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Child's Play is a 1988 American supernatural slasher film[4][5][6] directed by Tom Holland, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Don Mancini and John Lafia, and a story by Mancini.[7] The film stars Catherine Hicks and Chris Sarandon with Brad Dourif as Chucky. Its plot follows a widowed mother who gives a doll to her son, unaware that the doll is possessed by the soul of a serial killer.
Child's Play was released in the United States on November 9, 1988, by MGM/UA Communications Co. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed more than $44 million against a production budget of $9 million.[8][9][2] Along with the film gaining a 1980s cult following,[10] the box office success also spawned a media franchise that includes a series of six sequels, merchandise, comic books, a reboot, and a television series. The original Child's Play film was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,[11] although the rights to the series were sold to Universal Pictures in 1990.[12] MGM retained the rights to the original film and also distributed the reboot in 2019.
In 1988 Chicago, detective Mike Norris chases fugitive serial killer Charles Lee Ray through the streets of Chicago and into a toy store, while Mike's colleague chases Rays accomplice, Eddie Caputo. Shot by Norris and dying, Ray performs a voodoo chant to transfer his soul into a nearby Good Guy-brand talking doll. The store is struck by lightning and explodes, and Norris finds Ray's lifeless body next to the doll.
Widow Karen Barclay's six-year-old son Andy wants a Good Guy doll for his birthday, but she cannot afford one. She later buys a discounted Good Guy doll from a homeless peddler and Andy is delighted to receive it. The doll refers to itself as "Chucky". That night, Karen's best friend Maggie, who is babysitting Andy, is attacked by Chucky, causing her to fall out of a window to her death. Norris considers Andy a suspect but he claims that it was Chucky and that Chucky told him his real name was "Charles Lee Ray".
The next day, Andy skips school and takes the subway into a sketchy neighborhood in Chicago. Chucky sneaks into the home Caputo is hiding in and kills him by causing a gas explosion as revenge for abandoning him. Andy is again considered a suspect and admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Back home, Karen discovers that the doll has been moving and speaking on its own without batteries. Chucky violently comes alive and attacks her before escaping. Karen goes to Norris but he does not believe her. She finds the peddler for more information but is almost assaulted; Norris saves her and forces the peddler to admit that he stole the doll from the destroyed toy store where Norris killed Ray.
Norris is still skeptical even though Karen tries to warn him that he's next after Caputo. Sure enough, not too long after, Norris is attacked by Chucky. He shoots the doll, whose wound inexplicably bleeds and causes pain. Chucky escapes to his former voodoo instructor John, demanding answers; John informs him that the longer his soul remains in the doll, the more "human" the doll will become. He refuses to help and is subsequently tortured by Chucky with a voodoo doll, forcing him to reveal that in order to escape the doll's body, he must transfer his soul to the first human he revealed his true identity to which in this case is Andy. Chucky leaves for Andy as Karen and Norris find a dying John. Before dying, John tells them that to kill Chucky, they must strike his heart.
Chucky arrives at the psychiatric hospital and kills Andy's doctor with an electroshock therapy device. Andy flees home, where Chucky knocks him out. As he prepares to possess him, Karen and Norris arrive. Chucky stabs Norris but Karen and Andy set him on fire. A horribly-burned Chucky attacks again, but Karen shoots him, blowing his limbs and head off. Norris' partner Jack arrives, refusing to believe the trio until Chucky's body bursts through a vent to strangle him. Norris shoots Chucky's body through the heart, finally killing him. The group leaves to get Norris to the hospital as a traumatized Andy looks back at Chucky's remains.
Additionally, Alan Wilder appears as Walter Criswell, Edan Gross as a young boy in a commercial promoting Good Guy dolls / Oscar Doll, Aaron Osborne as an orderly, Juan Ramirez as the homeless man who Karen received Chucky from, Tyler Hard as Mona, Ted Liss as George, Roslyn Alexander as Lucy
According to an interview with Mental Floss, screenwriter Don Mancini first conceived of the concept while studying as a literature major at UCLA in 1985. He wrote the first draft of the screenplay while studying film at Columbia University in 1986. 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, and the Cabbage Patch riots of 1983.[17][18] Mancini's troubled relationship with his own father and his experiences of alienation as a gay man caused him to center the script around a child with a single mother and no father figure.[19] 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 director Tom Holland has also affirmed that the My Buddy dolls played a role in Chucky's design, with the writers even having to change the doll's name from Buddy to Chucky to avoid a lawsuit from Hasbro.[20][21]
Charles Band expressed interest in filming the script at Full Moon Features, and later produced both Don Mancini's first film Cellar Dweller (1988) and the Puppet Master franchise. However, he did not purchase the rights to Mancini's script because it would have been too expensive for his studio to make. Initially no other studios were interested.[22] However David Kirschner, who would produce all seven films in the Chucky series, agreed to fund it. Kirschner wanted to make a film about a killer doll after reading The Dollhouse Murders and to branch out from children's entertainment after producing An American Tail. (1985).[23][18] Kirschner sent Mancini's second draft and his drawings of the doll to major studios, and attracted more interest due to the success of An American Tail and his links with Steven Spielberg. United Artists won a bidding war to produce the film after studio president Tony Thomopoulous, who would serve as uncredited executive producer of the film, and MGM/UA Communications Chairman Lee Rich realized that it could begin a long-running franchise.[24][1]
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.[25] It would have featured a doll filled with fake blood that would allow it to bleed if played with roughly, and it would have started coming alive while Andy was asleep after he mixed his own blood with the doll's. The doll would have represented Andy's subconscious rage caused by his parents' divorce and his single mother's frequent absence from home, and would have targeted his enemies. The third act would have had the doll trying to kill Andy and his mother so that it would not have to go to sleep while Andy was awake.[26][18] 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.[2]
Although Kirschner enjoyed Mancini's script, he demanded extensive rewrites because he feared that having the doll be a manifestation of Andy's subconscious anger would make the protagonist too unsympathetic to audiences. He also believed that parents would not be willing to buy their children a doll that bled. MGM/UA was not confident enough in Mancini to allow him to do the rewrites. Kirschner hired Tom Holland to rewrite and direct the film based upon Steven Spielberg's recommendation from his work on Amazing Stories.[27][18][2] Holland came up the with the idea that the doll would be possessed by a serial killer. Kirschner named the new character Charles Lee Ray based on Charles Mansion, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray.[28] Ray and his accomplice Eddie Caputo would be based on the "Hillside Stranglers" Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenneth Bianchi.[29]
However, Holland had trouble coming up with a new plot for the film and how Ray's soul would possess the doll in the story. Holland ultimately quit the project in order to direct Fatal Beauty (1987), and MGM/UA nearly cancelled the film. However, Kirschner and Laura Moskowitz hired John Lafia to complete the new script after he responded to their request to the William Morris Agency. In Lafia's rewritten script Charles Lee Ray's soul would have been transferred to the Buddy doll after being executed by electric chair as the doll was being manufactured on an assembly line.[30][18] The script featured the doll factory where Buddy was produced, which would be recycled for the second film.[25]
Lafia wanted to direct the film himself but was turned down because he had never directed a feature-length motion picture, and the studio sought an experienced director for the production. William Friedkin, Irvin Kershner, Robert Wise, Joseph Ruben, and Howard Franklin were all approached to direct. Ruben and Franklin were both nearly hired, with Franklin even doing rewrites on the script. It is unknown if any of his contributions made it into the film, although he is not credited. Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel were attached to co-direct together and started penning rewrites themselves but were dismissed after Jankel became pregnant.[31][18][2]
Holland was finally rehired as writer-director after the completion of Fatal Beauty and performed a final extensive rewrite on the script. Holland's screenplay moved the setting from a middle-class suburban home to a working-class urban apartment in either Chicago or New York City, changed Karen Barclay from an advertising executive to a department store clerk, and identified that Charles Lee Ray had transferred his soul to the doll via Voodoo magic with help from Damballa. Although Kirschner and Mancini both disliked the Voodoo subplot, this would be the screenplay used for the film. Holland argued that his final rewrite was so extensive that it was completely original from earlier drafts of the film and attempted to claim sole credit. Lafia and Mancini disputed this, and a Writers' Guild of America arbitration panel ruled that the three should share credit with Mancini receiving a special "Story by" credit. Lafia later accused Holland of rewriting the film merely to claim sole writing credit and claimed that previous versions of the screenplay had been better. He, Holland, and Mancini also disputed which of the three was most responsible for creating the character of Chucky for the rest of their lives.[32]
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