Horror icon Chucky was originally created by UCLA student Don Mancini, evolving from a script originally titled 'Batteries Not Included' which then became 'Blood Buddy', where the character was named Buddy.

Potential lawsuit with Hasbro aside, Buddy would eventually become Chucky; the movie was eventually renamed Child's Play, and would become a ground-breaking horror film that successfully combined dark comedy with genuine suspense. The animatronics used for Chucky were state-of-the-art for the late 1980s, and the film's success spawned an entire franchise that includes sequels, merchandise, and a television series.

But it wasn't all fun and games behind the scenes. Significant changes to Child's Play were made after poor test screenings, leading to a more streamlined movie and the controversy surrounding the entire Child's Play franchise, especially regarding violence, had lasting implications for horror films here in the UK.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Child's Play (1988) !

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Someone to separate the bad from the movies. Hi everyone, I'm Em, and welcome to Verbal Diorama episode 274, child's play.

This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't. And as always, a huge high. And welcome to Verbal diorama.

Whether you are a regular eternity listener, whether you are a brand new listener to this podcast, thank you for being here. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast.

There are so many podcasts out there all vying for your attention and for your ears, especially during the month of October, because that is traditionally spooky season on many podcasts. And I'll be honest, this podcast is no different.

I am going to be focusing on some horror this month, and it's one of those things that I always get requests for. I always get asked to do more horror.

So I'm just obliging to the listeners and what the listeners want, and those are the regular returning listeners. But if you are a brand new listener, welcome to Verbal diorama. Thank you for being here.

Thank you to everyone who listens to this podcast and has continued to listen to and support this podcast over the last five and a half years and 270 more episodes. It means so much to me to have your support and your lovely comments.

So the most recent episodes of this podcast were on Spider man three and Bill and Ted.

Face the music last month was something that I dubbed three Queltember, which was the second sequels, two movies that had already been featured on the podcast, but I just never got around to doing the third movie in the series or in the trilogy.

Threequel timber was just such a massive success, and I'm so grateful to everyone who listened to those episodes, who gave me some wonderful comments on those episodes. And really, all episodes of Bubble Diorama are winners. But Batman Forever really was the kind of standout episode of that month.

I got so many amazing comments about Batman forever, so thank you so much. But people love Spider man three.

People love Ben and Ted face the music as well, and also Jurassic park three, which came a bit earlier on in the month.

But the fact that Chucky became this huge horror icon was, despite the constant issues, on and off set. And it's also pretty much thanks to a disastrous test screening. For which the movie ended up taking a few hints and tips from jaws.

Here's the trailer for child's play.

On a bitter Chicago night, detective Mike Norris is chasing down the notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray, who takes refuge in a toy store. Injured in the shootout, Ray uses voodoo to transfer his soul into the body of a good guy dog.

And as the store explodes, Norris believes Ray has been killed in the blast. Meanwhile, hard working single mother Karen Barclay knows all her six year old son wants for his birthday is a good guy doll.

And manages to find a peddler behind her workplace selling one on the cheap. She buys it and surprises Andy. And the doll introduces himself as Chucky. Strange things start occurring, with Andy blaming Chucky.

And Karen becomes exasperated at her sons blatant noise. All Chucky can do is talk and respond to Andy. And then Karen realizes Chucky has no batteries. Let's run through the cast.

We have Katherine Hicks as Karen Barkley, Chris Sarandon as Detective Mike Norris, Alex Vincent as Andy Barclay, Dinah Manoff as Maggie Peterson, Tommy Swerdlow as Jack Santos, Jack Colvin as Doctor Ardmore, Raymond Oliver as John, Doctor Deckley Bishop, Neil Giantoli as Eddie Caputo, and Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky. And also as Charles Lee. Ray Child's play has a screenplay by Don Mancini, John Lafayer and Tom Holland.

Some even used baseball bats to both attack and defend themselves against others.

The riots lasted for months, with thousands of people left bruised, battered, some hospitalized, and most egregiously, many hundreds without their cabbage patch kids.

No one really knew why the cabbage patch riots happened other than parent company Conoco appealing to a huge number of children between six and twelve that they could adopt their own doll. And this craze foreshadowed similar holiday toy crazes and of course now Black Friday sales.

But those cabbage patch kids did more than cause a toy shortage and prompt physical violence between usually mild mannered mums and dads. It also inspired UCLA film student Don Mancini to write a darkly comedic tale about a young boy and his doll that takes a deadly turn.

Strongly influenced by the Zuni fetish doll in the Amelia segment of Trilogy of Terror, the creepy dummy in magic and the Twilight Zone episodes living doll about talkie Tina. The killer doll trope was pretty well worn, but in all cases the doll wasnt really a character with a personality, just a doll out to kill someone.

Instead the title was changed not to Child's play, but to blood Buddy.

The premise was a good guy doll called Buddy, that if you played with him too rough he would bleed and then the child would have to use official good guy plasters, aka band aids if you're american, to stop the bleeding.

Back in the eighties there was this thing kids did called blood brothers where you cut your finger, you got your best friend in the world to do the same and you mixed your blood together to become blood brothers. In the script, Andy is a lonely kid, his mother is always out working and his only friend is his buddy doll.

So when Buddy starts to bleed, Andy cuts his thumb mixing his blood with buddies and thats what brings the doll to life. There was no voodoo, no serial killer possession, just a twisted version of Andy's own unconscious rage.

Who goes after Andy's bullies, teachers, the dentist and eventually goes after Andy and his own mother. But the audience wouldn't be sure if it was actually Andy or not. And the doll could only come to life while Andy was asleep.

Mancinis original idea was for it to be a social commentary about the commercialization of toys and how harmful the marketing was to children. Over time, though, the script morphed into an outright horror tale.

This was all happening not too long after a nightmare on Elm street, which had a significant role in the growth of the such a subgenre. Freddy was a villain that could verbally torment people and had a very peculiar sense of humor.

But we're gonna come back to that.

Meanwhile, David Kirchner, who was producing an american tale for Amblin, wanted to branch out from animation and children's entertainment, and he believed in the darkness of childrens imaginations. Hed been holidaying in London and read a copy of the Dollhouse murders by Bessie Wren Wright.

Hed been scared of his toys as a child and wanted to make something about dolls. While developing projects for Disney, he came across Mancinis script for Bloodbuddy, which had been passed over by several other studios.

Charles Band, who was known for his low budget horror studio that may dolls and Puppetmaster, was interested, but he didnt buy it. Kirchner loved the script and added his own idea of the concept of a serial killer's soul being transferred into the doll.

A Frankenstein moment including lightning. And the serial killer would be named Charles Lee Ray, after three infamous killers, Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray.

Originally, the character had ethrica Siegels style hairdo. And if you don't know who flucas eagles are, watch the wedding singer. Very eighties band, weird hair.

Bert Mancini had described him as freckled, red headed, with overalls and a striped shirt. And it was Kirchner who drew the first pencil sketches of the character who would become chucky, using this sketch as a selling point.

During meetings, several studios expressed interest in producing the film.

Tony Thermopoulos from United Artists won the Biddenness and brought in director of the tv show Freddys Nightmares, John Lafia, to sharpen the screenplay. They didnt want Don Mancini be writing at this stage.

Lafayer wrote two drafts before Tom Holland, whod previously had a hit with Fright Night came on board to take a stab at rewriting the script, no pun intended. Holland added the voodoo and the rule that Charles Lee Ray could only transfer his soul into the body of the first person.

He reveals his true self to its worth, adding at this point that Mancini, Lafayette and Holland have always disagreed on the script's origins, with Holland suggesting that his script was an original work.

Due to his extensive rewrites of both Mancini and Lafayas work, and discrediting both Lafaya and Mancinis involvement, the Writers Guild of America would arbitrate and they would disagree with Hollande and give equal credit to Holland, Nafia and Mancini for the screenplay, as well as give a story by credit solely to Don Mancini.

All three men would disagree on who actually created the character of Chucky, since, although generally Mancini is seen and recognised by the fans as the creator as well as at the time of the creation, he was encouraged by a lawyer to describe the doll with as much detail as possible in that original script to prove legal creation to which he did. He described the red hair, the fact the character was 2ft tall, that he had blue eyes, crackles and a striped shirt.

And when David Kirschner created those initial drawings, he didnt deviate at all from Mancinis description, which would lead to, from a legal point of view, Don Mancini being the creator of Chucky.

But back to Hasbro and my buddy, because if youve ever seen a my buddy doll, youll remember they look remarkably similar to chooky, with overalls and a stripey shirt.

Director Tom Holland has since confirmed that the name was changed from Buddy to Chicky to also avoid a lawsuit from Hasbray, even though a lawsuit probably could have been filed on likeness alone. And from what I can find, Hatsbro never did file a suit against United Artists.

The idea for Chucky was always to utilise animatronics, and this had been done so spectacularly in Gremlins. But they wanted to push the boat with these animatronics, and Chilki would end up using some of the most advanced animatronics available at the time.

Tom Holland and John Lafaye continued to make changes to the script and the project continued to evolve, with Lafayer giving the character of Chucky a backstory as a human who became a doll. Tom Horand then left production to direct Fatal Beauty, and Don Mancini at that point was pushed aside for the most part by the studio.

And then when it came to choosing a director, they looked at William Friedking, Robert Wise, Urban Kirchner, Joseph Ruben and Howard Franklin. They were all considered. Rehmann and Franklin were close to getting the job. Apparently.

Even Rocky Morton and Annabelle Jankle, future directors of Thicc and Mario Brothers, were also discussed. But they kept coming back to Tom Hollande.

And the idea that Tom Holland was talented but also a little bit arrogant also, said Steven Spielberg, who'd worked with him on amazing stories. An invitation to direct was sent to Tom Holland and a whole year had passed by that point.

And Tom Holland agreed to direct the year after his previous involvement with the script and returned to the newly titled child's play with something else with grad Dorith. Now, Brad Dourif had played the villain in fatal beauty.

And Holland loved his, quote, gleeful sadism, thinking he would be a great vocal performance for Chucky. And Im going to come back to Brad Dourif and the boys of Chucky in a bit because first they had to cast the other roles in the movie.

Holland had worked with Chris Sarandon in fright night and cast him immediately as detective Norris. Katherine Hicks had worked with director Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek the Voyage Home.

And Nimoy recommended her to Holland for the role of Karen Barclay. Casting young Andy Barclay was always going to be a tough sell because fundamentally, this is a small child starring in a such a horror.

Young Alex Vincent had been an extra in a couple of things but had never really properly acted before. He was auditioned amongst some other young boys in New York and then received a call back to Laden.

He was chosen because he pretended to forget his lines to avoid swearing in front of his mother. And this ability to improvise impressed producers. Holland would say he found Vincent innocent, depressed and vulnerable.

He didn't know what was really going on. He was six years old, of course, but that he had a sweetness and sensitivity to him that would make one of his scenes particularly heartbreaking.

As to how fantastic a little actor he was. Despite the actual level of acting probably being a little bit dubious. I'm going to come back to that a little bit later, though.

They also hired Ed Gale. He'd also starred as the infamous Howard the duck. And as a little person, he was hired as the body of Chucky.

But he would eventually be credited as Chucky's stunt double and would only be supplementing the puppet work and animatronics.

And so back to Brad Dourif because he'd been rehearsing with the lead actors for scenes where the doll comes to life and had also pre recorded several of the lines for on set playback, but then he became unavailable for the rest of Chuckys voice work due to filming Mississippi burning.

And while he would be retained as the acting performance for the serial killer Charles Lee Ray, instead, the production decided to cast a woman to play the voice of Chippy the doll, and the reason stemmed from the Exorcist. The voice of Vadima Pazuzu is credited to a few people, but most notably Mercedes McCainbridge.

Horan's idea was to have Chuckys voice feel distorted and otherworldly. He first tried to use an electronic overlay to the voice, like a Robbie the robot thing, because that's how the toys with sound chips worked.

But it didn't sound great, so he went back to hiring a woman. And he had an actress in mind too.

It was thought she could be threatening and menacing as Chucky, but she obviously didnt stay as the boys of Chucky, so im going to come back to that too. Theres a lot to come back to on this episode.

As for the body of Chucky, the plan was to use state of the art animatronic dolls as well as Ed Gale, the little person hired to play Chucky in some key scenes and also to use child actors. Chucky was designed by Kevin Yeager.

They met on the set of this movie and they are still together to this day. Yeager was hired. Actor Chris Wallace, the guy who did the puppetry for gremlins, decided to direct the fly too. Rick Baker also declined.

Yeager was in his mid twenties at the time, and he and the special effects team would spend months perfecting the Chucky puppet. And Chucky would be a difficult performer on set. It would lead to already strained relationships on set becoming even more strained.

The team created multiple Chucky animatronic heads such as a flailing tantrum chucky, a walking chooky and a stationary chooky. And getting chooky to move wasnt the problem. It was getting chooky to move in the right way, his hands had to be changed three times a day.

After the aluminium fingers would wear through his latex skin. He had a fiberglass core. That housed complex mechanisms. That could create subtle facial gestures.

Not only did they build force perspective sets 30% larger for Ed Gale and the child actors. To convincingly portray Chucky running or generally moving the way the animatronic couldnt. They also built entire sets 6ft above the ground.

So the puppeteers could operate the animatronic dolls from beneath the floor. The monitors for the puppeteers were reversed, though, meaning to make him look left. They saw him as looking right.

And so it was tricky to coordinate all the movements. It would take a team of eleven people to puppeteer Chucky. Multiple puppeteers had to work in unison to create fluid movement.

One would handle the hands, another the eyebrows, another the mouth, and so on. They had multiple heads, arms and dummies that were on hand at all times. Just in case a change needed to happen.

To get Chucky to roll under the sofa when he comes alive in Karens hands. Would lead to the set being tilted at 45 degrees to get the doll to bounce and then roll under the sofa.

That this was all brand new technology didnt help. The animatronic dolls face was controlled via remote control through a rig. Capturing facial movements on puppeteer Brock winklers.

Where he would mouth the loins already recorded in pre production. Chucky would also visibly change as the movie progressed. His hairline would recede. And he would become visibly more like Brad Douris.

Ed Gale, who was practically blind while playing Chucky, also got set on fire for the climactic fireplace scene. As it would have cost too much for them to actually burn a Chucky animatronic. So it was too much for them to burn an animatronic.

But not too much for them to burn an actual human being. Gael would only be set on fire for a limited period of time. So he was on fire in the fireplace, which was then cut.

He would have then been hosed down and then set on fire again to kick the grate open, which was then obviously cut. Hose down and then set on fire again to walk out. And each take was about 45 seconds.

He had a full burn suit on and an oxygen mask, but still he was set on fire. Dale would liaise with the puppeteers to synchronize his movements to the puppet.

With a variety of Chicago locations before the production moved to Los Angeles for soundstage work in Culver City, the Brewster Apartments, a Chicago landmark located at Diversey Parkway and Pine Grove Avenue, became the Barclays apartment building. Karen Barclays work was located at the Carson Pirie Scott and Company building.

The Playland toy shop was filmed on 418 South Wabash Avenue, while Eddies home was filmed in a North Chicago house that the city had condemned to be demolished.

The temperature in Chicago during filming was bracing with a wind chill factor of as low as -50 degrees fahrenheit, which is about -46 degrees celsius. So when I say it was super cold in Chicago that winter, it really was super cold. Also super cold.

Lovely little segue is the relationship between Tom Holland and screenwriters Don Mancini and John Lothia. And this relationship never really thawed with the latter two men never appearing on Sethe.

So chances are it was simply due to the fractured relationship between Bozeman and director Tom Holland.

Holland also managed to get a convincing performance out of young Alex Vincent in the paediatric psychiatric hospital, which is recalled differently depending on who you speak to. Holland would say he repeated the scene with Vincent over and over again and the six year old boy just burst into tears.

Whereas producer David Kirchner recalls it differently. He remembers Holland screaming at Vincent, saying he was going to get productions shut down if he didn't do it. And the boy cried real tears.

There were also rumours that Holland told him his parents were getting divorced. Accusations of bullying on the set of child's play are plentiful and most of those are in Tom Holland's direction.

Saying this, any time there was an argument on set between the adults, young Alex Vincent was always removed from the set. So going back to the voice of Chucky, because Jessica Walters voice was really working for the menacing scenes, but it wasn't working for the humour.

Tom Holland would enlist John Franklin to re record Chuckys voice to focus on that humour.

But obviously also Franklin wouldnt stay as the voice of Chucky, but would instead be credited as walkabout Chucky, the chucky that we hear in the tv commercial. The relationship between Kirschner and Holland also just kept going downhill due to the onset disagreements, the issues with the Chucky puppet.

The first test wing of Childs play, though just like Holland and Kirchner and Holland, Lafayette and Mancini also didnt play well with others. After production was finished and Tom Hollands first rough cut was put together, it was screened for a test audience who werent impressed.

Neither was David Kirchner and brought back Don Mancini to consult on the cut. Both Mancini and Kirchner thought that Tomahollen showed Chupitu liberally in this original cut which was 2 hours long.

Holland declined to reduce the amount of time that Chuppy got on screen. And reports are mixed as to whether he walked off set himself or whether Kirchner removed him.

But it's at this point that Don Mancini was invited by Kershner into the editing room for his creative input. And both agreed they needed to treat Chucky like Bruce the shark in Jaws or the alien in alien with as little screen time as possible.

And so quite a lot of the movie was removed, including investigative moments with Chris Sarandon's character detective Mike Norris. And about 25 minutes of Chucky footage was cut. And in the meantime, Brad Dourif, who was now available, would return to redub the voice of Chucky.

There are conflicting reports as to which voice was used in the test screening. Some say it was Jessica Walter and others say it was John Franklin.

But nevertheless, Brad Dourif was now cast to voice the doll and a horror icon was born.

Other deleted scenes included Chucky trying to break into Andys room at the mental hospital and fooling a mentally ill young girl named Mona into carrying him into the ward.

John the voodoo priest healing an infant through a voodoo ritual, Andy showing Chippy around his room and discovering a photograph of Andys deceased father and Charles Lee Ray stalking a drunk woman only to find out its Mike Norris on an undercover sting operation.

The script also included an alternative ending in which Mike and Karen shoot Chucky repeatedly, light him on fire and stab him with a knife Andy has mounted on a radio controlled car. Its the same car that we see Andy pick up towards the end of the movie. Chucky also has his face and legs melted with a Drano filled squirt gun.

Chucky would have appeared to be dead after being subdued by Jack Santos and multiple police officers.

Another police officer would disregard Jacks claim that the doll was alive while storing Chucky's remains in an evidence room where Chucky's disembodied arm would come to life to swat a fly, leaving his ultimate demise ambiguous. With all of these changes made and cuts made to the movie, this new, streamlined child's play was screened to test audiences and played much better.

Kirkorian would then terminate the production agreement between MGM United Artists with David Kirchner that he agreed United Artists would release Childs play, but only after the recut received posited test greenings. But let's Segway again into something completely different, in a non Segway way, in a non segue way. What is that anyway?

I don't know what I'm saying Segway into the obligatory Keanu reference of this episode.

And if you don't know what that is, it's where I try and link the movie that I'm featuring with Keanu Reeves for no reason other than he is the best of men.

And this is actually a really easy one, because Keanu Reeves also worked with special effects technician Kevin Yeager on the Binh Tab movies, including Face the Music, which was the last episode of this podcast. As I literally, as soon as I saw that Kevin Yeager had worked on this movie and he'd also worked on the Ben and Ted movies.

Really easy to link Keanu Reeves to child's play.

Joe Manzetti, the Academy Award winning composer, was hired to compose the score of child's play and he used a variety of orchestral and electronic elements in his score and he insisted on an electronic soundtrack, even though United Artists and Tom Holland intended the movie to have a full orchestrated score.

And Childs Play won praise from critics and most critics tend to write off the horror genre, but they liked Childs play because of its unique villain, puppetry, succinct narrative and its scenes of gore, it currently sits at 74% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a summary of child's play occasionally stumbles across its tonal tightrope of comedy and horror, but it's genuinely creepy. Monster and some deft direction by Tom Holland makes this chinner stand out on the shelf.

And so naturally, of course, United Artists had the second best return of the year with child's play, so you would think they would start with a sequel immediately. But eventually they declined to be involved in the sequel. And this was despite the fact they did get to work straight away on a sequel.

And then Kiptech's group, who was known for their family friendly entertainment, acquired United Artists and wanted the studio to focus on family friendly movies like Disney's family friendly movies. And so United Artists relinquished control of the franchise to David Kirschner.

And after a brief bidding war between studios like Paramount, Warner Brothers, Columbia, 20th Century Fox, the Price company, Carol Co. Universal and even Disney for the sequel, a deal was made with Universal for Childs play two, thanks to Kirchners close ties with Steven Spielberg.

30 years later, Spielberg would finally get to work with Chucky in ready player one. Childs play has since spawned six sequels, a television series, a remake, comic books, a video game and tie in merchandise.

The first, second and fourth films were all box office successes, with them earning over $182 million worldwide, including revenues from the sales of all of the videos, dvd's, Vod, Blu rays and merchandise, the franchise has generated over $250 million. But there is a lot of confusion when it comes to child's play and Chucky. And why are there a couple of offshoots of child's play and Chucky?

And who owns the rights to Chucky? And who owns the rights to Child's play?

However, they do not own the rights to the original Childs play, and because of the issues with United Artists and the move to Universal for Childs play, two various studios have now distributed the seven Childs play films throughout the nineties Universal Pictures they did Childs play two, Childs play three, and Bride of Chucky for the fifth franchise film, Cedar Chucky, that then switched to rung and relativity media.

They replaced Universal as the films distributors, but Mancini and Kirchner returned to Universal for the sick film Cursor Chucky and the 7th film Cult of Chucky.

The Chucky tv show was developed by Mancini and Kirchner, produced by Universal and as of recording, this podcast has very recently been announced as being cancelled after its third season.

That movie starred Aubrey Plaza as Karen Barkley with Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky and to be honest, I'd heard it's actually well worth the watch.

It obviously updates Chucky to a modern age and if you think about toys nowadays, toys nowadays can do anything apart from maybe go on murderous rampages. But you never know what will happen in the near future when it comes to toys and AI.

I knew the puppet work would be great because eighties puppet work is always great, but I think I didn't expect the movie itself to be so suspenseful and violent and unrelenting. This movie obviously had about 30 minutes trimmed off Tom Holland's original two hour cut and that definitely did this movie.

The world of good showing Chucky's movements, limited at first, builds up the tension showing his point of view. Its all really good stuff that shows that despite Tom Hollands ways, he really did know what he was doing with Chucky.

Weird voodoo subplot aside, and that scene when Karen Barkley picks up the box, hears something drop and realizes its the sealed batteries slowly moving over to Chucky, picking him up, inspecting the battery compartment and realizing its empty only for Chucky to violently spin his head round. Catherine Hicks is phenomenal in this scene. She totally sells the idea that this doll is attacking her.

The terrifying realization that her son has been telling the truth the whole time about this doll. I absolutely love that scene. I genuinely think it is one of the best scenes that I'd ever seen in a horror movie ever.

And because verbal diorana and by that I mean myself, loves practical special effects. And puppets and animatronics. I knew Chucky would be great. But I don't think I expected him to be so great.

Because as I say, I've not seen this movie in a long time. I forgot how good the animatronic version of Chucky is.

And of course you can tell the difference between when it is Ed Gale and when it is an animatronic puppet. But I don't care because I'm fully invested in this character of Chucky. And it's one of those incredible stories.

The fact that three decades after Don Mancini's seed of an idea was planted. It blossomed into this fully operational franchise.

And Chucky is one of horrors most recognizable, if not always utilized to his full potential characters. And obviously Tom Holland does deserve praise for creating this film that stands the test of time.

By using sympathy for its main characters and special effects. Ranging from realistic suits to animatronics and remote controlled puppetry. With these extremely violent and interesting, varied depths.

But David Kirchner's decision to remove Holland and recut the movie after those disastrous test screenings is the savior of this movie. Trimming the fat kept this movie lean at 87 minutes and it just keeps giving us what we want.

But child's play is mostly known for its controversies than its enjoyable plot.

With large crowds of protesters infronted MGM when it was released, claiming it incited violence in children as well as made children afraid of their dolls coming to life and trying to kill them. When the movie was released on vhs, a 32nd ad for the release was pulled from primetime because Chucky was too threatening and aggressive.

It then only aired in late night slots. And while not directed at this movie, specifically the whole franchise, and especially Child's play three, would become the top story on the news.

But Child's play three was blamed due to the 210 year olds allegedly recreating a scene from that movie. The link to Child's play three was that the father of one of the boys had rented the video. Some months earlier.

However, the police officer who directed the investigation found that the boy was not living with his father at the time and was unlikely to have seen the film.

It still led to an outcry over video nasties, but at the time the association of Video Retailers recommended but did not enforce the whole child's play franchise to be removed from video store shelves. Child's play three was the easy scapegoat to blame for the actions of children.

The mention of other relative factors gave the BBSC the ability to also consider other criteria not listed, such as bad taste, offensiveness or bad language.

Its rare for one creator to have the kind of continued and crucial input on a long running horror franchise of the type that Don Mancini can claim, as well as the one horror franchise to have one continuous story. Despite some comedy leanings.

Marzzini is also loyal to his actors, repeatedly casting not just Brad Dourif and Jennifer Timmy, but also Alex Vincent and also doriffs daughter Fiona, who played the lead role of Nica Pierce in Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chukki.

The childs play series has also explored themes of gender and sexuality, with Mancini, an openly gay man, using it to talk about sexual identity and introducing non binary characters, Glenn and Glenda in Cedar Chucky.

Childs play has aged like a fine wine thanks to three main things, not even including the idea itself, which is brilliant and still to this day incredibly striking.

But those ideas are the design and operation of the doll and the terrific visual effects that went along with it, that main battery scene with Chucky and Karen, and just the extremely graphic and imaginative death sequences. It's a franchise that has the potential to keep going so long as Don Mancini is involved.

And so basically what I'm saying is we will never be putting away childish things. Long live Chucky. Thank you for listening. As always.

I would love to hear your thoughts on child play and as always, thank you for your continued support of this podcast. If you want to get involved and you want to help this podcast grow, then you can. You can leave a rating or review wherever you found this podcast.

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Or you could simply tell your friends and family about this podcast and about this episode.

And so the next episode of this podcast, I actually mentioned towards the top of this podcast because the horror movies that I'm covering in this month are going to be going back in time.

This particular killer was burned alive by a group of parents, but as a group of teenagers discover he can murder people while they sleep by infiltrating their dreams.

However, this podcast is not free to produce, and so if you wish to help support the show financially, you are under no obligation to do so. But if you have some spare pennies and you want to throw them a podcast way, I would be very grateful to receive those pennies.

You can support this show one of two ways. You could give a one off tip@verbaldiorama.com tips.

Or you can go and join the Patreon, which is a regular monthly donation and that is verbaldiorama.com patreon. And you can join the amazing patrons of this podcast.

They are Sade, Claudia, Simon, Laurel, Derek, Kat, Andy, Mike, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Lisa, Sam, Jack, Dave, Stuart, Nicholas so, Kev Peet, Heather, Danny, Ally, Stu, Brett, Philip M, Michelle, Zenos, Sean, Rhino, Philip K, Adam, Elaine, and Kyle. If you want to get in touch with me, you can. You can email general hellos, feedback or suggestions to verbaldioramail.com.

or you can go to verbaldiorama.com and fill out the little contact form. And you can also find bits that I do over at Filmstories dot co dot uk too. And finally.