Dourif’s ad-libbing of lines, his running around in a frenzy in the studio before delivering lines to get that intensity in his voice, and his personality are what breathed life into Chucky.Īs technology evolved over the years, so has Chucky’s look. While the special effects, puppeteering, and design of Chucky all contribute to making Child’s Play special, it was Dourif’s voice that made Chucky a horror icon. Holland brought Dourif back to voice the doll. But in the initial cut of the film, her voice, while creepy, didn’t quite fit the tone of the film. While Brad Dourif played Charles Lee Ray in the opening scene, his role initially stopped there as Holland hired actress Jessica Walters ( Play Misty for Me, Archer) to voice the killer doll for the rest of the film. The final component of Chucky’s creation was his voice. Gale was credited as Chucky’s stunt double, but uncredited was two-year-old Hunter Marks, who also played the killer doll in a brief scene that involved the doll running behind furniture. He also tried to mirror the puppet’s movements to maintain a sense of continuity. Because Gale was much larger than the puppet version of Chucky, production built sets that were 30% larger to maintain the forced perspective. This, and the less than cooperative mechanics, meant getting Chucky to perform on camera was a grueling process.įor things the animatronics and puppetry couldn’t do, like running and jumping, 3-foot, 6-inch performer Ed Gale ( Howard the Duck) was brought in to play Chucky. That this was brand new technology didn’t help. The complex puppeteering and animatronics involved with Chucky meant that multiple puppeteers had to work in unison to create fluid movement one would handle the hands, another the eyebrows, another the mouth, and so on. Some for specific functions but many to demonstrate the doll taking on a more human appearance the longer serial killer Charles Lee Ray’s soul was trapped in the doll’s body. Helmer ( Tourist Trap, Reign of Fire), created multiple versions of Chucky. Yagher and his team, which included many talented artists and special effects crew members like Howard Berger ( The Walking Dead, The Green Inferno, Texas Chainsaw 3D) and Richard O. Kirschner tapped then 26-year-old special makeup effects artist Kevin Yagher, who’d previously worked on A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, to design and execute Chucky’s creation. The next step was to bring Chucky to life. From there, the screenplay underwent various passes, eventually transitioning from psychological-based horror to the killer doll tale steeped in voodoo, and director Tom Holland was locked down as the director. Interested in Mancini’s script, he created a couple of graphite drawings of the doll based on description, which attracted the attention of United Artists. Enter producer David Kirschner, fresh off of creating and producing family film An American Tail for Steven Spielberg. Not unlike the My Buddy toy line by Hasbro that was trendy in 1985. Red hair, two feet tall, blue eyes, freckles, and striped shirt. This makes now the perfect time to revisit 1988’s Child’s Play, also known as Chucky’s origin story.ĭon Mancini, who wrote the initial screenplay for the film (then titled Blood Buddy and very different from the story as we now know it), described his killer doll in great detail while writing his script. We’re also just over two months away from MGM and Orion’s reboot arriving in theaters. As of two months ago, Don Mancini and “Channel Zero” creator Nick Antosca were reported to still be hard at work on a new Child’s Play TV series from Universal, which looks to continue the film series. From voodoo practicing serial killer to family man to soul splitting vengeance seeker, the pint-sized killer is arguably the most ambitious icon of the bunch. Of all the horror icons to emerge from the ‘80s, killer doll Chucky has had one of the most unique cinematic journeys over the course of his 7-film franchise.
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