Retrospective Film Review

Child’s Play (1988) • 35 Years Later — when a Good Guy doll goes bad

A struggling single mother unknowingly gifts her son a doll imbued with a serial killer’s soul.

Of course, I’m going to praise Child’s Play when I’m 70 episodes deep into co-hosting a Chucky podcast. But in discussing Dolls (1987) and Puppet Master (1989), Chucky stands out even more nestled between those two killer doll movies. Modern approaches like The Boy (2016) and M3GAN (2023) are still competing with the bar Chucky set 35 years ago, let alone the Chucky TV series that’s on right now. There really is nothing quite like Child’s Play. Like a certain serial killer and voodoo incantation, a combination of creative voices came together to birth one extraordinary and enduring S.O.B.

Don Mancini, the creator of Chucky, has been with the iconic killer doll for over three decades. But his original screenplay, which went through several titles, including Batteries Not Included and Blood Buddy, told a different story. Mancini’s satire of rampant commercialism was even blunter in early drafts, with dolls that…