The Child’s Play Saga

Child’s Play 2 (1990)

Starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerritt Graham

Certificate 15

Directed by John Lafia 

By Roger Crow

Five years before Toy Story revolutionised filmmaking forever, there was a sequel to Child’s Play. Remember that late eighties stalk-and-slash movie about a serial killer whose soul is transferred to a doll? And the two movies seem remarkably familiar. Key protagonist in CP2 is a kid called Andy, who barely survived the first film. However, as we see during the opening titles, remnants of Chucky, the possessed doll, did, and they are refashioned to form a new talking terror. 

The youngster is taken in by a kindly foster couple, which includes the dreamy Jenny Agutter sporting a mild American accent. 

In one overhead shot of their house, it almost seems like the same affluent North American neighbourhood as Toy Story. Anyway, Chucky version 2.0, still possessed by the soul of a dead serial killer (just go with it) finds out where Andy lives, hijacks a car, and gets driven to said abode.

In a spot of exposition, we see a priceless, delicate heirloom, which may as well have a sign attached saying ‘Chucky will break this and Andy will get the blame’. 

There’s another foster kid living at the house, but the parents forget to mention her until the last second. Anyway, she’s a feisty smoker who sports late eighties fashions, as well she might, given the era. And suddenly the fact this film is 33 years old feels like a shocking wake up call. It’s pre-Internet, and cell phones, so the analogue element is everything. That extreme close-up of an old phone looks like it belongs on Bargain Hunt.

Naturally Chucky proceeds to wreak havoc, and is desperate to transfer the trapped serial killer soul from doll to kid via an ancient incantation. 

Given how nonsensical this all is, kudos to the cast for playing it straight, and the doll effects are terrific. Okay, there are obviously scenes of a person in Chucky suit, but the animatronics lend an eerie quality. 

And like Toy Story 2, which appeared a decade after this, there’s a scene featuring a maze full of packaged dolls, and a finale which feels like a candy coloured version of Terminator 2. 

Given the age of the film, the picture quality and sound are excellent, and clocking in at under 90 minutes, the multiple endings eventually wrap things up with a finale so abrupt it crashes into the closing titles. 

There’s a horrible sense of misogyny from a couple of characters. You’d expect it from Chucky, the doll we love to hate, and the argument “It was a different time,” is no excuse. 

Anyway, it’s a lean, mean sequel which is just the job after a hard day as it requires no brain power, and was obviously designed for the inevitable second sequel. Chucky, after all, is a production line creation, so little wonder the films followed a similar pattern to the antagonist’s birth.

Child’s Play 3 (1991)

Starring Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Andrew Robinson

Directed by Jack Bender

Certificate 18

The doll everyone hates to love, and loved to hate is a pile of molten plastic… and blood. Yes, the half doll/half trapped soul of a serial killer is resurrected as the opening titles roll, and if you needed any exposition, there’s a valuable slide show with a bunch of corporate suits filling in the blanks between film 2 and this one.

When a golf-loving, cigar-chomping businessman falls foul of Chucky in his penthouse apartment, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen next. If you’d said Chucky would rock up in a junior version of Full Metal Jacket, I’d have needed proof. But Kent Military School is just where 16-year-old Andy Barclay winds up. Naturally he falls for a feisty, attractive, sharp-shooting female cadet, and naturally Chucky wreaks havoc. This time he wants to possess the body of a young kid as Andy is apparently too old. 

Anyway, there’s a paintball exercise when the ammo is changed to live rounds by you know who, and you start to wonder why the ‘junior military academy versus possessed doll’ genre didn’t take off after this barking second sequel as released in 1991. 

It’s quite bizarre, occasionally fun, and Perrey Reeves is a great heroine. Not as great a character as scenery-chewing psycho barber Andrew (Dirty Harry) Robinson alas.  

Picture and sound quality are rather good considering the age. The blues really pop, aptly on Blu-ray. The stuff in a haunted house naturally feels more germane to the EC Comics-style genre. 

As ever the MVP is Kevin Yagher, whose Chucky doll is gloriously nutty. 

Bride of Chucky (1998)

Starring Jennifer Tilly, Katherine Heigl, John Ritter

Directed by Ronny Yu

Certificate 18

Seven years on from CP3 and Chucky returned with the inevitable Bride of Frankenstein homage. 

With the aid of a pentagram and a guide book, Voodoo for Dummies, bloodthirsty trailer trash Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) has found the remnants of the killer doll and has stitched it back together. 

Arachnophobes be warned, there’s a jump scare with an eight-legged co-star which will leave some unnerved. 

Anyway, long story short. Tiffany is the girlfriend of the dead serial killer trapped inside Chucky. When he spurns her wish of living happily ever after, she locks him in a playpen, but at least gives him a doll in a wedding dress as company. 

Seeking his own form of vengeance, it’s not long before Tiffany is sobbing while watching James Whale Classic The Bride of Frankenstein. And then gets electrocuted. There’s just enough time for Chucky to transfer the dead woman’s body to the doll, and naturally they go off and wreak havoc. 

What follows feels like The Rocky Horror Show with nods to Hellraiser, while Katherine Heigl, before she was famous, deserves full marks for playing it straight. 

The script is often so cockily meta it hurts, but there are some nice set pieces, including a couple who meet a watery end on their wedding night, and explosive shenanigans with an RV. 

It’s a comic book-style caper on a par with the original Creepshow, and a lot of fun. Tilly is mesmerising as the femme fatale, and it never outstays its welcome. Unlike what followed. 

Seed of Chucky (2004)

Starring Jennifer Tilly, Hannah Spearritt, Jason Flemyng

Directed by Don Mancini

Certificate 18

The low point of the saga picks up after the last movie with some awful credits sequence involving a bad CG shot of the conception of Chucky’s son. He looks a bit like David Bowie, has Made in Japan stamped on his wrist and wreaks havoc with a British family who seem to exist somewhere in an alt-Victorian era.

Following a Psycho homage, we cut to shenanigans involving Santa (Jason Flemyng), but all is not as it seems, because we’re soon in meta territory and the making of a new Chucky movie involving Jennifer Tilly moaning about her career. 

Lord of the Rings veteran Billy Boyd plays the voice of Chucky’s gender confused son Glen/Glenda, and yes, it’s a homage to Ed Wood. 

The script is terrible, some of the acting is awful, and even indie movie icon John Waters can’t help save a weird horror comedy that’s neither scary or funny. Avoid at all costs. 

Curse of Chucky (2013)

Starring Fiona Dourif, Chantal Quesnelle, Danielle Bisutti

Certificate 18

Directed by Don Mancini

Certificate 18 

After the sheer abomination of Seed of Chucky, there’s an attempt to get the franchise back on track with Curse Of.  Shot in Canada, in centres on a gothic pile, a disabled woman (Fiona Dourif, daughter of Brad who makes a rare appearance instead of just playing Chucky’s voice) and her doting mother. When a doll-shaped package arrives, it’s not long before that promise of a title has been honoured. When a cute kid pops to the loo in that same shadowy abode, it’s not long before there’s a yelp, her concerned guardians break in, and there’s the delighted child with a Chucky doll. 

“It’s a doll. What’s the worse that could happen. Huh?” What indeed?

How about rat poison in your dinner? 

Only a priest seems to be wary of the plastic addition to the family… but why does he leave the dinner early? And why is this so much better than the awful predecessor? 

Well before you can say “Don’t lose your head”, there’s another decapitation, only this is so much better than the one in the previous movie. 

There’s actual tension in CoC, along with the usual tropes of any haunted house movie, including thunder, lightning, things behind curtains, and nobody being too bothered by the fact there’s hardly any lights on. 

And adhering to the golden rule of a heroine who loses her clothes will probably end up dead, there’s a clever scene involving a bucket of water, a spot of cyber flirting, and an inevitable denouement. The ending is left open for another chapter in the seemingly indestructible saga…

Cult of Chucky (2017)

Starring Fiona Dourif, Alex Vincent, Jennifer Tilly

Directed by Don Mancini

Certificate 18

There’s a feeling of things going full circle with this nasty little continuation of the schlocky horror show that is Child’s Play and its more atmospheric creepy chapter, Curse of Chucky. 

Andy Barclay, the kid from the first couple of movies, is now all grown up, and likes to torture the severed head of his living Chucky doll. Meanwhile, the wheelchair-bound heroine from ‘Curse Of’ has been committed to an insane asylum, so there’s a feeling of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, and all those other heroines who went through a trauma and were locked up, only to escape later while chaos ensues. Those are the laws of sequels, right? 

As before, there are set pieces involving creative murders, include an arty fallen glass routine reminiscent of the time that couple were killed by fallen glass from an overhead mirror. And there are throwbacks to the meta world of Jennifer Tilly. Yes, she does look like the actress and no, this sort of thing never works, as Ocean’s 12 proved with the sly nods to Julia Roberts and her on-screen character. 

Fiona Dourif once more proves she is a solid lead, but it’s time this franchise was left well alone. Even though a rather good reboot with Mark Hamill followed. 

Child’s Play (2019)

Director Lars Klevberg

Starring Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Mark Hamill

Certificate 15

The saga gets a reboot with this rather good offering featuring Aubrey Plaza. 

She plays the overworked single mum who smiles sweetly at irate customers when they return faulty Buddi dolls. 

She and slightly deaf son Andy have just moved into a new apartment. He’s lonely, and though the Buddi doll phenomenon is a little young for him, he politely thanks mum when she brings him a rejected toy from the store. The thing is, this version of the AI doll has been reprogrammed by a miffed worker in his overseas factory sweatshop, so all the safety protocols have been disengaged. 

Stuttering like Max Headroom, the faulty Buddi, named Chucky, tugs at the heartstrings as he tries to come to terms with the world and right and wrong. Like Data from Star Trek, this next generation of toys is a compelling sight. Ugly, yet endearing, and obviously creepy, as all dolls are in horror movies. 

So it starts off well, and a scene involving Christmas lights must win an award for one of the grossest, and funniest of 2019. The set-up is wonderful, while the eventual pay-off leads to an equally funny comedy of manners at the dinner table. 

The joy of Child’s Play 2.0 is it gets the tone just right. A mix of horror and comedy, with Mark Hamill relishing his role as the voice of Chucky. And the fact it’s hard not to sympathise with the faulty doll is an added bonus. One minute a psycho, the next a fearful plastic ’kid’ in peril. That duplicity is what made Gollum work, and it also ticks a lot of boxes here. I could have done without that closing song. Hamill’s a great Jedi, but can’t carry a tune. 

While the second act may lose a little steam, the showdown in a toy shop is just the prolonged end the movie needs. The cast do a great job, while director Lars Klevberg exploits every thriller trope in the book, including the well-worn fridge door gag. (Character opens door, obscuring view behind it. Looks for goodies. Closes it. Psycho appears). 

Gabriel Bateman is spot on as Andy, and does a great job of carrying the bulk of the movie. 

I could have done without that last shot, which inevitably suggests a sequel could be in the offing, but this is a mainstream popcorn offering rather than a more subtle indie flick, so in a way it’s a given. 

The movie looks like it cost far more than $10million, and while it might not have been a massive global success, the thought of that sequel is not the most horrifying thing in the world. Only next time, no singing Mark.

Aggregate scores

Screenplays 6

Cast 6

Cinematography 8

Scripts 6

Effects 7

Scores 7

Film review- End of Term (2023)

Starring Peter Davison, Chelsea Edge, Ronald Pickup

Directed by Mat Menony

By Roger Crow

Art college was such a memorable chapter of my life, I wish I could do it all again now. Thankfully our campus wasn’t haunted by the ghost of a psychopath, and as far as I know, none of the students crafted a BDSM chair worthy of the Saw movies. 

Those are just a couple of ingredients of End of Term, which was filmed a few miles from my front door in 2016, and has been languishing in post-production hell since then. 

I popped over to the sets a few times; interviewed the lovely cast and crew, and remember most of it like it was yesterday rather than seven years ago. So what of the finished film which is finally available on download?

Peter Davison on the set of End of Term in 2016. The less famous author on the right.

Well, elements of it are spot on. The cinematography by Gerry Lively, who also worked on Hellraiser III, is rather good; The Usual Suspects-style framework of a traumatised art student (Chelsea Edge) being interviewed by a couple of seasoned detectives (David Bamber and Julie Graham) is also effective… to a point. And it’s great to see the much-missed Ronald Pickup, who passed away before the film was released, and the ever brilliant Peter Davison, who was charm personified when we had a chat between takes.

A fine cast of photogenic ‘students’ too, including Ben Lamb and Darcy Isa, many who seem reminiscent of the posh art students I used to work alongside. The sort doing a foundation course rather than a gap year while waiting for their trust fund to mature. 

No working class art students here thanks very much, and sadly not much diversity either. 

It’s like Midsomer Murders meets Saw at times, though that’s not the worst concept in the world. 

Whatever original director Mark Murphy had planned for the movie has since been diluted. The interview scenes go on far too long; the editing needed to be far snappier, and the torture porn element may appeal to gore hounds, but after a while it’s more tiresome than thrilling. 

Cinematography by Gerry Lively, left.

During one of those set visits, one of the cast, who was either still in character, stared at me long after the interview was over, and no, it wasn’t me being paranoid. I didn’t need much more than that to know they were the killer, so the reveal when it comes, wasn’t exactly a shock. Nor was that last twist which most horror fans will guess a good 20 minutes before the final, inevitable shot. 

Director Mat Menony may be a real person or an Allan Smithee-style pseudonym. Hard to tell with the lack of an IMDb presence before or after EOT. Either way, I’d rather see Mark Murphy’s original movie, which promised so much more, than Mat’s over-long version. 

Cast and crew deserve an A for effort, but like some of that artwork during the final show, End of Term still feels unfinished. 

Cast 8

Script 7

Direction 7

Editing 5

Cinematography 8

Rewatchability 4

Restaurant review – RIO Brazilian Steakhouse – 18 Bridge Street, York

By Roger Crow

It’s the end of September, which for me these days usually means hunkering down for a few months of flicking through 100 channels to find anything worthy watching. And as much as I love cooking, I’ll admit the world’s smallest kitchen is not conducive to crafting culinary masterpieces.

When offered the chance to try out the new branch of RIO’s Brazilian Steakhouse, I don’t have to think twice. I just need to go hungry. 

There’s now only seven of them in the country, so while it is a chain, you’ll not see one on every street in the UK. 

From the moment I stepped through the door, I knew I was in for a treat. The restaurant boasts a tasteful and inviting decor that sets the stage for a memorable evening. 

My culinary odyssey began with a trip to the gourmet salad bar. How many times have we seen ‘gourmet’ added to anything and it turns out to be wide of the mark? But this is the real deal.

Just the delightful appetiser of garlic mushrooms alone was love at first bite. They were perfectly seasoned and had just the right amount of garlic, creating a burst of flavour with every mouthful. It set the bar high, and the other delectable sides from that help-yourself buffet included perfectly roasted potatoes and a coleslaw that was both fresh and creamy. 

Oh, and don’t get me started on the delicious sushi, olives, chips, imported cheeses, and cured meats. It was like something from Lionel Bart’s Oliver! in buffet form. 

All of the above provided a wonderful balance to the hearty meats that were the true stars of the evening. There was so much tasty choice on that buffet, I’d have been happy if that’s all there was, while the bread and US-style biscuits were also to die for.

In case you didn’t know it, RIO is famous for its all-you-can-eat style service where a variety of meats are brought directly to your table, sliced to perfection. You just need to be ready with your tongs as those slivers and hunks of meat unfurl. 

The range of meats on offer is extensive, and each cut is cooked to perfection. The peppercorn sauce in a mini saucepan is especially good. 

There’s something to satisfy every palate, though you may soon find yourself overloaded with meat if not careful. 

The red and green place mats on the table indicate whether you’d like more meat or if you need a moment to savour your current selection. It’s a simple yet effective system that ensures you’re in control of your dining pace. And while my default setting on an empty stomach is to rush, thankfully the meat is so melt-in-the-mouth delicious, I also savour every mouthful.

One standout aspect of my experience was the exceptional service provided by Adriane, our waitress. She was not only attentive but also incredibly knowledgeable about the menu, offering recommendations and ensuring our dining experience was second to none. All of the staff’s warm and friendly demeanour added to the overall enjoyment of the evening.

After indulging in the meaty extravaganza, it was time to explore the dessert menu, and RIO doesn’t disappoint in this department either. I couldn’t resist ordering the churros, which arrived hot and perfectly crispy. The accompanying caramel and chocolate dipping sauce was a revelation – a rich, moreish concoction that perfectly complemented the sweet churros. It was the ideal way to conclude a fantastic meal. (I wrapped a couple in a napkin for later, and they didn’t disappoint either). I also had a mouthful of the panna cotta, which was equally delicious, not least because of the coconut crumb and prune syrup.

In addition to the fantastic food and service, the atmosphere is another reason why I can’t wait to return. The tasteful decor, combined with the energetic ambience created by the sizzling meats being carved table-side, makes for an unforgettable dining experience. 

York’s high street dining scene has gone through a seismic shift with the mix of pandemic, recession and other forces pulling punters away from one of my favourite city’s streets, so it’s heartening to see an establishment thriving on a Saturday night. 

Exceptional food, outstanding service, and a vibrant atmosphere made it a magnet for me and one of my oldest friends on a rain-lashed evening. 

The menu blurb includes the line ‘Let us take you on a culinary journey you won’t soon forget,’ and for once you can believe the hype. 

We left RIO with full stomachs and a promise that we would return soon. We only scraped the surface of the range of meats on offer. They also do spicy chicken wings, and linguica (Brazillian pork sausages), as well as plenty of other mouthwatering goodies.

And next time I can go with Mrs C as there’s vegetarian, vegan and pescatarian selections too. Even the unlimited use of the salad bar with 40-plus hot and cold items is enough to tempt me. 

I really hope RIO York thrives in the coming months, because like some carnivorous Terminator, I’ll definitely be back. 

Ends