Chucky (Child's Play)

Charles Lee Ray (also known as "The Lakeshore Strangler", or nicknamed "Chucky") is the main antagonist in the Child's Play slasher film series. In 1999, Chucky was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for best villain. He was created by Don Mancini and is voiced by Brad Dourif.

History

Charles Lee Ray (January 24, 1950 - November 9, 1988) was a voodoo practitioner and serial killer from Hackensack, New Jersey. He and Eddie Caputo were involved in a series of brutal murders and voodoo rituals.

Child's Play (1988)

Main article: Child's Play (1988 film)

When being chased by Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), serial killer and voodoo practitioner Charles Lee "Chucky" Ray (Brad Dourif), is shot and mortally wounded, and hides in a toy store. Before dying finds boxes of talking "Good Guy" dolls, and uses a voodoo ritual to transfer his soul into one of them. The doll is found by a homeless peddler, and sold to Karen Barclay, who gives him to her son Andy as a birthday gift.

While Karen is working late, her friend Maggie baby-sits Andy. When she has Andy go to bed, which keeps Chucky (what the talking doll calls itself) from watching a 9:00 news story about Edward "Eddie" Caputo (his former accomplice who had left him stranded leading to him being killed), he causes Maggie to fall out a window to her death on a car.

The next day, upon Chucky's request, Andy visits the house of Eddie (Neil Giuntoli) and causes it to explode while Andy is away urinating.

Andy is questioned by police about his presence at the explosion; he blames it on Chucky, and is placed in a psychiatric ward for a few days. Karen discovers that Chucky has no batteries and thus should not be able to talk on his own. When she threatens to burn him if he doesn't talk, Chucky attacks her and eventually flees the apartment.

Karen contacts Mike, who is now investigating Aunt Maggie's death. Although he initially doubts her story, he realizes Chucky is alive after he is attacked by the doll in his car, surviving by shooting Chucky in the shoulder.

Chucky later meets with John, his voodoo instructor from years past, and asks why his gunshot wound bled. John refuses as Chucky has corrupted everything he taught Chucky, but after being tortured through a voodoo doll, informs him that his body is slowly conforming to that of a human's, and that he will soon be trapped in the body if he doesn't transfer his soul into the body of the first person to whom he revealed himself to (which is Andy).

Mike and Karen find John before he dies, learning that Andy is in danger and that the only way to stop Chucky is to destroy his heart.

Andy escapes from the psychiatric unit as Chucky brutally kills the head doctor. Mike and Karen rush back to the apartment hoping that Andy is there. Chucky reaches the apartment through the furnace and knocks Andy unconscious with a baseball bat to possess him. After a prolonged struggle, Chucky is tossed into the fireplace by Karen and set on fire.

Still alive he attacks again but Karen takes Mike's gun and shoots part of Chucky's body until they presume that he is dead. However, Mike's partner Jack comes and plays with Chucky's head. His arm pops out from the air ventilation, strangles him, and Mike shoots Chucky's heart. Mike then takes the rest of the body parts as evidence.

Child's Play 2 (1990)

Main article: Child's Play 2

In the sequel, set two years after the first film, Andy lives in a shelter, and his mother is under psychiatric observation for supporting Andy's story. Bad publicity about Play Pals Inc. (the company of the Good Guy Doll franchise) is all over the newspapers regarding Chucky. The company has the original doll reconstructed for analysis, and a worker is electrocuted at the completion of that process

A Yuppie-style couple with no children of their own who have often fostered children, Joanne and Phil Simpson (Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham), agree to foster Andy until his mother is able to look after him again. Andy meets an older girl, Kyle (Christine Elise), who is also living with them.

Mattson, a Play Pals executive, takes the rebuilt Chucky doll off the factory grounds, under the orders of Play Pal's president, Mr. Sullivan. While doing so, he goes in to a liquor store for vodka for his girlfriend for their two week dating anniversary. While he is alone Chucky manages to call the crisis center, and learn Andy's whereabouts; once Mattson returns he forces him to drive him to Andy's new home, then kills him. Breaking into the house, Chucky finds another Good Guy doll and takes its place by destroying and burying it in the yard.

The next night, Chucky ties Andy to his bed and tries to possess him. However, Phil and Joanne come into the room. Phil and Joanne don't believe that Chucky is really alive and blame Kyle for tying Andy up. In order to calm Andy down, Phil throws Chucky into the basement. As Phil exits, Chucky gets up and realizes that he's bleeding, as he is turning human again.

On Andy's first day of his new school, Chucky follows him. He finds Andy's school paper and writes profanity on it. The teacher, Miss Kettlewell, gives Andy detention. Miss Kettlewell also locks Chucky in the classroom closet. She then leaves the room to call Phil and Joanne about the incident. Andy escapes the locked room through the classroom window and when Miss Kettlewell returns, Chucky kills her.

Back at the house, Andy tells Phil and Joanne that Chucky followed him to school. Fed up with and frustrated by Andy's constant beliefs about Chucky, Phil takes Andy to the cellar door to show Chucky lying exactly where he was when he was thrown down there. That night, Andy takes an electric knife from the kitchen and goes down into the cellar intending to finish Chucky himself. Chucky attacks Andy, and kills Phil, who came down to investigate the noise. Joanne is horrified to find her husband dead and believes it is Andy who murdered him.

Andy is taken back to the center after being suspected for involuntary manslaughter. Kyle later finds Chucky and puts him in a trash bin outside. Soon after, she finds the "Tommy" doll buried in the yard, and then discovers Chucky is gone from the bin. Upstairs, Kyle finds Joanne dead, and then is attacked by Chucky, who forces her to drive him to the Crisis Center. Under Chucky's threats, Kyle sets off the fire alarm of the Center to get everyone downstairs. Chucky kills the center's director and locks Kyle out of the room.

Chucky forces Andy into the back of a van, which Kyle chases. She gets the driver to stop, but Chucky escapes with Andy into the nearby Play Pals factory. Chucky performs his ritual, but it is too late. Realizing that he is trapped in the doll's body, he decides to kill Andy. Kyle helps Andy escape, with Chucky following. She manages to trap the doll by dropping a gate on his hand. To get out, Chucky tears his own hand off, then replaces it with his knife, and continues chasing them into the manufacturing floor. After chasing them to a conveyor belt where the dolls are constructed, Andy and Kyle staple Chucky to the conveyor platform and he is impaled with doll parts. They escape through the factory thinking they have killed him, but Chucky returns, having cut off his own legs to escape. Ultimately, Andy coats Chucky with molten plastic after Chucky chases him near a vat containing the plastic. Kyle then forces an air hose into his mouth. The resulting air pressure builds up and causes Chucky's head to explode, killing him.

In a televised alternate ending it reveals that half of Chucky's exploded head is in a vat of melted plastic, which in turn creates another doll head (after sinking into the plastic) which smiles.

Child's Play 3 (1991)

Main article: Child's Play 3

Eight years later, the factory is reopened. Chucky's remains are lifted away by a claw-crane. As it passes a vat of plastic, the remains bleed into it, causing Chucky's soul to inhabit a new doll. Chucky kills the CEO of the toy company and traces Andy, finding him at a military school. Chucky delivers himself to the school, hoping to transfer into Andy's body, but is instead found by young recruit Tyler, to whom he inadvertently reveals his secret. Realizing this, Chucky decides to take Tyler's body, and attempts to kill Andy to prevent him interfering. He sabotages a game of capture-the-flag, replacing one sides paintballs with live ammunition. Tyler, eventually realizing what Chucky wants to do to him and runs. The chase leads them into a fairground ride, where a scythe cuts half of Chucky’s face off. Chucky catches Tyler, planning to transfer his soul, but is shot several times by Andy, as Andy cuts Chucky's hand off while he is grabbing at Andy and then thrown into a large fan, where he is sliced to pieces.

Bride of Chucky (1998)

Main article: Bride of Chucky

Right after the end of Child's Play 3, Chucky's remains are recovered by his old girlfriend Tiffany Ray, who stitches them back together. However, when she learns that what she thought was an engagement ring he left her was just a piece of stolen jewelry from a lady from Vivian Van Pelt, she refuses to perform the voodoo ritual, and locks Chucky in a baby crib. Chucky escape with a sharp ring as the bars in the crib are wood, in retaliation, kills Tiffany by throwing a small TV in her bathtub and electrocuting her and, transferring her soul into a bride doll and she makes over herself. The two then decide to follow a young couple, intending to transfer their souls into them since Tiffany is paying them to bring them to Jersey. On the way, Chucky witnesses Tiffany killing two people who stole money from the teens. He then proposes to her, and they consummate their relationship. They then reveal themselves to the teens and force them to take them to Chucky's human body, which possesses a voodoo charm essential to the ritual "The Heart of Damballa." However, Tiffany turns on Chucky, killing him, before dying herself. Chucky confidently declares that he will return, but adds that "Dying is such a bitch" and is shot multiple times and dies next to his regular body. At the end of the movie, Tiffany gives birth to Chucky's child, Glen or Glenda (Due to the doll's lack of anatomy making it genderless).

Seed of Chucky (2004)

Main article: Seed of Chucky

Six years after the previous movie, Chucky and Tiffany's child Glen/da, born in the closing moments of the previous film, locates animatronic models of the two created for a film based on their exploits. Using a voodoo ritual, the puppet brings the models to life. Chucky is initially shocked that he has a child and faints, but then enthusiastically tries to bring the new addition into the "family business." But Tiffany, feeling a new sense of parental responsibility, wants them to swear off killing, while at the same time planning for them to inhabit the bodies of Jennifer Tilly, her chauffeur, and her unborn child. Chucky, exasperated by these experiences, finally decides that he prefers life as a doll to life as a human. He tries to kill Tiffany and Glen, but the child doll intervenes and hacks Chucky to pieces. Tiffany succeeds in transferring her and her child's souls into their desired bodies. Five years later, at Glen's birthday party, he is sent a package containing Chucky's severed arm, which then tries to strangle him and the film ends with Chucky laughing.

External links

• Chucky at the Internet Movie Database