There are few instances when my love of America has been so profound as a certain weekend in mid-October, 1998, when Oprah Winfrey's sanctimonious vanity project Beloved -- based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name -- was deprived of its rightful number one box office position by a film detailing the homicidal adventures of two excessively horny plastic dolls. I am referring, of course, to Bride of Chucky, the movie which taught me never to underestimate the public demand for repeated shots of a battered John Ritter, a hokey voodoo chant or a naked doll's plastic ass. I no longer felt alone in my love. God bless America.
That's why it hurts me so much to say that, upon repeated viewings, that irresistible quality which captured our nation that fateful weekend does not exactly withstand the test of time. Don't get me wrong -- Bride of Chucky is certainly the best installment of the series since the original Child's Play, and if you consider that a meaningless evaluation, I'd go as far to say that it's even better than the original. Bride of Chucky is a wonderfully absurd, hilarious and gory flick, and it's about a doll that kills people. This was the big epiphany in Chuckyland, the film that finally admitted the little munchkin was just plain goofy, even when he was trying to be scary. He's two feet tall for Chrissakes! Just kick the little bastard, people!
But, despite these revelations, this film is still -- less than two years after its release -- incredibly dated. There's a scene in Bride of Chucky when Alexis Arquette, having discovered the doll in the trailer of the ex-girlfriend of Charles Lee Ray (Chucky's human incarnation), exclaims, "Chucky?! But he's so...eighties! He's not even scary!" True, but that very phrase itself is just so... 1998, the height of the Scream-influenced trend of horror self-referentiality. The opening scene of the film features a police station filled with items such as the masks of Jason and Michael Myers, and while this sort of gag was funny at the time, it seems as quaint today as the original Child's Play did at the time of Bride's release.
Luckily, Chucky still has much more to offer than its I Know What Movie Sucked Big Time-era counterparts. Namely, it has Jennifer Tilly as Chucky's devoted and equally homicidal ex-girlfriend, Tiffany, who resurrected the overall-clad, plastic maniac with a needle, some thread, and a Voodoo for Dummies handbook. Soon Chucky's back to his old self, and being the raging stud that he is, he still holds scant interest in marrying Tiffany. Furious, she retaliates, and in turn, so does he. She locks him in a playpen. He uses a Speak `n' Spell to spell the word "woman" as B-I-T-C-H. She mocks his manhood. He electrocutes her with a toaster and transfers her soul into a female doll.
OK, not exactly a fair trade there. But it's Chucky, so we go with it.
What we don't go with, however, is the subplot featuring two lovelorn teenagers, who are as boring and bland as Chucky and Tiffany are funny and fascinating. (In a moment of casting foreshadowing, the deadly dull female is played by future Roswell star Katherine Heigl.) Determined to escape their plastic limitations, Chucky and Tiffany plot to kill the teenagers and inhabit their bodies, and I've gotta say, I was cheering them on every step of the way. In the meantime, Chucky and Tiff manage to kill several humans with a level of brutality and bloodlust that is surprising, even for a Child's Play flick. It's here that the movie again loses focus; I've got no problem with gore, but why would you want to waste time on measly slaughter when you can concentrate on the truly remarkable aspect of Bride of Chucky: the sex.
The sequence showing Chucky getting laid is truly the most bizarre sex scene ever filmed. Lit with all the soft romance of a John Hughes deflowering, this unforgettable moment includes such witty epithets as "I'm all rubber, baby!" when Tiffany asks her man if he has protection, as well as a shot of Chucky's bare behind. I don't know what kind of sick mind came up with this idea, but I applaud them heartily, as I do for this weird, funny, if somewhat flawed, ode to homicidal love.
DROOL FACTOR: It's a battle of the uglies as Chucky faces off against police officer John Ritter, with the Dawson's Creek casting call reject teenage leads making life ever the scarier.
GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Woo-yeah! This is possibly the grossest and most violent of all the post-Scream slasher movies released last decade. Nasty, nasty stuff, tempered by the movie's sick humor and good FX.
STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Personally, I thought that Tiffany, voiced by -- ha! -- Oscar-nominated actress Jennifer Tilly was a pretty cool character. (Then again, I really liked this movie, so...) Any girl who manages to dis Barbie and tell Martha Stewart to kiss her shiny plastic butt in the same film works for me.
-- Sarah Kendzior
Bride of Chucky is currently available on video and DVD.
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