Child's Play and Spooky Empire Discussion

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Obrother podcast with hosts Dan and Mike Smith, brothers from the same mother with different opinions, movies, tv, video games or more, plus celebrity interviews. Get ready, it's set. It's time for the Obrother podcast. Welcome to the Obrother podcast and be a host. Dan Smith, long time is always my brother from the same mother, mike Smith, we are still in the midst of Halloween fest, halloween fest.

Speaker 1 0:36

Mike's got a great for those listening and not watching. Mike's got a great shirt he's sporting right now, which is a I guess it's a Halloween fest version of Pac-Man, which I, evan loved.

Speaker 2 0:50

That shirt, the pack so the pumpkin is a Pac-Man going after the ghosts.

Speaker 1 0:56

That's really cool. Now Are you gonna be sporting that at spooky empire? I might. I might just sport it one. So the Obrother podcast now we get it evergreen of the pot, the episodes, but we I'm just too psyched to say that we're gonna be In the house all weekend at spooky empire the dark side of Comic Con October 27 through the 29th, mike, I cannot, I cannot express how jazzed up I am about. I know talking about this. For a long time. I've been wanting to go to spooky for a long time and haven't even been. So not only are we gonna be there in the house together Representing the Obrother podcast would be live streaming but it's the 20th anniversary of spooky Empire. It's a big, big deal and you know. Check out their website and you'll see the lineup is just and they're continuing to add guests.

Speaker 2 1:46

Right and find us and come over and say hi, we're gonna be doing giveaways. We got movies, we got stickers.

Speaker 1 1:54

We got all sorts of stuff. We're gonna have all kinds of merch. We're gonna have all kinds of giveaways, some you'll have to, you know, earn yeah but you know too hard possibly some horror movie trivia in the house going on or something.

Speaker 1 2:08

But speaking of horror, as you said, halloween fest rolling on and, mike, today we are gonna talk about one of probably the most classic horror films of all time child's play, which, of course, came out November 9th 1988. So we're rolling up on as of this recording very close to the 35th Anniversary of child's play. So it's pretty exciting talking about. And here's what I love and this is the. This is the great thing, not only about Halloween fest, but for me, the great thing about doing the podcast is that, as is the case with child's play, I've never seen child's play before, which is shocking, which is ridiculous. It's ridiculous, you know, and I was off.

Speaker 1 2:53

I was a sophomore in high school when this came out by yeah.

Speaker 2 2:56

Like why you didn't see this?

Speaker 1 2:58

because well, think about it, don't think about it. It's I'm sophomore, what I'm I'm, I'm 17, so technically you could have gone.

Speaker 2 3:09

What's rated R Right, but you could have gone with me. Sure this is my son.

Speaker 1 3:15

You weren't exactly coming around the house much asking me to go to movies.

Speaker 2 3:18

Yeah, and 88. I was gone actually. So Well, that's true, I wasn't even here.

Speaker 1 3:24

Yeah, you're in Florida, yeah, but so child's play comes out November 9th 1988 to rated R, directed by Tom Holland, mm-hmm. Written by Don Mancini. John Laffia both Kind of collaborated on that with the screenplay. What are you pointing?

Speaker 2 3:41

to. I'm just saying Don Mancini is the guy who created the doll, the Chucky doll.

Speaker 1 3:48

Mm-hmm. Yeah, all right, so the the main players of the cast. You've got Catherine Hicks, mm-hmm. She was in the the series Ryan's Hope, or anybody who remembers that you?

Speaker 2 3:59

remember Ryan's Hope no he back.

Speaker 1 4:01

She was also in Star Trek, the voyage home.

Speaker 2 4:04

She was in that, so spent a lot of years on like an angel Show, promising angel or I don't even really.

Speaker 1 4:12

Yeah, she's in a lot of those kind of like 80s.

Speaker 2 4:15

Yeah, she did a good 10 years on that.

Speaker 1 4:18

I think, yeah, chris Sarandon. No, no relation to Susan Sarandon, no, no, but he's a, he's a.

Speaker 2 4:25

Well, you know, when you see him, you recognize our yeah, exactly, character actor.

Speaker 1 4:30

Yeah, somebody who's gonna be in attendance at spooky Empire is Alex Vincent, who of course, plays Andy, and he's back in the scene.

Speaker 2 4:39

Yeah, he's what child's played universe and we'll get. I'll get to that because there's this TV show and a Remake of the 88 movie, and what's that all about? We'll talk about that.

Speaker 1 4:51

You give us all the 411 on that, yeah, and then, of course, great actor Brad Durif plays Charles Lee Ray, who also voices Chucky Mm-hmm, and he did into that voice them for every movie.

Speaker 2 5:04

Accept the remake. And he's on the TV show Along with Jennifer Tilly and all these other characters that have shown up in movies over the years.

Speaker 1 5:14

It's, yes. Another thing about Halloween fest. It's a shock because you've this is where you've demonstrated the surprise to me. You're you're deep knowledge of the horror genre For two guys that aren't really hard core horror guys. We're not. You've seen every Saw film.

Speaker 2 5:34

I know.

Speaker 1 5:35

You've seen every Freddy film, every Jason film. I mean I gotta tip my hat. But, brad Durf, of course we were talking about this the other day when we were talking about doing the episode, and of course I just always think Billy Bibbit from one of the. Cuckoo's Nest, fantastic. And of course he was in Rob Zombie's Halloween, which is just Right. He played Sheriff Brackett. He did and he was really amazing in that. There was really some good acting in that.

Speaker 2 6:01

Like Tobin Bell, like Robert England, he's one of these guys. That's a great actor that got into a franchise. He co-starred in Child's Play, which shocked me, because without him you don't have a movie, and every sequel is him and the TV show is him, and now his daughter's involved and she sounds just like him. She voices Chucky sometimes.

Speaker 1 6:31

Now at the time, if you see some of the behind the scenes at the time, I don't think you know. He seemed to not associate himself with it because he was only in it in the beginning, physically, yeah, but his voice is throughout.

Speaker 1 6:45

But now, yeah, and as you say, with these kind of reiterations and other interpretations of it, or what have you, or iterations I should say of it Back at the time just to kind of get the rundown a budget of $9 million, worldwide it made about 44 million bucks. It was filmed and set in Chicago and, well, illinois, I should say, not Chicago necessarily, but you wanna give these quick synopsis to this one. It's pretty straightforward.

Speaker 2 7:12

Pretty straightforward. It starts out two guys robbing or getting chased by a cop. One of them's the driver and he takes off on Brad Dorff, leaves Brad Dorff stranded. He goes into a toy store and in the toy store he kind of falls over into there's this whole good guy that's the name of it. The name of the doll isn't really Chucky, it's good guy. And then you give it a name, so he falls over and Sarandon clocks him a couple of times so he's dying and he winds up using voodoo to transfer his body or his being, his soul, into one of these good guy dolls, right. And then Catherine Hicks, who plays the mom, winds up buying that particular doll from a vendor out behind her work A peddler of the alley Right.

Speaker 2 8:10

And you know Chucky's born, basically Right.

Speaker 1 8:15

Yeah, now it was going to be. The original working title was Batteries Not Included, but at the time, of course, stephen King was getting ready to put out a project Batteries Not Included, right. And then it becomes Blood Buddy, which I love.

Speaker 2 8:31

I kind of wish it stayed.

Speaker 1 8:32

Blood Buddy. That's a great title, but ultimately it ends up, you know, becoming Child's Play.

Speaker 2 8:38

Yeah, it's also been remade, which I sort of mentioned and I'll talk about it more, but in the remake they're called Good Buddies.

Speaker 1 8:47

They're not called Good Guys anymore.

Speaker 2 8:49

Oh, so they didn't mash up of the yeah, it's weird because it's a remake, yet they make these little adjustments.

Speaker 1 8:56

Now who is? Is is because I don't. You know more of this franchise than me, but is Tom Holland, any of these original guys involved, or it's a new team? It's a new team, okay.

Speaker 2 9:06

Which didn't sit well with Don Mancini. He's like we gave you six sequels that were, you know, a lot of them made a lot of money.

Speaker 2 9:16

And he felt, I think, portrayed. Mgm owns the rights to the original Child's Play, but that's it. So a lot of times, like I have the box set behind me here with that has six of the movies and then there's a seventh movie beside that called the Chucky, and MGM can only remake the first one, and now they can do a sequel off that remake, but they can't be involved in the original anymore. So the rights are all screwed up and Mancini wasn't happy. Wasn't happy. He created the doll, wrote the story.

Speaker 1 9:59

Although the story changed quite a bit from his original concept. Right, I mean, it was gonna be Andy the kid. It was supposed to be sort of like the doll was going to be imbued with his kind of id, right and all the people that had wronged him, and it was going to be him kind of lashing out at all the people that have wronged him in his life. There wasn't this voodoo bit, that was not part of Mancini's original idea, so I think his idea got watered down quite a bit by the time they get to the final script, which so he's probably perhaps held a grudge ever since yeah, cuz he took the franchise to Universal, you know.

Speaker 2 10:45

That's why Universal has a chucky house now.

Speaker 1 10:49

Right, I wanted to mention too. We talked about the kind of the main cast, but there was two others I wanted to mention, or three actually. One was this character, maggie, who's played by Dina a man off I don't know the baby. Maybe Dina man off, because like Dina, sure I'm thinking of which is an old reference for us, but she played Marty in Greece and I just she's very recognizable to to people of our generation.

Speaker 2 11:17

Yeah she's.

Child's Play TV Series and Film

Speaker 1 11:18

She's in a pretty good third of the movie, in the beginning the first act is really her. Yeah, exactly yeah and then you've got character a doctor Ardmore you talk about, played by Jack Colvin, and I said, geez, I know this guy, another character actor, and I had to go. Where did I know him from? And he was in the incredible Hulk TV series, which, of course, yeah, that was a favorite of yours a big fan of yeah you know what I was surprised, having not watched it in a while.

Speaker 2 11:46

I was surprised how long it took to get to that third act where Chuckie comes, you know, not comes to life but becomes animated. You know where his his facial and you know there's like. At that time it took six people to operate Chuckie.

Speaker 1 12:03

Yeah, I think it was Kevin Kevin Yeager who's the the main what he called a tear a puppet engineer. Yeah, what have you?

Speaker 2 12:10

you know, especially given now, that if you watch the TV show, everybody is back from the original.

Speaker 1 12:19

Except for like who?

Speaker 2 12:21

well, brad Doriff, number one, jennifer Tilly, who becomes a major character when they hit bride of Chuckie Okay, right of Chuckie on Jennifer Tillies and everyone seed of Chuckie, which is a sequel. That doll is in the new series. The crew, don Mancini, don Don Kirchner, they're all part of this TV show and it's only the same crew, basically David Kirchner, alex Vincent who plays yeah, andy is in the TV show. I mean, it's really remarkable. In what is Alex's role Out? He plays himself, he plays Andy Barkley.

Speaker 1 13:02

Oh, doesn't help, but yeah, he plays Andy Barkley, so it's set. This is set. Sort of well, that's interesting. So what is the? How many seasons has this been?

Speaker 2 13:11

Uh, this week kicked off its third season.

Speaker 1 13:14

So what is the whole premise behind this?

Speaker 2 13:17

It's, honestly, it's not very good. It's all over the place, it's like.

Speaker 1 13:23

Let's well, it's back for a third season.

Speaker 2 13:25

I can't do that right. So people are watching and I'll tell you, dan, you would not believe how timid the original child's play is. They get progressively more Gory and I could believe that. But the TV show there's f-bombs, there's Uh, I mean, they exploded a guy, they exploded a priest.

Speaker 1 13:49

There was a lot of that in in in child's play. There's a scene with this this older couple on an elevator, one of these indoor elevators yeah, it's kind of an open elevator and the couple is like, oh, someone left their doll in the elevator and the, the, the husband, is like, ah, leave it's. You know, whoever owns it will come and get it. And then the, the older woman's stepping out of the elevator, she looks back and goes ugly dog yeah and then walks away and you hear F-ck you.

Speaker 2 14:15

Chucky and I'll tell you like it's on sci-fi network USA and then it's also on peacock. Like you can watch the first two seasons right now Straight through on peacock. The new one. There's only one new one, um, which is a little tone down, I noticed. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it's on sci-fi or USA. So I think I think this week it was only on sci-fi, but I did catch it and it's uh, it's funny to see alex vincent back playing himself. He comes back and cult of chucky he plays himself and he's he's. We find out that his whole life he was obsessed with chucky and he's got the head of the chucky doll From the original film, from the original film, in a cage and he's keeping him prisoner.

Speaker 1 15:13

Well, but the the way it ended, that that head was all it was like. It was like terminator two, and that's what it looks like in the cage, it does it.

Speaker 2 15:22

Okay, yeah, it's all burnt. And when you watch the sequels which I don't think you've seen any of the sequels but no, like you saw, the thing was burnt to a crisp at the end of the movie you know, spoiler for people who haven't seen it. But oh, I've years folks. Yeah and so if you haven't seen it, I mean I hadn't seen it. So right there but they literally Start off that movie by like cleaning it up, Like you would just chuck it and get a new mold. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 15:55

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 15:55

You know, considering I've watched them all and I have the box set behind me, it was much tamer than I Realized or remembered.

Speaker 1 16:08

Well, there's not a lot of again. This is not a horror film a lot of blood and guts. It becomes that.

Speaker 1 16:15

It definitely becomes other iterations and things yes, but yes yeah, but this one is, and I mean it's kind of Typical of the day when we've talked about this on the podcast before. But one of the things that stood out to me was Joe Ranzetti's score of the film. Right, it's very classic, that kind of sort of 80s Horror synth vibe going on, and right, that's as big a part of the, the tone of the, this kind of film. But at least back then, yeah, of anything else, I thought the acting, you know, you think about Alex. I mean Alex was great Mm-hmm as this kid. I saw one of the behind-the-scenes documentaries where he was talking about he doing the like in the casting. You know the read-throughs or whatever.

Speaker 1 17:03

The audition process and that scene where he has to say you know, the bitch got what she deserved, right, you know he's just telling his mother parroting what Chuckie said.

Speaker 1 17:15

Chuckie's words exactly, and Alex, as a little kid, had a problem with saying that. Yeah, so every time the line would come up, he would pretend that he didn't remember the line. This went on like three times, right, finally, he admits I was uncomfortable with saying it. So they said you know what the kid is so good, he made us think that he kept forgetting the line. This kid's got it right and they cast him, you know, and he really was. I mean, he was so believable, yeah, what was it eight years old at that time?

Speaker 2 17:50

Yeah, or something. I mean as little kids go, I've always thought is it Henry Thomas from me?

Speaker 1 17:56

Henry.

Speaker 2 17:56

Thomas, and me too, yeah. I think that's the best child performance I've ever seen. That's pretty good, but you know, this is a pretty strong one too.

Speaker 1 18:05

I think he deserves a lot of credit and I'm looking forward to chatting him up at the spooky empire because I'm a fan of his now. But him and Catherine Hicks, all of them, the to play those reactions off of this Idea, this doll, and how insane it is, right, made it very believable, right, you know, and I think that made it that much more Terrifying is maybe a strong word, certainly not my case, but but I felt a build of tension throughout and you know, I thought it's pretty well done.

Speaker 2 18:38

Child's play three. They jumped ahead a little bit. He's in military school Basically because he keeps telling these stories to show me.

Speaker 1 18:48

okay, let me ask you about that. Let me not to interrupt, but because it's not. We don't get the backstory in the film Mm-hmm. You know where's his father, you know what, what's the whole setup to where he's, they're, they're not believing him and you know, father get that as it goes on.

Speaker 2 19:07

Yeah, the father is has died. We get that in the first one. You probably missed it. It's real quick. Oh, I did it's like is he up in heaven with daddy? Some a line like that Okay, yeah, so the dad's out of the picture. And now, when child's play to, we see a picture of Catherine Hicks, but she's not made any appearances. She's not made any. She's the only one really that hasn't returned.

Speaker 1 19:36

That's a shame. Now, do you know if they've approached? I gotta believe they've approached her.

Speaker 2 19:41

I would think so.

Speaker 1 19:43

I don't know probably ever experience with it, so I yeah.

Speaker 2 19:48

I'm surprised she wasn't in two in the same with Saranda, and I'm surprised he wasn't in two. But once they're out of the picture when they get to three, it's almost like Kind of like a wiping of the board. Okay, and he's in military school and it's not. It's not Alex Vincent anymore. They cast an older kid which I think might have hurt it a little bit.

Speaker 1 20:14

Yeah, I, I almost like the idea of, like you said, he's playing Andy Barkley, right, yeah, now, or current day, which is kind of interesting, yeah, um, yeah, I liked it, I mean it's good. If you look at rotten tomatoes, get 73% from the critics, 65% from the audience, which is very surprising that those would be reversed correct.

Speaker 2 20:37

I would think they would be reversed, yeah, 58.

Speaker 1 20:40

Meta score IMDB, which you tend to give a little bit more credence to.

Speaker 2 20:43

Yeah, and that's that's pretty solid. Yeah, more than 50%.

Speaker 1 20:49

Yeah, I think so. But you know I can see why this is a cult favorite. I mean, it's fun and you know if you think about it.

Speaker 2 20:57

It's a prelude to Megan, right? Sure, I mean, if you look at Megan, megan probably might not exist without Chucky. And even the remake Okay, the remake it's more of like Ciri built into a Chucky doll. The doll itself looks totally different. Yeah, it's a totally different face. It's voiced by Mark Hamill, your friend Mark Hamill. Mark Hamill, and you know he always has a great choice Job with voices.

Speaker 1 21:33

Well, what's the other one that you love so much, that he's known for, well, the Joker? The Joker, like the ultimate Joker.

Speaker 2 21:40

I mean, if it wasn't for Heath Ledger, I think people, people who know the animated know Mark.

Speaker 1 21:48

Hamill's Joker. It's great.

Speaker 2 21:50

And you can't hear him. It's funny in the new child's play when the mother brings it home and gives in the mother's played by Auburn Plaza oh, really, from white Lotus. Anyways, when she gives the doll it's defective and it's all. Yeah, you got to plug it into a USB to charge it a little. Updating of the references hey modernize it quite a bit, but it's like. It's like having Ciri built it. You know you go. You call Chucky, turn on the TV, chucky turn the lights off, and it follows the command.

Speaker 2 22:25

So that's kind of a smart update.

Speaker 1 22:28

I like that. I like that, yeah, yeah, like I said, it's it's a, it's a benefit of doing the podcast. It's it's a benefit of doing a Halloween fest at O'Brother podcast, because I it kind of, you know, sort of forces me in a sense to finally check off some of these movies that I should have seen 35 years ago.

Speaker 2 22:45

Well, I was watching our latest rewind, which was the shining, that's right, and you're talking about how much you like Stanley Kubrick, and yet I saw like and I still got. I still got movies for you to watch.

Speaker 1 23:02

There's a handful I haven't seen yet, which is crazy.

Speaker 2 23:05

Oh, Lita's probably would be my last.

Speaker 1 23:07

Well, but it's Kubrick, I mean it's got to be, it's got to be seen, you know, yeah, yeah, but so thumbs up, thumbs down, where we at with Chucky, you know, I've got them all, yeah, and so obviously I liked, I liked the first one.

Speaker 2 23:23

I think they get sillier and sillier and harder to swallow.

Speaker 1 23:28

Yeah, but that's, that's some of the. That's what makes it entertaining, right.

Speaker 2 23:31

Yeah. And when they bring in Fiona Doriff, which is Brad's daughter that reduced it for me because she's she's like her dad yeah. And when she gets into this Chucky mindset, like what happens is, chucky goes in and out of her every time she sees blood that creates, that brings Chucky out in her and all of a sudden she puts this look on her face and out the voice. You're like holy. It sounds just like her dad.

Speaker 1 24:06

You know it's interesting because when we talked to Nick Matthews, you know yeah about.

Speaker 1 24:11

Saw Saw X. You know he had made a comment about how we've said it before during Halloween Fest 2, of how this is almost like this kind of Not that it really ever certainly didn't die off, but that's kind of re, re, birther, reemergence of horror to a different level. Right now it feels like there's a place for horror that there hasn't been for quite some time. It feels like anyways and you know I was wondering about child's play too, like this, you know, being a ginger at the time, was that a rough go?

Speaker 2 24:49

I wonder what heads in school we're getting tea. It's interesting that you say that, because in the remake um Audrey Plaza works at like a Walmart or a kmart something like you know, it's a fake one where they sell them and a guy brings it back and he's like what's the deal with this?

Speaker 2 25:10

This is a ginger, I wanted the blonde one. And she looks at him and says I don't think it's okay to say that, but the blonde one is Chucky. You know the the good buddy 2 model. This is the good buddy one model, which is has red hair, as you can clearly see Through the front of the package. She's like shaming the guy. That's good, it's pretty funny. That's interesting, it's weird that you brought that up, because that's in the new movie.

Speaker 1 25:41

I literally made a remake because I did think, uh, I could see that being a thing in our society, where you're a red head and, good lord, it's hard enough. And then this movie comes out. It's just demented, doll, I mean it just yeah. I could imagine that would have been a rough go. But well, like I said, I'm psyched that I've checked this one off my list it's. It's another classic in child's play from 1988.

Speaker 2 26:04

Uh, but yeah now if you had kids something like paul veris, a friend of ours, would you?

Speaker 1 26:11

we say say his name again, paul I always think you last names. I think, uh, was it the italian where we replaced bees with v's.

Speaker 2 26:23

Yeah, no, that's not there, that's like um.

Speaker 1 26:26

you said like verus, I don't know.

Speaker 2 26:28

Yeah, and he is gonna see this. So right, you know, but he's got kids. Would you recommend he Sit down and watch child play with this kid? No, yeah, no, because I'm at.

Speaker 1 26:41

And honestly, I think more for the language than I do almost the violence, although there's, you know, there's violence in it, of course, but the language too is just as bad.

Speaker 2 26:54

So yeah, and it gets like I said, it gets worse. And if you have kids, keep them away from the TV show. I'm sorry, don Mancini, I like your work, but it's way.

Speaker 1 27:09

That's a fair warning and it's not made for kids. No, it isn't.

Speaker 2 27:13

But it definitely crosses some lines.

Speaker 1 27:16

Yeah, well, we're gonna be crossing some lines at Spooky Empire come October 27th through the 29th we're gonna be you won't have to wait in line to come see Old Brother. Well, I don't know if you should put it that way. I mean, there might could be quite a line at the Old Brother podcast table. No, no, Halloween fest. Well, it's getting it's at the cleaners. So I brought out the original. Oh, the original.

Speaker 1 27:43

Halloween fest Old Brother mug yeah, and we've got. I told you you saw the first official Old Brother sticker. Yeah, what would a podcast be without someone hawking stickers? Although the difference is, if you come and see us at Spooky Empire, we're gonna be giving away those stickers, folks.

Speaker 2 28:06

Right, we're not shilling them out for money. We're not shilling them out. It's not how we sweeten the over the podcast. You're not shilling, willie.

Speaker 1 28:11

I mean, mike is in debt up to his ears over Old Brother mugs, let's be honest. And those are just the ones that you and I have, so it's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 28:20

Yeah, I know, I mean there's a lot of people out there with our mugs.

Speaker 1 28:25

Yeah, but if you're gonna be in the Orlando area October 27th to 29th, make sure that you stop by and you visit our table. We're gonna be there all weekend, lots of fun things happening, and of course we're gonna be covering the event the whole weekend too, so it's gonna be a lot going on.

Speaker 2 28:38

And if we're not giving stuff out, when you come up to us and you've heard this, just ask us. Maybe we might have some. You know, don't mind promises, don't mind promises your ass can't keep.

Speaker 1 28:53

Yeah under the table. All right. Well, that's gonna do it for another episode of the Old Brother podcast. I'm your host, dan Smith, long time. He's always my brother from the same mother, mike Smith, and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 2 29:05

Boo, everybody, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.