Child's Play (1988 film)

• Howard Berger[15]
• Bill Bryan[15]
• Allen Coulter[15]
• Steven James[15]
• Frank Charles Lutkus III[15]
• David Arthur Nelson[15]
• Loren Soman[15]
• Marc Tyler[15]
• N. Brock Winkless IV[16]

According to an interview with Mental Floss, screenwriter Don Mancini first conceived of the concept while studying as a film major at UCLA. Mancini was inspired by the consumerism of the 1980s and the effect of marketing on children based on his experiences with his father, an advertising executive.[17] Mancini's troubled relationship with his own father and his experiences of alienation as a gay man caused him to center the script around a child with a single mother and no father figure.[18] He was also influenced by the Cabbage Patch Kids, Trilogy of Terror, Magic, Poltergeist, the character of Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll". The film's executive producer David Kirschner, who would produce all seven films in the Chucky series, claimed in the same interview that he had wanted to make a film about a killer doll after reading The Dollhouse Murders.[17] The director Tom Holland has also affirmed that the My Buddy dolls played a role in Chucky's design.[19]

Mancini's original script was titled Batteries Not Included, with the title later changed to Blood Buddy after it was discovered that a different film with the same name was being made.[20] During production it was nearly retitled again in order to avoid confusion with Sidney Lumet's 1972 horror film of the same name.[1] It would have featured a doll filled with fake blood that would allow it to bleed if played with roughly, and it would have come alive after Andy mixed his own blood with the doll's. The doll would have represented Andy's suppressed rage, and would have targeted his enemies.[17] Mancini's original script would have been a whodunit story which dealt with the effect of advertising and television on children. Mancini's original script was also written to toy with the audience a bit longer, making it ambiguous whether Andy or Chucky was the killer.[2]

Charles Band expressed interest in filming the script, and later produced the Puppet Master franchise. The script was accepted by United Artists after studio president Tony Thomopoulous and MGM/UA Communications Chairman Lee Rich realized that it could begin a long-running series.[1] After UA purchased the script it was rewritten by John Lafia to make the character of Andy more sympathetic and after Kirschner expressed doubt that parents would buy their children a doll with fake blood. In Lafia's rewritten script Charles Lee Ray's soul would have been transferred to the doll after being executed by electric chair as the doll was being manufactured on an assembly line.[17] The script featured the doll factory where Chucky was produced, which would be recycled for the second film.[20]

Lafia wanted to direct the film after being hired for the rewrites but was turned down because he had never directed a feature-length motion picture, and the studio sought an experienced director for the production.[21] William Friedkin, Irvin Kershner, Robert Wise, Joseph Ruben, Howard Franklin, and Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel were approached to direct before Holland was hired on Steven Spielberg's recommendation from his work on Amazing Stories.[17][2] John Lithgow was considered to play Charles Lee Ray before Brad Dourif was hired after Holland worked with him in Fatal Beauty.[22][2] Initially the voice of Chucky's doll form was intended to be a simple electronic overlay similar to ordinary toys with sound chips. When this was deemed infeasible and when Dourif was initially unavailable to record Chucky's voice because of his involvement in Spontaneous Combustion, Holland cast Jessica Walter to voice Chucky on the basis that Mercedes McCambridge had voiced Pazuzu in The Exorcist.[17][23][24] Later, Walter's recordings were discarded and she was replaced with John Franklin, who completed his lines but was also replaced when Dourif returned to the film. Unlike Walter, part of Franklin's performance remains in the film through a scene in which he appears as a human television presenter dressed as a Good Guy, a scene which was shot after his replacement.[25][21]

Principal photography began on January 7, 1988, and wrapped on March 5, 1988, with a budget of $9-13 million.[1][2] Mancini never entered the set and was minimally involved in the production because of the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike.[17] Child's Play was filmed on location in Chicago. The Brewster Apartments, a Chicago landmark located at Diversey Parkway and Pine Grove Avenue, served as the location of the apartment where Andy and Karen lived and is pictured on the film's poster. In-studio filming took place at Culver Studios in Culver City, California.[2] The on-location filming was conducted in the winter with a wind chill reaching as low as −50 °F (−46 °C), forcing the production to rent entire rooms and park running station wagons near shooting locations as warming centers.[1]

Chucky's full name, Charles Lee Ray, is derived from the names of notorious killers Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray.[26][27]

Maggie's death was originally going to be by electrocution while taking a bath. The idea was abandoned, and was later used for Tiffany's death in Bride of Chucky.[27]

Chucky was controlled by a team of nine different puppeteers, led by Brock Winkless, who moved Chucky's mouth via radio control, wearing a rig that captured his mouth movement. The others were in charge of operating the doll's head, face, and limbs. By Curse of Chucky, Chucky's mouth, now performed by lead puppeteer Tony Gardner of Alterian, Inc., was now operated via a radio-control unit without the need for a rig, and the doll himself now required fewer people to bring him to life.[16][15] For scenes where Chucky had to move around in wide shots, a little-person actor in a life-sized costume, Ed Gale, would portray Chucky in scenes where the character is walking, the props on the set enlarged to fit the size of the actor.[28][29]

The film used various ways to portray Chucky, including radio-controlled animatronics operated by up to nine puppeteers, extras of short stature, and child actors. Kevin Yagher was in charge of the puppetry for the film.[17] Various animatronics and cosmetics were used for every scene. Throughout the film, Chucky transitions from appearing as a normal toy to appearing more human, with his hairline receding throughout the film.[17] The film created multiple Chucky animatronics such as a flailing tantrum Chucky, a walking Chucky, and a stationary Chucky. The animatronic doll's face was controlled via remote control through a rig capturing facial movement on puppeteer Brock Winkless. For some scenes Holland used short-statured actors and children such as Ed Gale and Alex Vincent's sister Ashley with forced perspective sets.[17][20]

The film initially received negative reviews after a two-hour rough cut was shown to audiences at a test screening. Kirschner and Mancini subsequently cut 25 minutes of the film to reduce the amount of time Chucky was on screen, something Kirschner had advocated for during production to build suspense in a similar fashion to Jaws or Alien. Holland, who had repeatedly clashed with Kirschner over Chucky's amount of time on screen and the film's tone during shooting, objected to the cuts and left the production.[17][2]

The three have also suggested that the test screening flopped due to their use of Walter as the doll's voice.[2][17] They claimed that while Walter's voice was suitably menacing, she was unable to convey the humor intended for the character, and all of her lines were redubbed with Dourif's voice.[17] The cut footage, shown only in production stills and the film's script, would have featured Charles Lee Ray stalking a drunk woman as a human only to discover it to be Mike Norris on an undercover sting operation, Andy showing Chucky around his room and finding a photograph of his deceased father, John healing an infant through a voodoo ritual, and Chucky unsuccessfully trying to break into Andy's room at the mental hospital and tricking a mentally-ill girl named Mona into carrying him into the ward.

The script also featured an alternate ending in which Chucky is stabbed by Andy with a knife mounted on a radio-controlled car and has his face and legs melted with a squirt gun filled with Drano in addition to being lit on fire and shot repeatedly by Mike and Karen. Chucky would have been seemingly killed by being overpowered by Jack and several police officers. While storing Chucky's remains in an evidence room, another cop would have disbelieved Jack's assertion that the doll was alive, and after they left, Chucky's disembodied arm would have come to life to swat a fly.[30]

The score was composed by Joseph Renzetti which featured a collection of electronic and orchestral elements. Portions of the soundtrack were released on vinyl in 1989 and was later followed up by another vinyl pressing by Waxwork Records that featured the complete score from the original master tapes.[31]

Child's Play was originally released on VHS in North America by MGM/UA Home Video on April 25, 1989.

The film was first released on DVD by MGM in 1999. The film was presented in an open-matte full screen presentation and included a theatrical trailer and a "Making Of" booklet. The Australian DVD release by MGM featured the film in non-anamorphic widescreen transfer. The DVD was re-released in 2007 with a lenticular cover.

A 20th Anniversary DVD was released by MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on September 9, 2008.[34] The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 Widescreen format (for the first time in the U.S. in 20 years) enhanced for 16x9 monitors and includes an English 5.1 surround track and English, French, and Spanish 2.0 stereo tracks. Special features include two audio commentaries with Alex Vincent, Catherine Hicks, Kevin Yagher, producer David Kirschner and screenwriter Don Mancini, a "Selected Scene Chucky Commentary", "Evil Comes in Small Packages" featurettes, a vintage featurette from 1988 titled "Introducing Chucky: The Making of Child's Play", and "Chucky: Building a Nightmare" featurette, theatrical trailer and a photo gallery. The film received a Blu-ray Disc release on September 15, 2009. The DVD does not feature any contributions from director Tom Holland, who claims he was not asked to contribute to it. In response, the website Icons of Fright contacted Holland and asked if he would be willing to record a commentary track that would be free for download on their website. He agreed, and the track is downloadable from here.[35]

On October 8, 2013, the film was re-released again on DVD and Blu-ray in a boxset for the respective formats, containing all six Child's Play films.

On October 18, 2016, Scream Factory and MGM re-released the film in a brand new Collector's Edition Blu-ray.[36]

On October 3, 2017, Universal Home Entertainment re-released the film once again on DVD and Blu-ray in a boxset for the respective formats, containing all seven Child's Play films.

On August 16, 2022, the film was released in Ultra HD Blu-ray for the first time by Scream Factory, featuring newly-restored scans from the original camera negatives made for the first three Child's Play films in addition to Blu-rays containing new and legacy extras as well as the previously released remastered of the film from the 2016 Collector's Edition Blu-ray.[37]