SEED OF CHUCKY (2004)

Resurrected by their gender-confused child, Chucky and Tiffany invade Hollywood to disrupt a film about their murderous past.

by Devon Elson 10th November 202410th November 2024 Leave a reply

“What did they expect? Son of Chucky? Another killer doll?” Don Mancini asked in hindsight to the stinger of Bride of Chucky (1998) in which Tiffany, Chucky’s newlywed, gave violent birth to their unexpected child. ‘Son of Chucky’ was greenlit on 18 October 1998, two days after the opening weekend.

Universal Pictures had produced all three sequels, expecting more Chucky and Tiffany with their murderous offspring. Mancini was praised for his seizing the meta-horror zeitgeist in the wake of Scream (1996) but “didn’t want to make the same movie as Bride of Chucky, so [he] thought, make it crazier.” If Chucky the homicidal plastic doll had to endure a domineering wife, “what if Chucky had a gay kid? To me, that’s hilarious.”

Universal responded, “This is too gay.”

It took six years until Focus Features agreed to produce his screenplay. Spurred by the success of Ronny Yu’s Freddy vs Jason (2003), the director of Bride, and Focus Features’ recent hit Cabin Fever (2002) with director Eli Roth breaking the news that Seed of Chucky was coming. And came it did, with the CGI seed of Chucky flowing through the opening credits. A graphic declaration detailed in the script, Mancini wanted to make an impression as he finally had the chance to direct his own Chucky movie.

So is it gay? It’s camp. Well, it’s a lot of things. Seed of Chucky is busting with ideas, themes, and jokes, but it’s less a script than a madman’s manifesto. The spawn of Chucky (Brad Dourif) and Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) is introduced at a rockstar ventriloquism event at Glastonbury before hopping on a plane to Hollywood straight into a Christmas-set film production of Chucky Goes Psycho.

The actual movie we’re watching could be described as Don Goes Psycho. Veering from the uppity ecosystem of movie stars to the intricate body politics of today’s youth while framed in a domestic melodrama that’s also meant to be a slasher sequel.

Resurrecting their parents into the Hollywood prop dolls, the parents are immediately perplexed by their offspring. Branded ‘Shitface’ by their ventriloquist tormentor, Chuck and Tiff’s estranged doll-child is Ziggy Stardust-meets-Oliver Twist with an extra dash of gender dysphoria. Their androgyny is on full display as the parents casually yank off their pants to find a smooth nothingness. A portent of genital inspections on children in the news today, as well as beating Barbie (2023) to the punch by nearly two decades.

Of course Chucky has genitals; not only does he conceive a child but he’s filmed masturbating to Fangoria by John Waters in a bush. Get it, Mini-Me, that’s camp.

The emotional core of the movie is whether this child should be called Glen or Glenda. Yes, that is also the title of infamously terrible filmmaker Ed Wood’s infamous 1953 docudrama. Assigned to cover the real-life surgical transition of Christine Jorgenson, instead Wood pivoted to a semi-autobiographical exploration of his own closeted transvestism. A curiosity that remains both endearing and stigmatizing to every other letter in the LGBTQIA+ rainbow. And the same could be said for Seed, a similar patchwork representation that leaves more questions than answers.

Dubbed Glen/da by the fandom and eventually christened canonically as GG in the Chucky TV series (2021–24), are they trans, non-binary, a literal two-spirit that co-opts pan-Indian concepts with the already rickety Haitian Voodoo mythology of the franchise? Language evolves and quite likely no singular word encapsulates your entire existence. In Chucky, GG is granted the newer term of genderfluid, which fits their experience in switching between masculine and feminine presentations.

Trying to classify what GG is and isn’t is exactly the point of Seed. Don weaves elements of self-reflection and growing up gay, focusing more on the confusion of self-discovery rather than the relief. It may feel clunky that Chucky and Tiffany assume their gender so abruptly, and calling murderous dolls problematic feels redundant. But the delayed breaking point of GG screaming the Rebel Without a Cause (1955) reference “You’re tearing me apart!” is a sense of relief in itself. They don’t know what they are, but now they know that. Being free from the burden and pressure of others dictating your own identity is actually the messy yet poignant message of Seed of Chucky.

“I think why gay men are drawn to horror is that outside identification, with figures ranging from Frankenstein’s monster to Carrie. You have the lonely, misunderstood monster, or what the world perceives as a monster, but we, the audience, are inside them with their hearts and we know that they’re beautiful but misunderstood and corrupted by the evil world.” — Don Mancini, writer/director.

Much like the Bride of Frankenstein, Tiffany ended their honeymoon with the words “We belong dead”. Now she’s having second thoughts. Mancini struck gold with the casting of Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany Valentine; the Goth mommy of the 1990s. Sexy, dangerous, and funny, she had it all. The glitz and glamour of Hollywood have bedazzled the trailer trash Tiff; she’s already starring in a movie, technically, and has eyes on possessing the actress portraying her, Jennifer Tilly (Jennifer Tilly).

As Mancini insisted with his own money that they cast her in Bride, here “my biggest mandate is that I wanted to bring Jennifer back in an even bigger way. We’ll set it in Hollywood and have Tiffany come and visit Jennifer Tilly, her favourite actress, and try to impregnate her!”

The Academy Award-nominated actress is introduced by a stagehand told to check the catering truck for her while she hides away another chocolate bar and reluctantly sips a diet shake. Even her biggest fan, Tiffany, relents “fuck! She’s fat…” when dragging her spoiled, obnoxious ass. The real Tilly is in on the joke and encouraged her good friend Don to write her as unlikeable as he could.

Not every joke is about her weight. She offers herself to the rapper-cum-director Redman (Redman), “Mr Man, can I call you Red?”, in return for the lead role in his Virgin Mary biopic. While screaming bloody murder as Chucky tries to choke her out, Tiffany tells her concerned assistant on the phone, “Bound is on cable, Gina Gershon is fingering me.” By strategically placing herself as the butt of every joke, Jennifer Tilly succeeds in stealing every best punchline.

It also serves double duty as more commentary on the franchise itself. Much like Tilly, Mancini was once taken seriously with the huge success of Child’s Play (1988). Sequels drew diminishing reviews and even the cult-favourite Bride did just fine with critics and the box office. With more creative freedom for each entry, Mancini wanted to tell more personal stories rather than cater to the formulaic expectations of Chucky’s past. Speaking of, isn’t this a Chucky movie?

The overarching narratives of Tiffany wanting to possess Jennifer Tilly only after she’s given birth to a human vessel for the gender-confused GG do sideline Chucky for many critics and fans. Even if he did put in the work with that Fangoria, Chucky could be seen as relegated to a supporting role where his seed is more important than he is. As Mancini pushes the confines of the slasher genre to their breaking point, between the dream kills, fictional movie kills, and real kills shared between the family, it leaves Chucky light on the body count.

He does get to kill Britney Spears (Nadia Dina Ariqat) but only by ramming her car off the road. Meanwhile, Tiffany gets to disembowel the genuine Redman, Glen melts the nosy paparazzi (John Waters) with acid, and Glenda sets Tilly’s assistant (S Club 7 popstar Hannah Spearritt) ablaze with a DIY flamethrower. Quite possibly the most eclectic cast to ever be slashed in a horror.

Oh, don’t forget the news broadcast revealing the verdict of Martha Stewart’s 2004 trial was her to be executed by the state. As Chucky puts it, “There is a limit to how much I can take! This is nuts, and I have a very high tolerance for nuts!”

At least Chucky makes his point very articulately, as does the entire family with their ever-impressive animatronics. Taking over from series steward Kevin Yagher, Tony Gardner had the challenge of rebuilding Chucky and Tiffany from scratch as Universal had scrapped everything right after Bride, built the new GG, and led the three teams of puppeteers in wrestling with three dolls who were now the main characters front and centre.

“Shooting what may seem like a simple dialogue scene is way, way more complicated than it might appear on paper,” Gardner admitted, giving the incredible example, “It takes five grown adult men to jerk off one small plastic puppet.”

Mancini had to literally build the production around his plastic cast, opting to shoot the entire movie on sets. This coalesced with his aesthetic intent to pay homage to the work of Brian De Palma and Dario Argento.

“We actually built this full scale Spanish Colonial house, not just the façade, but if you went there, you could see you go in there and all of the rooms and the stairs and upstairs are just all like a full scale house and yard and the streets and the street corner and the intersection. We built all of that on the stage, shipped in palm trees from Egypt and built this little corner of Beverly Hills on the soundstage.” — Don Mancini, writer-director.

Admirable though it sounds, Seed lacks the stylish quality of his heroes or the glossy predecessor Bride. This film looks cheap. Cheaper than the two video-on-demand sequels, whose combined budgets are still less than this one. Every set is glaringly a set. The Chucky franchise has continually impressed with flawlessly hiding a dozen puppeteers under fake floors. Here, Mancini unintentionally homages Ed Wood as actors risk knocking over the wobbling walls at any given time.

And working around the dolls? Mancini and series producer David Kirschner wisely shot down any studio suggestion of VFX in favour of the old-school animatronics, but the puppets are then far too often clumsily composited from greenscreens into their many scenes. Like GG’s introduction into the world, it is a messy first impression. Thankfully, Mancini’s far superior flair for direction gets to shine in Curse of Chucky (2013), Cult of Chucky (2017) and the TV series.

To spin a positive on Seed of Chucky’s placement in the franchise, Chucky holds together the disparate threads and drives the plot forward with his own journey. He feels this maddening drama encroaching on his favourite pastime, like a typical father in a midlife crisis bewildered by how the patriarchal reins slipped out of his once unquestioned control.

In the Child’s Play trilogy, Charles Lee Ray had a one-track mind to get out of the doll and back into human form. With Bride, he dragged his girlfriend into the same situation as punishment but found the two were having so much fun like this. Finally, Seed peaks with the crucial realisation that he’s been fighting his own identity crisis all these years. He was chased down and shot as a human, and now he can get away with any crime. He hasn’t aged since 1988. Maybe Charles Lee Ray is dead, maybe, in a sense, Charles has transitioned…

“As a doll, I’m fucking infamous! I’m one of the most notorious slashers in history! And I don’t wanna give that up. I am Chucky, the killer doll! And I dig it!”— Chucky.

A misunderstood monster. A camp cult classic still reviled by many. Roger Ebert perhaps recognised the dichotomy best, “Seed of Chucky is actually two movies, one wretched, the other funny.” After a $24.8M box office disappointment against its $12M production budget, this became the last Chucky sequel released in cinemas. Mancini sought to explore representation and instead marred his own reputation for years to come. “When we did Curse and Cult, even though I wanted to allude to those characters, I was forbidden from doing so.”

Mancini would finally have his closure. A satisfying epilogue in Season 2 of the Chucky series cast the non-binary Lachlan Watson as both the human Glen and Glenda reconciling with their past and family issues. Even without the success of the series, Mancini reminisces on Seed fondly, “Sometimes to this day, Jennifer and I will talk about it and go, ‘I can’t believe they gave us $10M to do that.’” I can believe why they continue giving Mancini money even two decades later, no other horror franchise continually shocks and surprises us like this.