Welcome to Fear Coded, a podcast where we talk about media from the horror genre and take a queer reading of a single book, video game, film, podcast, or TV show to explore just how queer horror can be.

This month we're setting up shop right in the middle of the uncanny valley and getting set up for a tea party as we explore dolls in horror all month long.

It's Doll Sember, and where better to start than with the legendary Chucky himself in 1988's Child's Play?

I'm Tyler.

I'm David.

I'm Mary Lee.

I'm your friend of the end, Derek.

Yes, yes, you are my friend to the end, Derek.

Yeah, that's right.

We couldn't sell all these good guy dolls on our own, so we brought our dear friend to and Co founder Glitter Jaw and Co host of walloping web snappers Folly with Style gimmicks Screeon and Lee Carvalho's podding challenge.

Derek, thank you so much for coming back to FEAR CODA, Derek.

Derek, Derek, you were just here to talk about Buffy versus Dracula.

So you've now you've now set the standard of least amount of time between guest appearances on the podcast really.

But but I know that this one has a lot of personal connection to you.

So I am excited to dive into it and I found some other Derek connections as part of this and I will be interested to know if if if you have made those connections yourself.

I, I can, I can think of a couple of things that you probably are going to say and I'm aware.

But you know what?

I'm just, I can't wait.

I'm in heaven for the next 90 minutes.

This is going to be delightful for me exclusively.

We'll find out.

We'll find out, though maybe I'm wrong.

I'm excited to find out what you have.

Well we want to thank all the bats in our belfry for being part of our amazing community by supporting our FEAR code of Patreon.

Thank you to Will, Knight of Cups, Doug, Jacob, Alyssa, Blake, Puckish, Rogue, Tyler, Derek, Maureen and Tommy.

Now before I check to see if the batteries were installed, I want to check in with my Co host and our guest to see how things are going for them and the landscape of horrors that our real world has to offer.

What's making you scared or what's making you feel prepared?

Derek is our guest.

Let's start with you.

I am scree paired.

I'm scared OK, OK, prepared because of being scared.

I think obviously holidays are, are happening and we're recording this like right before every holiday is, is starting to happen and they're going to be busy for me.

I mean, they're, I get they always are for everybody, but like it's unusually so for me this year where there's a lot of back and forth travelling involved.

And like I'm doing, I'm doing a Christmas show, like I'm doing Christmas Carol again this year at the beginning of the month.

And so, and then, you know, obviously all the usual podcast bullshit in the middle of that.

So like I'm scared of all of that in that it's going to be a lot in the next like six weeks or whatever.

Like we're just going to be pretty non-stop.

But I'm feeling prepared because I'm trying to keep my feelings on the fact that it's all done for fun and for love.

It's all stuff that I want to do, right?

Like it's not all the holiday stuff that I'm doing isn't because it's like, Oh no stressful, traumatic holiday stuff.

It's all stuff that I wanted to do that I'm looking forward to.

It's just getting my life in order for doing it.

The same thing with with doing a show, right?

Like it's, it's stressful when you're having to prepare for that and devote a lot of time to that while you're trying to keep your life in order at the same time.

But it's all because I love being on stage, right?

So I'm just keeping my keep my eye on the prize for that.

And so I'm feeling prepared, but feeling prepared because I'm driven by being scared of how much there is to do.

Excellent.

I think, you know, evolution really gave you all these tools, Derek, and it's good that you're using all of them.

Exactly what is the show?

And this is not your first year doing.

It no, it's Christmas Carol is with it's with my alma mater.

So for a long time, Randolph Macon College had a Christmas show that was like written by the head of the theater department's wife and then directed by the head of theater department from 1990 up until 2015.

And I acted in it for the last like 5 years of it while what, like what I basically my senior year, I started doing the show and then I kept coming back as an alumni the last few years because it's meant to be like a community show, right?

So like alumni are always invited back, people from the general community invited to come back.

It's like a, it's a long, long standing tradition in that town.

And then when the head of the theater department and, and the director retired, they retired the show along with it.

But then the school in the interviewing years, like never really replaced it with anything.

So then last year, you know, it had been awe, it had been done for nine years.

People had been clambering for like, are you ever going to do Christmas Carol again?

Like ever?

And so they finally brought it back last year and invited a bunch of like veteran cast members back for it.

Last year.

It was extremely successful, like sold out every show.

So that's going to be a tradition now.

I think they're even like I think they even got like an endowment for it or something to like make sure it keeps going.

So I'm doing that again and it'll be my, I don't know, 7th time doing it, maybe I think 7th.

That's fucking awesome.

That's beautiful.

Wow.

Would we Would we recognize the character Derek?

Yeah, I got 2 characters that I play in it.

Mr.

Fezziweg in Christmas Past, Scrooge's happy boss that is like that is like the one good employer in the world and have a little dance sequence with it.

And then in Christmas future, I play like the undertaker, like one of the rag pickers that's picking through Scrooge's old stuff.

And we get to play like very high camp cockney accent stuff for it.

And it's like, yes, the biggest, the biggest scene in in an otherwise the kind of like naturalistic show.

So, yeah, incredible.

That's awesome.

Wow.

And hearing that it's gotten like an endowment and, and just that there's so much support for it, it like, makes me really happy too, cuz like local art and local theatre is so important and it helps keep the community alive.

And like knowing that that is going on in a time where everyone is trying to make cheap, sloppy art, just just like for free for the sake of it and ruining our environment, that makes me very happy and warms my heart.

So that's that's wonderful.

Yeah, it's always really fun to do.

Love it.

And high camp cockney accents.

Tyler, are you feeling scared or prepared?

Oh no, I like that.

I'm like concerned, but also happy that that is now my brand.

You know, I am feeling prepared today.

I have to say.

I got to experience my first snow this past week.

And so this happened.

This feels like the conclusion of the trilogy of whether or not Tyler is going to be prepared or scared for cold weather.

And ladies and gentlemen, I feel, and anyone who does not feel that applies to them, I think I feel prepared.

You feel prepared.

Monday, Monday was an early weird snow, but it's we survived it.

Marshall made it to work OK.

I had purchased an ice scraper earlier on, so we were all prepared for that.

And now I'm feeling good.

However, the snow is all gone and it's still kind of freaking me out that the day that the snow actually went away, there was still snow on the ground.

Then the sun came out, and then it was just gone.

Yeah, yeah, I'll do.

That it does that, That's so weird.

What do you mean that happens?

I don't know how I feel about that.

You're a little perturbed by the the the concepts of thermodynamics.

A little bit, yeah, OK.

OK, in this House we follow the rules of thermodynamics.

Well, I'm I am feeling prepared now going into the colder months.

So, Mary Lee, I must ask, are you feeling prepared or scared today?

Not to to be too greedy, but it is a little of both things.

I'm mostly prepared but I'm a little scared because like I am planning on making myself like a big pan of macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Hell yes.

And it's so nice to have homemade macaroni and cheese.

So I know that there's going to be a moment when I'm about halfway through making it, I'm going to like, look at all of this, the dishes and stuff that are strewn from my kitchen.

I'm like an hour and a half in.

I'm going to look around and be like, is this worth it?

I have a box of like.

Fucking.

Easy macaroni and cheese in the pantry that I could have made and been done an hour ago and I just need to, I know that I need to.

This happens every time I make Mac and cheese.

I just have to power through that scared moment and I'll be prepared.

I will eat the Mac and cheese right out of the oven, be like yes, no, it is worth it.

It is worth it to do all of the things, but God it's so annoying.

I I don't think I've ever successfully made Mac and cheese outside of like a box.

It's, it is, it is, it's not hard.

There are just a lot of steps and you have to actually, everybody always says that you have to like take a block of cheese and like grind it to to shreds yourself because it doesn't bind properly if you don't.

And you just have to do it.

It sucks.

Yeah, you have to do it.

Because they add like different types of preservatives on like shredded cheese bags.

So it is.

Bags so it doesn't clump and yeah, yeah.

And if you don't?

It is worth it.

It is worth it though.

Like it's.

So worth it.

It's definitely worth it.

Like I've never I've never been disappointed from making homemade Mac and cheese, even if it takes a long time.

I do you do you have the dark moment of the soul every time you do it as well, Derek.

I mean, less.

I think the mess of it.

Yeah, certainly.

Yeah, I think the mess of it, yeah, yeah.

For.

Sure, yeah, there's the mess.

There's just always that moment where like what if I just didn't do this instead?

And but.

You just never get through that.

I never get that dark.

I'm more just like, just like upset at how long, how much longer I have to take.

But I've never like, I wish I shouldn't be doing this because it's like, because I'm making fucking Mac and cheese.

I it's, I'm destined to be doing this.

Actually, it's how I feel.

It's just facing your destiny, you know?

You're a delight.

I have, I have AI have something that compels me right now that I would feel compelled to do in the moment of facing that darkness.

And I wonder, I wonder if you have done this and if it would work for you.

Is I feel like if I got to a point where I felt like I couldn't go on, I might grab a handful of noodles and a chunk of cheese and shove them out my mouth and remind myself of the ultimate goal.

No, I wouldn't do that.

I wouldn't like, would you not, would you not do that?

No, because.

Like OK, the whole.

Point is that it's not going to taste just like a raw hunk of cheese and a noodle.

You have to like you, you layer the cheeses, you use different cheeses as well as, and I think this is the secret sauce you have got to use really good Dijon mustard.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Wow, a literal secret sauce is your secret sauce.

I mean, it's, it's more of a secret condiment.

Yeah, but like the way that I do it is you, you fry an onion in and and you sweat out, sweat out an onion and you put some Dijon in there and you get like that cooking.

Then you deglaze the pan with some white wine and then you melt the cheese and then yeah.

And, and I would also put in a lot of pepper.

But again, it's just like a more Dijon than you think that you need.

And then by the time that like it all bakes and that comes together.

And also I would put lots of panko on the top.

Yes, yeah.

That's the the when it all comes out.

It's so good.

And the Dijon really like brings a muchness to it.

I love that merrily because it sounds like it's almost like kind of like a savory Mac and cheese, which I never really considered, like, yeah.

All Mac and cheese is.

Savory.

What else?

I know, but like savory, but there's like an extra like maybe it's like the umami, I don't know, like from the makes sense.

Yeah, from the Dijon.

I mean.

Yeah, I mean cuz like mustard, mustard flake, like I'm a ground mustard girly in anything that has cheddar cheese in it cuz it really yeah, it's like cheddar flavor a lot.

But I think like Dijon cuz it's Dijon.

Does Dijon traditionally have horseradish in it or am I making is that?

Am I making that?

I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

So I think that little tiny bit of spiciness like helps it a lot too.

Yeah, definitely.

It's just, it's so good.

But I just, I don't know, I just don't have the patience for it to.

I mean, I do.

I hate it the whole time.

I'm gonna I'm gonna do the fastest edit ever of an episode just to isolate this part for you merrily.

And you can listen to it on loop while you're while you're shredding to remind you that there.

Is a goal I even have I bought myself a Rotary grind like cheese grinder because like that'll help, right?

No, I, I got the cheapest one off of Amazon because I was like, yeah, this will work.

And like the suction doesn't work and it's very, it's smaller than I need it to be.

But you can get an electrical 1 though where you just stick the block in and it shoots it out though you could do that.

Those exist, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you can.

Either that or if you have a food processor, sometimes they'll have an attachment that you can shred cheese.

Into so that's not.

Used, there are options.

There are definitely options.

Got it.

I will have to look into those.

But I like you working out your cranking arm for when you go back to the phonograph for hoop cast.

Exactly, Yeah.

Anything for hoop cast?

There's quite the backlog in the hoop cast that we haven't gone through yet.

Well, you have it.

I've been a hoop cast listener from day one, Tyler so.

Stupid, I can't wait for this bit to die.

Oh sorry, I'm more of a newbie.

I'm a fake hoop cast fan.

This, this bit this bit just put a put a bullet through its.

Head Well David, it sounds like you're scared by the bit, but are you feeling prepared or scared today?

No, not just the bit.

I am scared all around.

And what brings me fear this time is, is the man that I've become.

Because next week I leave on vacation.

I'm leaving, I'm going on a trip.

I've got, you know, two weeks where I'll be in a different space, access to a different world, different environment.

And what scares me is that I asked my trainer what workouts I should do while I'm on vacation and I can't believe I have become this person who wants to use a gym that is not my gym while I'm on vacation.

I hate it, but it's who I am.

It's the man I am now.

I love this for you.

You love this for me, I hate this for me.

Yeah, you know, cuz you've your fitness journey has been like a thing that we keep coming back to.

And you like when you got your personal trainer, you're like, I don't know why, like you, you were you're hesitant because you who were at a plateau.

I think you said the specific you didn't know where you could go from here.

But like this just means that not only has like this personal trainer thing worked out so well, you have this resource that you can ask questions like this, but you're also like you're continuing fitness journey and things really inspiring.

And I think that you feeling like I don't know who this person is.

I was like, it's just you who it's always been you.

You're the kind of person who will take care of yourself, and I love that.

Merely that's delightful, but my fitness journey should be fitting this pizza in my mouth because it's vacation.

More people can exist, yeah.

You can go to the gym, this strange gym that's foreign to you, and then immediately go get pizza.

That's true, That is true, that's true.

The world is my oyster.

Or a slice of pizza.

Or a slice of pizza or Mac and cheese.

Yeah.

It could be all of these.

I want that Mac and cheese merely I want it so bad.

Wow.

Well, come over.

OK, we'll do that.

Yeah, OK, well, while Tyler scurries his way over demeriles, we're going to scurry our way through a camera point of view into an abandoned house.

Because today we are talking about the absolute classic Child's Play from 1988.

The original idea for the story was written by Don Mancini, who wrote the script with John Lafayette and Tom Holland.

Tom Holland also directed the film.

But not the Tom Holland.

That's spider man.

This is a different Tom Holland.

We should different.

That would not.

It would not have worked out in years at all.

Quick guess from the panel.

Was Tom Holland alive when this movie came out?

Tom Holland, the Spider Man.

No, no.

God, no, no, right, no.

Okay, great.

That is incredible.

Still a little egg, I assume.

Well, this movie is about a widowed single mother who gives a toy to her son, unaware that it has been possessed by a serial killer.

As the bodies start to pile up, Karen the mother tries to prove her son Andy is innocent, while Chucky the doll tries to get his revenge from beyond the grave.

Child's Play was wildly successful, gaining praise for its original villain and great special effects.

It spawned an absolute juggernaut sized franchise with six direct sequel films with A2 short store like short films.

Three seasons of ATV show that's all in the same continuity which are considered the main franchise.

There are also 2 video games, killer skins for the game Dead by Daylight, a number of comic book and like book book novelizations, several Halloween haunt theme park attractions, and also a reboot movie.

With all of that said, we are going to try to limit our conversation to just our subject topic today.

So what is everybody's experience with the first Child's Play movie?

Derek, let's start with you.

What's your experience?

I'm going to immediately push back on the limit in the conversation to adjust this one subject today because I think the context of this, it's really, I think the context for this movie in retrospect is actually really important because I don't know, I think that this is a movie.

I think this movie is interesting because I don't know that you would clock it from the get go as being like a queer movie until you sort of see what comes after it and then learn more about Don Don Mancini, who is a gay man and who like integrates that into the films more, you know, more and more as it goes along.

And like this movie, I do think is interesting to go back to with that lens and especially knowing that it's like this is out of all of them.

This is the one where it's like kind of 5050 Don Mancini and and like a bunch of straight guys and a lot of the stuff that I think makes this movie interesting, but also a little bit flawed.

Is that interesting sort of conversion.

And then and then Don Mancini having to sort of take that ball back and run with their ideas and then make them gayer in the future.

I just think all of that's really, really interesting.

But my, my experience with it is I was very, very little when I was exposed to one of one of the original 3 movies 'cause they came out very rapidly between 88 and 91.

And so I, I watched one of the three of them.

I don't know what I watched, but I was very, very tiny, tiny child watching this too young, too young for it.

And it scared the fuck out of me.

And it there absolutely did create like instill a fear of large dolls in me.

And I remember there's like a, there's a point nearby where there is like a video store that was just like right down the road from where I lived that years after the third movie came out, even had like the poster for Child's Play 3, which is just a close up on Chucky's or a grinning face with blood dripping out of his nose.

Used to scare the, I couldn't, I would cry whenever I'd like see it on there, right.

Like it was like fully, fully traumatic.

And, and my, my parents, this is when it, this might be a long story.

I apologize, but my parents kind of doubled down on that 'cause they were big pranksters.

And so and we owned, we owned like a couple of.

Like, you know what they would call life-size dolls that were maybe like 3 to 4 feet tall.

And so there was one that was like a newer 1 and then there was one that was an old one that my mom had when she was a child in like the 60s.

And it was like dirty and had like matted hair and everything.

Very ugly, very creepy.

Used to scare the shit out of me.

They would hide it in my closet.

Sometimes they would put it at the foot of my bed when I woke up sometimes went on for years.

And then eventually, even when I like the, the, the kind of apex of it.

And I think the last time that they ever did anything with it was I was taking piano lessons and the piano, or I think I was practicing on a keyboard that was in the basement.

And I went down there and they, like, put the doll in the seat, put a pencil in her hand, and then wrote in like these sort of like daggery letters, like, I'm going to kill you, Derek.

By this point, they done it enough that, like, I knew that it was them, but I still didn't like it.

And so like, I went up, went upstairs and it was sort of like, I know what we always do.

You're not, you're not going to trick me.

But can you just like move it 'cause I don't like this, I'm too scared of it.

I'm, I'll touch it.

I don't want to touch it.

And they pretended like they didn't know what I was talking about.

God, I were scared by it too.

And then went down 1 by 1 And they would go down in the basement and then just like scream bloody murder.

And then like silence.

And then the next parent would be like, Oh no, what's going on?

And pretend like they don't know what's going on, then go down, scream and then silence.

And then just let me upstairs by myself for a while until eventually come up like laughing.

So that's my childhood trauma.

I think it's hilarious in retrospect.

And I look back on it because it's so fucking funny that they did that to me.

But that obviously like fucked me up for a long time.

Yes, yeah.

I think I'm happy for it though, because I think it may gave me a better appreciation for like horror movies in general because I went through like a very realistic experience and then I could watch the movies afterwards and be like, yeah, this shit's fucking fake.

This is just for fun.

And so I did eventually watch these movies I think for the first time maybe as like pre teen or teenagers.

So it was like it was many years later, you know, I'd avoided them for the most part, but then eventually was just like kind of interested and I think had was aware that they would were going in wild directions.

So I guess it probably was probably sometime between Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky, like during that period when the series had kind of already veered into like a horror comedy territory.

And I found that really interesting.

And so I started actually, and I watched them and I was like, some of these fucking rip.

Like the, the effects are so cool and like, I love anything with like animatronics and like practical stuff.

And they're really, really cool.

And I find, and I found them just like so fun and enchanting.

And then the more I would learn about them, the more interesting it got.

The fact that it is like one guy who's been helming this franchise for decades, which is like so unprecedented.

And then the fact that that one guy is a gay man who it was like as the more power that he got over it, the more he imprinted his own experiences onto the films.

And again, like taking lore that was established by established by other people that worked on the film with him that he didn't like.

Like the voodoo stuff was not Don Mancini's idea, but he was like, it's here now.

I've got to figure out what to do with it.

And I think he like finds ways to de emphasize it and like mediate that in later movies.

And I just think that's so fucking cool that it's like he owns it and is also just like really chill about it.

But I think but also made them kind of personal and like made it a point to like queer them up as much as possible.

And also like he's from Richmond, VA, where I grew up.

So I think that's fucking cool.

It's very much of like this hole is made for me kind of thing.

Just like cool.

The more I learn, the more I'm like we're In Sync.

I don't know.

Mancini just seems like a really like, I love listening to him talk about these movies because he's so passionate about them, but also like super down to earth and very much like, if you tell him like, this was a stupid thing that happened in the movie, right?

To be like, yeah, that was really contrived.

It was a bad idea.

We were really tired.

Like, he's so open to talk about that stuff.

But yeah, I just, I thought I I think that's it's made me love them even more.

Like I don't love every Child's Play movie, but I always respect them.

And the fact that this is a series that like starts with this movie and then like 4 movies later ends up being like has a movie about gender dysphoria and being gender queer queer that has John Waters in it.

And then does ATV show centered on a gay protagonist that's like about Dom man CD's like childhood living as a closeted gay kid with like a dad, like a neglectful parrot.

Like it's just fucking incredible to see all of that unfold.

And I just I think it's really cool.

And then again, I think going back to this movie, I have a soft spot for this one because it is so weird going back to this movie with all of that in mind and seeing that starts here.

And there's stuff that this movie does that no other movie in the franchise does that only this one can do as the first.

No other fucking movie in this franchise is a cop drama like or detective story, you know, like stuff like that.

No other movie in this franchise focuses on the mom.

And it's so it's interesting to go back and see those things and see how this kind of like laid the foundation and how the series is sort of take it and run with it.

And I do think that there's like little queer readings you can have in it that I think you only have knowing that there is a gay man behind it that was trying to get some queerness into it, even if it didn't fully make it into this one.

You know, I don't know if you know some of the back story of the original idea that he had for it, but I'm sure maybe we'll get into it.

But like, I think even the original idea for this had some more queerness in it before it ended up in this movie.

But I can put a pin in that cause I've already talked for too long.

This is talk more.

It's great I.

Love this, this, this is totally random.

In the second movie, there's a teacher that Chucky kills named Missus Kettlewell.

My screen writing professor in college was a Missus Kettlewell and she in that character was named after her.

I don't remember.

I don't remember who what the connection was, but it wasn't like it was like in honor of her.

It was literally like she as a screenwriter was in a similar circle as somebody who worked in this movie.

And they were like, that's a wild name.

That sounds like a great name for a teacher that would be mean and be killed.

And so like, I knew the person that a victim of Chucky in the second movie was named.

After she really deserves it in the second movie too, she does.

Yeah, yeah, That's incredible.

Thank you so much, Derek.

That's great.

That's great.

I'm glad you're here.

I'm really glad you're here.

Yeah, Thank you so much for.

Sharing all that, Derek, That was amazing.

I I am, I am between concerned about young Derek and so pro your parents because I think like, listen, we wanted kids.

It it didn't work out, can't do it naturally.

Couldn't have an accidental pregnancy.

If I had children, I did want to terrorize them to the point that I felt like they could handle.

Because I think that's part of being a parent truly and honestly, yeah, it should entertain you a little bit.

I'm glad that it wasn't like, because there are things that I was shelter that I, they did shelter me on that I think was bad.

And I think that I don't know, I'm not a parent myself, but I do think a little bit of just like, you know, being a little bit real with them and letting them experience this, the full spectrum of emotions, I think is like not a bad thing.

And I think that that helped me be less scared in my adult life in general by experiencing safely experiencing something really, really terrifying.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

I did not have an experience even remotely similar to what you had there.

My my family would always just shun anything scary.

And the thought of scaring me even a little bit totally would not have, like, made sense to them probably if they did try to do that to me out of like, without any sort of like prep or anything, knowing that my parents were tricksters, I would have wound up in therapy.

I'd probably still be there right now knowing that, but I think, like, it's so interesting that that has had such an impact on your take on the movie because like, for me, the context around Child's Play, like the first movie and then just the Chucky franchise in general has been kind of poor.

A lot of that actually did come from my parents when I would say like, oh, did you ever see any of the Chucky movies?

They were like, yeah, it was terrible or something like that.

Yeah.

And so I had for the longest time, like a really negative association with Child's Play and Chucky and all that until I think it was maybe like a year or two ago, a friend was streaming all of the Child's Play movies like every week.

And so I started watching each of them.

And the first movie I thought was like, you know, the one that we're talking about today.

I was like, this is this is OK.

I don't think it's really something that I click that well with.

I didn't really enjoy any of the Chucky movies until we get to Bride of Chucky, which is like hard into camp that I was like, OK, I get it now.

So for me, I'm gonna be a little bit of the Debbie Downer in this episode cuz like seeing the movie a second time, it still doesn't really click for me.

But I'm going to be your cheerleaders and I'm going to commend all of you who enjoy this movie and love all the good parts cuz I think there are a lot of good parts in here.

And unfortunately, the parts that are not so good have more of an impact on me.

Stood out to you?

Yeah, apparently.

What about you?

Well, so I think that my story is a little like like right in the middle in between like Derek and Tyler.

Because honestly, my first experience with Child's Play is they used to play like some of the later Chucky movies a lot on like the sci-fi channel, particularly like Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky.

They were like constantly on there.

And when I was younger, I was just kind of the worst person, frankly.

And I wasn't, I didn't have a good appetite for camp.

And so I saw it.

Like the clips that I saw, we were obviously cool and queer and like camp and all of this other stuff.

I didn't appreciate it for what it was.

And I just thought it was kind of silly.

And so that was kind of my experience.

Oh yeah.

I've heard that there's cool queer stuff, especially like from the TV show, but I'm I, I wasn't really into two puppets.

I didn't and and just the camp of it all really turned me off.

But then, and this is true, last year when we were getting started with fear coded, we asked a lot of our glitter job hosts like if you would want to be on the podcast, what movies would you or, or media would you want to talk about?

And Derek, your immediate answer was child's play, but it was the first thing you said.

You said I want to be on that.

And so I thought, my good friend Derek really loves this movie and has something to say about it.

I should actually give it a real chance.

So I watched it last year and I was like, shit, this rules and I'm still exploring the later movies in the franchise when I have time.

But again, you saying this one's good, It is.

It is good.

I like that the, the that's like a mystery.

I like that it focuses on the mom.

I think that especially knowing where it goes.

And I do appreciate, I like have a lot more appreciation for like those things now as like an actual person with like a fully developed brain.

But I just, I think that it's really interesting what they're doing here.

And I think it's interesting like in the context of of like horror in general as well as where it's going to go.

I just think that there's a lot to appreciate about this movie.

Mm, hmm.

Mm hmm.

How about you, David?

Yeah, so I didn't watch this because I thought it would be scary.

And I think when I was in high school, I was either a junior or senior when Bride of Chucky came out.

And so there was a ton of advertisement for it.

And I remember asking a classmate if these were worth checking out.

And I think what I literally asked was like, is it scary?

And they said, Oh yeah, these are really terrifying.

And I was like, well, fuck that.

I'm not, I'm not going to do that.

And now that I've watched this, like this is a horror movie.

Spoiler alert for like 10 minutes later in the conversation.

But I I don't think that this was prohibitively scary, that I wouldn't have enjoyed watching it in high school.

I think it's it's scary for like a for kids watching it, I think, but I don't.

And and if you're predisposed to not like dolls, but yeah, I, I never felt like, I don't think any of them are like very high on the scary meter.

I think it's, it's, it's, it's, I think it's the, if it's, I think it's unsettling seeing the dolls face change.

I think it's like the the the farthest it goes, you know what I mean?

I like my my favorite parts.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I I actually like, I really, I really like hold this person responsible for me missing out on this for so long because I didn't watch this until June this year when we had sort of decided on the schedule and I was like, I'm I'm going to be a good podcaster and get ahead.

Spoiler That didn't last, and I had AI had I had a fantastic time with this.

I think my second watching showed a little bit more of the the bald spots in this film, sure, but I restrained myself.

I really wanted to go on to Child's Play too and continue on with the franchise and I was waiting for this conversation.

Fucking Rips 2 is so good, like it's so good.

I do think that if you were to return to the franchise, though, I mean, like, unless you intend to do all of them, which I wouldn't recommend.

I do think that like doing Seed of Chucky with someone gender queer who was a fan of it or doing some episodes of the TV show, I think they're like a lot more valuable for conversation because it's so interesting.

Like Seed of Chucky is just interesting because it's like from 2004.

So there's a lot of shit that's like, really dated in it, but still also really innovative at the same time.

Yeah, I, I don't know.

I think too, I don't know, I feel like you'd still have the same sort of like struggles with like queer conversations with it because it's not fully there yet.

I think there's like a little bit more in there for sure.

There's definitely more you can pull from it, but you can have more robust conversations the deeper you get.

But as a fucking movie, 2 rips.

It's so fucking fun.

Yeah, yeah.

This, this is this one's for David, this this one was for the podcast.

The next one will read for David.

I I probably Derek will go through the series.

I, I probably will just do this, but merely saying how many seasons the TV show was, which excites me and terrifies me a little bit because like, there's a lot of TV to watch, sure, but I, I feel like I can get through these films no problem.

This is not a this is not a challenge.

This is not as scary as it was told to me to be.

And I do.

I do have a little bit of a thing with dolls that we're going to go through all month long.

Like I don't like them.

And I also was raised with those like 3 foot tall fucking 60s dolls that these people had.

And we kept ours in something called the Playroom of the Farmhouse.

And that's just the whole thing is fucking terrifying.

If you told me that there was a playroom in a farmhouse, I would just ask like, okay, is that where the bodies are kept?

Tyler, we simply don't have time.

But the room next to the playroom was called the Witch's Room.

What the fuck?

What does that even explain that?

Sorry, we cannot go on.

You have to talk more.

It was it was the room that led to the attic.

And so it was sort of in disrepair and it looked like it was in disrepair.

And that's how it got the nickname the Witch's room because it looked like a witch's old hovel.

But it was on the second story of a very well to do farming families farmhouse.

Incredible.

I wonder why no one ever invested in like fucking drywall.

It's beyond me.

Is witch's room like a term that is used or is that OK that is like a real?

It might be.

It might be regional.

I've only heard it in Michigan, but I've heard tons of people in Michigan refer to Witch's room.

It's so.

Funny, I love that.

But it's like a, it's like a closet or something.

It's not like, like you would put a child's bedroom and be like, Oh yeah, they're in the witch's room.

Like that feels.

Well, maybe Derek's parents would, yeah.

Honestly.

Yeah, I had AI had a blast of this.

I'm excited to go back to it.

Yeah.

So now that we have talked about our context with Chucky and our history with it and everything else, now it is time to talk about the themes related to today's episode.

So our very first theme of the day is Robert did it.

Convincing people that Chucky really is alive and filled with evil is in many ways the core struggle of the movie.

One of the final lines of dialogue is do you believe me now?

Followed by yeah, but who will believe me?

Andy the child especially struggles with this because adults think he's just plain or confused when he tells them that Chucky did it.

Strangely enough, in many ways, this story resembles the case of supposed real life haunted doll and Florida legend Robert the Doll.

While never listed anywhere as official inspiration, the match could be kind of eerie because between the refrain that Robert did it to the supposed voodoo magic that caused the doll to be haunted in the first place.

This was a bit of a stretch for me.

I was, it's the one who did the nose this time.

And I but like, again, I am very familiar with the real life story of Robert the doll.

I've seen him in person in Key West.

And.

Yeah, no, I went to the Haunted Doll Museum while I was at Key West.

It's cool.

Yeah.

And he's like this very like a big deal in the Keys, the story of this doll that was super fucking haunted and the the original owner of this doll, who is this this artist?

His first name was Robert.

He named the doll Robert.

Anytime anything went wrong, he would say Robert did it as a kid and he came back to Key West as an adult.

He found the doll in the attic and then started hanging out with the doll again.

It was.

It's all very weird.

It's a very interesting story.

I highly recommend you look it up if you'd like a little soup sound of creepy today.

But I did want to point out that the thing that Mancini did say was his inspiration is the Twilight Zone episode, The Living Doll, which I just think is very fun for next week.

Yeah.

Talkie are y'all covering talkie Tina?

Yeah, I.

See Tina Hell.

Yeah, our next episode.

Love that episode.

It's so it's so good.

That'll be a fun one to record and talk about.

But I also think like the this creepiness and the fact that no one really kind of believes that Andy is telling the truth here.

Reminds me a lot of another creepy doll that we had, although a puppet, in this case with Night of the Limmy Dummy last month when we covered the Goosebumps book, I talked about.

And I think we all kind of talked about, if I recall that the the creepiness, a lot of the scariness for us as adults came from the fact that the children are telling the truth, but no adult believes them.

And like kind of acknowledging that sense of powerlessness of childhood is really scary.

And I think that crops up very, very often and very well in this movie where, you know, Andy is trying to tell the truth.

Andy is the only person that can communicate with Chucky, though, for the longest time.

And so no one believes him.

And to me, that's like, that's really frightening.

And I think it's it's very effectively done here.

And then it kind of pulls out to the other adult members of the the cast of characters.

Yeah, I don't know if this is a great time to talk about, but I'd love to bring up Mancini's like original idea for what the movie was, because I do think.

He.

Plays into.

What this theme is.

So initially he was really interested I think in the idea of like commercialism in the 80s and how like how like his, I think he's his dad worked in advertising.

So he like saw how cynical that stuff was when how it like corporations targeted children specifically.

And like I think there's a, I think it's in the second one or a future movie where like do you even have like an executive referring to children as consumer trainees?

Like that's all like stuff he pulled from his sort of like real life experiences.

So Move is a lot more of like a satire on that.

And the sort of heightened satirical element was that the dolls would be like these dolls that like had like sort of flesh that could tear and they could actually bleed.

And the and which is meant it's meant to be like really absurd because then it would be like, well, parents, then you've got to buy band aids and bandages for your dolls.

So it's like basically creating dolls that could breakdown that.

Then you have to buy extra stuff to like supplement that.

Let's just apply to buy more stuff, right.

So like meant to be like an absurd out there idea and then where the evil comes from is like the just this accidental blood magic where like Andy's blood mixes with the doll's blood and then, you know, the doll kind of comes to life.

But the movie I think in his original idea with that context, since that whole thing is like a lot more vague and a little more heady.

It's meant to be like the doll was kind of manifesting Andy's own, like internal sort of rage and complicated emotions from feeling just like not understood or feeling neglected.

Which again, kind of a heady concept.

And I think that in that version of the movie, it's less about like, no one believes the kid who's telling the truth.

And it's more like this kid is like has so all of these like complex emotions that his parents are just ignoring and not able to understand that then manifest in terrible ways, which I think to me is like a very queer kind of story, right?

Of like your parents don't understand you and you don't know how to process your emotions because you're too young to even understand what it is.

And we don't have that help and assistance to process those emotions.

They're going to manifest in really destructive ways, which I think is really, really cool.

Obviously the movie that we get is is I think a lot more simplified and like not I don't want to say grounded, but like it's more like things are explained a little more explicitly, right.

It's a lot more simple of a story of an evil man possesses the doll with this specific type of magic, right.

And I and I think, you know, Mancina has been open being like I don't like that you made my heady concept so simplified, but here's what I got to run with it.

But I do think that like, that's the thing that is interesting about this movie is that like, I it's it, it is a very, I think some, I think I think this idea is less interesting than what Mancini came up with originally.

But yeah, I do think it's a lot more palatable and understandable and makes sense why it was a hit that became a franchise, even if I do think it's a little bit less interesting.

Yeah, and I in in in 35 years, Mancini would have done an A-24 like that.

That exactly.

There's a different landscape now for that kind of film.

And we never would have had child's play if that was what it was.

And as disappointed as I am, because that does sound like a baller ass.

Yeah, I this needed to be a little closer to a formula, I think, to be as successful as it was.

And.

And I hope Mancini come on the podcast.

I hope that that now we're able to explore things because the success of this first one yielded other success, which then let you tell a story like this in a mainstream way for school.

It does make the story fun and very understandable.

Like nobody believes the kid, but they should believe the kid, and then they start believing the kid and then they fight the doll.

It's very straightforward.

Yeah.

And I don't love that he's a weird serial killer, but it gives him motivation for actions.

And yeah, that's the part of the formula I needed was motivation.

I do think that that is an interesting genius move because I don't, I mean, I, I don't know that other talking doll stories traditionally, I feel like usually it was like they just were evil or they were like possessed or something.

I do think the idea of like, no, this is just like a literal human man who just kind of ended up in a doll.

I do think that that's a really interesting take on the on the evil Tal concept.

That's like creepier in a very different way, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

I I so much about like what makes Chucky and like Charles, like Lee scary is, is so much about like who that character is and like I kept thinking about like he's a serial killer.

So like, who's this other guy?

Like what, what, what kind of crimes are they committing of?

I just, you know, I think it's all very interesting.

Yeah, it is funny.

Like, I think it's not.

I'm sorry.

I I literally just watch an interview with Don Mancini like this morning.

So like, it's all in my brain.

But like that even came up where it's sort of like, why would a serial killer have like a partner?

Like, it doesn't really.

Is that, like a thing that happens?

You know what?

It sort of doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

It's great.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Dexter.

Dexter, Hunch, Chucky.

Like, I would love that.

Like get together and make it happen.

Oh my God, I don't think I would survive that.

Well, we that in that case we have to move on to our next theme, which is that voodoo that you do.

So Voodoo VODOU is a very real religion that was created through the combination of the traditional religious practices of the Central and West African peoples and Catholicism that is still practice today.

It is also a closed practice, which means that you must be initiated in its mysteries by a practitioner to truly learn more.

Because of these factors, it was easy for depictions of voodoo to become warped in popular media and not at all like the rich culture that it truly is.

Yeah.

It's the worst part of the movie, and I don't mean I don't even mean for sure.

And and not even like like it's racist on one hand, but it's not even just that.

It's also just like really like why is Chucky fucking using a voodoo dolla's movie?

It's stupid.

It doesn't make any sense.

It's so silly and it's like so it's like this is the only movie that like has any focus on that whatsoever, because that was all Tom Holland was like really into the voodoo idea for this movie for some reason.

And that's just a completely de emphasized after after this.

It's just, it's so.

Spider Man, what is this?

Hey, we didn't, we didn't talk about this in your, your background history, Derek, but Tom Holland showed up in another place that I wasn't expecting him to, another film that you have expressed interest in.

He directed Fright.

Night he did wrote it.

Oh my God, I well wrote it.

Yeah.

I, I like Tom Holland as a director and I think with Fright Night, he like, he was actually like very into like emphasizing the gay subtext in that movie too, and like elevating that and making that a lot more explicit.

So I like him is that I do think he was a bit of a menace in this movie 'cause there's stories of him not being very nice to Alex Vincent and that's really why he's not on any sequels.

Like I really, it was very much like we got to get a good realistic performance out of a six year old child, so let's terrorize him.

And it's just like, and nobody was happy with him doing that.

So he's like not part of the franchise after the first movie, unfortunately.

And like, between that and the voodoo stuff, it's like, you know, you don't have to be part of this.

It's fine.

Yeah.

Yeah, it did seem, it did seem like I I kind of not a fall from grace because obviously Holland did plenty of other things.

He's a recognizable actor as well.

You probably have seen this man in.

Spider Man, but.

Yeah, it's.

So stupid.

And he directed the Langolier.

So like, listen, he did.

He did land on his feet eventually, but this was this.

It was sort of a weird note on this.

And I did see the voodoo stuff.

It did seem kind of like there was a a sore part of the cast and crew and it was Holland.

And that was the one that didn't persist.

I mean, like Alex continues on like he, he's great back in the series and he is fucking fantastic.

He's he's so good in the he is the lead in the second movie, even as a fucking like 8 year old kid and he's so good at it and like as an adult, he's really, really good and he doesn't I've heard doesn't like working on this movie has actually fucked him up.

Like, he's very and he has a really good relationship, I think with these movies.

It's very cool, yeah.

Yeah, but I would also fire a director to keep this child actor.

I would do anything to keep this child actor, Yeah.

Derek is Alex Vincent the actor in the third movie?

Cuz I feel like the third movie takes the movie was literally made nine months after the second movie and they have to.

And it takes place in military school.

So he has to be aged up to like 16.

So but it is funny.

So it's Justin Whelan plays him in the third movie.

But then because Justin Whelan then goes on to be in Serial Mom, he ends up being the connection between John Waters and Don Mantini.

And that's how John Waters ends up in Seed of Chucky.

So yeah, but that's the only time that Andy is not played by Alex Vincent.

Yeah, God, we will do anything to not talk about this voodoo.

Tyler, I, I sorry to derail your theme, but it sucks.

It sucks.

It's.

It's Merrily.

It's Merrily's theme.

OK, yeah, I know.

Like, I, I it doesn't have a lot to do with like the rest of the movie, mostly because all of the sudden there's a voodoo plot dropped in right at the beginning of the third hack that comes from nowhere.

It could have been any form of magic.

I just, I felt like it would be impossible and frankly irresponsible of us to talk about this movie without mentioning, hey, this is a real honest, actual religion that lots of people really actually practice.

It is, it is not like a fun movie, haha.

It's real.

It, it is, it is believed.

And it's really racist to just pretend that that's not what is happening here for sure.

And I, I, I felt like we had.

We had.

We have.

I think it's important.

It's important too, because I also think that's another thing to be weird is that like, again, it's like dropped into here and it's like so conspicuously de emphasis.

Like obviously they have to keep some of the rules of this, but like, again, you're not having Chucky.

Fuck.

Nobody's playing with like in voodoo dolls and future movies or whatever.

Like it's only this one.

And it's interesting how much it's in here.

And then it's just like, yeah, we're just not fucking with that in future things because that was weird.

If I give them the slightest modicum of credit for this one, at the very least, they make it very clear that, you know, like what 1 black man in the whole movie is like, you know, this like guy who teaches Charles Lee Ray voodoo, but at the very least he's like not framed as being evil.

He's very much like, Oh no, this is like, shit, you shouldn't be because of evil, dude.

I'm kind of like, maybe you should vet your clients a little bit more before teaching a serial killer this.

But at the very least, like, they're they they aren't framing actual, you know, voodoo as something inherently evil, right?

Just that this is an evil man using it for evil.

It's still not good how it's deployed, but it could have been worse, I guess.

Yeah.

Could have been worse I guess.

What a ringing endorsement.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Well, listen, we have to ask a couple questions that we ask of every media we consider here on the podcast.

And the first of those is, is it horror?

Is the film Child's Play, which introduced to the character Chucky into our worlds, a horror film?

Yeah.

I love this section.

I genuinely love this section because it's so funny to just be like Yep and a flat yes and like yeah, we could talk about it more, we could move on.

It's so funny to me every time.

I do want to say that David Kirschner's Chucky doll, David Kirschner's the designer of the Chucky doll.

It's an animatronic.

It looks fucking fantastic.

And I was maybe not prepared for how fucking good this looked.

And I knew this name, but it wasn't until I looked him up that I connected the dots.

This is the man who came up with the story for An American Tale.

Two years later, he would design the Chucky doll.

Can I also add that one of the main effects guys and engineers, Kevin Yeager, who worked on this movie and would work on future ones, he met Catherine Hicks on set for this movie and then they got married.

I've been married ever since.

Oh yeah, I found love.

She's she's good too.

I I will actually say the stat the cast is pretty stacked.

Oh yeah, genuinely.

Prince Humperdink from Prince's Bride.

Yeah.

Mm hmm.

What a Paul.

What a Paul.

No, it's it's.

It's I I had to learn his name as I was doing the notes because the entire time he's just been Prince Humperdink to me.

He's also Prince Humperdink in Fright Night.

Yeah, she calmed.

I I did also see him in Apbs documentary about Edgar Allan Poe reading some Poe.

So that was that was neat.

He had he gave it some gravitas.

Yeah, OK.

He's OK.

He's always going to be Jerry the vampire to Jerry the the apple eating vampire to me for.

God, he's.

So good.

This is wild that no one sang Jack Skellington for this man.

I mean, I know you don't recognize him, but that's the voice that is coming out of this man's mouth.

Yeah, see, that's wild.

I didn't know that.

That's the same.

Yeah, no, I definitely thought that was Danny Elfman the entire time.

No, he's just the singing voice.

I got you now.

Yep, if you had played more Kingdom Hearts, you would know this Tyler.

What a fool I am.

I need to play one of those.

No.

He's also where Susan Sarandon gets her stage name from because they were married briefly like I I think they were buried until like 79 or something.

But I think like she liked how her name sounded with his last name so she just kept his last name as her stage name even after the divorced.

Yeah, that is so funny because I knew they were married and then I knew that they weren't married and I never like, I was like, oh, maybe, maybe he took her name.

Yeah, he was like, really funny.

Oh my God, I didn't connect the dots on that.

That's so funny.

Before we move on, there's one more thing.

I had a book in high school that was called How to survive a horror movie and it was just like a fun little goof book of like talking about like different preparedness scenarios you could have for, I don't know, the devil showing up in your house and like how to deal with that.

It was a funny book.

I had a great time with it.

Here's the thing.

Their haunted doll section was like a haunted doll.

Congratulations, you've landed the easiest horror movie.

Just punt that motherfucker and you're good.

That's amazing.

And I so when I watched this movie like for the first time is like a real person, I was really unprepared for how fucking vicious that motherfucker was.

Like he is, he is an actual menace.

And like I was, I thought, Oh yeah, haunted doll or whatever, it's fine.

No, he's not fine.

He, he will, is actively trying to kill you and it's going to do it.

I believe, I believe that he could.

Yeah, he's got the that that guerrilla warfare.

Like he just pops out of nowhere and stabs you.

I think that he like, yeah, he uses his size well.

I think that they smart.

They were smart.

And like, I feel like they were getting to the vibes of what it feels like to have like a big, a spider or small dog chase after you.

And there's like a particular kind of, it's not the same as having a man chase after you or a monster just after you.

There is something I I don't know how to describe it.

There's something scary about something that is tiny but fast and that you know that you like would be hard, that it could evade need you as much as it could attack you.

There's something particularly frightening about it, and these movies that fucking nail that with Chucky.

A green A green Chucky is scary.

Chucky is scary.

Yeah, sorry, I'm, I'm just my mind is kind of blown at the idea of like the size comparison between large dog or large large spider, small dog.

That's such a perfect metaphor.

Like sweet spot.

Spider thank you Spider is bigger than a bread box.

He's.

Bigger than a bread box, all right, But you know, horror, yadda yadda, whatever.

Is it queer can like, how are we going to talk about this particular movie?

Not the rest of the franchise, which gets way more queer.

We all know.

Can we find and explore this particular movie using the lens of queer theory?

I have a few thoughts about it because it's definitely, I mean, it's definitely like the least queer movie out of this whole franchise, which I think makes it interesting that it is like the least queer out of a queer franchise.

Like what do you do with that?

It is harder to pick it out of it.

And I think because of the perspective that it's because it's coming from the perspective of like a cop and detective who's an authority figure and like a mom, right?

Like it's a little bit harder.

I do think that what I what I get from it is I do think that there is something to me that I find interesting about this haunted doll movie centering on a boy and his doll.

Not that that's never been done before, but I do think that a lot of classical examples, if you think of a haunted doll, you're thinking of like a talkie Tina or like an Annabelle or something.

You're thinking of like creepy porcelain doll.

And a lot of people associate dolls with girls.

Just just how we are in our culture and.

Our society.

And the fact that in making, you know, maybe the, I don't, I hesitate to say this is like the first like full feature film, like like killer doll movie, but I think it maybe is I feel like every other time it's been like a short film or part of a trilogy of films or part of an anthology or TV episode, being a full feature slasher movie centered on a haunted doll.

And the fact that it is not a girl in her doll and it's not a feminine doll, that it's a boy in his doll that for a doll that was targeted in the context of the movie for boys.

I do think is an is interesting.

I do think it is interesting and and like, and I don't know, I don't know if there's more than that other than that.

It's like it feels there feels like there's something a little bit queer about this sort of innovative killer doll movie being like a boy really, really wants a fucking doll that's kind of a baby doll.

And I know that like those things existed, right?

That like my buddy was a real thing and in real life and cabbage posh dolls were, you know, non gender specific and who liked them and everything.

But considering how many dads would certainly not let their kid have a doll like this because it's a doll and you're a boy boy.

And you hear you have this mom that goes above and beyond to give her boy the doll that he wants just because it's her son and it's something that he wants.

Like, I do think that that that feels like there is something there, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that in a lot of ways, like if this movie was.

I know that there is a whole other reboot that I haven't seen with Audrey Plaza, so maybe I'm talking about my ass here, but I feel like if you made tried to make this movie again today, there a lot of emphasis would be on like Chucky as an action figure versus a good guy doll.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a struggle that they run into in the 2019 movie, which is, you know, the one like nobody, nobody involved in the franchise otherwise is involved in that when it's a completely different thing.

And I struggle with that.

Like these really struggle with with that, what to do with it.

I think it's a big problem with that movie.

And I don't think what they land on works.

I I do.

Yeah, I do agree with you.

I think that part of the advantage of this not being a franchise that's been reset and rebooted multiple times and sort of thinking the same continuity is that like they don't really have to go back to this original story, which you really wouldn't be able to do in the same way now.

Yeah.

I think if you did, you'd just wind up with Megan.

Sure.

Maybe, maybe.

Yeah, Yeah, that's actually a good point, Tyler.

And we'll, well, we'll find out at the end of the month.

But I think that I think that there's a lot that Derek brings up that that is really important and I think is tied to some of Mancini's like anti capitalist stuff.

Is that like when we start the film, Andy is emulating the good guys that he's seen on television?

It's a hyperflexation for a life, yeah.

It is it really?

Really.

Yeah.

And.

And what is a hyperfixation except, like, the love language of queer people?

Like.

Hello, I'm like we we own that.

And so I do think that if you I don't know how to make it a queer reading, but I think there is a reading to Andy sort of growing up through the film and abandoning the sense of childhood that is the toy because it tried to kill him.

So I we all have to go through that sort of struggle of abandoning our childhood, but I don't know that's necessarily a uniquely queer experience.

Sure, the experience, all four of us had it we're queer, but I don't I don't know that straight people don't abandoned their challenges as well.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

And I think there is something to like putting your again, this, this is all like reading a lot into it, I think.

But I think there's also something queer about putting your faith and vulnerability into someone you consider to be a friend who then kind of betrays you, you know, and and in the fact that Chucky is like an adult man in that body.

I think you can almost even read like, like a daddy issues thing where it's just like you find someone that use or trusting that.

Then when they betray you at like when it's an adult who's doing it right, Like, you know, there's there's no dad present in this movie.

It's just a single mom.

And I know Don Mancini has talked about having issues with like his dad not understanding him as a gay kid.

I I feel like that kind of in tiny, tiny bits makes its way into this because you have Chucky being possessed by an adult man and Andy forming such a connection with him, you know?

Yeah.

I, I also think, and I don't know what to do with it just because this is this now feels like cultural memory that's coming in from just existing in this world is I kind of was expecting a Chucky face turn at the end of being like, Oh, I can't do this to Andy.

And that did not happen.

But it it, it feels like maybe there is a Chucky in the future who has a code of ethic, maybe not a code of ethics that we all have, but something that that is a little bit more about the character having moments of, of a type of heroism.

I think you're thinking of the scene where that's what went viral from the TV show, where Chucky is like, I have a queer kid.

I'm like, not a monster.

I'm not a monster.

Yeah, I think that that kind of I, I actually give this Series A lot of credit cuz there are a lot of horror fans that are like, oh fuck yeah.

Chucky, like anti hero, like, like he kills authority figures, like he's a fucking anti consumerism icon.

The movie's never really leaned into that.

He's always just a fucking monster.

Horrible person all time.

That's fine too.

That's fine too.

And it can both.

Both things can be true.

You can still celebrate this, isn't it?

I mean, he tries to stab the fucking detective's Dick through the bottom of the.

It's so funny in the.

Car.

Yeah, it seems so funny.

That scene is great.

Take his balls off, man.

I was cheering for Chucky.

I don't want Chucky to kill the kid, but pretty much every well, and Maggie, Maggie was also a sad one.

Pretty much everyone else, I was like, yeah, fucking get it.

Chucky.

Kill.

Yeah, kill.

There is.

I think it's like that competence thing, like because Charles Lee Ray, excellent murderer.

So it's kind of nice to see someone who's really good at something do their job.

Oh my.

God, that's our I love.

We are so starved for competence that we're rooting for Chucky being really good at killing.

Marilyn, you have pegged me.

This is just like why I liked the pit.

I just like watching people be good at their jobs and and this was The Pit, but with a killer doll.

Yeah, I know.

Like, wow.

Yeah, I came to that realization in the moment.

I'm like sitting with it right now.

Like, yeah, I can't believe I said that, but it's real, so.

David, I genuinely think no one has ever said that sentence before.

What this is?

This is like The Pit but for Killer Doll.

Yeah.

If you have, please write into the podcast.

Yeah, I would love to know.

I would love to know who you're psychiatrist.

No.

So I think that one other thing is like, I don't know, maybe because it's like knowing that the franchise does go into a like a more heavily gender place, I feel like you could maybe find a reading in the like the dysphoria of like Charles Lee Ray being like, I don't want to be in this body for the rest of my life.

So like maybe you could find stuff there?

I think, I think so.

I don't think that.

Yeah, I don't know that it's like, I mean, it's definitely not intentional in this movie, but I think that, yeah, right.

In retrospect, because the movies do play with that in the future, like explicitly so.

Like, I think, yeah, in retrospect, you kind of could for sure, for sure.

I think it's a really great, great reading on it.

Well then, let's open a good boy of our very own and jump into the plot beat by beat for 1988.

Child's Play The movie opens with a foot chase between police officers and a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray.

After he's shot, he takes shelter in a toy store and realizing that his wound is fatal, Charles performs A ritual to transfer his soul into a new vessel, and he uses a nearby Good Guy doll.

He swears vengeance on the cop who shot him and Eddie, his quote friend who left him to die.

Before completing the spell, a storm rolls in and lightning strikes makes the toy store, causing a huge explosion.

In the aftermath, Detective Norris finds Charles dead body in the wreckage and the camera zooms in on one of the Good Guy dolls.

I can tell you something else that's queer about this movie is Chris Sarandon sweater in this opening sequence.

Yes.

This is not.

This is not a standard issue or uniform, is it?

What is going on here?

Absolutely not.

I know it's Chicago, but like, come on here.

I think if I remember correctly in the original script, there's like more to this opening where like he he is in disguised as like a woman on the street that Charles E Ray was after.

So they all there's already kind of like a little bit of like gender fuckery happening at the beginning of the movie that then is cut out because I think he when this movie starts, like you see him like throw a scarf away or something.

And I think part of that was like the idea that he was in like a full disguise as a woman, which is just fucking wild.

Again, consider where the series goes.

That was literally meant to start at that, at that moment.

Wow, listen, I would have loved a little Mrs.

Doubtfire de Dragging here at the beginning of this film.

That would have been incredible.

I I would have been here for it.

Yeah, that's so insane.

I cannot believe that A was written in B was cuts.

What the hell?

Crime.

Crime.

Another Reagan sin, I'm sure.

We're going to Reagan so soon, Gay.

This is so this is really our only experience with the actor physically present Brad Doriff that voices Chucky and Brad Dorish, an absolute icon of character acting.

So.

Good.

This isn't like his first thing, is it?

I didn't.

I didn't, I didn't.

I looked up so many other people, but I didn't even click on Brad Duriff.

I was like, I know this.

He'd been around, he'd been around for a while because he's, because he did and would continue to do so much TV, genre TV stuff too.

Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.

Wow.

But I, you know what?

I I obviously didn't know him as Billy from one player with the cookers list, but that was his.

That was his first film.

Oh yeah, of course that would be his first one that that totally makes sense.

He.

Was young, but I, yeah, I could have seen him acting five years before that.

But yeah, that he was, he was a baby in that movie.

Good.

Lord, but no, he's so good.

I love him.

I mean, I love his.

He's still like one of like the first great X-Files episodes.

What?

Is this oh?

Yeah, I love that episode.

Is so fucking game.

That so good.

Yeah, he's so game too.

Like, I mean, again, like Don Mancini's staying throughout the whole thing.

Like Brad Duriff's always fucking Chucky.

Except for the one reboot movie.

He's always comes back as Chucky.

His daughter is like involved in the franchise.

That one is also really good in the in the TV.

I'm sorry this is a little of a tangent.

Like in the TV show they do flashbacks to like young Charles E Ray sometimes and his daughter Fiona.

Like they put her in some makeup and she plays her dad and she's so fucking good at it.

It's bananas.

Like she's so good.

She's fantastic and like believe it or not, the maid, like the direct to DVD Chucky movies where she first shows up are fantastic.

Yeah, she's so good.

She's so good.

And it's it's like so hard heart loving that like father and daughter get to work on this like demented killer tall franchise.

Together, yeah.

They're killing it, man, It's so good.

The family that stays together, slaves together.

Yeah, also she's a main character in The Pit, which we did just mention that they were both.

Really.

I didn't even know that.

Oh my.

God, yeah, that's right.

I totally, I totally space.

Yeah, funny.

They were both there.

They're both there.

I I also am really glad I clicked on this because I now know that Chucky appeared several times on the WWE, voiced by Brad Durham.

Yeah, that did happen, didn't it?

Oh my God, I'm having like a That's a Raven moment but I'm just remembering suddenly like the past and ads on Sci-fi Channel in between Aryans of Child's Play.

Reverse That's So Raven moment.

Brad Dorf, Brad Dorf, come on the podcast.

Come on the podcast, Brad.

Dorf there, come on the podcast.

I will, I will.

I will clear the schedule.

We'll be here all day.

Just talking to Brad Dorf.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, I've got to say, I think that the opening titles are also very, very effective.

I love Child's Play appearing over the sort of pyramid of good guy dolls.

I think that I, I don't know, I love a good title sequence.

I'm we're in the late 80s.

It's the time to do these.

It was done very effectively.

This was also where I learned that I was accidentally watching the Spanish language version when I first started this cool, which was Munyeka diabolico, which means the evil doll or the evil wrist since it is the same word here in Spanish.

I mean the wrist that you know is used to use the knife.

So there you go.

Stamp.

Yeah, exactly.

And then I was like a.

Little plastic hand.

I can't watch this in Spanish, so I had to go and find an English language version I'm.

Curious how the voice over actor for Chucky is in the Spanish.

Version damn you know you're right Derek I should have at least listened to like who was doing the Brad Duriff of it because sometimes like like we talked about when when Derek was here to talk scream sometimes we pick really really really sexy masculine voices for killers in Spanish language versions here in the country it.

Was some ASMR with murder?

Yeah, in Spanish.

And it's funny birthday.

Birthday.

Well, elsewhere, Andy is getting a breakfast of cereal with extra sugar and really extra everything, as well as ice cream on burnt toast.

He's preparing this delicious breakfast not for him, but for his mom, as he watches the Good Guy show.

The TV shows an ad for the new Good Guy Toys, and Andy is absolutely enthralled.

When Karen wakes up, it's time for presents.

Andy is disappointed there isn't a Good Guy doll waiting for him.

On the news.

They report a story about the death of Charles Lee Ray the previous night, but Karen turns it off.

At work.

Later, Maggie, Karen's best friend, tells her about someone selling the doll in the alley behind the store.

Very legit.

When they get back, Karen gets in trouble for taking an unauthorized break and has to work late that evening, even though it's her son's birthday.

Maggie Wonderful wonderful Maggie volunteers to babysit.

Karen's big homosexual boss with his pink bow tie.

Oh, this man, Yeah, this is a villainous gay right here at the beginning.

But you know what?

Real real he was.

He's he's real.

He doesn't get killed, so you know.

He should get killed.

He should.

He should.

Yeah, he should.

Have I think in a future movie he would absolutely would have been killed.

Yeah, firstly, I'm also going to say right here at the top of the top of the game, I wanted Andy to die.

This, this breakfast preparation.

I was like, I don't know what I have now learned about myself, but messy food is now some sort of trigger for me.

And I was like, you got to eat it, kid.

I can't do.

This.

You've got to remember that he's doing it out of love for his mom, though.

Like that that.

Helped so much.

That helped so much Derek.

I'm not going to lie, if he had started eating it I would like When does this kid die?

And I, I do think that she handles it really well.

She's just like she's oh God, I'll eat this later.

Thank you, honey.

And that's like right in the trash.

Perfect.

Mom perfect.

Mom.

Yeah, she's great.

I was having traumatic elf flashbacks looking that fucking breakfast.

I was like, what are we doing?

I also have to offer merrily it is margarine, not ice cream, that gets put on the toe.

Are you OK?

That makes more sense because I was like this fully looks like a fucking tub of ice cream.

Even that burnt test looked kind of good.

I'm not gonna lie.

The rest of the meal, terrible, but like margarine on like a really well done toast that is.

Yeah, that's good.

But to your point, it does make me never want to have children, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have children to terrorize them, but don't have children because they will make a mess in your house.

Yeah, the children will terrorize you.

Yeah, is what I'm hearing here as well.

I also just sorry to keep keep talking about breakfast for one more second.

I do think it's insane to have like sugary cereal with extra sugar added and then a glass of orange juice on the side.

Thank you.

No, there's no way that juice is gonna taste good.

No.

OK, I, I, I'm going to bat for Andy in this moment.

So I agree, horrible spread mother does a great job of just kind of deflecting it.

Right.

But when I was a kid and I was watching commercials where they would be like Oreos is part of a balanced breakfast and they had a glass of orange juice, a banana, an apple on the side, a piece of toast.

I was like, well, I guess that's what you're supposed to eat.

And so I understand Andy making it just because that's true.

He probably saw that on the TV and then in a commercial during Good Guys and without realizing, Oh no, this is actually a horrible combination.

No one should ever eat this.

God, that's so smart.

I want to.

I want to talk a little bit about Andy because there's these presents here.

I like that it's his birthday, but it does all feel like a very Christmas kind of situation here because of the cold weather.

I mean, I it's Chicago and I this is supposed that came out in November and it's just supposed to be.

November, Right?

Yeah.

That's the best I can tell about all this.

Yeah.

I think it being I I agree with you.

It's actually, it's weird that there was never a Chucky movie centered on Christmas because it seems like a very obvious.

Yeah, I do.

I do think that this one being on Andy's birthday specifically means that like, I do think there's something a little more meaningful about it being like this is supposed to be his day for him and him alone, which is going to make Karen feel even worse if he's disappointed on the day that it's supposed to be his day, not just a general holiday, you know?

That's true.

That's that's a really good point.

Yeah.

Because could could little gay boss have been like, you can't go home to your son and she'd be like, it's Christmas, Sir.

Like that.

That does feel a little bit too.

Bob Crash, right, Right.

But there are, it does look like there are some decorations up in the toy store when when we get started.

So that I think it is kind of all, yeah, we're getting close.

So it's kind of all part and parcel when I think of it.

It's it's Andy's having one of those situations where it's his birthday and Christmas.

So it's just kind of like he doesn't really get to celebrate either.

He has to celebrate half of both.

Yeah.

But I, I think now is a really good time to start talking about the Good Guy doll as a concept because this whole month is dedicated to monster dolls like these haunted dolls, scary dolls, whatever.

They seem to really crop up during the hype for like a new type doll.

So to me, like, I felt like Chucky is meant to be like a direct reference to Cabbage Patch Kids.

Yeah.

And how that was just like this huge commercialized craze, people running over each other in Walmart to buy them.

And like, the good guy doll is similarly difficult to get, partially also because the toy store just got blown up.

But so now there's like an artificial scarcity issue going on.

But they are indeed like I especially because it's like commercialized, there's ATV show to go along with it.

There's a character that's dressed up as one of the good guy dolls in like a like a like a mascot outfit.

So it's really emphasizing also the capitalist part of all of this, which I really appreciate.

And it sounds like that is one of the things that Mancini was able to kind of spearhead into the script and in the final product.

So it's really nice that we have that, but I think it's kind of just like an interesting phenomenon that keeps cropping up because like we'll talk about this next week with talkie Tina, but that was during a similar doll craze.

Then we had Chuckie during Cabbage Patch Kids.

Megan is is like kind of our modern day Chuckie, our 21st century Chuckie.

And she's around when everyone is all about trying to get new gadgets and what's like the hottest new gadget for kids today and how do we make it the most expensive possible.

So and that's also just very much kind of like in the air of how we're being marketed to.

Yeah.

And so I think for the doll to then become a monster and kind of a representative of that capitalistic, like need to like consume or in Chucky's case, kill, which is kind of like his own form of consumption, you could say.

I think it's really interesting.

And I think that that even if I do have problems with this movie, I think that's one of the things that I really like the most about it.

And I think it it also feels like the best of the Chucky movies, kind of keep that in mind as well.

Yeah, you know in a very real way.

And I know that we make we make a lot of jokes about how Ronald Reagan is our 4th ghost Co host and all that just but like in a very real way, he is the bad guy from this movie because the way that he cut regulations on advertisers to children allowed shows like the good guy show as or like power working, not Power Rangers, but like like a Transformers.

That's the one.

And like stuff like that to like create shows specifically do sell toys to kids, which created the artificial like my, I have to have this toy for my kid on Christmas or they're going to lose it kind of thing.

All snowballs from a decision that Reagan made as well as like the ways that we see Chicago as like hostile isn't just racist, it's classist, which also comes from fucking Reagan.

So like all of the all the bad stuff in this movie, it's it's his fault.

I'm him always, forever, which I think is very.

Fun.

Yeah.

I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

OK, great.

Andy is thrilled with his new good guy Chucky, which they all have their own individual names.

They say that in the advertisement, so him introducing himself as Hi, I'm Chucky.

That all works and spends the rest of the evening playing with it.

Around the bedtime, a news bulletin comes on about Eddie escaping police custody.

Andy tells Maggie that Chucky wants to watch the news, but Maggie turns the TV off and helps Andy get ready for bed.

When she finds the TV on and Chucky in front of it, Andy gets in big trouble, even though he insists that Chucky did it and he wasn't involved.

Later, Maggie is nervous about something being inside the apartment with them.

She is so on edge she even jumps and spills flour everywhere.

As she is cleaning it up she is killed with a hammer and falls out the window.

It's a specific good guy branded hammer, by the way.

Yeah, I one small thing is like later on this movie, like one of my favorite, I think my number one favorite scene of this whole movie is like the batteries moment later on.

But I I like that how subtly that is kind of set up here where they just pull the style out-of-the-box and it is just already on and working.

Which if you're watching a movie, that's the kind of bullshit that movies do all the time.

And you wouldn't question it, but it's like, no, that actually is like, really what's actually happening in the universe?

And that's weird.

And they should be clocking that it's weird and they're not.

And they're not thinking about how weird it is that they didn't have to fucking turn this thing on ever or put batteries in it at all.

I love that.

Actually, that was something that I was thinking about because I don't think that like kids who watch the movie today would clock that as weird even because a lot of toys like come charged and with batteries in them.

But that was not the case.

Or like so like I that's another thing that like very eerie and like that's a generational thing, the lost.

And like, I think that kids, if they watch this movie now, would be really surprised by the battery reveal, you know?

Yeah, Yeah, I am.

I I like that we're we're sort of kicking this month off with one of what I expect that we'll be seeing a lot of, which is this implicit psychological horror associated with the distrust that you say the doll did it and no one believes you and spoiler alert will recommend psychiatric help for you if if you continue to say that the doll is the one telling you to do it.

I also think that it gets a company with whoever doesn't believe the protagonist then mistreating the doll because we watch Maggie sort of hold Chucky just by the arm and I remember thinking like, oh, she's abusing my guy Chucky.

And I was like, David, this is like an inanimate object.

It doesn't have feelings.

I would carry a doll around like that, but for some reason, because I know Chucky's alive and like, I have the knowledge of what Chucky will be, that almost felt like coding for me, the audience to go like, well, it's OK if Maggie dies because she mistreated Chucky and that was like her sin to the doll.

Yeah.

I mean.

I, if there's ever a doll or anything humanoid toy that I carry around, I'm very careful with it just in case it's actually real.

There's a killing side of it.

So they're not going to have like a vendetta against me.

So yes, like you never know that it doesn't hurt to just have that cover, you know, merely.

Do not cradle your squish mellows.

Those things could smother you.

I mean, I do, but because I love them, not because I'm afraid that they're gonna kill me.

That's never That is not an intrusive thought that I have.

Well, what is?

Congrats, a new trauma.

I don't know.

I love my guys.

I I guess I assume that they love me.

Why?

Why wouldn't I?

See, I always imagine it's like a Toy Story scenario where they're alive, but they love me and I love them in return.

And so it's a mutually empathetic thing where I don't want to hurt them because I care about them and they care about me.

And they will teach me a lesson if I do abuse them, but not in like a physical way, just in a this is going to traumatize you for the rest of your Life, OK?

Wow, sure, the way.

Sure.

Speaking of rest of our lives and how short they are, I want to talk about poor Maggie.

I really liked Maggie.

She comes from, I guess, the Jersey school.

Yeah, referencing tale of the dangerous soup last month of loud mouths with sassy attitude.

Brunettes who get it and who get it who get it.

And I think that's a bummer cuz I really, really liked her.

I thought she was, you know, fun.

She helped caring out quite a bit.

She had an attitude.

She tried to, she talked back to the boss.

Yeah, in the previous scene.

And so I was just like, hell yeah, Maggie, I want you to go all the way.

And then she gets fucking domed by, by Chucky with a good guy Hammer.

I, I always get sad when that happens because I like Maggie even though it's like a really cool like fall and then she crashes on the car outside.

But I to me, I think the scene works better if it were actually campier because this it's it's pretty campy to be killed by a child's toy hammer and then fall out a window because you slipped on the flower, you know?

But I feel like it's not played up enough, like it doesn't feel heightened enough.

So it just kind of feels more of like a straightforward murder.

And then when a straightforward murder happens in a movie like this, I'm just thinking like a like 3 foot doll made of plastic just killed a grown ass adult.

And then like the, the feeling of like reality kind of breaks for me.

And so I end up this could have been better.

I do think that you're putting a lot of context for having been living in a world with the Child's Play franchise where you're very familiar with Chucky, though.

And I think this movie was made in a world where you don't necessarily.

I mean, chances are from the marketing, you probably know that it's the doll, but you're not totally.

You're not meant to know for sure until like halfway through the movie that it is like 100% the doll or what the doll looks like.

You're not Yeah.

Like it's, it's a surprise when his face changes and stuff.

So I, I, I think that like, from the perspective that like, if you're watching this for the first time and this is the first time this movie has ever that any of these movies have ever happened.

Part of the mystery is like, what the fuck?

How is the doll going to kill people?

What does it look like?

Is it actually the doll?

Is there going to be some weird twist and sort of part of that in the first half of it, I think is meant to cover for that.

And and I think I do think that that is unsettling that you don't really understand like what is even happening.

And so it could be a little bit even more of a surprise when it's just like, oh, that was a fucking doll the entire time that just ran up and did that, you know, So I don't know.

So I think it's still works for me.

I'm going to push back just a tiny bit because, like, the alternative is that it's Andy who's 3 1/2 feet tall.

That killed her.

But, and I find that even less realistic than having seen a, you know, serial killer put his consciousness into the doll.

Well, that it's interesting you say that because that actually was my read the first time I watched this was that the the soul of Brett Duriff was living in the Chucky and then got transferred into Andy and that's why he was on a killing spree.

And and that is why his footprints were in there.

And I, I was doing, I thought this was like a Friday the 13th thing where the first one was different than the rest of them.

And it is, but it is not.

It was not the movie that I was doing.

And once Brad Durf reveals himself in the Chucky doll, then it that that sort of first thing that I was going through was sort of a wash.

But I do think it's why the second viewing was not as enjoyable as the first viewing because I was doing exactly what Derek said, which was being like, what is happening right here?

What is happening with us for a sequence?

And I think a lot of that comes down to how that first murder is shot and sequenced because we are doing it with I guess Chucky's POV.

But we're never seeing Chucky.

We're only seeing Maggie and we're really selling the tension of this and I find Maggies tension to be very, very, very contagious in this moment.

I am just as tense as she is.

I do scare myself when I'm in the apartment by myself.

I think that we did a really good job with this, and I do think that with the context of what Child's Play would be, I too, like Tyler, would like this to be campier.

I am a little like, did you slip on the flower?

Does a single hammer blow knock you out a window?

We're doing some things with physics here that would make Garry's Mod blush.

But I do think that it did work and it raised the stakes and it pushed the tension forward.

And in the a 24 Chucky, we wouldn't have had this death at all.

And so I I like it.

I like that it's here.

Yeah, You know, I have this pet theory that I've been working on for a while now that I that the secret sauce for slashers in particular, but a lot of different horror movies is that that's they're like secret mysteries.

Because that's the thing like especially in a slasher, you have are trying to figure out who is the killer and like what is going on.

And that's why a lot of slashers in particular become supernatural slashers because once you reveal who the killer is, if they're already dead, you have to do.

And that's why Scream is so different.

It's because it stays true to the whodunnit format because this is different killer every time.

And so like when you guys are talking about like the mystery of it, it's just really nicely ironing into my theory here.

Thank you for all these test subjects.

This is the only movie that can be any sort of mystery, because once the cat's out of the egg with Chucky, you're coming to every movie for Chucky.

Exactly as you always do with like Jason and and Freddie.

It's the mystery that is what's making the first first set movie different than anything else, because they drop the mystery element.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, when Karen arrives home, she is horrified to discover that her home is a crime scene.

Detective Norris explains that Maggie fell out the window and asked Karen to explain the small sneaker marks in the counter on the flower.

She is deeply offended by his insinuation.

When Andy comes out of his bedroom and tells them Chucky wants to know what's going on.

Norris catches sight of Andy's distinctive good guy PJ sneakers and starts to ask about them when Karen asked them all to leave.

Andy goes back to bed but notices the flower all over Chucky's shoes, which happened to have the same tread patterns as his PJ sneakers.

When he tries to tell Detective Norris and his mom about it, he gets sent back to bed because no one believes him.

Poor little guy Norris tries to give Karen his number in case she thinks of anything and is firmly kicked out in the hall.

Norris compares notes with Detective Santa's.

And make sure to rush the lab test on the good guy branded hammer that was found in the kitchen.

I love that Andy is smart enough to be like, oh, fuck this doll's alive and killed this lady.

Hey everyone, fuck this doll.

This guy's alive and killed this lady.

Like he's not trying to protect his friend or everything.

He's just like, oh, I don't want to hear this shit.

I didn't sign up for this.

Like I love that because I do feel like a lot of other there was a lot of other stories like this kind of try to, you know, milk a lot out of these connection with the doll.

This kids like no, fuck this man.

I like, I like Maggie.

I don't want this.

Yeah.

And you know, in like in a later scene in the police office, Andy's going to say, like you said, if I said anything that that he would kill me.

And so like, you could kind of infer that this happened in between like like in the next morning to get him to go to the school after everything.

Because again, like the way that he looks at those sneakers is like that's flower on there.

They want they wanted to know about shoes and flower.

So we went to go tell them what a great call out.

Here's my thing.

I can't watch this scene without being distinctly horrified at the concept of PJ sneakers.

What the hell?

Okay, these are they would be footies on a normal set of P's and I assume the good guy.

The good guy footies are just shaped like sneakers.

They're like, just like slippers, except that they're full and you're supposed to sleep in them.

I simply can't get behind it.

They definitely have rubber soles on them that would imprint.

That's, I think, what makes it weird.

Yeah, it's one of the many things that make it weird.

I hate them.

I have sneakers I have seen and worn pajamas with footies that had like either plastic or rubber on the bottom that were designed either to help you grip or as part of some sort of shtick and I love.

Yeah, right.

That's the thing.

I know like, you know, like hospital socks that you'll get that have like the grips on them.

I know what you're talking about.

But I think that this is like it looks like just a sole of a shoe.

And it would have to be in order to like, you know, 'cause they 'cause they are suspecting that it's making the imprint in the flower.

It would have to be pretty, pretty thick.

So pretty thick, I think.

I think, I think the Good Guys Corporation just made some pretty horrendous products is really what it is.

Yeah, yeah, they made, they made hammers that could kill a lady.

Like, you know, I feel like they're, they're making some pretty off the wall.

Products here, Yeah.

And how many other deaths are they responsible for with their wasteful corporate management?

Mm.

Hmm.

The real bad guys in this movie, Reagan and the corporation that makes the good guys all.

Yeah, honestly, Guy Corp.

The second one like goes like hard on that.

So yeah.

It does.

Yeah, it absolutely does.

Yeah.

I'm so excited for what awaits me, but I had to be good and wait till this conversation was over, so I will.

You're going to love it.

You're going to love the the babysitter.

Character in the second movie too, yeah.

Can I also say how refreshing it is that Karen is the is like immediately coming to her son's defense?

Because I think in in a weaker movie, yeah, the mom would also just be like, well, the handsome detective told me this, so who am I really going to believe?

Yeah.

And because there is like a weird little emphasis that we haven't touched on that there's kind of like almost a romantic subplot where the IT seems like the guy is trying to get like the detective partner is trying to get the detective to go with Karen.

And they have like, I don't know, it's it's it's strange, but I'm going to, I'm going to send that over to Tom Holland for that.

Yeah.

But it's just nice that Karen, the is a mother who is like, I, I don't know what to believe, but I'm telling you right now, my son is not involved in this.

And I, I really appreciate that She's a very good mother.

This is one of the greatest mothers that we've covered so far in in in the Infocodo.

Yeah, Katherine Hicks is so good in this too.

Like, you know, like it's a bummer that she got trapped in like 7th heaven hell for such a long time, though, you know, she got the collected all the paychecks for it that she could have.

So good for her.

But like, she's so fucking good in this.

Didn't they do her dirty for the the second one like she said she they wouldn't want to come back and they it?

It wasn't it, it wasn't like it didn't, they weren't like it wasn't like an intentional jab or anything.

I think it was like a combination of like they couldn't figure out how to how to like make her make sense in the plot and she didn't really want to come back for like a, you know, a brief scene or whatever.

So she's kind of written out.

They it is rectified in future movies that they reference that she's doing fine.

Like it's she never Hicks never comes back.

I don't think there's any bad blood or anything between her and the movies, but she's never she never comes back.

But she in in in Canon is established off screen, is doing fine and living her life and doing a doing having a great time.

I like that.

I like that.

We should add Swiller Alert.

Karen doesn't die at the movie.

Well, Speaking of Karen, Karen is going to go talk to Andy and she hears some talking to someone, but when she opens the door, it's only Andy and Chucky.

Andy tells her that Chucky says all kinds of things, like his real name is Charles Lee Ray, that he was sent down to look after Andy from heaven, and that Maggie was a real bitch who got what was coming to her.

Horrified.

Naturally, Karen tries to make Andy understand that Chucky is just plastic, and then at first he insists Chucky is really alive and he relents and promises to stop making enough stories.

Karen leaves the room but waits just outside the door listening.

Andy dejectedly tells Chucky that he was right, she didn't believe him, and Chucky moves his head and looks for her shadow under the door before replying with one of his standard good guy phrases.

I'm going to tell you this is where I got turned around at Alex Vincent.

I, I this is where I was like, oh, this, this kids fucking, this is a rock star.

I'm watching on screen.

This is this is an incredible acting performance.

And I just, I didn't see it in the beginning because he was too much of A child and I hated him for being a child.

And yet I even now recognize that that was brilliant acting as well, because that is what I was supposed to be taking as the audience.

This I I'm so happy to know that good things came for him later in his life.

Yeah, I just the Chucky checking to see if she was listening before responding is so fucking sinister.

It is incredible because again, like the doll moving its head on its own, especially like coming from that mystery place of like, hey, what's going on?

Like we saw the scene earlier where he did that spell.

But like, this is the first real proof that we are seeing in the movie that like, that worked.

And it's so fucking delicious.

Yeah, yeah, agreed.

So the next morning, Karen brings Andy and Chucky to school, but as soon as she leaves, they walk right back out again.

They take several buses and trains until they end up in front of a seemingly abandoned home.

Andy asked Chucky if this is Eddie's house.

Before Chucky disappears inside the house, a tiny hand turns on the gas stove and then Eddie is killed in a gigantic explosion.

Karen arrives at the police station and discovers Andy talking with Santos about what happened last night with Maggie.

Before he switches to asking about Eddie, Karen begs Andy to start telling the truth about Chucky.

Andy begs him to talk at first before starting to get violent with the doll.

A doctor insists that Andy should spend some time in a psychiatric hospital.

The blowing up the house and killing Eddie Caputo is is silly.

It's like my it's my least favorite kill in the movie 'cause it's just like, why is he blowing up a fucking house?

It's whatever.

But I think that the act of like coercing Andy to like take a fucking bus and subway to like the other side of town in the middle of snow alone like a fucking 6 year old, to then like just be outside of like a rundown house and be like an accomplice to murder is so scary.

Like that is so fucked up.

Like and so upsetting.

Just like seeing him not just like walk around to go pee and like doesn't know what's going on and the fucking house explodes behind him.

Like it's so upsetting.

I think one of the things I really like about Chucky the character is that like, we've had evil villains, but Chucky is one of the mean evil villains.

Like he is absolutely just like a mean son of a bitch and there is no changing that fact about him.

And I think that's one of the reasons why people like him because that can also be really, really funny.

But I think it also just like like you're talking about how like scary it is to send Andy out from like the Chicago suburbs out to the Styx like on his own on multiple trains, multiple buses.

That is really fucked up.

And it's really like as an adult especially, I think that's that's extra emphasized because you're just thinking like, Oh my God, Andy is in so much danger, not just from like, you know, having an evil murderous doll by his side, but also because he's being coerced into doing things by the evil murderous doll.

And there's just strangers all around.

And this is like peak stranger danger time in America.

So like that, that whole PSA going around.

So I think like it, it works on so many levels until you get to the house.

And then I think the house stuff is silly.

Do you think that if someone just on the street had like attacked Andy or tried to kidnap him that Chucky would have protected him?

Because Chucky did need someone to coerce to to be.

Coerced as his transportation and like to have access to stuff.

I'm with Derek.

I think Chucky would have defended this child.

Only for the tool.

Only for now as a tool.

As a tool.

Yeah, as a tool, because I do think that he's a lot different than Art the Cloud.

This is not a nihilistic villain figure.

This is a villain who has a motivation.

The motivation is like stupid evil, but he will do everything he needs to to accomplish the motivation.

And so I I think Derek's question is well put and helps us determine who the character of Chucky.

Is yeah, no, like I get, and I respect that.

I think honestly, one of my favorite parts about Chucky, the killer doll is that it's Charles Lee Ray, actual evil human man with like, real motivations.

And I just think that he's so fun as like this absolute fucking asshole.

Yeah.

Do I do I think that the Eddie Caputo kill is the worst in the movie?

Yes, I absolutely agree with you.

Did I try so hard to get out of talking about this scene when I was doing the write up notes but it was ended up being too important for why he was in the police station?

Yes.

Do I think that the house blowing up is cool?

Also yes.

I contained multiple.

Truths.

It's a good effect.

Good practical effect, yeah.

I was like, you monsters.

There's some great cinematography in this house.

I am sorry.

Like, I hate that.

I hate some of what we do to get here, but we are doing some really good horror movie things in this house.

It it is tense.

I, I don't really care about Eddie, so I don't care that he dies in the same way and I cared about Maggie, right?

But I do like the little hand turning the stove.

I I, I did think that was effective.

I loved all of the use of weird angles in this like set that they had for the house or a real house if they were filming on location.

I, I, I didn't like the scene, but I really liked watching it, Sure, because I thought that it was good art for a horror movie, for this horror movie.

Tom Holland is a good director.

He's as good of a director as he is as a Spider Man, you know?

So yeah.

Apologies to Tom Holland, actor and director, but we are not going to stop making that joke.

Yeah, come on the podcast.

Come on the podcast if you've got beef with us.

I'm also going to say I had to watch it 2 times to make sure that my thesis on this was correct.

But we are only playing the You're in danger spooky background music when showing actual trains and buses that this boy is on.

Whenever we actually show the kid and Chucky together it's like other things.

Other things are going on, but we are playing the scariest you should be scared music when you look at a subway car.

And I was like, what is this fucking car propaganda that has been shown?

The true evil with public transportation.

Fucking Reagan.

I'm telling you, he is the bad guy.

This whole fucking movie, yeah.

Like like when fucking Chucky is whispering little things in the kids ear, it's just like oh don't worry about it, Andy will be fine.

But when we have to watch a bus transfer happening, it's like no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Although.

You know what, what Karen does also ride the bus like explicitly to and from work.

And she's like a like the good, like a good person in this.

So I think it's a little more neutral.

It's more like good and evil can both use public transport.

So actually it's an endorsement that public transportation is for everyone, whether you're a killer or not.

Deserves our tax money because everyone can use it.

It's inclusive.

Yeah, it's.

Inclusive your tax dollars at work for good and for evil, just like in real life.

I do actually want to add on to that before because I definitely want to talk about this police station scene.

Like I think part of that, I think merrily you kind of hit the nail on the head because the division to me with the public transit being good or evil is that the public transit that we see Andy and Chucky on is like covered in graffiti.

It's dirty.

It looks very rundown.

Andy then is going to a very rundown place that has been just, it's full of the unhoused and stuff like that.

And I think it is just like, it's so dirty.

The city is gross and it's gross because there's gross people living there.

So it is like very much that classes thing.

And it feels like Holland trying to take, like a shortcut just to tell the audience visually Andy is in a bad situation, not just with the music, but also the actual environment that he's in.

Looks like an unsafe one in comparison to the cleaner, more like, I guess wealthier part of Chicago that he lives in, even if Karen is not, you know, wealthy.

It's yeah, I mean, and the movie deploys that a couple of times, I think, you know, and it's like, it's very, I mean, it's very 1988.

Thank you doing a.

Movie about Chicago especially you know so yeah, it's not surprising.

I understand why it's there and I don't even I don't even like blame them for doing it because that's what fucking every movie would did.

Yeah, I think it's I think it's really good to call it out because I do think this and then like some of the stuff with on house people later on.

It's like it doesn't.

It's it definitely.

Not a good luck.

Doesn't look, doesn't feel good now.

Yeah, but but to the 80s of it all that that was the paint that was coming out of the two.

Yeah, every movie.

Yeah, every.

Movie.

Can we talk about that police station scene though for a little bit?

Because like seeing Andy, a six year old child, being interrogated alone.

Dude.

God.

Oh my God.

Well, it was also the 80s Marilyn.

I don't know what to tell.

You at the very least they had a child psychologist I guess on the other side of the glass, which I suppose maybe it was nice of them but and not guaranteed, but like it just it felt so wild.

I've.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm now thinking of that Michigan law firm.

I think it's Michigan that the two lawyers made a video for her and they just said, like, if you ever are in like a protest, shut the fuck up.

The police try to ask you stuff, shut the fuck up.

And I'm just thinking to Andy, Andy, you don't have a lawyer present.

Shut the fuck up.

You don't even, you don't have your mom present.

She doesn't know where like at the very when she first arrives, Norris asks her.

Did you like, stop by the school to pick up your son?

And she's like, oh, no, I, I just came straight here.

Of course she didn't pick up his son.

You already have him.

It's so shitty.

It's so mean.

I think I I kind of in a weird way kind of like that, like the cops of this movie are really like kind of shitty human beings.

Like and Norris only changes his tune at all until he's like seasoned on no uncertain terms.

But Chucky is a living doll.

It's like, oh fuck, these people are right, never mind.

And then fully makes like a 360 or or 180 from that.

But like up until that point, like every fucking sequence he adds, it's like, Oh my God, dude, you're such an asshole.

Like you're a fucking crying mother.

And like her, her child's life is being ruined.

And like, he's just sort of like, I don't know, lady, you sound crazy.

Like whatever.

Like it's, yeah, it's fantastic.

Typical, yeah.

Yeah, I hope you get stabbed in the Dick later.

I'm kind of hoping like obviously I don't have like the actual fact from that.

But in Mancini's version of the script, I kind of wonder like if that is the case, Like if the cops are being depicted as assholes purposefully.

Because I think that would be like an interesting, like, queer perspective to see cops depicted in that way versus like a like a very Reaganified type of movie where the cops are the heroes, but they're just confused or they misunderstand the situation.

In this, they're actually like, very actively aggressive and antagonistic to our protagonists.

Yeah, I can't say.

I can't say for sure, but I know that he said like, you know, that maybe like the first half of the movie or so is a lot more his.

And then after like kind of the midway point is when it's a lot more Holland stuff.

And I do think that like because his version of the movie, like the majority of it would be like everyone is thinking it's this fucking kid and accusing him and treating him badly until it's revealed to be the doll.

And so I do think that from that, that the narrative in that way, the cops would be kind of antagonist the entire way through until they're proven wrong.

And the cops are assholes in the first half of the movie.

It really, you really don't get Chris Sarandon's character becoming a sort of the hero of the movie until kind of the latter half of it when it feels like it's sort of veering more into Holland's vision.

So I think you're, I think you're right, Tyler.

I think that maybe, even if not intentionally, I think Mancino is probably having those thoughts in, you know, when when making the movie originally.

Yeah.

Also big big props to Andy.

I really liked him seeing.

I really liked seeing him get angry with Chucky and actually hit Chucky the doll.

See, I hated that.

I loved it.

Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a great scene.

It's great acting.

Like watching him hit the doll, I was just like my heart, like I immediately like, I was just like, oh fuck buddy.

No, because I know that the cops think this kid is the one who killed people.

He's getting violent.

I immediately like I, I got so fucking stressed because like this is just proving the cops theory to them about how Andy is a violent kid who will resort to violence.

So this that that made me like fucking I hated that.

I hated that for him that we thought that this was like immediate, Oh, no reaction.

I think that's fair.

I think it I because I also had that feeling merrily where it's just like, but he is getting violent in front of the cops, which is just kind of proving the cops bullshit point.

But at the same time it I liked it from like a narrative perspective because it felt very earned for Andy's character to react in that way.

Yeah.

And the performance itself was was really great, really great.

I kind of like every time I say that, unfortunately, I put like a little asterisk in my head because now, based off of what Derek, you told us, I'm just thinking like, Oh my God, what did Tom Holland.

Yeah, to, like, get some of these reactions, especially the Andy sobbing near the end.

Of the I will say that like once Tom Holland's out of the picture, Alex Vincent is still good.

So I do think that these performances you still can attribute to Alex.

Vincent is just a good child actor, regardless of Holland, you know, menacing him a little bit, you know?

Well, Karen brings Chucky home without Andy and tries to get Chucky to talk before starting to laugh at herself in the kitchen.

She examines the Good Guys box before discovering that the batteries were included but not installed.

Instantly realizing what that means, Karen tries to get Chucky to talk again, even threatening to throw him into the fire if he doesn't.

Chucky does more than talk.

He attacks her and then escapes.

So fucking good.

My fucking favorite scene in like this whole fucking franchise.

Honestly, it's.

So I agree.

The sort of I like, like the sort of ups and downs of it because I like that she is at such a such a low spot that she's just like, fuck it, what if the style is real?

I don't fucking know and is like yelling like say something, you little bastard realizes how insane that is, like calms herself down a little bit only to like only for the fucking batteries to fall out-of-the-box and suddenly all of that is like shit, I was right when I was at my like worst moment.

Like it's so good.

It's so good.

And the fact that like when she does go back to Chucky, like and he does the backwards fucking head spin and says hi, I'm Chucky, want to play.

It's still in the doll voice, but the delivery of the doll saying that is different than any other time that dolls.

It's still not Brad Duriff's voice, but it's still a more sinister version of the high pitched Dolls voice which is such a fucking cool detail.

Yeah, agreed.

So good.

This was also my favorite, and I would say this was very frightening.

And then she like, reaches under the couch and like, don't, don't do that.

But she also like needs the answers is the thing that I like about it is that like like other horror movies, I think would play the scene and you just be like, get the fuck out of there, girl, What are you doing?

Throw it in the fire immediately.

But like she needs this thing to give her answers.

What was happening to the son She needs.

She needs it to fucking come alive and talk to her Like she needs to fucking get it out from underneath the couch.

And I love, I love how they've like forced her into a position where she has to be in a position where the doll could, could kill her and she has to defend herself, you know?

Right, right.

Karen ends up going to the police station to try to explain to Norris, but he doesn't believe her either.

So she tries to find the person who sold her, Chucky in the 1st place.

Norris follows her and they discover that he found it near the toy store that Charles Charles Lee Ray died in.

Karen realizes that Chucky is Charles Lee Ray, but Norris refused to believe her.

Yeah, I just, this whole thing is so good.

It's really is like the heart of the movie in a lot of ways.

And I just think that like this, I know that there it's a little rough and that some members of this conversation don't really enjoy this movie that much.

I think this is where it starts cooking with gas.

And like almost every scene after this is fucking fantastic, you know what I mean?

Like, especially Brad Dorff's performance really starts to happen after here, and that's one of the best parts of the whole fucking thing.

I really wish that I like could erase my memory of what Chucky looks like culturally to experience for the first time.

Seeing the face change from the from the original doll to the animatronic.

Like it's fucking so creepy to see that.

Like the way that the skin stretches differently and everything thing on him and how emotive he is and stuff like it's like kind of gross and like kind of it's like it's it's pitch perfect with that stuff.

And I and I think that that's one of the like the major reasons this movie fucking works is like the decision to not just have the doll just talk and say creepy things and kill people, but to actually have it be like this detailed working puppet and animatronic in that way.

And like design his face to be able to be like a lot more like a squash and stretch almost in a real, in like a realistic human way.

Like does it make sense in the context of like the real world of the movie?

Absolutely not.

But like, whatever, it's fucking magic.

Who cares?

Like, it's so fucking effective and it's so creepy when you see that change happen.

It's also just like, on a technical level, extremely impressive.

A fax word.

He's like.

Nailed it from the first fucking movie.

It's really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, 'cause like that, that's sort of like those facial expressions, like obviously they become more refined and subtle as the technology progresses, but even here it's.

Like it's really good.

It's really good.

They're able to animate so many like micro features like the eyebrows, the eyes, the eyelids move.

The like the mouth especially is really impressive because like it's not just like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah up and down.

It's it moves kind of realistically to match the same shapes that Brad Dorr Mouth would make when he's saying the voice lines.

And that is very, very impressive for 1988 when they're not really using CGI at this point.

Yeah, and I think too also I think it's, I think hard to wrap your head around living in the world with Chucky for so long.

Like you see Brad Durf at the beginning of the movie, you don't hear his voice for the whole fucking first half of it.

This is the moment where you hear Brad Durf's scary ass fucking voice come out of the doll for the first time like that.

Plus the animatronic features, like it's kind of like, I wish I could see it again for the first time because it's got to be kind of mind blowing to experience that, you know, it's just such a fucking such.

Bites.

Yeah, he's a bite then.

He bites her and that bite looks pretty fucking.

It's so.

Bad.

It's Marley and like.

And then the bite mark that Karen shows off later, it looks.

Really fucking bad because like, you know, when she approaches Norris and starts talking about how the the doll really is alive and how like it attacked her and all that stuff, you could, if you were a police officer, didn't believe this woman.

You could be like, oh, she's making this up.

And like theoretically she could have taken the doll and like given herself the bite mark, right?

But like the way that that wound is on her arm and how bad it is, It's you can't even say that because of like it looks so awful.

You can't imagine somebody doing that to themselves using a fucking doll like that.

It's it's just crazy.

It's so cool.

Yeah, love it so much.

Well, still, Norris does Go check out Charles Lee Ray's file at the station.

As he drives home, Chucky tries to fucking kill him.

It's great, but Norris manages to survive and even shoots Chucky.

The next day.

Chucky finds his former friend and voodoo practitioner John, who explains the pain Chucky is feeling is because the longer he is in the body of the doll, the more human the doll will become.

Horrified at the idea of being stuck like this forever, Chucky insist that John fix it, but he refuses.

Chucky blackmails him, torturing him with his own voodoo doll.

Before John reveals the secret, he has to transfer his soul into the body of the first person he was.

He revealed he was alive to you, which is Andy.

Chucky stabs John anyway because that's what Chucky does.

Karen and Norris arrive and John warns them about the danger Andy's in and tells them to target Chucky's heart.

The car scene is so fucking fun and I I think anytime you put someone in a small space with Chucky, like you're cooking with gas at that point, like just like driving a car really fast on a highway while a knife is stabbing you through the seat in the back.

Like what do you do?

Like what the fuck do you even do, you know?

So good.

I love that the moment that he scurries under and like puts like is pressing the gas pedal so that like the the the Norris can't stop the car.

It's fucking incredible.

Yeah, yeah, I, I love the car set piece.

I think this is really good.

I think this it's, it's goofy, it's a little campy.

Oh yeah, but Chris Random plays it really campy.

Too.

Yeah, agreed.

Yeah, because he's like, Oh no, the seats on fire.

I better get my butt away from it.

Like it, it, it truly is just a little goofy here, but it's it's really good and it it's effectively shot to be horrifying.

Like I, I do kind of want him to get his balls chopped off, but I don't really want him to get stabbed.

And I also, I don't know where this is from, but I do kind of associate Chucky of having this kind of knife.

And so it feels kind of good to see him with it.

Yeah, yeah.

For sure.

And you know, I again, I called him Prince Humperdinck earlier.

He is that role to me forever.

But like, The thing is about this particular actor is he is so good at threading the needle perfectly between like serious actor and camp.

And like he does that in pretty much every role he's ever been in.

And this is just like such a master class of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the voodoo practitioner scene.

Yeah.

So it's like I think I mean there's a lot of stuff that I think I think 11 problem with it.

I mean like the racist thing is always going to be there.

I think that's a given.

I think the other another problem with with this stuff is that, like, this is where it's throwing out all the exposition and sort of like, OK, here's the rules of Chucky.

Do they make sense?

Not really.

Is it kind of contrived?

Yeah.

Like, is it just a way to, like, give you a way to have the final goal of the movie to end the movie?

Yeah.

Like, you know, and it.

And it just really feels like it's just all kind of shoehorned into this one scene for this one character you've never met before that's dead at the end of the scene.

It's a little weird.

And again, like Chucky with a knife.

Awesome Chucky biting people, awesome Chucky holding another man's voodoo doll and stabbing it.

I don't know, dude.

I do think that it is a it is a it is a good kill in that it is really unsettling and creepy to see him using it.

I think it's just weird in the context of this movie.

Like it belongs in a different movie about like dark magic or something.

It's weird in the context of this one.

Yeah, because, you know, the movie tries and succeeds, frankly, in playing it very straight, right?

Like it's really.

Frightening.

There's there's this serial killer who's possessing a doll.

Fine, weird that that's happened.

But this is the only like magic on magic thing, right?

It's weird.

It doesn't fit.

It doesn't.

But like, I guess at the beginning of doll Sember, we have doll on doll violence.

I that's fun.

I don't know.

You know, I never even made that connection that it is chucking a doll, holding another doll and using that doll to kill someone.

There is something kind of funny there, but you know.

Dulception Center.

That's what we're.

Going to Yeah.

My biggest problem with the scene is how much it fucking ripped.

Just from a visual perspective, it's well done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The things that are happening are the are the worst parts.

But we get so much Chucky emotive acting here.

And God, it's a blessing to watch.

It is just so fun to watch this.

And Raymond Oliver, who plays John, also credited as Doctor Death, he's playing these limb breaks really, really, really well.

And they're.

He's great.

Yeah.

They're gnarly and great.

He even gives a pretty good death rattle there at the end.

I hate everything that's happening, but I can't hate what's happening on the screen.

Yeah.

And that's the problem.

It just looks great.

It looks so good.

This is also like the first scene since the beginning where we get a lot of Brad Dorff as Chucky.

And so like we are starting to get him really to like chew the scenery and like act in the way that we know that he will.

It's just it's so good.

It just sucks that it's also this scene, you know, And there's also a line that's so funny in retrospect because of how the franchise goes.

But him saying, you mean I'd have to spend the rest of my life in this body?

No fucking way.

And like, bad news, buddy, That's that's it.

That's your Chucky forever now.

It's so funny.

Yeah.

So at the mental hospital, Andy sees Chucky and he tries to get help, but the doctor doesn't believe him.

Chucky is of course there and so he and Andy struggle.

The doctor comes back in and he tries to sedate Andy because he thinks he's like having a psychotic episode.

But Chucky again, he's there.

He kills him.

In the confusion, Andy escapes.

Karen and Norris arrive at the hospital and realize that Andy must have gone home.

At the apartment, Chucky finally catches Andy and he starts doing the ritual.

Before the soul transfer can be completed, Karen and Norris arrive and save Andy.

Norris, Norris, Karen, and Chucky all fight until eventually Karen traps Chucky in the fireplace with Andy, lighting him on fire.

Unfortunately, that's not enough to take Chucky down permanently, beginning another round of attacks until Karen eventually shoots Chucky 2 pieces.

Santos arrives and thinks that they're all pulling a prank on him until Chucky gets up one more time to try and murder him, and then the the movie finally ends with Norris actually putting a stop to him.

I think another reason I really like Child's Play movies is that like the ends of them or just like fucking Terminator movies?

Like it is like we can't fucking kill this doll.

Get a hydraulic press on this thing.

Right, right, right.

Let's let's turn the mental hospital because I do think that this is another chance for me to said like Alex Vincent just killing it here as Andy.

This is very, very good.

Yeah, like this is when you said that Tom Holland was like awful to to Vincent here.

This is the scene that I immediately thought of.

And I broke my heart for him because watching this scene, really it was the way that he breaks down and cries.

It just, he's such a little, little boy and he's having this big, big emotion.

And it just, yeah, I, I couldn't not imagine my nephew crying like that.

And my heart went out to him.

And then knowing that that was maybe like, a little bit real.

I can't handle that.

Like answer for your crimes, Tom Holland.

Yeah.

Come on the podcast we will yell at.

You yeah, like, hey, he didn't get any residuals for get get as many residuals for sequels because he didn't thank anymore.

So you know, yeah, yeah.

No, it's good.

He's really good.

But for a for a pivot and happier times, Chucky putting an electroshock on to a doctor and then frying him into a crisp.

Yeah.

No, this is perfect.

Chucky did nothing wrong.

This is the fate that awaits all of you who practice for it in psychiatry.

Get the fuck out of here, Frazier.

You're next.

Oh.

My God.

It's it's that kind of like ironic death that like is like the the seed work for the camp that is to come in the future movies.

Yeah, especially because it's just so over the top in a, in a like a weirdly grounded way.

Like it's obviously not at all like what someone being killed by an electric shot would look like, but it is still just like, it's what we imagined that would look like.

And that for that reason, I think it works really well.

It's also really satisfying too, because not only is he some sort of Freudian psychiatrist, but he's also ignoring fucking Andy.

Like a lot of the horror from this movie just comes from every institution that is meant to protect the vulnerable.

Like Andy totally fails him.

And like so seeing him die is is very satisfying because you know, fuck you listen to your patients, listen to children that are like in actual emotional distress.

So good on Chucky to do that, even if it was only for Chuckies own.

Sure.

Yeah, sure.

And further framing Andy by the way, because that is a scalpel that Andy held earlier in the confrontation.

They're only going to find his fingerprints on it and it just really sucks to.

I know that they cover this more in movies down the line, but picturing Andys future from here just seems like a bad time.

Yeah.

Yep, Yep, Yep.

There's another moment of levity before we get to the climax, and that is these old neighbors riding up in the elevator lift.

And the woman turns to Chucky, who is just there at the corner, minding his own business, and she goes ugly, duh And.

Then.

And then Chucky goes fuck you.

My favorite my my understanding is that Brad Duriff AD libbed that in the booth.

The fuck?

You excellent, excellent, incredible.

Legend.

I this is, this is one of the things that I've recognized now that I've been exposed to a lot more heart.

You do need a little bit of table setting before the big conflict because we're not going to have a lot of time for laughs once we're in the apartment.

And this is a really, really good way of giving me a little bit of breathing room before we do some really, really haunting stuff with lighting when it's just Andy and Chucky.

And then it is, as Tarek said, fucking Terminator here at the.

Yeah, I, I also think too, like I've always found like Andy and his mom are like 2 of the smartest people I've ever seen in a horror movie.

And especially because like, at this point, like they have their fucking cop friend who just kind of being dragged around by them the entire time and he's the one who's incapacitated while they have to defend him at a certain point.

Like they fucking know.

Exactly.

Yeah, right.

Right.

Yeah, It's very, very, very exactly.

Yeah.

I just, I they're, they're always making the smart move and like, predicting what Chucky's going to do before he does it.

Like they're in a terrible position and they're still struggling, but like, they figure out how to fucking navigate all of this and make all the right decisions.

It's just like, really, it's really well done, you know?

Yeah, personally I just thought, look, there was 1 confrontation in there too many.

Like I loved, I loved the fireplace thing and like Andy being like this.

Is the end friend.

Yeah, that was that was.

Rather the extra the thickest slice of ham you could ever add to a sandwich there.

Perfect.

Perfect.

And like I loved Karen shooting him to pieces and like, in theory, I like the thing at the with the like an other cop and like all of that stuff, but I just something needed to give in here.

I feel like and I, I, I don't know what I would have cut, but I felt like something should have been.

No, I feel like all the yeah, all the stops on the road trip are perfect.

Merely they were just too far apart.

And that, that was my problem was we just spent too long going from this is the end friend to the blasting to the final scare.

There was just a little too much time between all of these things.

OK, yeah, it could be a pacing.

It's just fair.

It's, I think that they had to figure out time to get the like the last cop in there so they can have one more person to not believe them and immediately be invalidated because of that.

But, and then yes, I, I, I, I don't disagree with that.

I think sort of it's a little bit too spread out.

I get that.

Yeah, yeah.

But but really, as soon as Andy is knocked unconscious, we really are in the end game and and that is exciting.

The end game is just a little longer than I think that it could have been.

And a a scalpel to the edit would have been helpful.

Yeah, but it's great.

I mean, batter up all the way until the to the last scare.

This is this is perfect.

This is this is what I I got a ticket for.

Yeah, like.

I love Karen doing like a triple tap, by the way, or quadruple tap on Chucky's body doesn't hit the heart.

Very surprises she can't do that.

But just the fact that she's new, like I'm going to shoot this thing because I'm fucking sick and tired of this thing getting up and walking around is is I love that.

That was a wonderful.

Moment.

I also just like the classic 80s clouds and lightning over their apartment building.

It's such a great like a particular look.

I don't know how you describe it, but the particular look that 80s horror movies and like Poltergeist and stuff like this had, the way that clouds look so fucking good.

I.

Love it so much.

Yeah, Zul finished in New York and came over to Chicago for a quick set and brought the clouds with her.

Exactly.

It was in New York to Chicago to California with yeah situation just traveling the country doing her.

Storm going the wrong way through this country.

That's not how storms usually work.

Well, it was supernatural, so.

Yeah, but this wasn't.

I mean it does seem to come because of the spell of being cast.

So if you want, if you need storms, just use a just appropriate a voodoo.

Yeah, I guess.

That's the answer.

But we do not recommend appropriation.

Well, how did we all feel about Child's Play in terms of horror or queerness after our conversation?

Do you have any other final thoughts for the episode?

The only other thing that I, I I didn't bring up that I was thinking about in terms of like the queer conversation.

I don't, this doesn't need to be a whole can of worms.

I think it's, I think it's a thing that's not present that I think could have been present is in a bad like could have been present in a bad way.

And I'm glad that it wasn't.

Is that the idea of this being an adult man with a doll like in the city, like sleeping in bed with a child?

I think a worse movie would have played up on the ickiness of that and framed Chucky as more of a child predator.

And I think it is very smart that this movie, like if you want to read into it, you can, but you have to work to read into that, you know?

And I like this movie kind of avoids it and the whole franchise avoids that.

Chucky's never like that.

I just like to kill people.

I think that keeps it fun.

But I also on the queer side of it, I kind of wonder if that because this is being helmed by a gay man and a thing that is constantly present in the queer community is accusations of of like of being child predators, right?

Probably intentionally or not made him just like not interested in pursuing that and not wanting and wanting to avoid that with Chucky.

Because that right, is a very real sort of darkness that again, you could do in this.

And I think you could tell a good story with this if you wanted to, but it wouldn't be a fun slasher movie if you integrate that.

And the fact that these movies don't veer into that I actually think is benefit to them ultimately.

And, and again, I do think that, yeah, being a gay man helming it maybe helped make that not happen.

Yes, because I think somebody would have put a a spit on it that would have would have read to an adult audience.

Oh, that's a funny haha joke, right?

And would have would have forever tarnished this in that sort of same level of homo and queer phobia.

Then all of all the things that we struggle with as queer people who are accused of child molestation or child abuse come from and and that is it's particularly disgusting.

And I I with you, Derek did notice the lack of it and was grateful for it.

Even the line, because Chucky has a line that says I have a date with a six year old, but it's not it is not even close to being read that way because I think he then says you have a date with death and then stabs the voodoo talk like it is.

It is very Chucky word play, not at all even getting close to the problematic area that I think another another performer, another director, another creator would have would have lambasted us into absolutely.

Yeah, great call out.

We didn't touch on this too much either, but there was also the the issue with the unhoused being villainized in this movie.

They were definitely, I, I think we could chop this up to Reagan and the conservative attitudes towards the unhoused during that time.

But like, they are definitely played up as being like ominous and menacing.

And when Karen goes there, she's immediately like preyed upon and it's very uncomfortable.

And it allows, you know, the Detective Norris to come in and be the hero John Wayne Gun.

I deliberately admitted that from the scene description because it was like.

Cuz it doesn't I I.

Appreciate it like.

It's not even doesn't.

Matter.

Yeah.

It's not even fucking relevant to the story.

It's just, it's just there because it's like, well, I guess if a Pretty Woman goes around the unhoused and this is bound to happen.

It's inevitable.

And it's that's the kind of shit that is just so gross and just very classist.

And, you know, I, I don't know, Derek, that doesn't really crop up ever again after this movie, right.

Like this issue with like then House being villainized.

Yeah.

So that is, that's definitely something that's appreciated.

But yeah, otherwise though, like I said at the top of this that I, I didn't love the movie.

Like it doesn't always work for me.

I think there's movements in it that do and I'm really glad that we got to highlight those.

I feel like maybe I'm just not like the audience for more of like a like a less intensely campy like evil doll kind of movie.

I but I still like appreciate what they were doing here and Derek especially like thank you for providing all of that context about Don Mancini, because I certainly did not know all that.

I didn't even know he was gay.

So that really does help elevate the movie and from my perspective quite a bit and future movies in in the series.

That was great.

So thank you all so much for listening to this episode.

Please remember to rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

If your good guy doll has tried to kill you, you can tell us all about it on Instagram and blue sky.

If you're coded pod and Derek, genuinely, you were such a delight.

You're you're so perfect.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Where can people find you and what you're working on?

Sure, you can find me making other podcasts way too long.

I apologize, sorry.

You can find me most places at Derek B Gale.

My other podcasts include Whopping Web Snappers where we do deep dives into every Spider Man cartoon ever made.

Scryonk, where we look at the Godzilla films.

Lee Carvalho's Potting Challenge where we look at Simpsons tie in video games and Falling With Style, where he previously looked at Pixar films, but also veer off into other animation and gimmicks where David and I talk about weird experimental episodes of television.

And if you all would like to support the podcast, you can join the bats in our belfry and subscribe to our Patreon.

At patreon.com/fear Coded Podcast, you can show your appreciation at one of three levels with accompanying bonus content starting at the $3 level.

This month it it's finally happened.

We watched Elf and talked about it, and now you can enjoy the suffering that came from that experience.

But that is not all that we have for you under the Patreon tree.

Starting today we are celebrating the 12 Days of Saw Miss where we have little essays for you or Patrons on the Saw franchise that I have found 12 entries to write about so you can check all of that out.

Those will be available afterwards for free for any of you who are listening who are not part of the Patreon, just go to patreon.com/fear Coded podcast.

And of course, a little more housekeeping.

We have to report on our Fearful Phrases game from November.

So last month Tyler snuck in Will's phrase, Heffalumps and Woozles in our Over the Garden Wall episode while discussing themes.

And just last week, David used Doug's phrase.

This is the same Rio character when we were discussing stuffed animals in our episode on Night of the Living Dummy.

Fear Coded is a proud part of the Glitter Jaw Queer Podcast collective.

If you'd like to listen to more queer media, podcasts and white women Geo, check out the full roster of shows at glitterjaw.com.

And join us next week as we continue Doll Sember by going back to the Twilight Zone, where we encounter yet another living doll in the episode Living Doll.

But for now, we will simply say goodbye.

Bye, bye.

This is the.

End friend, it's the end of the podcast.

Friend, it is the end.

Please don't meet you.

Call me Chucky.

I'll always do your very best.

You know Bells.

Are hard to come by, but you'll find that I'm a good guy.

It's a tub of.

It's a.

It's a tub of.

Country crop, Yeah, I had to save that product.

Placement.

Yeah, Yeah.

Well fuck me I guess.

Sorry guys.

A giant tub of oil just plastered on that toast.

Not better.

Merrily, ice cream would have been the safer thing to eat, but seeing that giant glove of margarine made me go Damn, I wish I had some margarine.

Right.

Yeah, that's Give Me That's a Raven reverse flashbacks to my childhood with country croc all the time.

Crunchy croc OH.

God, Oh yeah.

So I was thinking about that, that same thing.

And they used to have it like in a little sprayer too, so you could just spray it on some toast.

Yeah, some white bread.

They were so helpful.

That was this.

That was a snack in my grandparents house.

Well, things started.

Getting stranger and the TV warned of danger and Chucky said that he was really 'cause it isn't very funny being treated like a dummy.

So I went and gave that little guy a hug, but he pushed me away and said I'm sick of this job's way.

No more this liquor guy from home.

Then I got really scared 'cause he jumped straight up in the air and we're after started christening up a storm.

See.

Why don't you come out?