming!
-And so we did that maze with the boxes.
-There were 80 million of those boxes
that they had manufactured to be all stacked up.
Like a jackass, I never got one.
I don't know what the fuck I was thinking.
I didn't take one.
-There were two different types of boxes for background,
in which there was only a photograph of the doll,
and it made it look like it was underneath cellophane,
and it was about 500, in which we had cellophane front
and an actual doll in the box itself.
-I was just amazed at how imaginative Ivo Cristante was
in coming up with that set.
-John Lafia, the director, gave me an awful lot of freedom,
and he says, "What I want
is an insidious-looking Disneyland."
-Hiding us was an issue, you know,
because in that one set, it's kind of open.
But Kevin was really good at helping the director
figure out how to get those angles
without too much trouble.
And strike, go! -Cut it.
-The set was built at Thatcher Glass,
this enormous warehouse in Valencia, California,
too big to fit into any of the soundstages at Universal.
That's why we went up there.
-The factory is like a Vegas casino.
[Ringing]
It seems much easier to get in
than to find your way back out of it again.
-Let's go!
I'll go first.
Stay right behind me.
-The warehouse was like a maze,
so maybe we thought we had to go up to get out.
-The climax of that film, in the toy factory,
with all of the mechanics that are going on
and the building of a doll, is staggering.
-Things are coming in from all sides.
That was very time-consuming to shoot.
-The shoot was like 55 days.
But, you know, I think there were probably 15 days,
maybe, or more out there.
-I had already started KNB EFX Group
with Greg Nicotero.
Kevin threw us some effects, which were great.
He's like, "Hey, I gotta do these dummies.
You know, these guys that, you know, are killed
and, like, the Chucky eyes are shoved into their heads.
You know, are you up for the task?
Do you feel like you want to do them?"
So it gave me a reason to go visit them,
which was tons of fun and see all my friends.
-Chucky proves to be exceptionally relentless
in that factory sequence.
-Action! And dummy!
-He gets his hand cut off and shoves a knife down his arm,
which, even though you know it's a doll,
is really gruesome to watch.
He gets stuck in that machine
that puts all arms and legs in him,
and he gets stapled to this thing.
And that's the nature of villains.
They just don't stay down.
-The differences between the first and second
was the amount of torture.
[Chucky screaming]
And that all required me screaming
and feeling all that pain.
So that was like a nightmare.
-[Gasps]
-And when I melt him with that hot wax,
that was super fun to shoot.
It wasn't really hot in real life,
but it did shoot out of there with an intense velocity.
-It was a Methylcellulose, which is, like, this food thickener.
The special effects guys added smoke to the liquid
as it came out to make it look like it was hot,
but it was actually cold.
And then we cut to a brand-new art piece that was Chucky,
molded onto a floor with all this silicone
and everything that came into a brand-new puppet
that had a brand-new head to it.
-Any time that I get to hurt the doll is my favorite.
-While I sometimes find it frustrating
that horror movie final girls don't get themselves away
from the allegedly dead villain that they've been fighting...
♪♪
-Aah!
♪♪
...Kyle does the same thing. Kyle hovers over the melted wax
and invites the attack that inevitably comes.
-Action!
-[Screams]
-You never really get to kill Chucky.
I've killed him several times, and none of them take, it seems.
"Was this it? Have we killed him?"
Not yet. Try again.
-Eat this, you son of a bitch!
-Christine shoves the tube into Chucky's mouth,
and we use the first melted puppet for that.
And then, through cuts, it would cut away and cut back,
and we had an expandable head that had bladders in it
that we began to stretch it out, and then we cut to another head
that was fully out to like the size of a basketball.
And again, this is the John Lafia kind of humor.
He would just -- "Heh heh!" --
laugh at it the whole time in the background
because he just loved this kind of stuff.
♪♪
-Chucky blowing up was an homage
to De Palma's "The Fury," with John Cassavetes blowing up,
and we, you know, showed it from the different angles.
-Chucky, at this point, is Wile E. Coyote.
We burn him, we rip him apart, we poke his eyes out,
and he deserves every bit of it,
and you're happy that it's happening.
-Kill him before he can say it.
-But how? How?
-Shoot him through the heart. -Heart.
-It would be over.
-It's the only way -- through the heart.
-Didn't we learn something from the first film?
♪♪
-The ending of the movie cracks me up
because we walk out of the factory into broad daylight.
My hair looks better than it ever did in the whole movie.
I have perfect hair,
which I wish I had that hair the whole time,
and we've just gone through hell,
and people we know are dead.
Two people, our foster parents, are both dead,
and we walk out, and he's like...
-Where are we going? -Home.
-Where's home?
-"I have no idea!"
Like nothing bad happened at all.
It's hilarious.
-Well, there was, as originally filmed,
we go back in, and we see blood dripping
from Chucky's exploded remains into that vat of plastic.
And then John did this kind of graceful, cool camera movement
up to show this new head coming out of the assembly line,
and it smiles.
And that, again, was something from the end
of my original script for "Blood Buddy."
-John just wanted to leave it on them walking out.
They had defeated the beast, and yet again,
here we were lucky enough to get a second film.
I don't think we were thinking of,
"Oh, we're going to leave a cliffhanger of any kind."
-That very well could have been the ending of Andy's story.
It could have been the ending of Chucky's story.
I think we're both very thankful it wasn't.
-With production on the sequel wrapped,
all eyes turned to putting together
what the cast and crew had created,
hoping to take Chucky from fright favorite
to outright icon.
-I have strong memories of going to dailies
with John Lafia
and Ed Warschilka Sr., our editor,
and it was fascinating for me
to see them working together in dailies,
because I could hear what they talked about
and figure out what they thought made the scene better.
-I was aware that some of our stuff was cut.
-I'm happy if you're happy. -I am.
You'll see. Everything's gonna be just fine.
-And it's not the Jenny Agutter
and Gerritt Graham story, is it?
-This is it. -It's the Alex and Chucky story.
♪♪
-Graeme Revell -- that was -- it was very exciting.
So, John Lafia and I had gone to see the movie "Dead Calm,"
and the score was amazing.
And it's interesting because we talked about
Joe Renzetti's score for "Child's Play 1."
The score for "Dead Calm" had something in common with that.
[Tense music plays]
It was very percussive.
It wasn't a score about melody or strings.
You know, it was just a percussion.
And so I just remember John was very hot to meet this guy.
-We just kind of went with him.
His work was good. Don was very impressed by him,
and he felt Graeme would be great,
and Graeme delivered for us in a wonderful way.
[Dramatic music plays]
-[Screaming]
-I was honestly shocked that the reviews were not great.
I really thought we'd delivered something,
and I thought what John Lafia did with his directing
and what Don had written were really great.
-Sequels are always a tricky one to pull off.
You have to sort of recapture that magic
that makes the first one so special
in a way that makes audiences feel like
they're getting another taste of that.
-It feels like it lacks the seriousness of intent
that "Child's Play" had for me.
And so, as a result, it's just a body-count movie.
He's killing random people for no real reason.
It doesn't even necessarily serve his purposes,
and I feel like that takes a little bit
of the intensity out of it.
-I don't know that critics
are that important to horror films.
Our true critics that we want to please
are the audience, the fans.
-"Child's Play 2" was released on November 9, 1990.
Though not a critical darling, the film topped the box office,
ultimately pulled in $34 million,
and proved that you really can't keep a Good Guy down.
-It turned out we were so lucky.
Once again, the movie came out, and it won the weekend.
-And the audience seemed
to respond in kind, as far as showing up
and telling their friends and their friends showing up.
-I am so proud of that work.
It's sort of one of the epitomes of my career
in being part of that team with John,
Kevin, and magnificent art department.
I feel very privileged to have been part of that.
-I am super proud of being part of "Child's Play 2"
because I feel like I was part of horror history.
-It really was a good bunch,
and I had a lot of people there who I trusted
and knew I could rely on, and who did great work.
-The finished product was pretty exciting
'cause I spent, again, most of the time in isolation,
so it's fun to be able to see
how they put all the work together.
-I did exactly what I set out to do,
and that doesn't always happen that you shoot a movie
and you get what you thought in your mind it would be,
and it was exactly what I wanted.
-I knew it was going to get a gigantic audience.
Everybody and his brother was gonna go see the damn thing.
And it was a good shoot, a smooth, happy, fun shoot.
-That Universal logo was like a hug, you know,
acknowledging that I was part of this unbelievably cool club,
and that was really fun for me.
-I was very happy with it
but at an age where you begin to feel
and know what insecurity is,
so I was a little more critical of my performance
than I was ever watching the first film.
-In all fairness, I don't normally like
to watch movies that I'm in.
I find that a horrifying experience.
So I didn't see the movie.
-I enjoyed it. You know, I'm --
You know, I was looking at my own work
to being the second unit director,
so I was kind of looking to see how that was cutting in,
you know, and I was happy to see the new parts work out.
But with Chucky, it's always nail-biting.
-It was, you know, pinch-yourself moments
that you made a movie, and now you get
to make a sequel to that movie.
And, you know, to be able to work with Don was exciting.
And John, you know, they were part of the team.
-It felt like, for me and John and David,
that we had righted the ship or at least stayed the course.
-I will say that there were shackles off of me.
The fact that Tom was no longer a part of this,
that felt really good.
And so there was just a lightness to it
and a frivolity that everybody had on this
that was not possible on the first film.
-We felt like we did Chucky proud.
♪♪
[Gunfire, explosions]
♪♪
-With "Chucky" topping the box-office charts twice before,
Universal hoped a third time would also charm.
The catch? Delivery of the film
for a summer 1991 release,
a mere nine months after the first sequel's debut.
-They'd greenlit "Child's Play 3"
before "Child's Play 2" came out.
I know that the movie had tested well,
well enough to hire me to start to get writing on the sequel.
-It was Universal.
They wanted to immediately capitalize.
I guess they felt they had some momentum going.
But I'm not sure why they wanted to rush it so quickly.
-There was a clock ticking.
I had to write that script really fast.
We had to go into production really fast.
-I made a mistake by agreeing to that.
The green light was too quick
and I've never made that mistake again.
-We knew we needed to change things up in some fashion
because we didn't want to get too repetitive.
-The domestic thing had happened twice.
-It has to change.
It can't be the same thing.
So there you have Don Mancini
coming up with a really good idea.
-I think I was inspired by the "Omen" franchise.
"Omen II" partly takes place with Damien at military school.
-I'm not sure if I love the whole concept
of the -- story-wise, of the soldier thing.
It just didn't feel like a "Child's Play" film,
to me, for some reason.
-I do remember being disappointed
that John didn't want to direct it.
He wanted to move on to something else.
-Jack Bender came available, and we were lucky to get him.
He had been directing television,
but he was very talented.
-I had written a story with Richard Matheson
called "The Dreamer of Oz," about the life of L. Frank Baum,
and Jack directed that, and I offered him a feature,
and the studio, at that point, was willing to go
with whoever I felt strongly about.
-I had a relationship with Jack Bender.
I had never done a horror film before.
I was intrigued about giving me the challenge to
take the genre and see what I can do with it.
I didn't know anything about Chucky before or since.
The most complicated thing was making the doll work,
not making our day 'cause the doll would break.
-I think I was hesitating working on "Child's Play 3"
because, okay, now it's a franchise, now it's something
that's just going to keep going on.
I felt that by part 2, I'd done it all.
So what else can I bring to this character?
And I was also -- it was a great year, work-wise, for me.
I had "Bogus Journey" going on.
I had all these other movies that I was working on,
so I was trying to give it as much as I could,
but I know I didn't give it as much as I did
in the first two films.
-Though some things changed,
others felt the same, as this third trip
around the Chucky sun proved
when it was time to say hello to new recruits
and bid farewell to old friends.
-I discovered that my voice had changed
and I could no longer be a part of the "Child's Play" movies,
but I think it was very cool for them in "Child's Play 3"
to take that jump into boarding school.
So that was a cool story twist, right?
-And, of course, both Alex and I assumed
we would be in "Child's Play 3," which didn't happen.
-I thought that I was coming back for part 3, though.
There was a time when I definitely thought I was.
I remember being in a restaurant and finding out
that I was not going to be in part 3,
and I was devastated. I was incredibly devastated.
-But I was super disappointed, though.
I really wanted to come back
because it was such a positive experience.
-I felt like this was something
that I was a big part of, and now I wasn't a part of it.
And, yeah, that was -- it was difficult for me at the time.
-We felt we had run dry
on the story of Chucky chasing Andy Barclay.
-Don thought he had really explored Chucky,
you know, assaulting a child.
He kind of done everything with that that he could,
and he wanted to move the story into somebody
maybe more sophisticated in fighting back against Chucky.
-Andy.
-Teenage Andy -- that's a whole other story.
-I never felt comfortable with those people.
They weren't family, they were strangers.
-You know, Andy grown up, who wasn't our little kid.
It was this different actor. That's always hard,
you know, to accept that as a character.
-I think it was more interesting
instead of just repeating the same thing over and over again.
It really brought a new aspect to it.
-Andy, how you've grown.
-Justin was a great find.
Credit to that goes to our casting director.
Glenn Daniels found him and was super excited about it
because I remember him calling me and saying,
"Not only have I found a great kid actor,
he looks exactly like Alex Vincent."
-He seemed to care a great deal.
He seemed to, in our minds, be a version of grown-up Andy.
-And I thought Justin was great.
-You think you're pretty funny, don't you, De Silva?
-Yes, I do, sir.
-I had just really started acting a couple of years
before I got the role of Kristin De Silva
in "Child's Play 3," and I loved the part
because she was sort of a badass, ahead of her time.
-That was the absolute intent,
to have a strong female central character.
I don't know that she necessarily seemed like a girl
you'd meet in military school,
but I believed her as having a tough edge.
-How you doing, Tyler?
-My audition process was lengthy.
I had a lead starring role.
I didn't even realize how significant it was going to be.
-My name's Jeremy. And even though,
I'm only 9 years old, I have the voice...
[Speaking indistinctly]
-The character of Tyler, that Jeremy Sylvers
did such a wonderful job at, he had home-life damage.
-As a young Black African-American male
latchkey kid growing up in the '90s,
being scared wasn't too hard.
-Do you know who I am?!
-Shelton.
-At the time, I was working on a TV series
called "The Young Riders,"
and we were on hiatus for the summer,
and I got a call from my agent.
He said, "There's this movie you're gonna be
auditioning for, 'Child's Play,'
and I knew of the "Child's Play" movies.
When I first read the script,
the thing that I -- immediately jumped at
is how much I loved this character.
There was a complexity to it that I saw.
-He had such a range with his acting.
-Travis was awesome.
-We just had a blast.
-You must be new. Otherwise, you'd know
they don't tolerate any form of individuality here.
-I showed them a picture of me from this movie
I had done, that Joe Roth had directed,
called "Coupe de Ville."
My hair had been, you know,
cut down for, like, a military cut,
so I was like, "This is what I look like
with a military cut."
Anyway, like, at the end of my audition,
I stuck my head back in the door and did that silly thing
where you reach your arm back in and pull your head out.
I think that's why they liked me.
-Dean was great.
We were going for rehearsal, and he said,
"Oh, I spent the night at the academy."
-I wanted to do my homework, do the research,
find out what it's actually like to be a new student
at a military academy.
-I said, "Why?" and he said,
"'Cause I told them to kind of bully me
so I could experience that."
-This is my rifle, this is my gun,
this is for shooting, and this is for fun.
-So I came in to read for the part of Colonel Shelton,
and I thought, "Hey, this is in the bag."
And they told me, "Well, there's this other guy we like,
and we're gonna give him a shot."
"Uh, uh, all right."
And they came back and said, "But they really liked you,
and they want to write a part for you.
So we're going to put Major Ellis in the script,"
and I was like, "Awesome."
-Apparently, Matthew was considered for my role,
and to his credit, he put that aside.
I think he's a phenomenal actor, an interesting, intelligent guy,
and I loved working with him. I really did.
-It's time to forget these fantasies of killer dolls.
-Well, I was pretty new to film and television.
I had only come down to L.A.
in the very late '80s and early '90s
after a 25-year career exclusively on stage.
Jack was a friend of mine,
and he had given me my first lead in a movie of the week.
-Dakin Matthews was the dad on the set.
Super accomplished, knew the drill.
If you needed to know anything about working on a set,
you just kind of looked at Dakin.
[Both gasp, laugh]
-So this was my real first motion-picture audition.
I moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to New York to L.A.
because everything was casting here.
-Perrey and Donna had the unfortunate distinction
of being really the only two females
in this military school with hundreds of other guys.
The chance of that being intimidating
was certainly there,
and I don't think they let it bother them one bit.
♪♪
So super pumped, ready to head to everybody's favorite,
I think, Mecca of filming, Boonville, Missouri, in winter.
-It was freezing. We were out.
You had to pretend it wasn't cold.
-We had these heat packs that we
put in our shoes so that
our toes wouldn't just completely freeze off.
-So what could go wrong?
-With Chucky boot camp in full freezing swing,
"Child's Play 3" began filming on February 4, 1991,
with a budget of $13 million.
-The bottom line is the bottom line.
-Peter Haskell as Sullivan
was a personification of the worst of Madison Avenue,
and he loved doing that.
-He is killed on top of his desk
in front of these pictures of these two cute
little blond kids, which were my kids.
-You know, I said, "Oh, we're gonna bring you back
for 'Child's Play 3' and kill you."
You know, 'cause he was like, "I want to --
I want to get killed by Chucky."
So I was able to accommodate him.
-It's the first kill of the movie.
And you're kind of expecting it,
but when it does happen, it really is a delicious payoff.
-Nothing like a strangulation to get the circulation going.
-Brad is great at delivering darkly funny lines as Chucky.
-I actually do remember doing that line,
and Chucky is becoming aware of himself.
-Because the character was getting more popular,
our operating principle was, "Let's show him more."
-Where are you, you little shit?
♪♪
-The young man was sent to a military academy
because he's been causing so much trouble.
-Adjustment problems.
-I can read, Barclay.
-Justin's character was very internal.
I always thought he did such a wonderful job.
-I thought he did bring all that history to the role.
-He's a lovely actor, and we had a pretty good relationship.
-Grow up. You're not a kid anymore.
-That character on the page was R. Lee Ermey.
-You are pukes. You are the lowest
form of life on Earth.
-I was never going to approach it like a jerk.
I was going to approach it a bit more humanistic.
-Dakin brought, I think, some humanity to it.
-I think Dakin Matthews is precious.
-Andy Robinson playing the barber.
-Next.
-He's capable of playing
the most psychopathic, psychotic serial killers.
-Andy Robinson is, you know,
Dirty Harry's nemesis. How awesome is that?
-To me, he was really intimidating.
-He's actually an extraordinarily nice guy.
-Andy and his performance,
definitely one of the most
memorable aspects of the whole movie.
-"Presto!"
-You're bald.
-"You're bald."
-What we see is these shiny boots
step into frame and do a snap turn and walk down.
I can't remember how I was supposed to enter,
but I walked up to Jack, and I said,
"Hey, Jack, you know, what would be great?
If the camera was really low
and you saw my shoes, these shiny shoes,"
and I did the snap turn. And to Jack's credit,
he let some 22-year-old actor call his own entry shot.
-You're a new boy, huh?
-Travis was, you know,
doing the work of a good actor
and finding a way to play a figure
that was relatively thin on the page.
-Shelton's anger and his aggression came from a fear
and a refusal to sort of confront his own stuff.
-God damn majorette over here.
-And on paper, this was not a bisexual character.
I don't think Don ever intended to write it that way,
and that's how I chose to play it.
-I was aware, and we did talk about it briefly.
-As an openly bisexual man,
that was one of the earliest moments with that character
that I was able to play around with something.
-Travis has to find a way into the psychology of that character
so that it'll be interesting and watchable, and he did it.
-I'm proud that I got to play that character
the way I wanted to.
-You asshole.
-One of the most fun parts of the movie for me
was all of my scenes with Travis.
I mean, number one, they were just head-to-head.
-There's that moment where I walk up to her
and I say, "You think you're pretty smart, don't you?"
So it's a very sort of intimate moment.
And, again, we talk about secrets
and things that actors bring and subtext,
and I always believed that
Shelton and De Silva had had a thing.
-Why don't you drop and give me 25 right now.
-And they had actually flown in a stunt double.
-She was the one who would do all the one-armed push-ups.
-And when I found that out, I was so upset.
I was like, "I can do my own stunts."
-I loved what Perrey brought to the character.
She's got such a strength.
-So I did. I did a one-armed push-up.
I think I could do two of them,
and then actually did fall in the mud.
But we laughed and laughed and laughed.
-Jack asked me to ad-lib a line
because Perrey was doing push-ups,
and it just came out. I said...
-Once a month, we're just gonna get on out of your way.
-It came out, and Jack's like, "What was that?"
and I said, "I don't know,"
and it ended up staying in the movie.
-Her and Travis really set the tone
for the rest of us
that they were going to take the work seriously.
-The ensemble was wonderful. We all really bonded
because we were on location right off the bat.
-We all got to hang out and have fun.
That was nice.
-Why don't you give this to the new kid for me?
Barclay.
-Yes, sir.
-Tyler took the Good Guy in the first place
because he was a lonely kid.
-You know, he kind of took the place of the next Andy.
-The most amazing part of the film
was actually interacting with this real-life doll.
"Hey, kid."
-Fun's over.
Where the hell's Andy?
-It was hard to stay in character because I'm like...
-You have to believe that voice
is coming out of that doll.
-Brad Dourif is one of the most amazing actors
on the face of the planet.
-I remember one of the first questions
I think I asked my reps at the time was,
"Did Brad Dourif sign on again?"
-There's a freedom and a wildness and a passion
and an intensity to Brad.
-The one thing that I love about Chucky
is that he loves his job.
That's really part of who he is.
-He had the sauce, man. He had the sauce.
-A Good Guy.
-Tyler was very meaningful for me
because we shared a lot of similar life circumstances.
-I always thought that maybe Tyler's role
had a past history of really serious abuse.
-Tyler wanted some friendship. He wanted a companion,
and he was torn between Chucky and Andy Barclay.
And Andy was the real friend.
Chucky was the pretend friend.
He was the wolf in sheep's clothing.
-Ade due Damballa.
-During those "hide the soul" moments,
I'm sitting there, like,
silently mouthing the exact same lines,
and Jack is like, "No, don't do that."
[Laughs] "He says the voodoo thing.
You don't say it."
-I can't believe I let you talk me into this.
-I was all excited because prior to that,
I had seen the promo for "Child's Play 1"
with my brother Chucky. How weird is that?
-De Silva, when she was going through the commandant's office,
was trying to get information on Andy.
-But when she finds Tyler with that doll...
♪♪
[Both laugh]
...she doesn't want him to be,
you know, damaged or be sought out to be picked on.
-[Gasps] Oh, he is so cute!
-Ivers, give him back!
-I wanted to humiliate him and shame him and go,
"Hey, I'm bigger than you, buddy."
-Donna, um,
was sort of the one that you kind of think
she's probably going to be dead by page 30.
-[Sighs]
-Right? But just to have that female energy
in such a male-centric film, I think, was able to bring
a different kind of emotion and playfulness to it.
-Chucky has such a incongruous,
macho sensibility
coming out of this adorable little child's doll.
-Give me your lipstick. -What for?
-Just give it to me.
-And so the notion --
it just seemed like something
that, like, would really make Chucky livid.
-And you knew that this was a coiled spring
with a bomb attached,
and they were risking their lives.
-Uh, he ain't gonna like it too much
that you putting, uh, lipstick all over him.
-I don't know that I was doing it
so deliberately at the time,
thinking, "I'm going to start to queer my franchise."
But I was.
You know, I was starting to do that.
♪♪
Chucky has evolved.
His own experience of his own sexuality
expands over the course of the franchise,
and that's something that I'm probably
a little ridiculously proud of.
-This means war.
-When I hear a noise, I turn around,
and Chucky walks out from behind the file cabinet
and raises his dagger.
-[Shouting]
-And I simply saw him and reacted.
-[Gasps]
-Colonel Cochran dies by heart attack.
-One always likes to have something
about one's role be unique.
-He's not a tough guy,
so you lose the humor of this strutting martinet
who takes one look at a doll and drops dead.
That was the joke.
[Glass shatters]
-We went right up to the fall, and then the stunt double
jumps in and crashed through the display case.
-It pays off really well when he falls into it.
-Then he got up, and I laid down in the broken glass
and did one last expiration.
♪♪
-The camera is going past
all these kids who are looking
at the commander of the academy, who is dead,
and his body being taken out.
We did 39 takes of that.
-I just stood in the background,
and I watched take 29 and take 30.
I thought 28 was a pretty good take.
[Laughs]
[Razor whirring]
-The death of that character, the barber, I love.
I think that's probably my favorite sequence
from that movie.
-Presto.
-In the barbershop, you have a big mirror.
And how do you shoot in a mirror?
How do you shoot the scene in a very tight space?
-It was a little bit of a nod to "Sweeney Todd."
-♪ I'll not meet again, my little darling ♪
-We created the barbershop on stage,
and that gave me the ability to create multi images
in the shop of mirror
reflected on mirror reflected on mirror.
-We were always there, off camera,
watching Andy perform his scenes, which was amazing.
-When he was getting the
prosthetic neck put on, you know,
so that when Chucky slashed it, the blood would pour out...
[Chucky laughing]
-We got giggling fits and had to run away.
-And I also love the line when he's dying,
and he looks at himself in the mirror,
and Chucky's saying...
-It's definitely you.
-I mean, with "Child's Play,"
I guess some people just need killing.
We were actually out in the woods
when we first started filming it.
-We had some exteriors, real live forest,
and then we were on a soundstage where they built stuff.
-I mean, we'd shot there for a couple days.
And then, it started raining,
and the fields were getting very wet,
and the trucks were starting to sink.
-So I talked to the production designer
about building a forest
on one of the smaller stages at Universal.
-Come on, Andy. I want to show you something.
-Our first view of the amusement park is from afar,
this sort of romantic moment between Andy and De Silva.
-Pretty cool, huh?
-I think the vulnerability that he was able to portray
made her feel close to him and safe with him.
-There is something magical and fairytale-ish about that.
-His mom was there for the kissing scene,
and I remember saying, "When we reshoot this,
the mom's gotta go."
I mean, we can't have a first kiss on screen
with the mother watching. It's just too awkward.
♪♪
-It just seemed like a darkly clever,
Chucky-esque thing to do for him
to replace the paint pellets with actual ammo.
-Hold your fire!
-The death scene was a fun moment.
Chucky gives me the finger, and he says...
-Hi, soldier.
[Laughs]
-That character's final line before he dies is...
-Fuck me.
And he was asking me,
"Is there a metaphorical piece of this?
and I went, "Maybe."
-"Ooh, fuck me."
And Jack said, "Cut! Travis, what was that?"
[Gunshot]
-De Silva never liked Shelton.
I mean, obviously, they were in conflict
the whole time she was at that academy.
But when he got shot, I think there was a guilt
because in the back of her mind, at one point or another,
she's like, "Oh, my God, I wish he'd die."
-Yeah, it kind of breaks my heart that Shelton dies.
-Even though he's the bad guy,
you sort of still care about him, in a way.
-Matthew's character responds so heavily to my death.
-Oh, God, he's not breathing.
-Clearly, these two guys had a deep, deep bond,
and this death affected him in a big way,
and it was a beautiful performance by Matthew.
[Indistinct shouting]
[Dramatic music plays]
-Whitehurst's death is so dramatic and heartfelt.
-I blowed up real good.
[Explosion]
There was a platform over a pit,
and the pit had a lot of what
I think it's called Fuller's earth that blew out.
♪♪
-Dean was perfect in that role.
-Dean did such a great job of building
that character along the way.
-I love that his character got to be
a bit of a hero in the end.
And I said to myself,
"This is my moment of truth,"
and I jumped on the hand grenade.
I did the best I could to find a way to motivate that.
I don't know if I succeeded. I hope I did.
-[Breathing heavily]
-Carnivals are creepy, right?
I mean, isn't that a perfect opportunity to let Chucky loose?
-We brought in a real carnival,
set it up in a field, which was mind-blowing to me.
-They basically rented a carnival
and we just, like, set it up.
-There's a moment that my wife and I and daughters
are walking through.
-There's your prize! -There you go.
-Thank you, Daddy!
-There are carnivals that you can rent.
So we were able to just call up and say,
"Can you erect your carnival at such-and-such a place?"
-Say, give that thing a rest, or you're out of here, both of you?
I was doing a play called "Tony n' Tina's Wedding."
I know Don came but also Jack Bender.
I do not recall auditioning, so I think it was
just say, "Would you do it?" and I said, "Yes!"
-Mister, Mister, you gotta help me!
-Throughout all the "Child's Play" movies,
there's always the adult that does not listen to the kid.
-Adults look at children oftentimes like,
"Well, you're just a kid. What do you know?"
-Have a seat. How about some gum, Private?
-I love the foreshadowing,
when I open up the drawer to get the gum,
and there happens to be a pistol
right there. [Laughs]
So we know something might happen with that gun.
♪♪
Now, I thought I would have a wonderful death like my wife,
Beth Grant...
-Aah!
-...but I did not.
-Justin and my character arrive and discover
the body of the security guard.
-I'm a dead body.
lying on this sawdust
while they're having a bunch of dialogue.
♪♪
That was the toughest job I've ever done --
just being dead.
♪♪
-Perfect.
There was a set piece
that we ended up not being able to do
because it was too expensive,
but it was in various drafts of the script
where Chucky is on a more traditional roller coaster.
-But they didn't feel that they had the budget.
-We just couldn't afford it.
-So I came up with the idea of a house of horror,
and I'll never forget looking --
they're looking at me like I was nuts.
Jack came to me that evening and said,
"Rich, I like your idea. Let's do it."
-So we built the roller coaster on the stage.
-We all had so much fun with these sets,
and those designers did such a good job.
That was one of my favorite sets that was built.
[Woman screams]
♪♪
-Oh, hello! I'm so glad you could come by.
Come on over here. We're making a movie. Come on.
How do I create, on stage, a roller coaster?
And that was the first thing that Jack asked me.
[Chuckles]
So I said, "To be honest with you, I don't know,"
'cause I had a very tight budget
and a very short period of time.
So I found, through research,
someone who had a roller-coaster track,
but he didn't have the car.
I said, "Well, that's great." [Chuckles]
'Cause I wanted to build the car as a piece of horror.
♪♪
-The roller-coaster ride
was done on the Phantom stage at Universal,
where they shot the original "Phantom of the Opera."
-And the Grim Reaper scythes off Chucky's face.
-Aah!
Made him sort of "Phantom of the Opera" Chucky there.
♪♪
[Both scream]
♪♪
They go into that wonderful mountain of skulls.
-I shot my own stunts.
-[Screaming]
-I was hanging from an invisible
metal protection wire,
and it went through my clothes, and it went down,
and there was a harness. I was really hanging.
-And there was, like, huge industrial fans below us.
-Chucky falls into that and just gets ripped to shreds.
-Aah!
-Him falling into this gigantic,
industrial-sized fan
and being torn into pieces is really cool.
[Police radio chatter]
-As she's getting carted off in the ambulance,
it's all wrapped up nicely. Chucky's been blown up.
-There is no obvious cliffhanger.
-I always felt that she would be back for more
because she and Chucky were not done.
-I think that that last scene,
where Andy's being taken away in the car,
it's not great. It's not great.
And I think it's just symptomatic of my fatigue.
-I poked at the trash
as the credits that nobody reads go up.
-He's stabbing the trash and putting it in a bag,
and there is a piece of Chucky's face lying there on the ground.
He stabs it and then stuffs it into the bag.
That was the way that Chucky would come back,
but I understand that was cut.
-Was I cut from the film? Those bastards!
Where's my agent?
-Chucky's training now complete,
it was time to prepare for a tour of terror.
The film's first stop before storming theaters,
post-production editing, scoring, and ADR.
-I was super excited to get a call to come back again,
this time as an assistant editor.
-I did write the score with my partner at the time,
John D'Andrea.
We just knew that Jack Bender wanted something
really different than the past scores.
-They were known at the time for "Baywatch."
-I was used to, you know, young, beautiful women
running down the beach in slow-motion.
So to go over to Chucky was a whole other thing.
-There was definitely a sense of deadlines.
Constant deadlines.
-Tell you, we worked tirelessly on that thing.
I mean, hundreds and hundreds of hours went into that score.
-I feel like we still delivered a great movie.
-The movie itself, altogether, in the theater was awesome.
-The first time I saw the movie
was at the cast and crew screening,
and that was just awesome.
-I thought it was incredibly exciting.
I think I brought my mom.
-There was so much to love about the film,
so many surprises.
-I've seen the movie a couple times,
and I have fun, and I laugh out loud.
-I'm just watching, you know,
just like everybody else in the audience,
not knowing what to expect next.
-"Child's Play 3" was deployed to theaters
on August 30, 1991.
While critics and audiences
conferred a less than friendly homecoming,
the cast and crew believed their time
in the trenches would forever be memorable.
-"Child's Play 3" was not viewed successfully.
The film just didn't seem to work.
-Box office-wise, 2 didn't do as well as 1,
and 3 didn't do as well as 2.
-The movie did not do well.
-The reviews certainly hurt.
-The last line, Andy says, "I've been here before."
I think it was the L.A. Timesreview,
something like, "We sure have." Went, "Eh."
-I thought it was probably over at that point.
-The failure of that movie
was my first experience with failure in Hollywood.
-The studio, at that point,
wondered if maybe we should change writers.
That was something that I was dead set against.
-You know, I think I was amazed that it did three,
and I wasn't surprised when people were tired of it.
-The first one, we were discovering a brand-new animal.
Second one, we were improving that and making it even better.
By the time we got to the third one,
I think it was just same old, same old, in a sense.
-I really thought, "Okay. That's the end."
And it was the end for quite a while.
-It was the first negative impact
on my career and livelihood.
So, you know, it was very existential for me.
So I think it kind of skews my --
my whole feeling about the film.
-And I go back and applaud Don because he took what was
this sort of silly little horror franchise,
and he's really turned it into something
that is speaking on a much deeper level.
-I would say the making of "Child's Play 3"
was an adventure.
-I have to say that I'm very, very proud.
The effect that it has had on many,
many people has been a tremendous success,
and being part of that success,
I feel I've been -- I've contributed a great deal.
-For me, it was very satisfying
to be invited back to do the third movie,
having been a big fan of the first one
and being part of the success of the second one.
So, for me, it gave my early career
a sense of completion already that I got to be part
of this huge, fun horror franchise of the Chucky world.
-I think learning about Chucky was fun.
I think arguing with the crew
that they weren't going fast enough wasn't fun.
-Well, I definitely enjoyed the process.
That was very exciting. Especially when I see it,
you know, these days, I think,
"Those are some pretty cool cues."
-It was a good experience because we
did enjoy ourselves.
And when, you know, "Cut!" happened,
we'd often laugh, you know,
so we wouldn't take it so seriously on the set.
-I want to say thank you. Thank you for Jack Bender,
and thank you for Don Mancini to write it.
-I've played opposite Helen Mirren
and Denzel Washington,
but to play opposite Chucky,
this is a -- this is an honor.
-It was just so cool to be a part of this thing
that is loved by so many.
Being a part of the Chucky-verse,
it's just one of the coolest things.
-The most fun part of making "Child's Play 3"
would have to have been, for me,
playing that great character that I got to play.
Being able to bark lines to people like R. Lee Ermey
from "Full Metal Jacket"!
And just being involved in such an iconic franchise,
you just felt giddy every day going to work.
-Making that movie was so exciting
because it was my first feature film.
It was my first studio project. It was a great time.
-Everyone was great.
Like, you know, it was just beautiful to start my career
in a very high professional atmosphere,
with quality top professionals.
-Being a part of a franchise with a character like Chucky
was one of the most fun and wonderful
and exciting opportunities that I've had.
For me, to get to play and have so much fun
in an early part of my career
with such a wonderful group of people,
I feel incredibly lucky that that was in my life.
-Bringing "Child's Play 3" to life
is probably one of the easiest moments of my life,
of bringing a production to production,
and that was that the studio said to me,
"Start working on 'Child's Play 3.'"
Whoa! That was incredible.
-I look at a lot of sequels, and I think, you know,
"This is a really, really bad idea."
It rarely, rarely ever works.
A sequel has to be something that is so good,
it's not even a sequel, and that's a tall order.
-It was an admirable attempt to do something different,
to put a little bit of a spin on it.
It was just getting tired.
My main feeling about that movie is, like,
"I fucked up."
[Laughs]
Let's move on to "Bride."
[Laughs]
[Chucky laughing]
♪♪
[Thunder crashes]
♪♪
-After the disappointing reception
of 1991's "Child's Play 3,"
Chucky was placed back in his box for years
after several failed starts to stoke the flames
of Charles Lee Ray's bloodlust,
a fourth film was finally given the greenlight --
for love.
-David and I were always in constant communication
about like, you know, what could we do next
and when would be the right time.
-My wife and I were in Rocket Video on La Brea Avenue,
and there was "The Bride of Frankenstein."
And it's just like this silly light bulb went off in my head.
"What if we did a bride for Chucky?"
-We just thought it would be so much fun
to add a new character to the mix.
♪♪
-I was a development executive for David Kirschner,
the producer. Don went away
and did the wonderful concocting of imagination that he does.
-I felt like, "I don't want to repeat the mistake
of 'Child's Play 3.' We've got to do something new.
We're gonna make Chucky the lead."
-I was, indeed, surprised to get the call
that we were going to do another movie,
and then delighted when I read it.
I thought it's a beautifully conceived script.
-You got that right.
-When we pitched it,
David had constructed,
like, a little chuppah.
-It was like a wedding scene.
-We were calling it a haunted chuppah,
and we had a doll that was representative of Tiffany
because that hadn't actually been built yet,
and then an older Chucky doll.
-We presented it to Marc Platt.
-And Marc was sort of on the bubble.
-No. It was no.
And a bunch of months went by.
-Marc had a renewed interest in Chucky
because his daughter had had a slumber party.
-And she and all of her friends had rented
all the Chucky movies and loved them.
-It's the honest to God truth.
That's what got it made. It was a teenage girl
that got "Bride of Chucky" the greenlight.
-With classic inspiration, a knowing wink,
and Chucky's impending nuptials on the horizon,
it was time to send out invitations
for cast and crew to join the ceremony.
-We pursued Ronny Yu for the director
of "Bride of Chucky" really hard.
-When they first asked me to do it,
-I said, "I have to be very frank."
You know, I knew nothing.
I knew nothing about Chucky.
-Shit!
-We really didn't think he would entertain it.
And we thought, "Oh, my gosh. We'll be so lucky if he does."
-I said, "No, thank you."
To be very, very honest,
I don't like horror movies.
They scare the hell out of me.
But then my agent said,
"The producers are great fans of your "Bride with White Hair."
-I remember watching "The Bride with White Hair"
with Don, and for me, I had never seen anything like that.
It blew my mind.
-Hmm! -Ha!
-It's just stunning.
-So I have a phone call with Don and David and Corey,
and they sort of, like, convinced me.
-It was also a thing, though, to convince the studio
because he wasn't doing American movies.
-And I think one of the major reasons that I said yes
is because the studio allowed me to bring my own team.
-The cinematographer was an exceptional human being
by the name of Peter Pau.
-We hired Ronny and Peter
because they had this brilliant, stylized aesthetic.
-The script came to me through Grace Gilroy.
There were just so many opportunities for design,
and I thought, "Oh, my God. This is incredibly scary."
-I read the script, and suddenly Tiffany comes up --
"Oh, my God. A woman doll?"
-Boom! Out of the Don mind came Tiffany.
-I loved writing the character of Tiffany because
I was really able to let my queer freak flag fly.
And it was all about contrast.
-Chucky loves his job, and he makes a connection,
a deep connection with her in spite of himself.
-They are the Bonnie and Clyde of horror.
They're Sid and Nancy.
-I went right to work. And I think I started designing
before I had any money, I was so excited
about working on it again.
-I started to draw what would be this bride.
and Kevin Yagher yet again hit it out of the park.
-Ronny came by the shop to look at the Chucky parts I had,
to meet me for the first time.
We had a great relationship, and he was very trusting.
He was saying, "You know, you're the person who knows
the most about the doll.
You know, I have to rely on you."
-[Screaming]
-Casting Jennifer Tilly and the way the script
was written were just acts of genius.
-I was just a fan, and I knew that she was
the absolute perfect person to play that role.
-I had just come off my Oscar nomination,
and I had this idea that I was going to be
the next Helen Mirren, the next Dame Judi Dench.
And my agent called up, and he goes,
"Jennifer, I got you an offer for a movie,"
and I said, "Well, what's it about?"
and he said, "Well -- [clears throat] --
it's about a little doll."
And I went, "A Chucky movie?!
I'm not doing a Chucky movie!" [Laughs]
-I wrote it for Jennifer Tilly,
even though I didn't know her.
I had never met her at this point.
-I heard that Don Mancini,
when he was writing the voice of Tiffany,
he kept hearing my voice,
so he was really obsessed with me.
-I wanted Jennifer, too.
Don wanted Jennifer, David wanted Jennifer.
Corey wanted Jennifer.
-I got the script, and I thought,
"Wow, this script is very clever."
I love camp, and I thought it's sort of haunting, too.
And I really liked the character.
I liked that she was just, you know,
a white-trash girl looking for love.
-And somehow, there's some people
in the studio didn't like it.
-The studio just thought
that maybe she would be too cartoony for the film.
-The studio really wanted Tiffani Amber Thiessen
because she would fit our budget.
-Because the normal thing at that point
for a teen horror movie would be to cast
a kind of a teen regular icon.
-And it's just like, "Here's an Academy Award nominated actress
from Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway"...
-I am sick and tired of getting bumped into and stepped on.
-...that she is so great in.
-So it was three weeks of work, and Jennifer's rate
was $100,000 a week.
So David and I had to chip in a lot of our own money.
-Don Mancini and David Kirschner took a pay cut
because I wanted more money -- [Clears throat] --
to "ruin my career." [Laughs]
I was a brat. [Laughs]
-It was money well spent.
-Jennifer Tilly's got that great --
just such a great voice. It's so iconic, you know.
-She flies by the seat of her pants and ad libs.
-Jennifer is really extraordinary
at making up dialogue.
-That aspect of it was crucial for Brad.
I think he was very excited
about getting to work with another actor.
-Brad is a brilliant actor,
and I really do feel like they love each other so much.
-It was really a blast.
She brought me out in a really cool way.
Suddenly, the whole franchise came to life for me.
-Critical elements of the film now in place,
"Bride of Chucky's" courtship ended,
and the time had come to put a ring on it.
With that, production on the $25 million film
began on April 15, 1998.
-It was the longest shooting schedule that we had had.
-Making movies with the studio.
You know, the entire system is different from Hong Kong.
-I loved Ronny Yu.
He's Chinese, I'm half Chinese.
I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
But he was a really spiritual guy.
He would burn sage or do a little prayer.
-At the start of each day of shooting,
they would do this ritual to dispel spirits.
[Thunder crashes]
The evidence depository was a bit of a holdover
from "Child's Play 2."
We had a court case with the Catherine Hicks character
where she is deemed an unfit mother.
-There's usually a police station involved,
and there's locker rooms.
The challenge is making all of that stuff
visually accessible so it's not boring.
-In the wake of "Scream,"
this meta moment of seeing Michael Myers' mask
and the chainsaw from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
that was fun to do.
♪♪
-Cool.
-The scene at the beginning,
where the cop is in a warehouse,
where he's going to meet Jennifer,
and the light coming in at night,
the moon, it's delicious.
-We found this place. It was so beautiful,
the shafts of light.
Jennifer with the blond hair and the black latex mini skirt.
-And then when I killed the cop,
and then I put the Chucky doll in the bag,
and I'm walking away.
And this is very much the Hong Kong
film sensibility, also.
That was just really the greatest introduction
to Tiffany ever.
-I remember Ronny saying,
"It's like a commercial for murder."
-Well, hello, dolly.
-I love the scene where Tiffany is stitching
the doll back together because it's truly a labor of love.
And I said, "Oh, how about if
I put the eyeball in my mouth?"
-And he's like, "Why?"
And I said, "Oh, I'm just fucking with him."
And he loved the idea.
-Hello. I'm Chief Kincaid, Jade's uncle.
-David Kirschner had a relationship
and a friendship with John Ritter
because they had done a TV movie together
about L. Frank Baum.
-John Ritter and I had done "The Dreamer of Oz" together.
-Which Jack Bender directed.
-David and the producers and Don and Corey
somehow got hold of John Ritter.
You know, "Oh, great!"
-He would play a complete ass
and a really bad guy.
Just everything that John wasn't.
-He said, "Yes! Yes, make me awful.
Make the audience want to see me die."
-God bless his memory because he just added
so much to that film.
-Yuck. Not my type.
I'm so over that whole uniform thing.
-It was very unusual to have a casually gay teenage character
in a studio horror movie.
-Jade is going off to prom,
supposedly, with David, her friend who was gay.
-David Collins. Nice to meet you, sir.
-I really wanted this part.
And I literally read that script in an hour,
like I just, I rifled through it
and I was laughing out loud, and I was loving it.
-He just kind of encapsulated it by saying like,
"Oh, so he's like the handmaiden.
He's like the handmaiden to the main characters,"
and we're like, "Yes! That's right."
So he's kind of a genius.
-I had made the choice not to play the character gay,
but Don had given this character a rhythm,
like the way the character speaks.
It just -- it was in the writing.
So all I did was do what I thought was intended by Don.
-Phew! Something really stinks in here!
-It was something I found in the writing, actually.
I didn't initially plan on that character being gay.
-Don and David and Corey
thought it's the right thing to do,
even though it's ahead of its time, you know?
So, for me, I totally agree with that.
This movie is different, you know?
It's not just a slasher movie, you know?
-You look beautiful.
-Nick was great, too.
His handsomeness was a crucial part of the story.
In a movie that was consciously going for a gay vibe,
which I was, you needed some beefcake,
and Nick was not at all shy about that.
-James Van Der Beek came in to talk to us
for "Bride of Chucky,"
and the first thing he said is, "I don't want to do this movie."
And he said his agent really made him come in for it.
"Thank you very much," and that was the end of that.
-[Crying]
-I wasn't a huge horror fan, to be honest.
"The Exorcist" F'ed me up so bad as a child.
So when I got the job, of course I went back,
I started looking at them and started studying,
like, what it meant to be in a horror movie.
-He's a guy that really wanted to learn,
so he always hang out on set,
even though he's not, you know, his turn.
-You know, I started trying to research,
like, what does it mean when these dolls are coming to life?
And there's a whole history of dolls that come to life.
and stories that are about dolls that come to life.
-[Screaming] -[Laughing]
-[Gasps]
-Come here! -[Gasps]
-I appreciate that enthusiasm and the passion
that he has for movies, you know?
So I think he's a very good young actor.
-Jade!
-Katherine was very young.
She was 19 when we made that movie,
so she wasn't really Katherine Heigl yet.
-Katie was a pro, very serious.
She had more experience than I had doing a big picture.
So I learned a lot from her.
-Working with Katie was great.
I mean, she was really a serious actress
and she remains a serious actress,
and I think that that really sells it.
-It was very obvious that this is someone
who was gonna go far.
♪♪
The "Voodoo for Dummies" was a way for me
to incorporate the voodoo element
without hanging my head in shame.
Just corny and dumb. Let's embrace that.
I mean, just seeing that book.
And, also, just hearing Jennifer Tilly
intone that nonsense.
-Ade due Damballa! Awake!
-I'm like, "It's a fucking movie about a supernatural doll!"
[Laughs]
-Hey, Tiffany!
-What are you doing here?
-An important element of the movie was Alexis Arquette.
I mean, we definitely made a deliberate choice to,
whenever possible, cast gay icons.
You know, Jennifer, of course, Alexis, even John Ritter,
because of his role in "Three's Company,"
he had a connection to gay culture.
-I loved Alexis so much, and I had a giant crush on him,
and he had, like, this kind of secret life.
Like, I always wanted to hang out with him
because I really felt like he was the coolest guy.
He was always nabbing the wigs
from the wig department because, you know,
he would dress up like a drag queen.
His alter ego was Eva Destruction.
-Thank you so much.
-We wanted this character to be a little interesting
in a gender-bending way.
-I didn't know that she was trans.
We were going to dinner one night,
and I'm waiting, and the elevator opens,
and this very pretty woman steps out,
and Don says hello,
and then realized that it was Alexis.
-One of the highlights, I would say,
of my career was working with Alexis Arquette.
It was really exciting.
And it was almost like a stamp of the queer world's approval.
It just gave us kind of bona fides, in a way.
-He had to lay on the floor for like eight hours
to get all this tattoos on like every few days.
There were scenes where he's chained up to the bed.
Never complained. Just funny.
We loved him so much.
♪♪
-We had to build a rig where Chucky could spin around on him.
So it was like this little bracket that went --
that he slid into, you know,
and then we had to pull his lip ring out.
-Ohh!
-And I had just quit being in a band
that was touring for about eight years.
-Gotcha.
-My first four auditions,
I booked three of the gigs,
and the first one was "Bride of Chucky."
-Michael Louis Johnson was so good as Needle Nose,
that kind of conniving -- [Laughs mischievously]
"Yeah, too bad. The money. But the money."
-I knew the tone that they were going for.
I'm not some sympathetic character in a horror movie
who's being killed.
Can I wait in the car, please? -No.
-It's like, "No, I'm the asshole cop."
And I made more money in 14 days of work
than I did doing 250 shows
on the road the year before as a musician.
-He's actually a very accomplished musician,
and he played the trumpet at my -- at my wedding.
[Trumpet plays]
♪♪
-Let me die.
-[Screams]
[Dramatic music plays]
-She's alive.
Alive!
Just seemed right for this character
and this actress to meet her death
in a luxuriant bubble bath.
-John had written that in his first script.
-I raided past scripts.
-That was Don's idea. I mean, in the beginning,
always use "Bride of Frankenstein,"
you know, as this homage.
-[Screams]
[Electricity crackles]
-Even though you're just acting,
it's always sort of traumatic to have the life go out of you.
I don't know why. It's just sad.
And, um, they wanted me to go under the water
with my eyes open.
And, of course, everybody loved me
because I would do whatever. I was like, "Okay.
You know, there's soap in that water,
but I'll try. I'll try to do it."
-What a great attitude Jennifer had of just being dunked
constantly in this water as she's being electrocuted.
And her face, and the way
that that is cut together with back and forth
between the "Bride of Frankenstein."
-Then the bubbles going up,
and the little Chucky doll loves the bubbles.
And it's just a very beautiful, beautiful sequence.
-I just consider that genius.
That's really how you're supposed to do it.
-It's truly one of my favorite moments
in any film that I've ever, ever been a part of.
-You son of a bitch!
What have you done to me?
-A key moment in the movie. She becomes a doll.
-I just look at it as a fantasy love story.
A tragedy love story.
-There was the bride, and then she gets the whole makeover
and goes from a brunette to a blond.
-Barbie, eat your heart out.
-It's actually a very technical, demanding shoot.
Every character has at least 10 puppeteers.
It's a very complicated thing.
-He would always ask me, "What would you do here?
What should I do here?" you know?
And we worked together, and it was really nice
to have that -- that trust.
-And I said, "Listen, watch me. Watch my movement,
watch my facial.
See my eyebrows, see my teeth, all that.
Try to imitate that."
So they say, "Okay. Is that -- that's what you want?
We'll give you that."
-Look, there were moments. There were difficult moments.
There's no doubt, with animatronics
and all those people and an A.D. saying,
"Move, move, move!"
But it really worked.
-The heart of Damballa. What's that?
-You know, it was a new element in the mythology.
And it's like, "Wait. We didn't need this before. Eh."
-It was buried withmy corpse.
-You know, there needed to be a reason
for them to get from A to B.
Initially, it was a character, actually.
It was like another -- a voodoo practitioner.
But somewhere along the way, we decided to make it an object.
-Who the hell is this bozo?
What's he doing?
-John Ritter was fantastic.
David Kirschner brought him and his wife
by my shop to see the puppet.
They were very interested in all that stuff.
-He said, "Give me a good death," which I think we did.
I think he has one of the best ones.
-Now! -[Gasps]
[Electricity crackles] -Aah!
-The nails coming out of the glove compartment box
I thought was super creative.
-I remember when -- when I first read the script,
I talked to Don.
I said, "Wow, that reminds me of that movie,
the pin head thing."
-We'll tear your soul apart.
-He let us put rubber nails all in his face.
It took forever.
Never complained. Was so, so patient.
-I remember, he asked me,
"Why do you want a comedian in a slasher movie?"
I said, "Well, it's different, it's different.
It will make it different, and you will bring something
different, you know?
So when you die, people laugh."
[Laughs]
-[Inhaling]
-I am not exaggerating. I think I sat in my trailer,
I swear to God, 18 hours, waiting for that shot.
-Smoking a joint, yes, it's difficult,
very time-consuming,
and scratching your head all the time, you know,
"How do you make it look right?"
-It was a huge, huge undertaking for the animatronic team,
but they got it. It was funny. Funny moment.
-Norton?
Are you still there? -[Coughs]
[Both laugh]
-When the camera is gonna zoom in on me for the scream
right before the explosion, I was like,
"Yeah, it's total Hitchcock, right?"
-Aah!
[Explosion]
-That's it. You know, one shot.
Then we have maybe six cameras set up to do that.
-It took all night to get. That was one of the most --
probably the most complicated shots.
-Excuse me. The door was open.
I didn't realize there was anybody in here.
-Margot Kidder, my aunt, who I refer to as Margie,
or Aunt Margie, such an inspiration all the time
with her horror genre life.
I would like to be able
to follow in her footsteps a little bit.
-[Growling]
Well... who's this?
-Well, my agent called me and said, "Sweetie,
do you want to go in for something
called "Bride of Chucky"?
I just laughed and said, "I have to have that on my résumé."
-James and I met in the audition, and we just clicked.
-'Cause I felt like I had just instantly made a new pal
in Janet Kidder. We've been friends ever since.
-That honeymoon kill scene, I said,
"What if the mirror comes down, right, like a rainfall?
And nowhere you can run."
-[Screaming]
-It was, I think, even more impressive
than I had imagined in my head.
-It was also important to us
that it be beautiful in a weird way,
you know, that it just visually cool and interesting.
-Possibly one of my best death scenes, and I've had a few.
-That was a great murder.
And it was fireworks, you know?
-The hours and hours that Janet and I
had to spend in makeup,
getting all those shards of mirror
put all over our arms and legs.
-I had to lie on a makeup table for 5 or 6 hours,
and then I couldn't go to the bathroom without help
because I had all these -- you know,
these huge, uh, plastic shards all over my body.
So that was quite a process.
-I just think of the romance of it
and, you know, the beautiful cinematography
and the lilting rhythm that
Tiffany and Chucky have together.
-He's just, like, beside himself with awe of
how beautifully she orchestrated that.
-I love you.
-Which is all about romance.
That's all about new romance.
-That was so gratifying when I read in the script
that Chucky and Tiffany were gonna do it,
because they're two dolls doing it.
It's just so out there.
-I think that some of my energy maybe wore off on them.
-You know, he wanted the ring to go onto her ring finger,
and we just couldn't get it on. It wasn't staying.
It was spinning, falling off. We're shooting and shooting
and said, "You know, it'll fit the thumb."
-Part of the fun was to utilize the clichés
of the Hollywood romantic-comedy sex scene.
-We talked a lot about making naked puppets,
and it's super hard to get everything built
the way you want and hide it all within the skin.
-The camera dips down,
and we see just a hint of buttcrack in Tiffany.
-Chucky is French kissing me,
and it was so funny because his tongue goes out like this
and starts rotating around in my mouth.
So when I was doing the looping, I made a sound like, "Ahh!"
like a gargling sound.
-Ahh!
-My wife loves that scene.
I mean, she howls with laughter at that scene.
-When we were doing the doll sex scene, we were ad-libbing.
I came up with this idea where I go -- he's about to enter me,
and she hasn't been a doll for very long.
And I go, "Wait, Chucky, do you have a rubber?"
-Tiff! -What?
-Look at me!
-"I'm all rubber."
-"I thought you were plastic."
That was them. They improvised that.
-When we previewed that,
the audience was laughing so hard and so loud
that you couldn't even hear the next lines.
-It's just so out there. It's so funny.
-This is a first.
-I just thought it was wonderful.
-So two puppets having sex
means 14 puppeteers pretending to have sex.
So, uh, I don't know, vinyl orgy -- what is that like?
-How are we gonna have them --
For one, you know, they're skin to about here,
and then they turn into mechanical parts.
-So I'm gonna just use shadow
because they have a fireplace going,
and who wants to see two dolls having sex?
-It was hilarious.
And that was almost a problem shooting,
we were all laughing so hard.
-Oh, you're using shadow!
You're not actually seeing it! [Laughs]
I said, "Of course! You think I'm crazy?"
[Laughs]
-And I've concluded that what we have here
is a terrible misunderstanding.
-Then I got to have this arc where I get to then
start to suspect them, as well.
-And then the Mack truck comes out of nowhere, and...
[Truck horn blares]
-I don't know what they used, but, man, whatever it was,
it exploded in a million pieces.
-His death was so shocking even to us.
-People have mentioned it to me
sometimes over the years about, like,
"Did you ever have any misgivings
about killing the gay character?"
My feeling was, cute, straight teenagers
have been getting slaughtered
in slasher movies for years now.
Why can't that happen to a cute gay boy?"
-Chucky doesn't even kill me.
Chucky inadvertently kills me.
[Tires screeching] -That works, too.
-And that was a relatively early use of CGI
that, you know, the body exploding.
I mean, there was some practical stuff,
but we augmented it with CGI.
-Tiff? -Mm-hmm?
-Those, uh, dishes aren't gonna wash themselves, you know.
-Because horror is now self-referential,
that's a perfect thing to have happen.
Horror becomes about, you know, domestic chores.
-When Tiffany is screaming about Martha Stewart
and throwing plates of cookies,
Martha Stewart's life is so perfect
and so clean and no problems and no bodies lying around,
and no husband that comes home and insults her
and, you know, tries to kill her and everything.
-Chucky gets confronted with that.
-It was "The Honeymooners" on steroids.
-Bang, zoom!
-I see the love story in "Bride of Chucky,"
and I think that that's what anchors it,
and it's that sort of weirdly doomed love story
between Chucky and Tiffany.
-[Bangs] -[Screams]
-When Tiffany gets burned in the oven,
that was an homage to "Trilogy of Terror,"
because we talked about that a lot.
Don was a big fan of that.
Everyone's always asking, "How do we --
How can we do it differently?
What can we do that we haven't done before?"
-Why can't I ever get it on with the real good guys?
-The graveyard scene and the final love thing
between them was my favorite moment of the film.
-The graveyard scene was supposed to happen
in a real graveyard.
-I go to the location.
Ronny and Peter look at each other,
and they walk away from the group a little bit,
and they start talking to each other,
and then Ronny comes back, and he says,
"But there are ancestors here."
-And I remember Universal Pictures
scrambling to change the location
and actually create a graveyard.
-We built in the studio
all the stuff around where the grave is.
-If you look at it on camera, it looks fantastic.
But, I mean, it's all styrofoam and fans and fake dirt
and smelled like mildew.
-It was Ronny's idea to put the plastic --
There was like all these, like, plastic around,
like, blowing in the wind.
-All these black rags --
this is very Hong Kong film -- hanging from the trees.
Everything's blowing in the trees and they're in silhouette.
-It needed to be epic in a kind of --
in a stylized way.
It feels like Technicolor Hollywood.
-I love you, Chucky.
-I'm always amazed
at Jennifer's line readings.
I love that she makes the word "Chucky"
a seven-syllable word.
"Chuck-y-y-y-y."
-I'll see you in hell.
-I think she was probably supposed to say,
"I'll see you in hell!" you know?
But, uh, I didn't deliver it that way.
-That's part of Jennifer's brilliance
is unexpected readings.
I suspect occasionally
it might have something to do with not knowing her lines.
-I just got really sad.
Tiffany didn't want to kill Chucky...
-Aaah!
-...but she felt like they did belong dead.
And the awfulness had to end.
-I think, in the end, when she decides to kill Chucky
and the whole movie suddenly comes together,
that everything that has been put into it has a real meaning.
I think that's my favorite, but I'm a sap.
[Both grunting]
-Aah! Aah!
-When Chucky and Tiffany are fighting
in the cemetery, those are actors.
They step in in the costumes.
Like any other fight scene,
it's choreographed to the beat.
-They can hit each other with shovels and fly through --
you know, jump on each other.
If you compress it all by being on top --
and I pitched that to Ronny,
he was like, "Great idea," and went with it.
-We try every trick in the book.
Sometimes, I'll shoot 22 frames per second
rather than the normal 24 frames per second,
so when we project it later on,
it would become a little bit faster.
-I remember I went in to do looping, and they said,
"Oh, can you make some effort noises?"
I was like -- Tiffany's, [Quietly] "Ow. Ow."
[Panting] "Unh! Ow! Ow!"
-[Laughs]
-[Screaming]
-[Screeching]
-We did end up reshooting the ending.
And so the actual birth of what would become
"Seed of Chucky," that was reshot.
And that was to give it, like, a big, punchier ending.
-We did an edit of the movie
and then decided we were going to do some extra things.
And one of those was the birth of the Seed of Chucky
at the end of the movie.
-What John created there was the idea of,
"We're keeping this thing alive."
-I got to direct that whole last scene.
Working with Lawrence Dane was awesome
because I was such a fan of his, because he was a horror icon.
-[Screaming]
-Well, first of all,
we couldn't show the vagina, obviously,
because it was, "What are we gonna do with that?
Is she, you know, anatomically correct?"
[Laughs] "What's going on?"
-That's a lesson for the kiddies.
Unprotected sex leads to unplanned pregnancy.
'Cause Chucky's just like every man.
He just tells her what she wants to know.
-And then suddenly, this almost full-sized baby...
-...comes exploding out of her loins
at the end of the movie in a very terrifying way.
-And I don't know how that happened, but we did it.
-Huge choice to have a child on camera. Very ballsy.
-This franchise just keeps
pushing down the doors for puppet-kind.
-When the baby comes shooting out of Tiffany's loins
and is screaming, Don said they used the voice of a baby pig.
♪ La la la
-As soon as you see that demon baby thing
coming out of Tiffany, you know, "Okay."
-♪ Dum, dum dum, dum
♪ New movie
-Once the film wrapped,
the crew ventured into post-production,
where the relationship between Chucky, Tiffany,
and how it would all come together
wasn't exactly the honeymoon anyone had planned.
-Ronny and David Wu --
you know, David had been his Hong Kong editor.
Probably had two days or something to deliver their cut.
-It just wasn't cut the way Don and I specifically wanted.
-He and Don were looking for somebody to come in
and kind of help out on "Bride of Chucky"
and kind of focus it a little more.
-We had the good fortune to work with Randy Bricker,
who came in to do another pass at the film
and really just made it a lot, um, punchier.
-Universal wasn't quite as enthusiastic about that.
-Marc Platt was out and Stacey Snyder was in,
and Stacey was not a fan of the project particularly.
-I remember at our first screening of "Bride of Chucky,"
that was not great,
Stacey Snider, who is a superb executive
and really bright woman, came up to Don,
very unfairly, and said, "What were you thinking?"
-Stacey Snider just fundamentally
didn't like the movie.
-By the way, Stacey, you read the script
and gave it a greenlight,
but I think she wanted Academy Awards, and who doesn't?
That's not what Chucky was.
-Our next test screening was crazy, and everybody loved it.
-Sitting with the audience and seeing their reaction,
they're enthusiastic, for me, that is --
that is the best. That is the best.
-"Bride of Chucky" officially tied the knot with audiences
on October 16, 1998.
While critics seemed harder to please, fans were smitten.
Cast and crew believed in their job well done,
and few could argue that Chucky found not only his soul mate
but a true reinvention.
-The film comes out and does great business.
-There was huge audience reaction,
so I knew it was going to be good.
-Mission accomplished!
-Oprah famously said it sent her
into a downward spiral.
She made "Beloved," and she thought it was
going to be number one, and then they're like,
"You were beat by Chucky."
-And I remember, Saturday morning,
hearing that we got beat by something called Chucky.
-She's like, "Chucky? Who's Chucky?"
She didn't even know who Chucky was.
-"Bride" made like $50 million.
And, you know, on a budget of like 20-something million.
-And it was really successful.
-Critics missed the boat a little bit
on "Bride of Chucky." You can look at reviews
from practically every now-classic horror film,
and virtually none of them
were universally beloved in their day.
I mean, audiences really liked "Bride of Chucky."
It reversed the trend that had been going on
with the previous three at the box office.
-By the late '90s, you're seeing more and more
where film critics from major outlets are talking about genre
in a way that isn't condescending or dismissive,
that sort of understands there can be
different levels of self-awareness, of humor.
-Chucky was wildly successful before "Bride of Chucky,"
but "Bride of Chucky" did come at a time
where it was this kind of new-age resurgence of horror --
"Scream," "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
-I didn't realize that this film was taking the franchise
in a different direction because I hadn't seen
any of the other three movies,
So I always refer to "Bride of Chucky"
as the first one.
As a gay guy, one of the things that I loved
that Jennifer and the character of Tiffany
brought to the franchise was glamour.
-It's the "Showgirls" of the franchise.
It's excess, it's strobe lights.
it's wind, it's flying, it's -- it's camp, it's goth.
I mean, it's Jennifer Tilly.
It is perfection.
-The presence of that movie went on for a long time.
-One of the proudest achievements I have is --
is working on the Chucky franchise.
And, you know, "Bride" is probably the favorite movie
that I've ever worked on.
-Don was such a generous person to me.
It was his idea that our credits would be staggered,
like "Laverne & Shirley."
"Bride of Chucky" made me a producer.
I owe a big thanks to David Kirschner
because I got an opportunity that changed my life.
-I think "Bride of Chucky" comes in as the proudest moment,
just being able to do two characters at once.
I mean, I've never had that challenge before.
-Even now, to this day, people say,
"Oh, my God, you worked with the 'Bride of Chucky'?"
I'm like, "Yeah, I got killed by the Bride of Chucky, man."
-Making the "Bride of Chucky," for me, was pretty exhilarating,
and to have such a memorable, fun role in it,
even if it is just, like, the standout death.
Chucky and I spent time together,
so that's what I'm left with.
-Thank you to David Kirschner and Don Mancini
for making me feel like an immediate member of the team
from the second I walked into the audition.
-I am really proud to have been part
of the "Bride of Chucky."
It is probably one of the biggest highlights of my career.
It was just such a great experience.
It's what moviemaking is supposed to be.
-I'm just honored to have had the opportunity
and the good fortune and, quite frankly,
the luck of being cast and having an opportunity
to be a part of it. I'm forever grateful.
-It's a fabulous ride, and I'm super happy to be famous
for being a homicidal doll. Who would've thought?
-I can't tell you how much I love that movie.
And it's so rare for me to like anything I'm in.
-"Bride of Chucky" is probably
my favorite production experience
that I've ever had in my life.
It represented, ultimately,
a successful reinvention of the franchise,
which was a bit of a gamble, and it worked, and it paid off,
so that was very satisfying.
Working with Ronny Yu and Peter Pau was amazing.
To work with filmmakers of that class,
that kind of world-class stature was really thrilling.
-Don's script, Ronny's direction,
Peter Pau, Jennifer, Alexis.
For our world, it was visionary
and taking it to another whole planet,
another whole universe of this franchise
and really set the course for this relationship
between Tiffany and Chucky.
-How I felt, like, after all these years
about "Bride of Chucky," I felt I'm so blessed.
I believe in my own vision, and I trust my own instinct.
I think it's great, that payoff.
I'm not saying it's an easy job. No.
Absolutely very, very challenging, very difficult.
But at the end of the day, I had a lot of fun making it.
And the audience think that it's fun watching it.
♪♪
[Thunder crashes]
♪♪
-After "Bride of Chucky" successfully reinvented
and reinvigorated the killer-doll franchise,
a sequel was not only in order
but put on the fast track in the fall of 1998.
-"Bride of Chucky" was very successful,
so Universal actually put "Seed of Chucky"
into development immediately, and I wanted to experiment.
Whereas "Bride of Chucky" was a riff on romantic comedies,
I wanted "Seed of Chucky" to be a riff
on family melodramas, like "Ordinary People."
-"Ordinary People," I think, is -- [Laughs]
Yeah, maybe "The Godfather."
-I think I remember Don and I
talking about "Kramer vs. Kramer."
I mean, the references are wide and varied,
-But, also, there's this whole John Waters strain
that I wanted to put in the movie.
-We were all very aware that it was a real swing.
You know, the fact that Universal was doing it,
my hat's off to them.
-Being a gay man in Los Angeles, I had trans friends.
I saw it as an opportunity to do something new
in this kind of movie.
-It was very important to explore Don's vision on that.
-It was ahead of its time.
It was trying to do something else.
-I pitched it, everybody loved the idea.
I went off and wrote it, and the first response was,
"It's too gay, and there's too much Jennifer Tilly."
[Laughs]
-And when I heard that, I was like,
"How can there be too much Jennifer Tilly?"
[Laughs]
-The other thing that was really happening
was Columbine.
There was this reticence at the studio now about
getting into violent material with kids.
You know, and a couple of years passed,
and Ronny Yu was gonna be in town
for the premiere of "Freddy vs. Jason."
So I called Jennifer, and I said, like,
"Okay, you got to go to this with me
because we have to, like, be on the red carpet and be seen."
And sure enough, "Freddy vs. Jason" made
30, $40 million that weekend.
And literally, on that Monday, we got the call.
And, you know, we had the script from several years before.
-I thought the script was hysterical.
I'd never read anything quite like it.
I thought it was a --
I just thought it was very, very funny.
-I thought it would be a cool source of comedic conflict
for Chucky's child to be a pacifist.
The Glen/Glenda character is informed
by those family melodramas.
He even references James Dean at one point.
-You're tearing me apart! -You're tearing me apart!
-Trash cinema is a thing that has value,
so having a character who was a cross-dresser,
it just made sense to go to
the ultimate trash classic, "Glen or Glenda,"
as a metaphor for a queer kid's
tense relationship with his macho dad,
who expects the kid to follow in his footsteps
and be a real man and kill people.
-That's my boy!
-As far as the direction of the film,
I had said to Don that, after "Bride of Chucky,"
I was so impressed by his contributions
as a producer that I felt now he was ready.
-I had wanted to direct.
That was always my goal.
Making that transition, it was incredibly exciting.
-He had had that goal for a long time,
so he was ready, and I loved being there with him.
-It was a delight to see him finally in control.
It had been his baby all along.
-He has everything planned out so meticulously
and such a strong idea
of what he wants with every little thing.
-He is without doubt the best-prepared director
that I've ever worked with.
He storyboards, and there isn't a frame of a film
that Don has not thought about in 27 different directions.
-"Seed of Chucky" so then was taken in by Focus Features.
-It was a smaller division,
and there was a great guy there named David Linde.
-David Linde said, "Let's go, and let's make the movie."
-We were told that Romania would be the best place.
-We ended up scouting Romania pretty quickly.
We were up and running, looking forward to making the movie.
Kevin Yagher was very much involved,
but, ultimately, the studio, Focus,
was not able to make a deal with him.
-Losing Kevin was terrifying,
but it was a financial decision with the studio.
-I started doing design, so I, you know,
designed the kid and brought back,
you know, the two other characters
and began to work on it.
But just sometimes things fall apart in negotiations.
-Oh, dear.
-The studio said, "Well, you know,
why don't you just move to CGI?"
And Don said, "The fans will go crazy.
They do not want that. They want the puppet."
-So that was a real blow.
But David Kirschner had a relationship with Tony Gardner,
also someone who has his own
amazing bona fides in this world.
-My relationship with David Kirschner
started with "Hocus Pocus,"
and I recall getting calls
from David's office at one point.
They had a project with a talking baby in it,
and it was just this gradual sort of thing
where, all of a sudden, it turned into,
"Well, we've been having conversations with Universal
about 'Seed of Chucky' and Kevin Yagher,
and we don't think it's going to happen."
-It certainly wasn't greed on my part.
They wanted me to be able to go over to Romania
or whatever, wherever they shot it,
and bring one puppeteer. Me and one other person,
and I said, "I need to bring a group of people
who can repair these things if they break down."
And they just didn't want that done.
-I was crestfallen because Kevin was the guy
who first engineered and built Chucky
and has been puppeteering him and leading the puppeteers
over the course of the four movies and 10 years.
-I don't think I necessarily grew out of
doing "Child's Play," but you do go on
to do other things, and so you kind of go,
"I'm kind of done with that, you know,
and I'll leave it as it is.
You know, I'm proud of what I did."
-I mean, we were terrified.
We just didn't know what we were going to do.
-David Kirschner's words were,
"Well, if you don't do it, someone else is going to."
And I was like, "Okay."
-I met with Tony and saw, you know,
the amazing things that he's done in his career.
-We contacted archives,
and they had just the saddest two stunt dolls.
But there was really nothing for us to start with.
-He also brought in all the puppeteers --
13 puppeteers per puppet.
-I got the unlucky reward of going to Romania.
for four months to be one of the puppeteers.
-At the time, the only reference we had
was watching it on TV, freeze framing the VHS,
taking photos off of the TV, and then developing those.
-We started from scratch, so we rebuilt Chucky and Tiffany
and then created a new Glen puppet.
-It was important that Glen have an androgynous look,
based on where the story was going.
Tim Burton meets Ziggy Stardust.
-Pointy teeth and a more angular, narrower face.
-Jutting high cheekbones and giant dark eyes
that look like death.
-We went through a bunch of iterations,
and everybody had a lot to say about it.
-But we went for it. We had three months
to build three characters and do duplicates of them,
so really six puppets, and throw it all in a box
and fly off to Romania and figure it out there.
-As the film continued gestating,
everyone's attention turned to casting.
That meant the surprising return of Chucky's one true love,
the reveal of a genuine Hollywood diva,
and finding the perfect voice for Chucky and Tiffany's
captivating and sympathetic offspring.
-When Don called me up and he said,
"Oh, we want to bring you back for 'Seed of Chucky,'"
I was confused 'cause I said, "Didn't Tiffany die
at the end of 'Bride of Chucky'?"
And he laughed, and he goes,
nobody ever really dies in these movies.
It's voodoo. I mean, we can always bring them back."
-It was great having Jennifer there.
I deliberately planned it that way.
-He basically took all the worst aspects of me
and made the Jennifer Tilly creation,
like, this really insecure,
narcissistic, self-involved actress, which we loved.
-Everything we did was
with Jennifer's enthusiastic endorsement.
-And I said to Don, "You have to make me
the horrible diva movie star from hell."
You know, I should have played Erin Brockovich.
I could have done it without the WonderBra.
-Going back to work and walking in a booth
where Jennifer is there is, like, really exciting.
-And then I had to find the new Brad Dourif,
the new Jennifer Tilly, the new great actor
who was going to be able to sell all of this
and play both characters, Glen and Glenda.
-We heard a host of voices.
Don really sparked to Billy Boyd.
-The way he voiced that character was adorable,
and the character was very vulnerable.
-It's because of the way I look, isn't it?
-There's just this sweet quality that he had.
And intelligence.
-Yeah, Dad, it'll be fun.
-He just really did a great job
of bringing the pathos and the sweetness of that character,
and I think that's why Glen/Glenda is so beloved.
-We were going to distinguish the voices.
We knew that we wanted Glen to basically be Pip
from "Great Expectations."
-Tell us your name -- quick!
-Pip. Pip, sir.
-But for Glen's female side,
what about, like, a Cockney streetwalker?
-[Gasp] I'm a real "lady killer,"
if you catch my drift.
-And that's really what Glenda is.
You know, just that kind of,
like, "Freshen your drink, guvnor?"
-With cast, crew, and brand-new animatronic creations
ready to play -- and slay --
"Seed of Chucky" went before the cameras on March 15, 2004.
-So, the title sequence
I actually wrote into the script,
even seeing Jennifer Tilly's name on screen
as Chucky's seed comes slowly.
I wanted it to be an icky, pervy version
of the Bond gun-barrel thing.
-Like anything Don does, there's an extraordinary
amount of work that goes on behind the scenes.
-Richard Morrison had done "Batman" for Tim Burton
and a couple of his other films,
so this seemed like a marriage made in heaven.
♪♪
The opening scene is
at once an homage to "Halloween,"
then we move into "Psycho,"
where he kills the woman in the bathtub.
♪♪
-[Screams]
-Glen is this poor, tortured soul in this cage
and treated as a performing rat, essentially.
-Glen is meant to be a Dickensian orphan type,
much abused.
It seemed like a ventriloquist would be the best abuser.
-You were shit last night.
-Psychs is a reference to Dickens.
-And then he sees on TV the behind-the-scenes
of the Chucky film being made.
-Fuck with your mind!
-Chucky's broke again!
-We needed this actor to do this one scene
in the film within the film.
A guy said, "What about my friend Jason Flemyng?"
And I said, like, "Fuck! Awesome."
So, Jason Flemyng agreed to do it,
and he flew in, um...
complained a lot.
-[Shouts]
-Jason Flemyng had to play Santa
and schlep all these packages through the snow,
and he gets killed by Tiffany with a slinky around his neck.
And it was totally goofy, stupid stuff.
-I'd be interested to know more why
this was such an unpleasant experience for him.
-This is unprofessional, and I can't work like this!
-I don't -- Like, I don't know.
-We're here in Hollywood, where production is underway
on the new horror flick "Chucky Goes Psycho."
-I had another thought -- "Chucky, Actually" --
because "Love, Actually" was right around that time.
Nobody found that funny.
-So everybody's sort of, like, either themselves
or a variation of somebody else in the room,
which was pretty hilarious at times.
-I think "Seed of Chucky" is really interesting
for being a commentary on Hollywood.
It was so incredibly meta.
-I see it in terms of how Don was adapting
to where the genre was.
It's self-referential.
-I played Don Mancini being directed by Don Mancini.
-Tony, what was that?
-And here's Tony Gardner as Tony Gardner.
[Gears whirring] -[Gasps]
-There you go.
-I need to take a meeting with this Redman right away.
-When Redman was cast for the film,
the studio really wanted someone kind of cool, edgy.
-My dream casting was Quentin Tarantino.
I didn't know Quentin Tarantino.
I still don't know Quentin Tarantino.
-He wanted an actual indie director to direct it.
-I was considering Vincent Gallo,
and Jennifer goes, "Oh, no, no."
[Laughs]
'Cause she had worked with him, and she just said,
"No, he will eat you alive."
-The studio was like,
"Oh, Redman would be a great indie director."
-Universal suggested Redman.
-Yo, Redman here.
I'm on the scene at "Seed of Chucky."
-I liked him, and he's charismatic.
-Don thought it was funny the way I said Redman.
Is it "Red man," "Red man"? -"Red man."
-"Red man," okay. I would always say "Red-muhn."
-Oh, that's so sweet, Redman.
-He was an absolute gentleman, a pro.
I had no idea if this guy could even act.
-Man, this was meant to be, baby, for real.
-But he did, and he was great in the film.
-Action. -[Grunts]
-[Laughs] -And cut.
-They're puppets.
-They don't walk and talk by themselves.
-So I always had this concept of the puppeteer
getting killed by the puppet.
Originally, it was going to be Kevin.
-I remember having to do an audition at Don's house
on Don's kitchen table,
strapped down, and the dolls performing "Operation!" on me.
-"Is Tony gonna be able to do this?"
But we realized he could.
-The day of the shoot,
I remember it was super schizophrenic for me
because I'm acting as this guy, wearing specific wardrobe.
The guy's name is Tony Gardner.
So you're playing this part, and then when they say cut,
and then you're Tony Gardner, the effects guy,
setting up the puppet version of yourself
for how you're gonna die.
-And it's just, again, Don Mancini, meta.
-And that, to this day, remains one of my favorite kills
in the whole franchise.
♪♪
It just goes off like a cork.
-When they did the scene of it rolling up in the air
towards camera, they actually had it on a spit,
and we were rolling it like this,
and the camera was pushing in towards it and pulling out.
And then they actually filmed me in a green suit,
and they comped my eyes
right before it starts to fall back down,
so that they could have more realistic eyes in there.
-Pete Peters, "Celebrities Revealed."
-And I thought like, "Oh, it'd be great
to have John in the movie.
So the way I was able to communicate with him
was through Tony Gardner.
-I was super thrilled that that Don wanted
to hire John Waters to be in it.
-I had heard from Justin Whalin, actually,
years before, that John Waters was a fan
'cause Justin worked with John in "Serial Mom."
-John Waters was a big Chucky fan,
and he said that he really wanted
to get killed by Chucky. -You know,
he was insistent on coming on and playing a role,
so that he could be killed by Chucky.
-Well, I loved all the "Chucky" movies,
and I jumped at the chance, you know,
because, uh, I like to be in movies
that maybe people won't expect to see me in.
-Don was able to get John to come on board.
-He said, "Yes, I'm completely on board.
This is going to be great." -Plus, I got to go to Romania
for the only time in my whole life I ever went there.
-I was so surprised and thrilled
that John Waters said yes, I think that Don had that dream,
like in his pocket the whole time.
-He improvised a couple of his best, most memorable lines.
-I'm confronted by reporters, and one of them is John Waters,
and he's screaming questions at me.
And I remember I was kind of annoyed,
because he was ad-libbing.
-Jennifer, how old are you really?
-I'm like, "That wasn't in the script."
Like, "Hey, stop it.
Stop bringing attention to my age."
-Did I? I'm usually against ad-libbing.
I'm -- If -- If I did, they asked me to.
I would never butt in
and do that, because I respect the writers.
[Indistinct conversations] -Jennifer, I love you.
I...
Jennifer, I love you.
-I was between boyfriends at the time,
and I remember Don was like,
"I'm gonna get you a really attractive straight guy
to be the chauffeur."
And then, I showed up on the set, I was kind of like,
thinking like, "Oh, hello, here I am.
Where's my set romance?"
And it was Steve, and I was like,
"Oh, he's not my type. He's more Don's type."
[Laughter]
-Jennifer, I have something important I --
-Hold on a second, sweetheart.
-Considering the context that Jennifer Tilly
was playing Jennifer Tilly,
and I was this London actor pretending to be,
you know, an American chauffeur, uh, in love with Jennifer Tilly.
That wasn't that difficult.
-So, it was actually very touching,
like, how devoted he was towards me
and how she sort of saw him as sort of an extension
of the steering wheel that drove her home.
-Aren't you gonna give me a hand here?
-Chucky is masturbating to Fangoria,of course.
-Ah. -I think he was looking
at a picture of Don Mancini.
-I do remember, though, for legal reasons,
we had to mock up our own cover,
but we have the actual Fangorialogo.
They definitely endorsed the moment.
It's like "Seed of Chucky," brought to you by Fangoria.
-Come to Papa.
-You know what? I don't remember that. [Laughs]
-It was often...
uh, almost unbelievable what we were doing.
-I -- I -- Was I masturbating?
-Tony and the puppeteers were very on board
with going for this kind of John Waters,
you know, trash, you know, obscenity vibe.
-While we were laughing, we were all so amazed that, uh,
somebody would be bold enough to make something this crazy.
-You know, and to actually see Chucky's dick,
which you can in the unrated version.
It was scripted and we did it and we shot it.
But from the powers that be, there was some squeamishness.
-I -- I love the idea of the exploration of --
of Glen/Glenda.
I just thought, personally, we got a bit base with,
um, masturbation and -- and seeing,
um, semen in a cup.
-What am I supposed to do with this?
-You know, so what? It's fine. [Laughs]
-I like that. -Good for Don.
Good for the movie.
-Get it, mini meat.
-Well, Chucky's kind of beyond taste.
I mean, Chucky masturbating is,
at first, you get nervous, but he must be 18 by now.
-John Waters is there watching it,
which was a great running commentary in and of itself.
-I love the idea, because you never see monsters having sex
or masturbating or especially masturbating.
-And you have to really over exaggerate your moves
for it to translate down into this puppet that's down,
you know, 15 feet of cable.
One of our British puppeteers, Andy Garner, drew the straw
of having to puppeteer Chucky's arms for that scene.
-So, when you have all those people trying to tap
into kind of what they know about what Chucky is doing, uh,
it just became extremely hilarious.
-Where are we going? -Hunting.
-The story is set in Hollywood.
I thought it would be fun for Chucky
to sort of casually run some celebrity off the road.
Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne were being considered,
but at some point, our casting director had an actress
who was the spitting image of Britney Spears.
-It's the height of Britney Spears fame.
-The double is so convincing.
-That's why it was Britney Spears
specifically that Chucky killed.
Not because I have anything against Britney Spears.
-[Laughs] Oops, I did it again.
-So, anyway, Britney, you're awesome.
-Jesus Christ.
-Who wouldn't want to kill John Waters?
I mean, it was just great. No, I'm kidding.
He was amazing. -The very first take,
Glen is coming over to me, and they say "Cut!"
And of course, the puppet goes blank.
And then, he looked up at me and said, "Fuck you" like that,
because the puppeteers were under there
just trying to fuck with me.
-John loved Glen, so it made it even more special.
-The melting of his face, it's "Raiders"
when the Nazi looks into the Ark of the Covenant.
-Killing him was really fun,
but we did a prosthetic makeup on him with some goo tubing
and slime and stuff like that in it.
-Making the mask was much scarier
than having Glen or Chucky come after me.
-John was super graceful and super witty as always,
never at a loss for words.
-And he was also really beneficial to me.
He was just like very calming, you know?
And he was like saying, "Yeah, you just gotta, you know,
take a step back and think of it --
Look at the big picture.
It's brick by motherfucking brick."
So, yeah, it was a lot of fun to work with such a legend.
-I'm thrilled to be in "Chucky." Bring me back.
I want to be in another one.
[Knife slices]
-Tiffany doesn't like how Redman has been treating
Jennifer Tilly, and so she disemboweled him.
-The rig on him for that was a big fake stomach
on a vest that literally opened up in the center
along the cut line of Tiffany's knife.
-And I remember there were so many guts,
there were so many intestines, I was like,
"Do people really have that many intestines in them?"
-Don got a great shot when he dies.
It's very, very Hitchcock.
-I feel like he and -- and John Waters
both really enjoyed
dying by the hands of these -- these puppets.
-[Crying] -Tiff.
-[Laughs]
-Glen/Glenda turns out to be, uh, homicidal,
just like his parents.
-Glen has split and -- and manifested as Glenda,
and their parents are very confused about what to do.
-Glen? -Guess again, Daddy.
-Glenda?
-The idea of trying to -- to bring a transgender character
to life was a great challenge, and it was taken very seriously.
-To take Glen to Glenda.
It was really all about, um, a makeup makeover
on the actual puppet.
-It kind of struck me how forward it was
and how forward Don was putting that in
back then. -I didn't think of it, like,
we were doing anything out of the box or ahead of its time.
I was focused on trying to be true to the character.
-People are very touchy about the subject.
Um, I think it treats it with great respect.
-That sort of nod to someone, like,
Ed Wood and to trans people and to,
you know, all of us queer freaks and weirdos.
You know, that's who that moment was for.
We got that that was being presented in a loving,
respectful, uh, gracious way.
-And I felt empathy towards the character.
And I wanted everything to be real, because without that,
there's -- there's no story.
To me, there's no heart.
-Wake up right now! -[Laughs]
-[Gasps] -Tiffany slaps Glenda and --
and then, Glen comes back,
and there's that moment where -- where they look in the mirror.
It says, "What am I?"
That like, again, maybe,
because I'm gay and my, you know,
like, I played a version of that scene
as all or most gay men do when they're growing up.
So, it hit home, I think, for me and for, you know,
gay audiences, as it turned out.
-Push, Miss Tilly, push! -[Breathing heavily]
-I am pushing you little star fucker!
-Then, I had to have a baby birthing scene.
I'd never birthed a baby before in -- in real life,
so that was a lot of screaming.
I just screamed like it was a horror film.
-Tiffany is attending,
and Chucky is like the nervous father waiting in the wings.
-All the bed scene stuff we didn't think was fair,
because all the human actors basically had to do
is lay there with gags in their mouths.
-I do remember Don apologizing a lot for the fact
that I had a sock in my mouth.
-So, it wasn't like I was attractive, tied to the bed.
I was like this big beached whale, and a lot of times,
like, my feet would be in the foreground,
tied to the bed stand.
So, I was like, "I have looked more attractive in the past."
I'm trying to seduce you.
-I think I do remember asking Jennifer how she keeps going,
and she -- she just said, she just does.
-And it was kind of relaxing,
because I didn't really have to do anything,
just acting with my eyes, mostly.
-If that's what she does, then that's what I'm going to do.
-[Groans] -[Screams]
-The action of throwing with a mechanical arm,
and then, the whip hand to the -- to the impact
of the knife, I thought, were great.
-The knife -- I think the knife is CGI.
-He takes the knife in his chest to save her.
-So, then, I could throw myself
back onto Jennifer's lap into frame,
splurt the blood everywhere, and then, have the -- I --
I love -- I love it up, which was not difficult,
because I was choking on ketchup blood.
-In the first draft,
he finally gets out, "I love you."
Jennifer Tilly's response was "Thanks!"
And then, he dies, and we had to pull that back.
-Stan, tell me, tell me. [Baby wailing]
-And yeah, I love the fact I didn't get to say I love you.
I still think that's great.
-To the very end, he's still trying to get it out,
and he dies before he can, uh, say it.
-[Screams] -No!
-I honestly don't know how many times Jennifer Tilly
has died in this franchise at this point,
because whether it's me or someone else,
there's so many different versions of everybody.
-I love the scene where Glen/Glenda
is killing their dad.
-He chops Chucky up,
and Chucky finally is proud of him.
-Weirdly, he seems to really care about his son.
-Atta boy, kid.
-He goes, "Atta boy," and then dies.
-It's so beautiful. The rage comes from love.
Like, why don't you love me enough?
And, you know, I have to do this to you,
because you are evil, and you need to be obliterated.
-This murder was committed by Glen, not Glenda.
You know, Glenda is gleeful about killing.
Glen does not enjoy it.
And so, he's traumatized, and he breaks down in tears.
-This little kid had endured so much.
-And I remember when we shot that scene
where she's comforting the sobbing puppet,
we were all kind of, like, "Oh, God, that -- that's sad."
[Kids shouting playfully] It's a birthday party
with 60 Romanian children
running around as extras.
That was a lot.
-You have an homage to Mommie Dearest,
where she's having that children's birthday party.
-Tiffany has taken over Jennifer's life,
but now she's looking like Joan Crawford.
-And then, she takes the Tiffany doll,
and she pummels that sweet nanny to death.
And I loved how deranged Tiffany became
once she got into Jennifer Tilly's body.
I thought there was so much greatness in this film,
but the audience did not take to it.
It wasn't what they expected, especially Universal.
After "Seed of Chucky," they're like, "Okay,
now, you guys have had your fun.
Can we go back to Chucky being scary again?"
-There was a lot of eye rolling.
They trusted Don and I, and in their minds, we let them down.
-"Seed of Chucky" blasted onto movie screens
on November 11th, 2004, opening at #5
with a final global tally of less than $25 million.
Audiences and critics alike were divided.
Still, those who lent their talents to the project
will always remember the pleasure,
pain, and possibilities
of bringing the out of the Good Guy box idea to life.
-"Seed of Chucky" didn't get many great reviews,
but it did get some.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Wesley Morris did like it.
-By the time "Seed of Chucky" came out,
you'd had years of these
scream-influenced, self-reflexive horror movies.
And I just think critics were like, "I've heard this.
I've seen this kind of thing before."
And it kind of blinded them
to the strengths of the movie, and some of the very weird ways
in which the movie's really interesting.
-A horror movie is supposed to fit within a specific box,
and this sticks its hands out
in -- in a couple of different directions.
-That's something that horror does really well
is it makes things scary, but it also creates
an opportunity for discussion and conversation.
And I think that the best thing to help with fear
and bigotry is honest, open conversation.
-We're doing something that was like a little bit risky.
I think, something that people perhaps didn't think we were
going to be able to do as well as we were able to do it,
and it was just a fun experience all around.
-It was literally 7 days a week, every day.
The learning curve was massive,
and the work required was intense,
but I loved every minute of it. -It seemed so
rich, colorful, and so alive
that I forgot about the weeks and weeks of filming.
-It was kind of surreal to see what I'd been in
and been doing on the screen.
It was a lot more out there than I realized for a horror movie.
-You know? I was thrilled.
You know, I loved the "Chucky" thing.
That's what I get recognized for being in the "Chucky" movie,
not my film careers or not other stuff.
It was just great to be in it, and I was honored.
I still am honored.
-You know, when I saw "Seed," I thought --
I thought it worked, I really had fun.
-Like, now, when people are ranking the "Chucky" movies,
and they -- they refer to it
as the film that almost killed the franchise.
[Laughs] I'm like, "Oh, my God,
that was like one of my very favorite films."
But I think people weren't ready for it.
-Just being a few years ahead of your time
is still significant,
and may have been part of the reason
why the movie didn't do as well.
-I'm so glad that over the years
that it seems to be finding a bigger audience.
-It's made an impact on, you know,
the LGBTQ+ community
in a way that I hadn't really anticipated.
-I'm very proud of -- of what Don created
with the idea of -- of this trans child,
and very proud to have my name on that.
-I am proud of that movie.
I stick a big middle finger in the faces of the people
who to this day,
will contact me on social media and call me a faggot,
and, um, you know, tell me I ruined my own franchise.
-Up yours, asshole!
-I feel like if people were offended by the queerness
and -- and how the queerness was received,
I think that was the point.
-I often devolve into defensiveness
when talking about "Seed of Chucky,"
although, it's getting better as the years go on,
because it really does help to hear people
say that they like the movie.
And I didn't waste those years of my life.
-Great art sometimes takes time for people
to appreciate it.
♪♪
[Dramatic music plays, thunder cracking]
♪♪
-After 2004, "Seed of Chucky"
failed to bear Universal its hoped for box office fruit.
8 years would pass before the studio
finally showed interest in another dance
with their diminutive devil.
-So, after "Seed of Chucky,"
you know the movie didn't do well.
So the -- the franchise kind of went fallow for a while.
-I was approached by Glenn Ross,
who heads up a division at Universal
for streaming called 1440.
And Glenn said to me, "I'd like to do a 'Chucky' movie."
-They were interested in doing it
as a direct to video film.
-Glenn did not want Don to direct,
but there was no way that that was going to happen.
-It wouldn't have happened
if David Kirschner hadn't supported it.
-He either was going to make it with Don and I,
or we weren't going to make it, and they acquiesced.
-There were a lot of remakes happening,
"Nightmare On Elm Street," "Friday The 13th."
So, we did briefly discuss doing that sort of thing,
but I think both David and I were more interested
in a tonal reboot rather than a strict remake.
-[Screams]
-To me, this was kind of like the -- the series starting over.
You know, we're going back to the basics.
One doll, one environment. It's a horror movie.
-And it was going back to roots of --
of just trying to do a scary movie.
The idea was, is that we had to go back to the first movie.
And again, Don went about that
in a brilliant way. -You know, we just said
"Well, let's -- let's do it scary again."
I took a lot of inspiration from Hitchcock's
one set films, you know, movies like "Rear Window"
and "Dial M for Murder" and "Rope"
and "Lifeboat" and "Lady in a Cage."
[Doorbell rings] -Hello!
-So, I came up with this story, and I thought of like,
"Who could be a new protagonist?"
-Someone imprisoned in their home.
-Over the years, people who don't like the franchise,
like Dee Snider, for example.
-Yeah, I remember "Child's Play."
It was a freaking joke and an embarrassment
to horror movies everywhere.
-Over the years, he would say, like, he hated "Chucky,"
and one of the reasons was like, he could just kick him.
And I thought, like, "What if you can't kick him?"
-I think that that's where he did have the idea
that, uh, this would be a disabled woman
that's being terrified by some unseen force
that is coming from within the house.
-A disabled young woman without the use of her legs.
She is in a unique position of vulnerability to Chucky.
-It was like an old Hammer movie.
This is great. This is a haunted house movie with Chucky in it.
-As the franchise looked to explore a new story
and new direction, the question remained,
"Who would bring the wheelchair bound heroine to life?"
The answer, someone with Chucky already in their blood.
-Casting Nica was, you know, one of the first challenges,
one of the first things that was important to do.
-So, I spent 6 years at MGM.
And when I left to start my own company,
I made a lot of friends, Lisa Gooding in particular.
She entrusted me with quite a few of the Universal franchises,
and then she introduced me to Don Mancini,
and it was like love at first sight.
-I saw a lot of actresses, because what I hadn't found yet
in the actresses that I had seen,
I wasn't believing any of them in the wheelchair.
-The character of Nica is so powerful,
because usually, um, you don't see an --
an alternatively-abled, um, person in a lead role.
-And, you know, as it happens, I'm talking to Brad a lot,
because he's one of my main collaborators in all of this.
-Don called me up and asked if I knew of an edgy actress.
And I said, "You know what? I kind of do."
My daughter's actually is in -- is really good,
and she's kind of edgy.
He said, you should see Fiona. -Okay.
-The "Child's Play" franchise growing up
was just this thing that made me cooler to kids in school.
I've never been scared of Chucky.
Chucky just sounds like my dad.
-We were so excited when we -- when we put Fiona
into the mix. -I had been in "True Blood,"
and I had done some independent movies.
-[Singing] [Clapping]
-She initially had been submitted by her agent
to read for the role of Barb.
-I auditioned for it, and then I got a, um, call back saying,
"Actually, we'd like you to read for Nica."
-Don knew it was really important
who he would cast as Nica.
And I remember one day, he was really excited,
and he sent me some footage of Fiona Dourif in his scene
and he goes, "This is the person I'm thinking of casting."
And I said, "Oh, my God, she's amazing. She's brilliant."
-And Don called me up and said, "You know, um,
there's something about her
that, um, I think she should play the lead."
-She also reminded me a little bit of Amy Irving,
who I always loved in those De Palma movies,
"Carrie" and "The Fury."
Amy just has, like, this vivid portrayal
of emotional trauma.
Fiona had that as well.
-I was excited by it. I was terrified to be in it.
But yeah, I was excited to make it.
I was like, "This is very cool."
-With Chucky now poised to rise from the ashes
and raise hell once again, writer and director
Don Mancini worked to summon a team
to bring his vision and villain to life.
-We went and checked out Winnipeg,
and one of the first people I met there was Mike Marshall,
who was our DP. -We hit it off.
Don liked Winnipeg,
because it was kind of laid back, casual, and arty.
One of the things I said was,
"Let's secretly make an art film here."
-I wanted to do the Victorian house
that was kind of crumbling.
-The house was actually built
for one of the "Home Alone" sequels,
and then, they gutted part of it and added the elevator,
and then, made the whole thing look old and rotten.
-This cage elevator
that we had to have a forklift on the other side
with a winch on it, just pulled this thing.
So, that's what would bring it up and down,
because we couldn't afford to create a real elevator.
-[Laughs] -[Screams]
-A couple of things happened after "Seed."
We were told by archives, no one wants to do another Chucky film,
and everything has been thrown away.
All the puppets, all the animatronics.
-All the fabric to make the doll clothes and all of that stuff,
um, had been gotten rid of.
-Literally everything, we had to start over.
It was sort of a chance to prove that rod puppetry would work.
-We could transform the puppets from these,
you know, remotely-controlled dolls
to much more direct hand puppets.
-We did the whole business with guys
with sticks dressed in black
behind them that we're going to paint
out of the shots later.
-Shots are done with a puppeteer standing right
next to Chucky with a rod out the top of his head,
and that was a major departure
from all of the previous "Chucky" movies.
-When Brad does the line recording,
we would ask them to film him,
because we really focused on the body language.
-You can't call this living.
-And tried to match his gesturing and stuff like that.
-You can see my -- my dad's gesticulations
or whatever, in like a 3 ft, [Laughs],
you know, plastic doll, which is really interesting.
-I had never seen the doll work with puppeteers
and my voice.
[Laughs]
And it was delightful.
-With a new lead pushing the boundaries
of what had come before, and crew contracts inked in blood,
the old dark house was ready to welcome its guests
as "Curse of Chucky" began filming on September 5, 2012.
-The discovery of my mother dead.
It was horrifying. I remember I lost my voice a couple times.
-Oh, my God! -Don called me
and actually asked me if I wanted
to play Nica's mother, and I was like, "Yeah."
Count me in, I'll do that. This is exciting.
I'm really happy to come back to the franchise,
even if it's not as Kyle, and then, they couldn't do it,
because they had to hire a Canadian actress.
-Well, I think one of my favorite bits as the DP
is the first time the family comes to the house
and they come inside.
-From the moment Danielle Bisutti
came in to read for the role of Barb,
I thought, "Oh, my God. We have our Barb."
She is an amazing mixture of bougie,
decisive, alpha, and sexy.
My uncle Tony Thomopoulos worked for United Artists.
I do remember as a little girl
walking down the stairs into their theater room,
and there was that iconic poster of "Child's Play,"
and that poster would haunt me.
-Danielle Bisutti, loved her. -She's an excellent actress.
-We're gonna have to send Alice to public school.
-And she's so had her heart set on Saint Bridget's.
-And I don't want to deprive my child.
-Barb has one thing. It's an agenda. Okay?
And fabulous hair.
-I loved working with Danielle Bisutti.
She uses Father Frank as a prop.
It was interesting that Don Mancini decided
to bring Father Frank into the -- the story
and have him function from that point of view, the appetites,
the needs, the agenda of the church.
-I had been a particular fan
of A Martinez's performance in "She-Devil."
He's really hilarious in that movie,
and he has this really funny line.
-I may be the butler.
But I'm not the maid.
-He would sometimes even do it to me,
because he knew I would laugh at it.
-A Martinez is such a pro. He's so calm.
-I was so excited when the studio said yes to A Martinez.
-My mom watched soaps my whole life
and was like obsessed with him, and I told her,
I said, "I'm working with A Martinez today."
And she felt I had -- I had arrived.
Is that a new chair?
-Uh, yeah. [Chuckles] -It's cool.
-Brennan has an amazing strength,
and he's a wonderful mixture of soulfulness and virility.
-Barb does wear the pants in the family.
Ian was always the shrinking violet in the relationship.
-So, I was doing my thing,
getting to that place of feeling kind of broken down
as a father. -Brennan was like
another incredibly experienced TV actor.
There was nothing he couldn't do.
-Come here you.
-Summer Howell was just this sweet, angelic,
professional, uh, little actress.
I think she was probably 6 or 7. -It was actually
my second audition ever, so, I was very new to it.
And honestly, I was so young
and didn't know anything about horror to begin with.
Never mind "Chucky."
So, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
-Summer did a really wonderful job.
She is an amazing little girl
that had so much depth and maturity.
-I just got to be myself and a young kid excited to explore,
meet my new friend Chucky.
Great, let's get cooking.
-Oh, dear God in heaven. The chili scene.
-Everybody's having dinner and Don has a camera above
that is slowly moving around the table.
-That was a concept that I had actually put into a script
I had written for this movie, "Cellar Dweller."
It didn't make it into "Cellar Dweller,"
so, I put it into "Curse of Chucky."
-The rotating, of course,
was the hardest part, because we had barely
enough room to get all the equipment
and lenses and all the stuff up there.
-And it visually evokes the feeling of a gun barrel.
-It's like Russian roulette with chili.
-We spent a lot of time shooting all that stuff.
-I think that scene took 2 days to shoot.
-And that had lots of footage.
And lots of choices.
-He creates this agonizing slow burn of -- of...
"Where is the poison?" -He, you know,
put all those false flags in there
to make you think it was the girl
or it was -- it was Brennan. -Yeah.
I felt like I was in a Hitchcock movie for a moment there.
-That's the stuff that --
that gives the kills more of a payoff.
-Though, in the first second, you're going,
"Well, who gets this?" Then, you realize, "Okay,
obviously, A Martinez's character."
-We're waiting for the bead of sweat to appear
on Father Frank's forehead.
I've died many times, and this was my favorite,
because I think it's just the most, um, indelible.
-He's my sponsor.
-Stanton, you're gonna need a drink after you see this.
-When I first started working with A Martinez, there's this --
The star power that kind of radiates off of him.
I think for Officer Stanton, he was a lot like I was, actually.
Uh, he wasn't really sure what he was doing.
-This was the film where I learned the lesson
that you do not do makeup effects
and animatronic effects on the same show,
or else your head will explode.
-First time, the blood squirted too intensely.
It was comic, you know, once my head came off,
there was a geyser of blood coming out
that was inappropriate.
-It was a little over pressurized,
and so, the jet of blood went way up in the air,
and it took out the B camera crew,
who were not prepared for a jet of blood, like 40 ft away.
-Just erupted on everything and everyone.
The camera was soaked. We were soaked.
-Luckily, the second take worked fine,
and that's the one we used.
-His death was great. -And you're like,
"Is that how they do that? That's incredible."
[Thunder cracks]
-Need a hand?
-Now, let's talk about Barb and Jill.
-You introduce the hot young nanny in the mix.
-I thought it was really cool that you assumed,
based on stereotypes, that it's Ian and the nanny.
-Actually, no. The mom's having an affair with her.
-The red herring that is my secret love affair with Jill.
[Smooches] The nanny.
-The twist with the nanny
was one of my favorite things about reading the script.
I was like, "Oh, how is this? Whoa! They made out."
-Whoa! It's Barb!
-And I remember Danielle and Maitland
were, uh, were -- were laughing about it,
and we're really excited to shoot it.
-I mean, you see how juicy her lips look.
We made sure we had our little --
our little breath mint beforehand.
-What were Don's words, at one point, he -- he tries to put
a little bit more gay in every -- in every movie.
-Like, at this point, I felt like, "Okay,
we're the -- we're the gay horror franchise,
so we've got to do it somehow."
[Alarm ringing] -Coming.
-I had initially even, I think, toyed with the idea of maybe --
maybe making Nica gay.
-One thing I love about "Child's Play"
is that it -- it -- it has this LGBT theme throughout it
and doesn't shy away from it and has fun with it.
-And then, Chucky takes both of them out.
He just dumps over the water, and that's it.
-I knew she was a hot number,
but I didn't know, like, that she was electric.
Too soon. Is it too soon? [Laughs]
Oh.
-When Danielle goes into the attic,
and she sees the Chucky doll there,
and she looks at it, she's staring at it,
and you're so scared he's going to jump out
and do something. -But then, of course,
I find the butcher knife.
[Ominous notes play]
It was like half of Chucky
and half of me and the blade.
It's so iconic and so beautiful.
-She is peeling, you know, his little makeup appliances
that he's put on to hide his stitches,
so that he can present as adorable.
-Scar Chucky is disguised as the Good Guy.
He's got a -- a sort of a prosthetic face on,
how Chucky learned prosthetics, I don't know.
-This is the iconic Chucky
coming back to wreak havoc once more.
-His need to dominate, his need to get revenge,
or his need to murder somebody
is actually so entrenched in himself
that -- that he -- that he will go
to the lengths that he goes to.
-We sort of took that story point and had some fun with it,
and did sort of like a plastic surgery
sort of vibe to the mouth, and the fans hated it.
They were just like, "Chucky doesn't look like Chucky."
And it's like, he's got a skin over his skin.
And here's a little hint that something's wrong.
But, uh, in hindsight, I think we went too far with it.
I think we had too much fun.
-And out of nowhere, Chucky just comes up and --
[Both scream]
Even though, I've seen it a million times, I still jump.
-I may have wet my pants just a little bit.
-And then, her payoff was she got stabbed in the head.
-[Screams]
-Enucleation is what that's called.
[Imitates knife cut] You know, removing of an eye.
It's very disturbing, a little,
I guess, a little homage to "Eyes of Laura Mars,"
and if not boon, well.
-It was literally just a dummy head
with a knife and an alignment,
so, it would go into the eye in the right place.
-And then,
popped out of my skull,
and then, tumbling down the stairs.
[Screams]
-And more time was spent trying to get
that eyeball... -Action.
-...to bounce down the stairs.
-In the perfect place for Chucky to squash.
It was a process,
uh, that was disgusting.
-Oh, my God. -[Breathing heavily]
-Nica, what have you done? -My big death scene.
-On paper, it didn't give it justice to the day I was there.
I was like, "You're serious?
This is the way we're going to do it."
-We did it. You know, old school.
It was really fun to plan.
-Say hi to the little woman for me.
-No, not the face!
That's his moneymaker! -How could you do it?
He's so pretty.
-It was going to involve the very simple reversal
of the camera thing.
-Then, we cut to a dummy head of Brennan
with a jaw that was removable.
-We did the head cast, which was awesome.
I wanted his mouth open wide and see his tongue.
-When the ax came down, the jaw could be pulled away,
and then, all the blood tubing would start to spurt.
It just went flawless, and I think we got it the first time.
-[Screams]
-It worked like a charm. -I've had people stop me
in airports being like,
"That's like the best Chucky death scene."
Like, because it -- it really looks really real.
-[Screams] [Squelch]
-I personally thought it was cool that Nica
was in a wheelchair, it was actually sort of a weapon
in her hands. -At different points,
it ended up being an advantage.
-Especially, seeing people in wheelchairs,
and the way that that device has been used, uh, in horror.
Um, we can think of characters like Franklin
in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
even "Dream Warriors."
We have a character who is in a wheelchair,
and -- and it's also that thing where they are designed
to be weaker and to be victims.
-And this movie very smartly
decides, no, no, no, this --
this character can more than fend for herself.
-It's fun to see a final girl who is other.
It's important, especially for people who feel other
in any way, shape, or form.
-I would imagine, much like myself,
seeing queer characters in Don's films
that aren't portrayed as victims or as weak
or, you know, freaks.
I would imagine that for -- for people,
especially people who use wheelchairs,
that was really special.
-I'm not saying that that had never been done before.
But it still was fairly rare at that point.
And I think it kind of speaks to both
Mancini's originality
and kind of social consciousness as a filmmaker.
-She's faced such hardships.
Chucky can't destroy that. You know?
-You can put a hatchet in my leg,
and it's not going to take the fight out of me.
-[Laughs] -[Screams]
-Fiona's near death in the wheelchair over the edge.
That was a big moment. It took a lot of planning.
-[Screams]
-So complicated, but so amazing.
-Charles. Come over here.
I want to introduce you to someone.
-The thing about, uh, Charles Lee Ray,
he was different in the sense that he became --
He became fascinated with the family.
-Hi, Daniel. Nice to meet you.
-And this is Barbara.
-[Laughs]
-It was very cool that my dad got to be in person,
and also the studio was very kind to fly him up
and let him stay an extra week, so that he could see me work.
So, it was this, like, really wonderful thing
for just the Dourifs to get to finally work together.
-You like 'em?
-It was really cool for me to be able to see
Charles Lee Ray come back on set.
-I think I found this in the process of writing,
because, you know, any kind of pressure cooker story like that
where you're dealing with just a duration of a few hours,
you know, you want to reveal secrets similar
to the Russian nesting doll metaphor.
It's like an onion that you keep peeling, or unpeeling rather.
-I've always had a thing... -[Gasps]
-...for family.
-It was cool to see him work in it. He was so creepy.
I think it was fun for him to -- to --
to come back to a character
that he hasn't played in a long time.
-I didn't pay that much attention
to really who he was as a person.
I didn't make him specific.
I didn't worry about that, I didn't even think about that,
which normally, I'm way over the top on -- on doing.
-And now, you're the last one standing.
-It really is something
that, uh, is -- is a family legacy at this point.
[Groaning, Breathing heavily]
There's this moment that I wonder how many people clock
where I move my legs,
where I'm, like, crawling as fast as I possibly can.
And then, I have to -- I have to make it into this elevator
and, like, move my legs at the last minute.
I actually have to for the scene to work
or we do it like 30 more times.
This is the 27th time we did it, I -- Every time I see it,
I'm like, "Ah, does anybody --
Did anybody catch that I moved my legs?"
You want to play, motherfucker?
Let's play.
-The moment that I love the most
is when they're facing off against each other.
And he's got his chin down,
and he's looking through his brows at her.
Just such great lighting, and it's so moody,
and it's so confrontational,
and -- and, like, really personal
and feels very emotional.
-[Screams]
-For that particular scene,
because I was screaming the lines live,
I was able to look Fiona right in the eye,
and she was looking at me right in the eye
as I was attacking her to kill her.
-[Grunts] -Frightening scene.
And it was one of my favorite moments in the whole franchise.
-We shot the courtroom scene at the very end of the movie.
I think it was like the last 2 days,
and Winnipeg had just become freezing.
[Chuckles] It was so cold.
-Filming the courtroom for "Curse"
was actually a lot of fun.
I think, we only had half a day in a real courtroom.
-We got, like, 150 background actors to come and do it,
and everyone was really excited to be around the doll.
-Well, the first time that I met Fiona,
I was incredibly intimidated.
She's the lead of this movie,
and she's also incredibly beautiful.
So, I just sat there in silence,
and just pretended I was in my own process as well.
But I was just sitting there super intimidated.
-I mean, he did such a good job as the cop.
I thought he was, like, so committed and -- and real.
-[Laughs]
I really didn't even think that Tiffany
was going to be in it.
So, I was very surprised when he said,
"Hey, Jennifer, we wrote a part for Tiffany
to come in at the end and you want to come in and do it?"
And, of course, I was happy to.
I feel like I'm kind of the mascot of the film.
-The tag with Jennifer Tilly made the movie.
She's indispensable to this franchise.
-When I got my throat slit by, uh, by Jennifer Tilly there.
She was, uh, remarkably calm about everything.
-And I was like, "I'm back. I'm back."
I made all these jokes, and then Don's like, "Okay, yes,
but didn't anybody tell you this is the scary 'Chucky' now?"
So, after I made all the crew laugh and everything,
he's like, "Okay, now can you just say the lines?"
-That was like my first inaugural kind of death
on screen, really,
that -- that amounted to any kind of blood.
And it was at the hands of Jennifer and a nail file.
-You know, when you have the fancy dish at the restaurant
and the food is in the middle,
and then there's little happy dribbles of color around it.
That's what Tiffany is in "Curse of Chucky."
-Chucky, you found me.
-Chucky, going into the child
opens up a whole new world
about what Chucky can do.
-I hadn't seen the doll with the scars
and moving and his mouth open.
So, that combination, I was not having it.
-She was scared of that doll.
-She was very frightened of Chucky and his face.
-I mean, she was very young.
And this doll obviously, it can -- it can be traumatic
when you first meet it. -Don, of course,
was very sensitive of Summer being afraid of the doll.
-We did hide his face, uh,
for her to get through those scenes.
-I was embarrassed that I couldn't, like, do the scene,
but they put a paper towel roll on his stick head,
and they drew a smiley face on it.
-We put a wig on it, and that was Chucky for something
that she had to interact with,
so that she didn't have to deal with the actual puppet.
-Package for you. -Really?
-Don was very keen to bring Alex Vincent back.
He really thought that it would be a great idea.
-And the studio was like,
"Who should we cast as Andy Barclay?"
And Don was like, "Well, Andy Barclay, of course."
He wanted to cast Alex Vincent.
And the studio said, "Well, hasn't -- he hasn't really acted
in 30 years," Don insisted.
-It must be my lucky day.
So, when I got the call from him
that he basically got the green light from the studio
to go ahead with his idea to bring me back,
uh, it was thrilling for me.
-And when he came out on the screen
when I was in the theater, the fans went wild.
They loved, loved,
loved that it was the original Andy Barclay.
It made it more real.
-I got to work with Don directing me
for the first time ever.
Oh. Hi, mom. How you doing?
Don had a couple of things that he wanted me to say
in that, you know, which, like, uh, "How's Mike doing?"
-I had no idea that Mike
makes a, uh, referral appearance.
And I'm very proud of the fact
that he's still kind of alive and around.
-God, it's great. I hope they're together.
-Also, I kept it a secret and lied to fans
for an entire year for that.
Play with this. -Andy.
[Gunshot]
-Filming on "Curse of Chucky"
wrapped and seemed to work like a charm.
Post-production began immediately with a conversation
between Don Mancini
and a composer with some serious horror pedigree.
-Working with Joe LoDuca is a dream come true.
I love the first three "Evil Dead" films.
-[Evil laugh]
-I was introduced to Don Mancini, um, by my agent.
Now, impresario, Richard Kraft.
-Richard, uh, suggested Joe, because he represented him,
and he knew that I would go, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yes."
-When I saw the film, I remembered
from Saturday morning television a B-movie
called "Lady in a Cage," and I brought that reference
up to Don, and he said,
"That's where I got the idea for the elevator."
-For the "Curse of Chucky" score,
it had to be an all-electronic score,
because we couldn't afford an orchestra on this movie.
-The first thing that came to mind for me
was to have sort of a demented jingle,
because Chucky's a toy, it's a toy doll.
Um, and I wrote it on a toy piano.
I, uh, adorned it with a "Chucky" sticker.
-I loved the "Chucky" theme that he composed.
[Chucky theme plays]
♪♪
I love him to death, and I love working with him.
-Something like that.
-Originally, "Curse of Chucky"
had the little girl killed right off the bat
-In the script,
and my director's cut, Alice gets killed.
It was the first on screen kill that you saw.
-It was one of the more creepy, uh, scenes for me,
because, well, in horror, they go all out,
so, they have like thunder outside the window
and fake rain and lightning.
-That's where she says... -Chucky. I'm scared.
-For the first time, he comes to life, and he says,
"You fucking should be," originally,
what happens is then you cut to outside what we call, the tent,
and you just see the silhouette of, you know, going,
and then, blood go, [Imitates squirting].
So, it's all very stylized and abstract.
-I blocked it out as a kid
and I just did it and it -- it looked great.
-But while we were in post-production, um,
there was another shooting.
-There was some massacre where kids had gotten killed.
-So, Universal became concerned about that.
So, we just needed to revamp things,
so that that character survived.
-We had to, uh, recut to get the girl
not killed and, you know, put her in a closet
and come back later or whatever.
-In the end, they settled on me being locked
in a closet by Chucky.
That's what I was told
that he just hid me away until the end of the movie.
So, yeah, I was just chilling in a closet.
-"Curse of Chucky" was the first film in the franchise
to be released straight to video, store shelves,
home televisions, and even the cast and crew
were put under Chucky's latest spell
on August 2nd, 2013.
-The studio was incredibly pleased.
I don't think they realized quite what they had
till they released it,
and then just the response was enormous.
-It came out really, really well.
-The "Curse of Chucky"
got the best reviews of the franchise
really, since the first one, I think,
and to a certain degree, rightfully so.
Because it's a really, really good movie.
-The reviews were really good, and the movie was successful.
-Given the big swings that -- that you --
are -- are happening in "Bride" and "Seed,"
there is something about taking it all back
to basics that feels refreshing.
-"Curse of Chucky"
is a strangely beautiful movie in a way.
Even though, it's -- it's horror, and there are shocks
and twists and turns and crazies all over the place.
I think that that sort of haunted beauty
of the music sticks with me.
-I got to do a classic horror movie
and do it with a classic, iconic character.
-I'm very proud and proud
in all the things that it can possibly mean.
It was an artistic achievement,
because you got asked to do something,
to be part of the cultural references.
You get to be part of the modern culture,
and that's the ultimate reward.
-I had a lot of fun.
I met a lot of good people.
It was just, all in all, a really wonderful experience.
-I'm proud to be a part of it, but it was well received,
because it's a really well-made movie.
Everything about it is up to snuff.
I got to say, I'm really glad that I got asked.
-It was an honor to be a part of that project
and be a part of the "Chucky" universe,
and just really honored and proud to have been a part of it.
-It is a little bit like being in a time capsule,
because I'm the sixth in the tapestry
of this beautiful horror franchise,
and the moment where it returned to its roots
and such an iconic moment that the fans loved.
And so, I felt really lucky to be a part
of that particular story.
-It was so fun, and I'm so grateful
that it was my first role, and the people were so amazing,
and I got to work with such amazing actors
and learn from them, and learned that I really loved acting
and I wanted to pursue it.
So, thank you "Curse of Chucky."
-I love being a part of "Curse of Chucky,"
because that's the moment where I realized
that Don was never going to relegate me to the dustbin,
and I felt like I was sort of his good luck charm,
and that he was going to put me in everything from then on.
-"Curse" really worked, a really brilliant way
of reinventing the franchise.
-"Curse of Chucky" was a wild ride
I got to make with somebody
who ended up being one of my closest friends.
I feel really lucky to have been accepted into the franchise.
-It's, I think, probably my second favorite movie
of all of them, "Bride" being first.
Both movies were successful reinventions of the franchise,
and I also think that "Curse" looks very beautiful.
And so, I felt redeemed as a director
in that way after "Seed."
-My word would be pride
to be involved in -- in a film
that looks like this film does in every sense of the word,
from Don's direction to production design
to Tony Gardner's work, the actors, and again,
Don subverted -- subverting an audience's expectations.
-I wonder if Dee Snider liked it.
-It's a doll. Step on it. It's over.
[Chucky laughing]
[Ominous music plays]
♪♪
-After six films over four decades,
Chucky's reign of terror didn't just continue.
It thrived, the next logical step
in the evolution of the franchise, start a cult.
-"Curse" landed, you know,
pretty successfully, pretty quickly.
So, the studio certainly wanted to do it immediately.
-It was one of their biggest successes
that division has ever had.
And Glenn Ross wanted to do another "Chucky" film,
which was exciting.
-I was not surprised to get the call for "Cult of Chucky,"
because at that point, Fiona and Don Mancini
were fast, fast friends.
-Don wants you to explore another universe of taking Nica
into the world of a mental facility.
-Let's dive into the psycho ward subgenre
and have Chucky interact with people who -- who --
Their own relationship to reality is not necessarily
well-tethered.
-I mean, what a great place for people to say
"A doll is talking to me," I mean, of course,
who's going to believe them?
-I wanted to aesthetically do something
very different. -Before it would
have been Gothic and -- and Victorian.
This, he wanted clean, modern lines.
-Let's make everything bright and make it almost,
like, black and white in color and very about angularity.
-And you have all of these characters
with lots of different issues and personalities.
And -- And Don is the conductor of this choir of bizarre people.
And throw a killer doll into that mix.
And there's just the havoc that is -- that is created from that.
-A new story cemented in the halls of a mental hospital
signaled it was time to get committed
to a fantastic cast and crew.
-I wasn't surprised
to hear "Cult" was going to happen.
Don had been talking about it during the shooting of "Curse."
I was very pleased to hear he was going to come back.
-I was super excited, and then when they said,
it was going to take place in an insane asylum,
I was like, count me in. -Don and I had talked
about his approach to the script
and what we were going to do.
-Don was talking about everything being against white,
very pale, washed-out palette.
-I think of it more as the "THX 1138" of the "Chucky's,"
where everything's been stripped away a lot.
-Other references, "The Shining" is an obvious one.
"The Snake Pit." -Virginia.
Virginia, where'd you get that doll?
-I really felt like we had the team together,
and the machine was already going.
-We had a foundation to build from some preexisting stuff.
-It was far less of a -- of a zoo or of a circus.
It was much more of a bunch of people
who knew what they were doing
and were all on the same page.
-Tony Gardner contacted me, and he was
wanting a very specific look, how it looked,
you know, in the original.
And he knew that I had a lot of knowledge,
and I had made some dolls that were --
that were very accurate,
and he wanted to get that look for "Cult."
-When I first read that there were multiple Chuckys,
I was more concerned about the shooting
schedule than anything else,
because there was only going to be one at a time,
and we'd have to figure out how to make things modular
and put a melted hand on one or a different wig on them.
-It was really important to Don
to create multiple Chuckys,
that there are other dolls out there with the same essence,
something that I -- I was really concerned about.
-I wanted to give Brad different things to do,
because I have this amazing actor at my disposal.
-Dividing the dolls.
That was going to be a problem for me.
And I -- And I thought, I-I need to figure out a way,
how to keep him different and the same,
because they never stop being Chucky.
-I was frightened to take away from the monster
that -- that for 30 something years
we'd worked so hard to create,
and were we taking away from the personality
of this character? -You know,
having different variations
on the Chucky persona for Brad to play with
was something I wanted to do in that movie.
-It was really, "How are we going to make this
happen in the time that we have?"
-So, I just thought, let's expand our mythology
a little bit, like -- like, let's give Chucky
the opportunity to jump into new bodies.
-Let's play.
When Don gave me the call
and said that he wrote me into "Cult"
in a supporting way with some really great stuff,
I was thrilled and filled with gratitude
and appreciation and excitement.
Who is this?
-Tiffany.
-With "Cult of Chucky,"
I thought it was going to be another cameo,
and I was pleasantly surprised when I got the script,
because Tiffany is more of the storyline.
-Miss Valentine, I wish you had told me.
-Oh, didn't I? -Like every actor in the city,
you get auditions,
and they're always, very often,
under different names.
So, it didn't say I was auditioning for "Chucky."
It was some fake name.
But as I was reading it, it seems familiar.
And I started to guess it could be "Chucky."
-Michael Therriault is a really fun person to cast,
because he is the nicest Canadian
will ever meet in your life.
-Love, Michael Therriault.
He presents initially as someone very nice and caring,
which is what he is in real life,
but I knew that he would be able to sell that twist,
that he's actually so horrible
that even Chucky is a bit appalled and impressed.
-I don't know whether to kill him or just take notes.
-I think he really truly does want to help people.
-He's complicated. [Laughs]
-Don't misunderstand. I'm not a fan.
We're not going to be friends.
-So, my character, Carlos, the nurse,
which I'm very, um, honored to have played,
is based on someone that Don knows.
-I have a friend who lives in San Francisco
whose name is Carlos, and he's gay and he's a nurse.
-It kind of helped steer me a bit.
And then, I was just like, you know what?
I'm going to be me doing what I think is Carlos.
And that's either going to work for what they're --
what -- what they're going for or not.
-We wanted to like him so that when he gets horribly killed
by three Chuckys simultaneously...
-[Screams]
-...that, like, we would care a bit about that.
-You think this is funny?
-No. I don't.
-I think I found out I got the role
when I was at a film festival.
I was so excited.
I was like losing my mind.
-Grace and I had known each other before,
so, that was fun to see her, the way she was playing that,
which was so different than her own personality.
-Claire's pretty with it, she's a bit like a black widow.
-So, she's a little unstable,
but you don't see, as much, her instability as much
as some of the other characters.
-I'm a schizophrenic. I see things.
-I love Marina, I was lucky enough to meet her in Winnipeg
during the production of "Channel Zero."
-Shooting in the middle of the night in the dark
at about 4 a.m., and I went
right up and said, "Hi,
I'm Marina," "I'm Don Mancini," he said.
And he was charming
and friendly and sweet.
-Then, I went off to make "Cult," and I thought of her
for that role as this woman who, you know,
has this funny encounter with Chucky where, like,
because of her own delusions, it ends up driving Chucky crazy.
-Aren't you the crazy bitch
I talked to last night on the phone?
-She had a sweet, uh, innocence.
But behind that innocence, this intensity of
someone who's -- who's really in another zone.
-Oh. She's harmless.
-So, Adam Hurtig, I had worked with on "Curse."
[Ominous notes play]
-Multiple Malcolm -- Mark, Michael, Charles,
whatever you want to call him, he's Malcolm to me.
He, um, he's a guy who feels inadequate with his own life.
So, he has to take on these personas of these,
uh, these greater than average people.
-And he -- he nailed all of these personas.
-Fiona, I-I don't think that she actually remembered who I was,
but it was this moment of, uh, "Hey, I'm Adam,"
uh, "Lovely to meet you."
Uh, and then having her go, "Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Okay, I remember you. You're the -- the cop.
That's cool." -It was great to see him,
like, flex his muscles like this
and get to do so many different things.
And then also, I got to have sex with him.
[Moans]
It's been really wonderful hearing
from the disabled community about it.
They're like, "Oh, my God, finally, we get to see,
you know, a -- a paraplegic woman, like, have sex."
Because by the way, we have sex.
-It's too hot for him.
-Elisabeth Rosen played Madeleine,
and I thought she was great.
Madeleine is a strange character and has a strange,
interesting relationship with Chucky.
-I like to be hugged.
-I can't believe he's talking already.
-You know, like that in itself is creepy.
-I literally, I called my agent and I said,
"I want to do something really unusual."
And she literally said, "Would you do a cool 'Chucky' film?"
-Elizabeth Rosen was, like, the perfect example
of just the, like, maternal,
but maybe a little Mommie Dearest.
-And you don't care. -[Screams]
-Mommy!
-[Breathing heavily]
When we got there, I said, "You know,
I want to dye my hair black."
-'Cause she's a blond.
And that kind of also gave a really interesting,
unspoken darkness to her.
-She was maybe my favorite character.
I loved watching her.
-With cast and crew locked in.
It was time to head to the asylum.
"Cult of Chucky" began filming on January 9th, 2017,
in a chilly Winnipeg winter.
-It's like, you know,
at times, -45 degrees outside.
It was insanely cold.
-Oh, my God, I've never been so cold.
-Cold, freezing cold.
-Much like Chicago in 1987,
I was freezing my ass off on a "Chucky" set,
once again.
-It is bloody freezing.
That's our real breath.
-When you're filming, and you're outside,
sometimes, in those conditions, it can be tough.
-The sets were beautiful.
It was all on a soundstage in Manitoba.
-Our production designer was unbelievable.
You get the sense that the hallway
goes on forever and ever.
It's such a subtle design but so beautiful.
-This hospital set was like a little maze,
and it was mind-fucking me in real life.
-I don't think I ever totally figured out
where everything was.
-It was a bit like living in a -- a nightmare.
And they'd go, "Okay, now, we're ready for you."
And I'd go down a hallway that I thought was taking
me to my doorway, and I was lost.
-What I love about the script,
and that how it throws to that sort of mental hospital thing,
you know, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
That's great, and so, there's that line in there.
-Jesus fucking Cuckoo's Nest.
-"The Cuckoo's Nest" vibe was -- was very much intentional,
but it was also, uh, it was a challenge.
-It did have that, uh, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" vibe.
-Don loves skyscrapers.
-Don has a skyscraper fetish.
-He, uh, he loves them.
-Some people love Lamborghinis.
Some people love, you know, hot dogs.
Uh, he loves skyscrapers.
I just want to be able to protect myself.
-It opens with Andy trying to find that love.
He's been so scarred his whole life from this experience.
-"Chucky" has been in my life since I was a child.
It affected my whole life since I was a kid.
So, I have that parallel with -- with Andy.
-This experience has clearly had an effect on this guy.
In a way, he's kind of a vigilante of making sure
that no one else is affected the way that he was by it.
-Who's the only person in his world
who he comes home to -- to talk to?
It's not a healthy relationship.
-He's got all these tools and torture devices in trays,
in cabinets, you're just like super anal,
super organized, super efficient, and super messed up.
-The hunted did become the hunter.
-We had to basically shoot the whole scene first,
except for the blowtorch thing,
because we wanted to push it as much as we could.
And because the skin is silicone and heat resistant,
none of the mechanics fried
while we were shooting it, he was able to emote
and stay controlled, it looked great.
-Chucky had smell when you burn them.
It's really quite stinky.
-Nica isn't a danger to anyone anymore.
And let's not forget, she isn't the only one here
to benefit from an insanity plea.
-That was one of the fun things to do with this movie is,
you know, for -- to have people with mental health issues
respond to Chucky in different ways.
-As soon as Chucky is revealed,
we see everybody's kind of reaction.
-Angela just rises up
and lets them all know he's back.
He said to tell you he's coming for you.
-Grace's character immediately
doesn't understand what's going on.
-I love Claire, because she is trying to do right.
-She jumps up and she's going to come over
and comfort Angela.
-Elisabeth sees the -- the actual Chucky doll
as her -- as her daughter.
-He's my baby. -When she finds the doll,
it literally, it fills this huge hole in her.
-And Fiona is just, like, there's part of her that's,
you know, we can see that it's stirring below the surface,
but she is just stonewalling.
-Claire, why don't you come with us?
-Come on. -No.
-Carlos, in a way,
took Grace's character to her death.
But that's a "Chucky" movie, man.
-It's like, you know, a really creepy "Sesame Street."
So, it's like they've got puppeteers
doing all of the different things, it was like acting
with a human being, that was pretty amazing and surreal.
-She, by far, gets the nicest death
that I have seen in the -- in the "Chucky" franchise.
-Claire. Yes, who gets decapitated spectacularly.
It's not only the falling glass,
but the snow, because it's snowing outside.
-It's so horrifically gorgeous.
-My death scene was, I think, operatic.
-The whole death scene on the operating table,
there's like every version
of puppeteering performance possible.
There's people literally on every side of the camera
for so many of those shots. -I think, the scene
where Grace gets killed was sort of the hardest
to make feel real with the oxygen bottle
and the way that was going to fly.
It was heavily story boarded.
-In her death scene, like, take after take,
she was able to produce, like, a perfect tear
that rolled down her left eye.
I was, like, "How does this person do this?"
-And then the end of it, you're pulled right back
out of the, almost the poetry of that moment
by the head bouncing and landing at Chucky's feet.
-It's like a really terrible death poem,
but really, um, really, really beautiful.
And I think Don did an amazing job.
-Alice?
-We've been waiting for you.
I honestly hadn't even thought about my line,
like, being a foreshadowing moment.
So, like, seeing it now, I'm like, "Oh, that's cool."
-I was like, this is surreal and stylized and scary,
but also a little bit foreshadowing, for sure.
-Me, like, I was just this figure of Nica's imagination,
because she hadn't seen me for years.
-And then, you see somebody who was like 6 to 7 to 8 to 9,
you're like, "Oh, my God."
But yeah, it -- it was great to reconnect with her.
-Seeing Fiona again was great.
Uh, she's an amazing actor. She's an amazing person.
So, getting to talk to her again, even for only a day,
it was really nice to see her.
-Oh, God. -Elisabeth was down for it.
She knew that that was like a piece
of the disturbing picture
that we were painting here.
-The way I approached Madeleine was,
a lot of women have postpartum depression as well.
-I had the -- the shot as a bit of her --
uh, an homage slash rip off of "Snake Eyes."
You're looking down at a honeycomb of rooms,
but we glide from Nica,
and we pass right over the top and without a cut,
now, we're looking down at Madeline in her room
as she's breastfeeding Chucky.
-I've had people stop me on the street
and say, "You're the girl,"
but I think they're afraid to ask me
about that moment, it's okay.
-Elisabeth playing the role of -- of Madeleine,
what you kind of see is really her.
There's this haunting kind of presence.
Then, when we find out later that Madeleine
was driven insane by infanticide,
Chucky uses that to manipulate her.
-Wanna play?
-And the reenactment of what she did with the child,
it's like, oh, all right, now you got it coming.
Here we go.
-She can't live with herself anymore.
-She says, "Will it hurt?" And he says, "I'll do my best."
She has this masochistic need to be punished
for what she did to her baby. And here is her baby
come back to give her that ending.
-He's just supposed to play with his fingers on my lips.
And that's supposed to be the whole scene.
But we kept going.
And then all of a sudden, literally, he pushed --
'cause the puppeteer was like, "Oh, no one yelled cut."
We literally -- the whole fist went all the way down my throat.
-Aaah!
-I remember just thinking in my mind like,
don't freak out. It's all good.
-Chucky sticks his arm into her throat
and pulls out her guts.
-Then ripped his own arm off
and then stuffed it back in her mouth.
-Tony Gardner literally came and poured
three big jugs of sticky, minty blood,
and then they set the arm all the way down my throat.
-And she sits there and she takes it.
I think she really makes that scene so much more
than it could be.
-Madeleine's dead.
-Chucky did it. -No.
-[Laughs] Oh, God. The foot scenes.
-He's bought her this pair of bright red Chanel pumps,
and he's putting them on her feet.
-And I was struggling, and I was struggling,
and I kept, you know -- I didn't want to, like,
lose eye contact with her, but I just kept trying and trying.
And it went on forever.
-And we can see behind the monitor
that he's put the wrong shoe on the wrong foot.
-He's, like, doing it wrong and bo-- and me --
I'm trying not to break.
You know, I'm trying not to, like, break the scene
so we don't have to shoot it 300 times.
-And then, you know,
we all burst out laughing and then, you know,
for the next 5 minutes or 10 minutes,
every time we'd kind of start,
we'd burst out laughing again. It was just so funny.
-And so that's still one of my favorite scenes to watch.
-It was just fucking hilarious.
-Oh, my God.
-Scene 74 is the scene where the three Chuckys finally,
you know, come together and have a conversation.
-The scene and its purpose -- it worked.
For Don and for his creative process,
I think it opened the door for lots of places to go.
-Chucky can be in several places.
-What the hell happened to you? -Oh.
-That begins to evolve into all kinds of things.
-I remember walking into a room and just seeing all these --
all these little Chuckys, like, in different positions,
and it just feeling like a playground or something.
-Things would be mapped out with just three posable dolls
to start with so we knew where everybody was
and where our lighting needed to be.
-It was doing a lot of comping in
where we would do one performance
and then another performance.
-Each one was performed one at a time,
and then they were all stitched together digitally.
-We were doing a lot of things with rod puppets
and bunraku puppets,
where he's being walked with a puppeteer directly behind him.
So to see it now, to me, is kind of a triumph.
-Hello? Look at my hair. -Oh, shit. You win.
Absolutely. Sorry, pal. You go fuck him up real good.
-They were vocally a little different,
and they did have some points of view
that were slightly different.
But they were Chucky. They were essentially Chucky.
-They're not at each other's throat.
I mean, they may bicker about who gets to kill Andy,
but basically they are the Cult of Chucky.
-[Laughs] -Welcome to the cult, pal.
-When I did it vocally the first time,
I would do one character and take them all the way through...
-Yeah, well, you've been alive for like two minutes.
-And then go to the next character
and take that all the way through.
-Now I can be me. -And me. -And me.
-We had a lot of fun doing it and particular fun with Buzzcut,
the one with the bad hair,
because he was the innocent, you know.
We tried to give them each
slightly different personalities.
-Yeah, we all named them. We would give them nicknames
to, like, how they looked or how they were acting.
-You have three Chuckys at once on screen,
but you only have the budget to shoot one of them at a time
because there's only one of them.
So that was the challenge with Carlos's death.
-I was really honored that I was gonna be
the first character to be killed by three Chuckys.
-That was a gruesome death.
-[Grunts]
-Ah!
-It was like kitchen sink on Carlos, and he loved it.
-It's true that that scene with those Chucky dolls,
it's kind of like "Gremlins,"
but hard-core, R-rated "Gremlins."
It's one of the bloodiest, darkest moments
in our entire 30-something-year franchise.
-It's the most torment and horror
that this person's ever experienced.
-He was super patient because not only did he have to die,
he had to die multiple times because we had to shoot it over
and over again with each version of the puppet.
-Drill.
-And he took it like a champ.
-[Groans and screams]
-And the deal with Chucky is he just, like,
loves it so much, you're kind of rooting for him, too,
even though Carlos was -- Carlos was a good guy.
He was a good guy, but good guys finish last, you know?
-There's definitely perks to being supernaturally possessed.
-And then I get to be a man, which was also really fun,
and play my dad's iconic character,
which was a fun space to occupy psychologically
with somebody who's just doing exactly
what they want to do and doing it well.
-Fiona is a great actress,
and to be able to tap into a character
like her father, to emulate that --
that laugh, that smile, the look, the intensity
that he brings -- that's no small feat.
-Fiona's Brad impression, I think, is remarkably good.
-When I first realized that I was actually going to play him,
I definitely called my dad and asked him, like,
"All right, so what -- like, what's the clue into Chucky?"
And he always says the same thing.
He's like, "Listen, kid, there's basically two things.
Chucky -- he's terrified of oblivion and he loves his job."
-I love my job.
-And I was like, okay, okay, I could do that.
-This is for Nica.
-Ah! -Aah!
-There's something about Dr. Foley's death by high heel
that's, again, very de Palma.
-Dr. Foley had it coming, absolutely.
And that was a fun death to plan and shoot.
Michael Therriault himself was quite disturbed
to see his likeness stomped to pulp.
-And I'm also amazed by the artistry of it.
You know, the people who make these heads,
you know, each hair is sewn in individually,
you know, like every little blood vessel and pore.
-They built a really nice head packed full of stuff,
and they could really pound on it
very violently and repeatedly.
-Oh, my God. Fucking awesome.
-Chucky takes things much more personally,
and he's much more interested in who people are
than -- than he used to be.
-Yeah, I'd kill Dr. Foley any day.
-You're sick.
And not in the fun way, like me.
-Malcolm's brain has all these characters
starting to, like, fall out of him.
And he just regressed back to Malcolm.
-As deaths go,
Adam really got a good one.
And I think he's very proud of that.
-Now he's kind of gone off the deep end again
and thinks he's Chucky.
-I'm Charles.
-In your dreams, asshole.
-And he has this moment of realization
and you actually have pity for this guy.
-I think the death is all that more affecting,
that he becomes kind of vulnerable
and somebody that you're sort of rooting for.
-Who am I now? -You're a fucking poser.
-Finally, he's facing the truth
that for years, you know,
someone like Dr. Foley was trying to get out of him,
but it took a special killer doll to pull it out of him.
It's incredible to have a dummy that looks exactly like you
getting a drill through the back of the head
and you just standing there like this, going,
"Oh, I should really -- I don't know --
I should really be thinking about my life right now.
What am I doing here?"
-[Cackles] -[Cackles]
-I also wanted to take advantage of Fiona.
Her real-life laugh sounds like Chucky.
And at first I thought, like,
are you deliberately doing Chucky?
-It's my actual laugh.
You could walk into a party of 50 people and be like,
"Oh, Fiona's here."
I think the cackle's genetic.
-This is the end, fucker!
-To also be able to see Andy exact his revenge
so personally is also really cool.
-It was my favorite day on set.
I get to stomp a Chucky's face in.
-Any time the doll gets nailed by some horrible death,
people seem to really be into that, too, for whatever reason.
-At this point,
you know, she's not really Nica. She's possessed by Chucky.
It's an interesting little moment.
And, of course, she traps him
in the asylum and scoots away scot-free.
-Tag, you're it, pal.
-Hey, sweet face.
Good to see you back on your feet.
-I think Nica never wanted to meet Tiffany.
I think Charles Lee Ray was stoked to meet Tiffany again
in some whatever twisted romantic thing they have.
-The end of this movie, myself and Nica kiss,
get into a truck, and drive off together.
-It, you know -- just fun to have these two actors
from disparate parts of the franchise
finally meet and surprisingly team up.
-That's when you first saw Tiffany
as sort of a smooth master criminal,
and you saw a woman that was really in control
and sort of masterminding
some of the things that were happening,
and that was a very interesting direction for her to go.
-And Nica -- she's got this dude kind of walk to her and,
you know, she kisses Jennifer so passionately,
and I really do, I think it's brilliant.
-It was -45 degrees [laughs] in Winnipeg.
-It's so freezing. Like, snow is everywhere.
-And so I'm asking two of my dearest friends
to make out [laughs] in a blizzard.
And it's 40 below.
-I cannot believe you call yourself a director.
-She did not say that.
That's, like, when the friendship
part of the relationship really pays off.
I am her favorite director.
-He's my favorite director ever!
So we wanted to do this thing where we kiss --
we kiss and then I slap her -- him, Chucky --
and then she slaps me back and then we kiss again.
We just thought that that -- and we're laughing.
We just thought that was, like, a great thing.
Don was like, "Girls! What are you doing?!"
-And then they get in the car
and then there's the Tiffany doll in the back seat laughing.
It's like it just keeps building on top of itself.
And I really like that as an ending.
I thought it was a really, really strong ending
and they literally drive off.
It's like, where can this go? They can go literally anywhere.
-The end of "Cult of Chucky" left this cliffhanger.
I was like, "Drive me away. Great.
Like, I'll do this again."
-Who are we kidding?
Chucky can come alive no matter how badly he's murdered.
There's a sequel coming. [Laughs]
You know, there's bucks to be made.
-Kyle?
-Andy sent me.
We're gonna have some fun.
-You know, after having tested the waters
with Alex/Andy in "Curse,"
it was great to finally bring Christine in.
-They were running over. The producers were trying
to pull it and say, "We're not gonna do it.
We don't have time. We're not gonna do it."
And I'd been I'd been there for five days.
I've been standing around in the freezing cold all night.
And Don's like, "No, she's here. We're gonna do it."
So it almost didn't even happen,
even though I was standing there.
And I got like three -- three shots at it.
One, two, three takes, and that was that.
-For a moment, it looked like
"Are we gonna have to scrap this whole idea?"
And I really didn't want to 'cause I really wanted Kyle
to be at the end of the movie.
-The hat that I wear in "Child's Play 2" was my hat.
It was my lucky hat.
And when Don found that I still had it, he made me bring it
so I could wear it for my reappearance
at the end of "Cult."
-I mean, she's such a strong character.
It was so great to see her show back up.
-Yeah, really, really happy it happened.
-The lunatics taking over the asylum
and leaving it in bloody ruins meant the shoot was a success.
The next course of treatment was to edit the film,
create the score, and bring all the madness and mayhem together.
-The post process was very tight,
so while Don was shooting in Winnipeg,
I was in Los Angeles, and I would get the dailies
the next day, and so the scene they shot on Monday,
I would cut on Tuesday.
-"Cult" was, uh, a long time brewing.
And so, you know, Don made me aware of it
even from the script point.
-So on "Cult," Don was the producer,
the writer, the director.
And I had him all alone in the editing room.
-Well, my first pitch for "Cult" was that,
"Oh, we're in an intimate setting,
so let's just have five strings."
And that didn't go over well.
I think that the idea is that Don's cinematography
and his palette, uh, visually, is so large and so broad
that he really likes to see the music just as colorful.
I think there's more cinematic moments in "Cult,"
and that's definitely Don's esthetic as well.
-It was three weeks, 80-plus minutes of music.
It went down really quickly.
-First time I saw it was a rough cut.
I knew it was good.
I saw it and went, "Yeah, this works."
-So the first time I saw "Cult,"
I think it was at a screening with -- full of fans,
which was amazing.
I brought my Mom, [laughs] who I warned, you know,
"I'm gonna die again," but she loved it.
-It just did what a great horror movie does.
It just builds and builds and builds,
and you just think, how can this get any scarier?
How can this get any worse?
How can it get any gorier?
-And it was such a moment for me
because it was the first movie that I could remember,
really, that I was proud of,
I was proud to be a part of, I was proud to contribute.
-It was a blast.
My friends were all like, "We, uh --
we struggled a lot to watch you get decapitated,"
but I had, like, childhood friends who were like,
"This is the best thing ever!
I love that you're a part of this series."
-Seeing the movie for the first time was insane.
It's my first time seeing Chucky split.
I think it was a huge deal for everybody,
so it was really cool to see it come to life on screen.
-"Cult" is my favorite film in the franchise.
I love how it's shot.
I think that "Cult" is a masterpiece.
-Chucky's spell over those working on the film
had clearly been cast,
but the true test would be the reception
from critics and audiences at large,
and by all accounts, the response was insane.
-The critical reception to "Cult" was phenomenal,
especially for a seventh installment of a franchise.
-This movie got really, really good reviews,
including from places like "The Hollywood Reporter."
And, you know, there's the line about it
being kind of like a low-budget de Palma movie,
which is a great way of describing it.
-It way outdid what their expectations were.
-There are so many Don subverting expectations
in so many places,
and fans really responded to that.
-Don always has surprises,
and I think that's why the show has endured for so long.
He never tries to do a retread of something that came before.
He's the ultimate fan.
-I'm always on this quest to experiment,
to find what is the perfect balance of humor
and horror and camp and meta?
-So there are new "Chucky" fans coming along all the time,
and so "Cult of Chucky"
might be somebody's first exposure to any of this,
and they discover, oh, wait, there's these other movies?
And then that that's the incentive
to go back and check those out.
-Taking time between movies is a good thing.
I think it helps.
You know, I'm not thinking about the box office of it.
I'm thinking of the horror fans and the horror culture.
So I actually think, like, withholding some of these things
for a few years -- I actually think it's good
for the series and good for the franchise.
-Though Chucky first slashed his way
through audiences' hearts in 1988,
the character proved he could still knock 'em dead
decades later, and while that road to success
may have been paved
with plenty of carnage,
the journey maintained old friendships,
embraced new ones,
and proved a true classic never goes out of style.
-The success of every project is a conglomeration
of the people that are doing the project,
and where you are and what mood everybody is in.
It was fantastic.
-Making "Cult of Chucky" was like getting to be
part of the sort of movies you watched when you were a kid,
where it's a bit of a sci-fi, you know?
It's a bit of a sci-fi, it's a bit of an evil-doctor thing.
And it was very nice to be part
of something you would have watched
and thought was really cool back when you were 10.
-It's always a blast. It's all good. It's fun.
-Thank you for having me back, Don, and I look forward
to seeing you in the future.
-Don is a really loyal person.
He falls in love with his cast in a way
I think most showrunners and writer-directors don't.
-I had the chance to experiment
and do not just Chucky as a normal character,
but do multiple versions of him and a disembodied head of him
and hopefully make people laugh and scream.
And that's really why I'm there.
-It's an all-encompassing, challenging art form.
And it sounds ridiculous,
but Chucky is Shakespearean.
-The crew was unbelievable.
Everybody was really, really warm.
They made us feel like we were their family.
-I'm really glad and honored to have met Don
and the people involved in the production,
and it was an absolute bloody pleasure to die this way.
-The easiest and most fun part about "Cult of Chucky"
was the camaraderie.
We knew we were doing something special.
I light up because I have such fond memories of that time.
-I feel lucky that I got to do it, yeah.
I honestly had a really good time,
and it's a very fond memory of mine.
-Chucky and I have a bit of a feud still.
He flipped me off a few times.
So he's kind of a dick like that.
-[Cackles]
-But, you know, at the -- at the very end of it,
he's still my friend to the end.
-Being part of the "Child's Play" franchise
feels like I won some weird lottery
that I still can't totally explain to myself.
My family connection to it, um, feels significant.
It's something that's just been around me my whole life.
I just feel, like, so lucky.
It's just so lucky. So thank you.
-Thank you to the fans.
Thank you to Don Mancini. Thank you to the producers.
-I feel very, very lucky to be part of this franchise.
I love Tiffany. I love all the characters.
But it really is a "Chucky" family,
everybody supporting each other
and working really hard to make a good product.
-I mean, it's a family.
I couldn't turn it down if I wanted to, you know?
Um, "Chucky" is -- is a family project.
I consider Don Mancini to be a friend, and, um,
and I could never bring myself to say no to him.
You know, um, don't tell him that.
-I have enormous pride to have been part of this franchise
that started off as a movie with no thoughts of franchise,
being able to work with so many talented people,
the Kevin Yaghers of the world, the Tony Gardners of the world,
all of these people bringing this to life.
It's more than half of my life
that I that I have been a part of this.
And it does make me feel good
that I saw something in that first script
that I felt that other people would love.
And I've been very fortunate to be part of this ride.
-I love the world we've created.
We have a lot of characters and relationships.
There's a lot going on.
So I feel very, very lucky
to be able to keep expanding it, pursuing it.
That's what Chucky means to me.
He allows me to express this subversive perspective
on the world, and I'm super grateful
to the people like yourselves who support it.
♪♪
-Oh, man, I'm not doing the chant, guys.
-[Laughs]
-Guys, you really want to open that box?
-Ade Due Damballa!
Give me the power, I beg of you!
-Hi. I'm Chucky. Wanna play?
-It's time to forget these fantasies of killer dolls.
-I'll do it like Tiffany.
Ade Due Damballa.
Give me the power, I beg of you.
-All I hear is Jennifer Tilly. Ade Due Damballa.
Give me the power, I beg of thee.
French, French, amort, French, something.
-Leveau mercier du bois chaloitte.
Secoise entienne mais pois de morte.
-You are without a doubt
the most pathetic thing I've ever seen.
Wouldn't you agree?
I remember that line now!
I fucking remember that line.
-Last time I'm gonna tell you.
Get rid of that thing a rest, or...something else.
Ha!
-Ade Due Damballa.
Give me the power, I beg of you.
-You've seen dolls that pee? This one bleeds.
-We need you to put a little more into it, DJ.
I'm not really feeling like you're feeling it,
so try to channel whatever you've got in there.
Let me give you a little quick fluff here.
-Ooh! Something really stinks in here.
-Ade Due Damballa.
Give me the power, I beg of you.
-I just like, ooh, why did they have to do this goobly-gock?
-Jennifer, if anything happens to me,
I want you to know that I-I --
-Uh, let's not get crazy. It's 8:00.
We've been here for 6 hours. [Laughs]
-So the first one is, "Oh, sweet Jesus.
God bless the little people."
-And I'm back. [Laughs]
Oh, this is funny. [Laughs] You silly guys.
-I mean, print media is dead. Ian's working at Starbucks.
- I feel like I had pithy stories,
but I feel like all the stuff I want to tell you
is stuff I probably shouldn't say.
-Ade Due Damballa.
Give me the power, I beg of you!
-It's a doll. What's the worst that can happen, huh?
-Oh, nowyou're ready, Bill?
Okay.
-I realize I'm giving you a lot of good stories
and nothing you can use. [Laughs]
-Andy? [Laughs]
I can't.
[Laughter]
Oh, you're killing me!
Oh, my God, this is -- I think this is my whole part.
-Nica, thank you so much. The chili was delicious.
-Dr. Foley, it's true! He's alive!
[Laughs]
-You've already burned through my --
my cerebral cortex, you've moved into my cerebellum,
and it's exiting out my cervical spine.
-I've missed these little sessions of ours.
Haven't you? -I can hear him.
I can still hear Chucky inside my head.
-Ade Due Damballa. Give me the power, I beg of you.
Is that all you need? -That's all we need.
-Oh, okay. Oh, I can do that better, though.
-Christ, there's a lot of lines here.
-No. [Laughs] No, Tommy.
[Laughs] I'm tired.
-This is the end, friends.
-Ade Due Damballa.
Give me the power, I beg of you.
Let me be in focus.
♪♪