Horror history’s most infamous killer doll starts showing his murderous tendencies in a clip from the upcoming Child’s Play show Chucky. Don Mancini originally unleashed the murderous toy named Chucky in a 1988 slasher classic.
Mancini’s slasher Child’s Play of course later spawned a string of sequels centered on the iconic villain Chucky as voiced by Brad Dourif. Those sequels were relatively straight-forward initially but later become wildly comical as Mancini introduced Chucky’s bride, played by Jennifer Tilly, along with other increasingly crazy horror twists. After that series ran out of steam, the concept was rebooted in 2019 without Mancini and with a new and presumably relevant smart-technology angle. But that Child’s Play reboot as yet has failed to spawn a sequel, much to Mancini’s own delight. Now the character's original creator is taking back the reins of Chucky for a USA/Syfy TV show that sees the killer doll teaming up with a lonely teenaged boy in a horror premise that was originally meant for the 1988 Child’s Play movie but was dropped.
The relationship between the show’s main protagonist Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur) and Chucky is indeed front-and-center in a new clip from the upcoming show (via BD Horror Trailers and Clips). See the grisly extract in the space below:
The show's already-revealed premise sees the bullied Jake discovering a discarded and already possessed Chucky at a yard sale and befriending what he thinks is just a cute little harmless doll. In the just-released clip, Jake has brought his new plastic pal to biology class with him, just in time for an assignment that involves dissecting a frog. Jake is naturally incredibly anxious about having to cut into a frog but unfortunately his teacher doesn’t have a lot of sympathy (indeed she drops an F-bomb during the scene, suggesting she doesn’t take much crap off any of her students). But Jake somehow manages to get up the nerve to cut into the still-breathing frog with a scalpel, drawing blood. The sight of the blood is all Jake can handle though and he exits to collect himself. The clip then shows Chucky staring at the bloody scalpel and the helpless frog, and it’s easy to predict what will happen next. Indeed when Jake returns the not-at-all-squeamish Chucky has completed his assignment for him by expertly cutting up the frog, leaving its mangled body lying there with its heart still beating. This is not a surprise as Chucky is of course possessed by the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, and indeed Chucky will delve into the origin story of Ray for the first time.
The clip is obviously gruesome as one would expect from a TV show based on Child’s Play. But it also has more than its fair share of comedy – as one would also expect given the comedic turn the Child’s Play series ultimately took under Mancini’s watch. Overall the clip seems like a nice encapsulation of what Chucky has to offer in terms of gore and humor, and also when it comes to exploring the relationship between Chucky and his friend Jake. Chucky arrives on USA and Syfy on October 12, 2021.
Source: USA/Syfy (via BD Horror Trailers and Clips/YouTube)