Bride of Chucky (1998) Starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif & John Ritter Directed by Ronny Yu Written by Don Mancini

And with that one statement I've probably lost more than half my readers already. Oh well. Feel free to blast me in the comments afterwards should you see fit.

I'm not saying that the original Child's Play sucked. Not at all. As I remember, it's a pretty effective metropolitan chiller. Much like Tom Holland's earlier classic Fright Night, the emphasis is as much on a person's own sanity being brought into question as it is on supernatural shenanigans, with the lady from Star Trek IV slipping increasingly into paranoia as things get weird and people get dead. And, given the inherent absurdity of the premise, it's impressive that by and large it's played straight and doesn't feel silly at all. After all, high-rise apartments are claustrophobic, kid's toys are creepy, and the idea of a young child in danger only gets more distressing the older we get. And, of course, the puppet design and vocal talents of Brad Dourif make Chucky an instantly memorable villain. While I don't think it's in the same league as Fright Night, I still look back on both those films and lament that Tom Holland and Chris Sarandon haven't enjoyed such high profile success since.

The first Child's Play sequels were a different story, however. I must admit I haven't seen it in years, but if memory serves Child's Play 2 was an utterly prosaic retread of its predecessor, basically doing the exact same shit as the original but moving the action out of the apartment and into school. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I need to see it again, but as I can recall so little specific about it I can only conclude it wasn't that memorable. (My article = my logic. Deal with it.) I vaguely recall my ten or eleven year old self being quite amused by the words 'fuck you bitch' scrawled in a school book for the teacher's benefit. Then again, I also thought the Home Alone and Problem Child movies were comedy genius at that time.

Child's Play 3 I never even saw, but unfortunately it carries a whole different set of associations in my country, and in particular my adopted home city, due to it being erroneously linked to one of the most notorious murders in recent British history. After Liverpudlian three-year old James Bulger was abducted and murdered by two ten year old boys, the tabloids claimed the killers had watched and been influenced by Child’s Play 3; and, as such, Chucky must have killed James. Because human beings aren’t in any way responsible for their own actions, are they? It was a tenuous link at best, but that section of the British media have never allowed a little thing like evidence to get in the way of a sensationalist headline. In fact, it was never proved that the murdering little bastards had even seen the film; the courts, quite rightly, had more important concerns. Bullshit it may have been, but the smell has lingered around the Child's Play movies in the UK ever since. Still, I'm dubious as to whether this had anything to do with the sizeable hiatus the franchise went into, or the notable shift in tone once it came back.

But shift in tone the series most certainly did. Bride of Chucky is one of those oh-so-late-90's horror movies that is summarily classed under 'post-Scream.' Playing it straight, it seemed, was no longer an option. We all explicitly knew the rules now that Jamie Kennedy had spelled them out for us in black and white, so the only way to go was to point out the conventions and poke fun at them. For so many of the post-Screamers - the likes of Urban Legend and Cherry Falls - poking fun was about as far as it went, leaving the films with anunpleasant aftertaste of smug superiority. Bride of Chucky, however, had some distinct advantages. For starters, it came from a team who were actually part of the era that was now being sent up, Child's Play being a rare case of the same writer-producer team (Don Mancini, David Kirschner) maintaining an entire slasher franchise, so they knew the game better than most. On top of which, they were also smart enough to realise that if the old rules were going to be mocked, they probably ought to bring a few new things to the table.

And when I say new things, I'm not just talking about the addition of a new central character. Though of course, Bride of Chucky is mostly remembered for the introduction of Tiffany, in the perfectly cast form of Jennifer Tilly. Truly, it's hard to imagine anyone else doing that role justice. She just seems like the kind of crazy white trash woman who'd fall in love with a serial killer; it's not hard to imagine her writing steamy explicit letters to Manson, Bundy et al while waiting on resurrecting Chucky. It's tricky to bring in a new key character late in the day without seeming desperate; we all remember that one episode of The Simpsons, when they introduced Poochie to help boost Itchy & Scratchy’s ratings. But I don't think there's any denying that Child's Play had indeed grown stagnant, and the boost of new blood definitely helped. And Tilly's a smart enough actress to keep things just that bit shy of parody. Sure, Tiffany's dumb and more than a bit tapped, but she's still a human being with emotions; and even though Chucky walked over her time and again in life, she's still so devoted enough to him to bring him back (with a little help from 'Voodoo For Dummies,' heheheh), only to have him walk all over her again. With Tilly in the role, we feel for Tiffany; even when Chucky does the ultimate fuck-you and condemns her to his rubber doll prison hell.

But, as I was saying, it wasn't just the addition of Tiffany that brought something new to Child's Play. Mancini's script manages something that very, very few slasher scripts have ever managed: it does something interesting with the teenagers. The female lead Jade is Katherine Heigl, fresh from being Steven Seagal's niece in Under Siege 2 and Gerard Depardiu's daughter/pretend lover in tee-hee-paedophilia-how-the-fuck-did-they-get-away-with-that comedy My Father The Hero, and so still sporting that tantalising air of jailbait about her. Not that I would ever assess an actor's performance on such terms. Ahem. Anyway, her beau is Jesse (an impressively buff Nick Stabile- see, I'm an equal opportunity letch), a guy from the wrong side of the tracks who just so happens to live in the trailer next door to Tiffany. The star-crossed lovers are planning to elope so that they can be free from Jade's adoptive uncle John Ritter and his prohibitive ways. And he's a real bastard. I understand there was a deleted scene which revealed he kept her locked up and forced her to watch endless hours of Three's Company. Anyhoo, an opportunity presents itself when Jesse finds a letter from Tiffany offering to pay him to transport two dolls, apparently collector's items, to New Jersey. What he doesn't know is that those dolls are Chucky and Tiffany, and that Jersey is where they will find Chucky's old mystical Macguffin of a necklace that will allow them to take human form again. So, off on the road they go - and wherever they happen to stop, doll-related carnage is quick to follow.

And there's the real new thing that Bride of Chucky brings to the table; a subtle twist of very old-fashioned screwball comedy. In the face of the bloodbath, but oblivious to the fact that Chucky and Tiffany are alive and killing, Jade and Jesse have no one to suspect of all the murders but each other. As a result, they’re both on tiptoes for fear that their one true love may skewer them next. It's a genuinely new, clever and funny idea for a slasher film, and it succeeds where so many others have failed (or, more often than not, haven't even tried) in making the teen relationship just as compelling as the slaughter. Speaking of which, the action is handled with above average skill by Ronny Yu, pulling off the splatter sequences with panache.

A pity, then, that Mancini couldn't maintain that level of quality when he finally got in the director's chair for the fifth instalment Seed of Chucky, which took the clever-clever tomfoolery just a little too far into self-indulgence (film within a film, Tilly as herself, yadayada), and failed to make new arrival Glen as endearing as Tiffany. But I'm still curious to see how things turn out when the now obligatory remake comes around, as - in another first - it's actually series creator Mancini writing and directing the return to square one. If he can balance the menace of the original with the wit of Bride, and not disappear up his own backside as he did on Seed, there's every reason to hope that Chucky will return to form. Were I a follower of Voodoo, I might say “Give him the power, I beg of you...”