Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss Child's Play, the original and first instalment in the chucky franchise.
In Childs Play, Detective Mike Norris chases fugitive serial killer Charles Lee Ray through the streets of Chicago and into a toy store. After being shot by Norris, a dying Ray performs a voodoo chant to transfer his soul to one of the Good Guy-brand talking dolls on display. The store is struck by lightning and explodes, and Norris finds Ray's lifeless body in the rubble next to the doll..
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Screenwriter Don Mancini first conceived of the concept while studying as a film major at the University of California, Los Angeles. 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. Mancini's troubled relationship with his own father and his experiences of alienation as a gay man caused him to centre the script around a child with a single mother and no father figure. 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. The director Tom Holland has also affirmed that the My Buddy dolls played a role in Chucky's design.
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. During production it was nearly retitled again in order to avoid confusion with Sidney Lumet's 1972 horror film of the same name. 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. 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.
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