Since her special day is tomorrow and we ladies will be celebrating in style, today we will be looking at her pick that somewhat nicely fits into my Sorry Sequels theme, Seed of Chucky. It was my idea for us to see this movie together and I am still apologizing for that terrible decision but in my defense, I was hoping that it would be a fun time at the movies(which I will expand upon later).
For now, here is Stephanie's mini-review of that experience-take it away, sis!:
Stephanie's POV seeing "Seed Of Chucky" opening
day:I NEVER wanted to see this thing. I knew it would be garbage, but for some strange reason, my sister was dead set on seeing this awful thing. We actually got to our show early, and she was visibly anticipating for the crowd to come out so that they could go in. I couldn't believe it. All that excitement. For a terrible film franchise sequel.
I was THAT disinterested in actually watching/paying attention to this thing (I'm trying my best to not use bad words here), that I had a little FM radio (You know those little ones you used to get as a freebie or something? Yeah that.) in my pocket, and searched the stations for something that could get decent reception. I found one, and it was some rock station that was doing a "90's day".
So literally, beginning to end, I listened to this during the movie. I gotta
admit, it made for some performance art, if not a strange experience in its own
right. I remember hearing Veruca Salt - "Seether" playing as the title credits were on, showing all the weird, inexplicable CSI-type effects as to how
the lady doll became with child. Weirdest health class lesson ever.
And as the
movie ended and the credits for that rolled, the station was just about to
announce the Scott Peterson verdict. Yeah. That made it even more bizarre for
me.
That's it. The end.
That's it. The end.
Thank you, Stephanie for reliving that terror again for me. As I was saying earlier, my big reason for wanting to see SOC in 2004 was due to how much I loved the 1998 Child's Play sequel Bride of Chucky, which introduced Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany, the blood thirsty girl friend of Charles Lee Ray.
Tilly's transformation into a killer doll was a nice humorous twist, helped greatly by director Ronny Lu(who later went on to offer his genre twisting talents to Freddy Vs. Jason). This time around, however, writer Don Mancini took over the director's chair and since Mancini was the one who created the original Child's Play franchise, you would think that having him on board to write and direct would be a plus. Well, I and my sister are here to tell you that Seed of Chucky was a definite minus.
The plot of SOC has Chucky and Tiffany's child,who was born at the end of Bride, being forced to work in a Pinocchio fashion with a creepy Russell Brand looking ventriloquist.
The misbegotten puppet believes that he/she(trust me, I'll get to that) is an orphan but upon watching a promo for a horror movie in development called "Chucky goes Psycho", finds out that he or she may have parents after all. He then manages to escape his mean captor and make his way to Hollywood for a family reunion of sorts:
After reviving his murderous mom and dad, thanks to conveniently having the magic voodoo amulet that does so in all of these films, the puppet child confesses to a gender identity crisis, causing him/her to be called Glen or Glenda at times. Talk about your worn out Ed Wood references,sheesh!
Anyway, the story then goes into a plan for the doll family to become human by Tiffany taking over the body of Jennifer Tilly(playing a even more cartoonish version of herself) but not before having Chucky get her pregnant via artificial insemination(so that Glen/Glenda can have a body) and yes, a turkey baster is involved.
It's hard to tell which is more tasteless, the forcing a woman to conceive offspring deal, the rivalry between Chucky and Tiffany over which sex their child wants to be or the horribly humorless sitcom from hell writing:
In a weird way, Seed of Chucky does have something in common with the first stinker in my Sorry Sequels series,Freddy's Dead. Both movies tried to use humor to boost their meta horror appeal and failed miserably.
In an interview, Don Mancini sort of apologized for disappointing the fans with his attempt to mix the laughs with the screams, which I appreciate. He meant well, I suppose, but I find that whenever something goes out of it's way to be campy, it never really is.
Truly bad movies are like truly good ones; sincerity is key to it's success, one way or another. Perhaps Mancini should have taken a few notes from John Waters(who plays a snoopy reporter that dies horribly) on how to pull off straight faced satire:
Seed of Chucky did rake in some dough but this was the last time that the gruesome Good Guy doll hit the big screen. The film that came after this one,Curse of Chucky, went directly to video and I still haven't seen it. Nor do I intend to-a pop culture gal has her limits,folks.
The Child's Play movies are to my horror fan side what Anne Tyler novels are to my reader self(a strange comparison,I know); I have an on again/off again relationship with their work and while I may not check out their latest material, I still have a fondness for them.
The exception to that fondness when it comes to Chucky is Seed, which gives good horror comedies a bad name. Again, sorry sis but much appreciate your less than happy memories of that movie going nightmare. Tune in later this week for another frightening for all the wrong reasons look at parenting, Species II and as for Seed of Chucky, throw this baby out with the bath water,please!:
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