In the world of horror, some of the most beloved franchises and villains have gone to bizarre places, often as a result of an original film’s creator departing from the series. In the case of Child’s Play, however, Don Mancini has written each and every installment, with the bizarrely entertaining directions the series has taken being credited to the man who introduced the world to the killer doll Chucky.
Over the course of the series, Chucky, a doll who is inhabited by the spirit of murderer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), has killed dozens of people, found a wife, had a child, and been killed on multiple occasions.
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The upcoming Cult of Chucky, the seventh film in the franchise, promises an all-new adventure for Chucky, with Mancini taking on directorial duties as well. While the future of the series ultimately lies in the hands of the creator, previous installments haven’t always gone exactly as the filmmaker has wanted.
“In my original script for the first move, the babysitter’s death was in the bathtub, with the television going in and electrocuting her,” Mancini revealed to PopCulture.com. “Tom Holland, who rewrote the script and directed the movie, he changed the circumstances to [actress] Dinah Manoff go out the window, and fall to her death, which was cool, but I always loved that set piece with the bathtub, and the television, and the bubbles. I just thought it was, just visually, very interesting.”
“That stuff just makes your subconscious tingle…”
The filmmaker’sย original intentions weren’t just based on his personal preferences of seeing someone electrocuted as opposed to plummeting to their death, but due to his own visual tastes.
“I think one of the cool things, to me, about horror movies, or at least the horror movies that I like, when you haveย imagery that suggests something going on before, or even rather than, showing the event too explicitly,” Mancini confessed. “Having someone electrocuted, the act of their being electrocuted is less interesting to me than the bubbles lofting through the room, and seeing Chucky sort of mesmerized by the bubbles.”
“That stuff just makes your subconscious tingle, and I like doing stuff like that,” he added.
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Shaping the Series
Based on his remarks, the filmmaker seems much more focused on the future than on the past when it comes to Chucky.
“I’ve made little course adjustments,ย I have done that a couple of times,” Mancini noted. “I do have…I don’t know if it’s correct to call them long range plans, because it’s much more fluid. You can’t plan everything out, but I am always thinking, and one of the nice things about having a franchise is that if certain ideas, or scenes, or characters, or whatever, if they don’t, ultimately, make their way into the film you’re doing at that time, you can just file it away, and think, ‘Okay, well that might be more appropriate in a future installment,’ because it’s an interesting idea.”
With the series still going strong after 30 years, it’s safe to say the franchise isn’t going away anytime soon.
Cult of Chuckyย lands on unrated Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital platforms on October 3.
