Chucky (Child's Play)

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Child's Play character
Charles Lee Ray
Gender: Male
Motto: "Hi I'm Chucky, do you want to play?"
Notable Enemies Andy Barclay, anybody that gets in his way or tries to stop him.
Portrayed by: Brad Dourif
Weapon of choice: Knives, Axes,Voodoo doll,hammer, guns, yardstick etc. Pretty much anything he can get his hands on

Charles Lee Ray, a.k.a. "Chucky" is the primary antagonist in the Child's Play horror films series, with the original screenplay credited to Don Mancini, John Lafia, and Tom Holland.

Brad Dourif has voiced the character in all of the films, and appears at the beginning of the first film (as Charles Lee Ray himself) and in later flashbacks.

Contents

[edit] History

On November 9, 1988, Charles Lee Ray, the notorious "Lakeshore Strangler" was being chased down a street by a cop, Mike Norris, who proceeded to fire on Ray, fatally injuring him. Bleeding heavily, Ray stumbled into a toy store and collapsed into a pile of Good Guy dolls. Knowing he would probably die, Ray used voodoo to transfer his soul into one of the dolls. The store was then struck by lightning, and it burned to the ground. Before he died as a human, Ray had randomly murdered several people, many of whom simply got in his way. For ten years, he attempts to use six-year-old Andy Barclay to transfer his soul into since Andy was the first person to whom Chucky revealed his secret, and thus the only person Chucky could transfer his soul to, in accordance with the voodoo spell.

Ten years later, Tiffany, Chucky's fiance' reassembles and brings him back to life. When Chucky admits that he never intended to marry her, Tiffany imprisons him in a crib, but Chucky manages to escape. He electrocutes Tiffany by pushing a TV in the bathtub, and transfers her soul into a doll. After reconciling, the couple embarks on a murder spree, culminating at the cemetery where Chucky's human body is buried, as they need to get The Heart of Damballa, in order to transfer their souls into human bodies. But Tiffany has other plans: she slyly asks Chucky to kiss her before they appropriate human form, but suddenly grabs his knife and stabs him. The two dolls fight to the death, after which Tiffany is discovered by a cop. Tiffany manages to give birth to an androgynous baby doll Glen/Glenda, dying shortly afterward.

[edit] Physiology

Although trapped in the body of a doll, Chucky retains many human qualities, most notably the ability to bleed human like, as his innards are filled with living organs. Chucky also has the ability to procreate, as depicted in Seed of Chucky. He himself states in Bride of Chucky, "I am anatomically correct, ya' know.." It is interesting to note that Chucky acquires more human qualities the longer he inhabits his doll body. When Chucky first inhabits a doll body, he will be temporarily invincible. Once he remains in the body for a matter of time (usually a few days), Chucky progressively gains more human qualities, thus causing him to become more vulnerable. If Chucky stays in a doll body for too long, he will obtain full human qualities and will be trapped in the body forever. Only in Child's Play 2 has this occurred.

[edit] Child's Play (1988)

In this film, Charles Lee Ray begins in his human body. He is being chased by multiple police officers but mainly the main detective in the film. He beggs his partner Eddie Caputo to stay but Caputo drives off without Charles.

A police car goes after Caputo's van, leaving Charles alone with the detective. After some brief gunfire, Charles is cornered into a toy store which he forcefully entered. Once inside he is brutally shot by the detective.

Then he performs a complex and unique ritual on a Good Guy doll, thus Chucky's figure is created.

[edit] Child's Play 2 (1990)

Set two years later as Andy has moved in with a foster family while his mother undergoes psychiatric evaluation. According to the Child's Play comic miniseries, Detective Norris was threatened into facing dismissal unless he told the authorities that Karen was unstable.

To prove their bad publicity wrong, Play Pals Inc, the creators of the Good Guy dolls, decide to rebuild Chucky, who is then brought back to life. Chucky resumes his search for Andy, encountering and killing Andy's foster father (Gerrit Graham). Andy is blamed for the murder, and returned to the orphanage. After killing Andy's foster mother (Jenny Agutter), Chucky takes Kyle (Christine Elise), Andy's foster sister, hostage to help him find Andy.

Chucky brings Andy to the Good Guy factory with Kyle in pursuit. After failing to transfer his soul into Andy's body, Chucky realizes that he is trapped in doll form. He attempts to kill Andy and Kyle, but is instead doused in hot molten plastic after his legs and right hand are severed. The enraged and mangled Chucky is killed when Kyle shoves an air hose into the doll's mouth, causing his head to explode.

[edit] Child's Play 3 (1991)

Upon turning 16, Andy (now played by Justin Whalin) is sent to military school having failed to cope in several foster homes. Meanwhile, Play Pals Inc re-releases its old "Good Guy" toyline, believing that their bad publicity has abated. When workers clean up the Good Guy Factory, a crane pierces one of Chucky's severed arms, causing a lot of blood to drip out, and when Chucky's headless corpse goes over a vat of liquid plastic, some of Chucky's blood leaks out into the vat, bringing him back to life once more. He resumes his spree of killing by choking to death the president of the company (who appeared briefly in the second film), upon discovering the location of Andy, Chucky cleverly mails himself to Andy's school, where he is discovered by a young private named Ronald Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers). Realizing that Tyler is the first person to whom he revealed his identity in his new body, Chucky must now use Tyler, instead of Andy, for the soul transfer. When Andy learns that Chucky is around, he admonishes Tyler not to trust him.

Chucky's killing spree continues, and finally Tyler realises his evil during the school's war game (Chucky replaced the paintballs with live rounds) Chucky induces Tyler to hide in a carnival where Andy gives chase. In the violent climax of film (occurring on a spookhouse ride), Chucky's face is half-severed with an iron scythe, his left arm is shot off, and he is shot in the chest just before he can finally escape his doll body into Tyler's. In one final battle, Andy slices off his other hand and hurls him into a large fan, where the doll is unceremoniously cut to ribbons.

[edit] Bride of Chucky (1998)

One stormy night, Chucky's girlfriend Tiffany finds the remains of the doll. After calmly slitting the throat of the cop she bribed to steal his remains out of the evidence room (which also contains items which appear to be Freddy Krueger's sweater, hat and glove as well as Jason Voorhees' hockey mask and machete and Michael Myers William Shatner mask), Tiffany returns to her trailer and sews Chucky back together. She uses an incantation from a book entitled "Voodoo For Dummies" to reanimate Chucky, after which Tiffany learns that the ring she proudly wore for ten years was not actually an engagement ring, but was stolen by Chucky from a wealthy old woman named Vivian Van Pelt. An enraged Tiffany confines Chucky to a playpen which she bought for the baby she wanted to have. After escaping, Chucky electrocutes Tiffany in her own bathtub, and transfers her soul into her bridal doll. Tiffany immediately wants out of the doll body, but Chucky admonishes her that the only way to return to human form is with The Heart of Damballa, a mystical amulet that Chucky was wearing the night he became a doll.

In order to get to Forrest Creek Cemetery in Hackensack, New Jersey, where Chucky's human corpse is buried along with the amulet, Tiffany calls her neighbor Jesse (Nick Stabile), offering to pay him to get them there by the next day. Unaware that Tiffany and Chucky are dolls, he takes advantage of the opportunity to take his girlfriend Jade (Katherine Heigl) from her overprotective uncle, Warren Kincaid (John Ritter). He asks Jade to accompany him, and she accepts his offer.

Before they leave, Warren attempts to frame Jesse by putting a bag of weed in his van, unaware that Chucky and Tiffany are in the van needing a ride to Hackensack. Tiffany and Chucky fatally wound Warren with nails, concealing his body in the trunk. En route to their destination, Tiffany and Chucky kill anyone getting in their way, but Jesse and Jade get blamed for the crimes. To make matters worse, Tiffany and Chucky intend to steal Jesse's and Jade's bodies using voodoo.

Jesse and Jade decide to rest at a motel, where they meet newlyweds Diane and Russ, who are later killed by falling shards of glass when Tiffany throws a bottle of wine to the ceiling mirror. Impressed by the creative murder, Chucky proposes to Tiffany, and they have sex. When the bodies of the newlyweds are discovered by the hotel maid, Jesse and Jade are especially wanted by the police. Jesse and Jade eventually learn that the dolls are alive, and that there is no turning back. After hijacking a recreational vehicle from another couple, Jesse and Jade are forced to drive the dolls to the cemetery in Hackensack.

On the way, Tiffany and Chucky get into a fight (instigated by Jesse and Jade), and Jesse crashes and explodes the van. Nevertheless, they manage to reach the cemetery. Just before Tiffany transfers her soul into Jade, she and Chucky get into another fight. Tiffany is fatally wounded in the scuffle, and when the police show up, Chucky gets shot by Jade. As she lay dying, Tiffany gives birth to a bloody baby doll.

[edit] Seed of Chucky (2004)

Six years after the events of Bride of Chucky, the offspring of Chucky and Tiffany, a gender-confused doll named Glen/Glenda (voiced by Billy Boyd), has grown up as an orphan in Great Britain. When he sees his parents in an episode of Access Hollywood for the upcoming movie Chucky goes Psycho, Glen escapes his abusive ventriloquist owner and mails himself to Hollywood. Once there, he uses Chucky's amulet to transfer Chucky's and Tiffany's souls into the new dolls that the studio is using for their movie. Although horrified by his parents' murderous lifestyle, Glen/Glenda want desperately to please his/her parents and belong to a family, no matter what happens.

Seeing that Glen has no genitalia, Chucky and Tiffany cannot agree on the name (or gender) of their child: Chucky prefers the name "Glen" while Tiffany prefers "Glenda." Glen/Glenda asks his/her parents why they kill, to which they reply that they never much thought about it. Tiffany proposes to end their murderous ways, much to Chucky's dismay. This proves to be an arduous endeavor, especially for Tiffany. Chucky and Tiffany kill people behind each other's backs and swear Glen to secrecy, and Chucky tricks Glen into committing two murders by accident. Eventually, Glen is so traumatized that "Glenda" briefly emerges as an alternate personality who pleases her parents by gleefully committing murder, after which Glen reemerges for the rest of the film.

Meanwhile, real-life actress Jennifer Tilly (playing herself) is desperate to advance her acting career. When Redman arrives at Tilly's mansion to discuss casting her in his movie, they are both knocked out. Chucky's sperm is used to impregnate Tilly in order to give Glen/Glenda a human body. Because it is a voodoo pregnancy, Tilly appears nine months pregnant within a couple of days.

Later Tilly and her limo driver Stan (as Chucky needs a replacement body because Tiffany killed Redman) are tied to her bed, Tilly promptly goes into labor. After the birth of twin babies Glen and Glenda, Chucky resolves to remain a doll, as it makes him immortal and unique, prompting an alienated Tiffany to leave him. She decides to take Glen with her, enraging Chucky, who hurls his knife at Tilly but the limo driver jumps in the way to save her. Tiffany attacks Chucky with the knife before the police arrive.

The next day, Tilly is visited in the hospital by Tiffany and Glen. Just as Tiffany transfers her soul into Tilly, Chucky axes his way through the door and kills Tilly, who is in Tiffany's doll body, with an axe. Tiffany barely escapes with Tilly's body, but Chucky and Glen believe that she died. With this traumatic event, Glen is suddenly capable of killing (without Glenda's help), and he proceeds to attack his father. Glen uses martial arts to fight Chucky, Tiffany (in tilly's body) slides the axe, and Glen severs all of Chucky's limbs. Even when dying, Chucky is proud of his son, but even that doesn't stop Glen from removing his father's head. Tiffany, in Tilly's body, comforts him after.

Five years later, Tiffany is living happily with her human twins Glen and Glenda, now celebrating their fifth birthday. One of Tiffany's servants, Fulvia, tries to quit because she is frightened of the mischievous Glenda. Tiffany finds this ridiculous, but says she can leave. When Fulvia turns around, Tiffany brutally swings her doll at Fulvia's head, causing her to fall to the ground. She strikes her several more times, cracking her head open after the final blow. While dragging Fulvia's body into a closet,her eyes glowing green as her original body(also played by Tilly)had, Tiffany sees Glenda peering through the window. They smile at each other knowingly. Tiffany goes outside to tell the story of her and Chucky to a group at the party, when she surprises Glen by giving him an unlabeled gift. Glen opens it to reveal Chucky's arm, which leaps up and appears to grab him.

[edit] Other Media

There have been a number of comics based on the character. Most recently, Devil's Due Publishing have started an eponymous series which will include a HACK/Slash crossover. [1]

Chucky appears in the Robot Chicken episode "Plastic Buffet" voiced by Mark Hamill. He is featured in the skit where he takes on the soulless Lettuce Head Kids which are then killed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[edit] Trivia

  • Geto Boys made a song inspired by Chucky called "Chucky."
  • Bushwick Bill calls Chucky his alter ego.
  • Buju Banton's song "Friends for Life" includes the lyric "I'll be your friend to the end like Chucky."
  • NFL head coach Jon Gruden is nicknamed Chucky because of his angry faces.
  • The Castlevania series references Chucky. Some in-game descriptions for the Killer Doll enemy read "A figurine possessed by the spirit of a mass murderer."
  • On the Univision telenovela Acorralada, one of the chararacters is nicknamed "Chucky" because of her evil ways.
  • Chucky's full name, Charles Lee Ray, is derived from the names of notorious killers Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray.
  • Chucky and his arm are referenced in the 2001 They Might Be Giants song "Cyclops Rock."

[edit] References

[edit] External links