The Big Picture

Child’s Play, featuring the iconic killer doll Chucky, has evolved into a successful franchise since its release in 1988 with several movies, a TV show, and merchandise. Director Tom Holland was initially skeptical about the project due to an unsympathetic lead character but made changes to the doll’s motivations to create a more engaging story. Bringing Chucky to life was a complex and challenging task, with multiple puppeteers involved in every shot. The film’s suspenseful moments, particularly the doll’s reveal to the mother, were highly effective.

Thirty-five years ago, audiences were introduced to a salty murderous doll, a child’s toy with the consciousness of a very pissed off serial killer trapped within it. Since the release of Child’s Play on November 9, 1988, Chucky – whose full name, Charles Lee Ray, is derived from the names of notorious killers Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald (assassin of John F. Kennedy) and James Earl Ray (assassin of Martin Luther King) – has spawned a franchise that includes several movies, a TV show, and more merchandise than you can imagine.

What started as a script by Don Mancini called Blood Buddy, about a doll that came with a pin so that you could become its blood buddy, turned into a tale about a struggling mother (Catherine Hicks) unknowingly gifting her son (Alex Vincent) a Good Guy doll that a killer (Brad Dourif) on the verge of death used voodoo to transfer his soul into. When director Tom Holland (who also wrote and directed the original Fright Night and wrote 1984’s Cloak & Dagger) first had the project come his way, he wasn’t fully sold on it because he felt the young boy, Andy Barclay, was too unsympathetic. With some changes to the doll and its motivations, the project was greenlit and a new franchise had begun.

Collider recently got the opportunity to chat 1-on-1 with Holland about what originally attracted him to the project, focusing on the drama more than the absurdity of a story about a killer doll, the biggest production challenges in bringing the doll to life, why he feels audiences connected to this story, figuring out the best approach to shooting Chucky himself, and how they even ended up having their young lead actor’s four-year-old sister fill in for Chucky during an important moment.

Collider: When you first heard about Child’s Play and this whole killer doll idea, what was your reaction to it? Did it seem silly? Did you feel like you could make it work? What convinced you that this crazy idea would actually work?

TOM HOLLAND: Well, the reason I was attracted to it was that it had a feeling we’ve all had as little kids. When we were growing up, we’d look around as we went to sleep, around our room with our action figures or our dolls, or whatever, and I think that all of us thought, at one time or another, “Wouldn’t it be really interesting, if not wonderful, if one of my toys came alive and could talk to me?” It’s the same thing like, “I wish my dog could talk to me,” but it’s even more universal than that. That made it very attractive to me. How I was going to do it, I didn’t know. I was on it, but I couldn’t solve it. The original screenplay that had been written by Don Mancini was turned down by everybody. The little boy would get mad at his teacher or at his dentist, and then because he made the doll a blood buddy, it became his id and the doll would kill because the little boy was angry at the adult figures, but that made the little boy very unsympathetic. If you wanna have a movie that really stands up for a time, you better have your lead characters be people that the audience can become emotionally involved with, and I was not able to solve that challenge.

So, I went away and I made Fatal Beauty with Whoopi Goldberg and Sam Elliott, and as the lead villain, it had Brad Dourif. Brad had a fiendish delight in being the bad guy. He’s a major talent. And so, I knew that that I wanted him to voice Chucky, before I even went and wrote the screenplay, but I didn’t have a premise that really opened it up for me. And then, I finally had the idea, after working on it and being increasingly desperate because you hate to take jobs and then say, “I can’t write a screenplay to my satisfaction,” of the serial murderer putting his soul inside the doll. That excited me so much. I’d written Psycho 2 and I was steeped in Hitchcock, and one of Hitchcock’s great things was that he said, “The best suspense is when the audience knows that the people in the story are in terrible danger, but the people themselves in the story don’t know it. Then, you’re waiting.”

That is what allowed me to write Child’s Play, and then also to direct it. The little boy’s mother, Karen Barclay, is given this doll. She doesn’t have the money and she’s able to buy it for a big discount from a bum on the streets who, unknown to her, has gotten it from the explosion in the toy store that opens the film and it contains the soul of Charles Lee Ray, the Lakeshore Strangler, who is a serial murderer. The audience knows that, but the mother does not, and the little boy who has gotten the doll doesn’t know it. That’s a fascinating situation and the Hitchcockian definition of suspense, which excited me so much. I started to write and I thought, “Well, what’s the story?” The story is the doll, Charles Lee Ray, wants revenge against his partner in crime who left him and drove away in the first scene of the movie and is never seen again. He’s really mad at that guy, and he uses the little boy to get him to the house and kill his partner in crime. That’s the beginning of it. The little boy is innocent and the doll is his best friend. He’s telling his mother and the babysitter that the doll is talking to him and nobody believes the little boy. Of course not, it’s absolutely absurd. What the story did is it allowed the audience to worry about little Andy, so they were emotionally invested.

I did a very, very slow burn before the reveal. The scariest moment in the movie is when the doll finally comes alive and reveals itself to Karen, so then Karen has the same problem as the little boy does. How does she convince the authorities, meaning Chris Sarandon, Detective Norris, that the doll is alive? You’re trying to get people to believe this fantastical situation in the movie, and when something like that works, that makes it more believable to the audience. If somebody in the movie says, “This is silly, this is stupid, this is ridiculous,” you want the audience to feel like, “Yeah, but it’s happening.” The audience went with the movie because they liked Karen Barclay, the mother, and Catherine Hicks did a great job, and everybody is worried about the little boy and what’s gonna happen to him. Because of the drama of it, the movie fixed you to the screen.

Image via MGM

What was it like to get things with the doll to work the way you wanted and needed them to?

HOLLAND: It was complicated and difficult to do the film. Just bringing that doll to life, there were 11 or 12 puppeteers in every shot and everything was terribly complicated. It has a very, very slow burn. I looked at the script and the doll doesn’t reveal itself and come alive until page 50, so for 50 minutes, you’re sitting increasingly on the edge of your seat, waiting for that doll to come alive. I’m sounding like I’m bragging, but it’s got a sensational suspense sequence built around that. She comes back from the police station and the cops have arrested her seven-year-old little boy, thinking he’s the killer because there’s no other explanation for what happened with the house blowing up and everything. The little boy keeps saying, “Chucky’s alive.” But Chucky won’t do anything in front of the cops. She comes home totally dispirited and desperate, and it looks like her son is gonna be sent to a mental institution, but she sees that terrible Good Guy box and she picks it up to throw it away and the batteries fall out.

That’s the beginning of that sequence. And then, she goes into the living room with the doll, she picks it up and turns it over and opens up the back where the battery should be, and there are no batteries. And then, the head does a 180 that’s right out of The Exorcist and says, “Hi, I’m Chucky, wanna play?” In terror, she’s so shocked and she drops it, and then it rolls under the couch, so she gets down her hands and knees and she picks up the sofa cover and looks into the darkness. That’s the most vulnerable position you can be in, as a human being, because your eyes are exposed, and the audience knows the dolls alive and vicious and murderous and wonders what it’s gonna do? And it doesn’t do anything. She pulls it out and shakes it and says, “Are you alive?” And the doll, of course, does nothing. He’s totally hiding.

But then, she lights the fire and she threatens to put the doll in the fire, and the doll comes alive, screaming at her. Chucky comes alive and goes for her throat. I think that’s probably the biggest scare in the movie. Whenever I saw it with an audience, the audience screamed as one, and that lasts all the way through to her chasing the doll down the elevator and the doll coming out and disappearing outside the Brewster Building in Chicago. That’s a visual set piece that runs eight minutes with hardly any dialogue. It’s all visual, and it’s probably the best suspense sequence or visual set piece that I’ve ever done. I’m very proud of that. That had never been done before. I don’t know if anybody had ever tried to do a killer doll movie before that. In other words, Child’s Play started the genre. Without that, you wouldn’t have M3GAN and all the rest of them now. Child’s Play opened it up and something amazing has happened, where we’re sitting here talking about a movie that’s 35 years old.

Yeah, and there are still all these movies, there’s a TV show, and there’s all this merchandise. It really feels like it’s never gone away or slowed down.

HOLLAND: It’s just amazing. A lot of that is that David Kirschner, the producer, was a genius merchandiser. That was why he wanted to do the script, not because of the story, but because he saw the potential sales that could be done, if it worked. He was afraid that I was making it too scary and I was gonna drive away potential customers. The movie works as a standalone movie, and then all the rest that have been done all these years have been wonderful because that means that Child’s Play, the one that I did that began it all, will never be forgotten. If you had told me, 35 years ago, that I was gonna be sitting here now talking about an old movie that I did, I wouldn’t have believed you. That didn’t happen back in those days. There were a few sequels around, but it hadn’t gone crazy, like it has now. Everything is a sequel now or a remake.

If you look at Child’s Play: A Visual Memoir, you’ll see how complicated it was, just in terms of production. I built that set of the apartment four feet off the ground because I hid the 11 or 12 puppeteers that make the doll work and the face come alive underneath the set. There were holes drilled all throughout the set and I ran the cables up behind the doll, so you couldn’t see them when I was shooting the doll. I’m very thankful and totally shocked, and in some ways, I’m blessed. Here we are, 35 years later, and you’re talking to me.

Image via MGM

Why do you think the idea of this killer doll connected with audiences the way that it did?

HOLLAND: There was a moment in time when this script was called Blood Buddy, which is how it came to me, and the My Buddy doll had a computer chip in it. You never knew what the damn doll was gonna say, and that gave me the thought that a talking doll really was possible and would be accepted in popular culture now. But I couldn’t use the name Buddy for the doll because it conflicted with the with My Buddy doll. Eventually, Charles Lee Ray, which is a combination of three names of terrible assassins in America, led to Chucky. Chucky is silly. Who would ever think of a serial killer being named Chucky. It’s like being named Mortimer or Murgatroyd, but it was perfect for what I wanted to do. I’ve always mixed horror with humor. For whatever reason, I try to give a laugh at the end of a terrifying sequence to relieve the audience of the suspense. So, dolls had begun to talk. (Director) Tobe Hooper and (writer/producer) Steven Spielberg had that moment in Poltergeist where that doll had come alive under the bed and grabbed the little boy around the leg, and it was the biggest scream in the movie. And so, I just knew that the idea of a children’s play toy, something that they love, coming alive would be appealing to a huge audience. That’s gone on to be a genre of its own, too. I think there’s a Stephen King short story where all the led soldiers come alive and start fighting with each other.

How did you approach the way you wanted to actually shoot Chucky himself?

HOLLAND: From a directorial standpoint, one of the scariest things I ever saw was a 1968 TV movie called Trilogy of Terror. It was three short stories and “Prey” was written by a genius called Richard Matheson, who also head story editor when I did an Amazing Stories episode. I never got a chance to meet him, but he was one of my heroes when I was a kid, as a writer. One of those tales was about a gal who brings home this doll that she bought on the street, that was about a foot and a half tall wooden doll with a spear. She sets it down and the bracelet around the doll’s body falls off. She doesn’t read the instructions, but she bought it from a voodoo doctor on the street, which is probably where I got the idea of using voodoo (in Child’s Play) from. So, the instructions are, “For God’s sakes, whatever you do, don’t let the chain around the doll’s waist become detached.” That doll goes after her and chases her around that apartment with a spear that he’s using to spear her, in her ankles and her foot. It was absolutely the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, and it was on TV in 1968.

After that, you never could have gotten anything that visceral done again. What Dan Curtis did, who was the director/producer of it, was that he went and got a 60mm camera and put it on a skateboard, so it was down at the eye level that you’d expect the doll to be at. He chased her around that apartment at ankle level and you totally bought that it was the doll doing that. I just thought that was terrific, but I didn’t know how it applied to doing a killer do movie. And then, I saw The Shining and, at one point, they had a gyroscope lens with a steady cam and they put it at floor level. It was at Chucky’s level, and you can see in that shot in The Shining where the tricycle is going down the hallway and the camera is tracking from behind, I thought, “My goodness, I have a moving point of view of the killer doll, of Chucky, there. If I can write sequences where the doll chases our victim and if I can go around to the close-ups of the doll, and you put that together with the doll’s point of view with that butcher blade coming out, I have a terrific third act.”

I designed the whole third act in the apartment to be done that way, and whenever I got in trouble with the doll because it couldn’t do something, I had the doll attack and I had the point of view. It worked just as well in Child’s Play as it had in Trilogy of Terror. It was scary as hell. It was a lot of luck, and I had great people backing me. I had Howard Berger and Kevin Yagher doing the effects, and I had that entire crew of puppeteers. I will say that it was a true puppet. I was worried the entire time that, unless I showed some, “Hey, look, mom, no wires,” shots of the puppet then people would think it was just a puppet and they wouldn’t know that it was being manipulated off-screen. You could tell when it was the puppet. I mixed a lot of shots, including shots of a little person, Ed Gale. If I hadn’t had Ed Gale, I wouldn’t have been able to put it together. I tried an entire scene with Ed Gale, but that didn’t work when I put it together for the first rough cut because it was too smooth. You could tell it was a human being and not a puppet. The audience were with it being a puppet because of the movements. You couldn’t make it too smooth or it broke believability in a way that I never expected. It was very challenging.

Image via MGM

Did the doll itself ever work perfectly? Were there times that it did what you wanted to and you were thrilled that it worked, or were there always issues with something going wrong?

HOLLAND: Well, if there wasn’t something going wrong, it was me asking too much. It was before digital and certainly before CGI, and in that sense, I was blessed. Now, they would take CGI and animate the doll digitally, and that doesn’t read. What made Chucky and Child’s Play work was that it was a puppet, for real. Yes, there were all kinds of production problems that probably seem ridiculous. If you wanted to do an over the shoulder shot between the doll and Karen Barclay, the doll had to be looking at Karen, but it was hard to keep his eyeline straight because the puppeteers were down below the apartment, below the stage, which was technically very difficult. The eyes were supposed to be looking at Catherine, but they would start to wander. I ended up putting a 10-minute canister of film on and pointed it at the doll for 10 minutes, just hoping that I’d get bits and pieces where the eyeline was right. You don’t think about things like that, but that’s what happened.

Because I’d written it, in some ways, like an action film, which was insane of me to do, but that’s what I wanted to do, it was a nightmare. One of the scariest shots in the movie is the babysitter sitting there reading the book, and then behind her in the archway in the hallway, you see the doll run by and it’s a long lens, so it’s out of focus. I thought that I could take Ed Gale, the little person, and put him in a Chucky costume and have him run behind. But when I did it, he was so much bigger than Chucky that it just didn’t work because it was out of proportion. I was tearing my hair out, and I was getting phone calls from the studio saying, “You’re going over budget. You’re taking too much time. You’ve gotta cut, cut, cut.” And I was saying, “No Chucky, no third act.” It was a lot of pressure. We ended up putting Alex Vincent’s little sister, who was four years old, in the Chucky costume. The social worker stood behind the wall of the archway on one side and her mother stood on the other side, and we had her run from one of them to the other. It ended up being a fabulous shot, but that was not planned. That was out of the desperation of going, “Oh, my gosh, what do I do? I need this shot.” I knew it would be a terrific scary shot, but I was blessed, any number of times that happened. We designed it as best we could, but a lot of it was making it up as we went and solving the problems as they came up. We were very lucky.

I appreciate you sharing all these stories with me, and I just want to tell you that I am a huge fan of both the original Fright Night, which you wrote and directed, and also Cloak & Dagger, which you wrote and which I watched many times when I was a kid.

HOLLAND: Thank you. A girl who loves Cloak & Dagger, which was thought of as a 14-year-old boy movie. Cloak & Dagger is about the only movie that I’ve ever written or directed that hasn’t been remade or sequel-ized. I keep waiting for that to happen because they generate them for everything.

Child’s Play is available to stream at Max in the U.S. You can also buy/rent the film at Prime Video.

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