10 Things You Might Not Know About CHILD'S PLAY - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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10 Things You Might Not Know About CHILD'S PLAY

Geek Dave takes the vacant position of babysitter to young Andy Barclay and discovers 10 things you might not know about Child's Play.


1. The writer of Child's Play, Don Mancini, completed the script for the movie in June 1985. At this time it went under the title of 'Batteries Not Included' - taken from the memorable moment when Andy's Mom discovers that Chucky was functioning without a pair of Duracells. When Steven Spielberg started production on his movie *Batteries Not Included a new title was settled upon - Blood Buddy. This was because in the script Chucky at first went under the name of Buddy. Just prior to shooting Buddy's name was changed, along with the title, to the ones we know today.

2. The original script was more of a dark satire on how toy marketing and merchandising affects children. It was the mid-1980s and the Cabbage Patch Dolls were massive so it seemed quite an appropriate subject to tackle. But then Mancini realised that there had never been a horror film that featured a killer doll, so added in the horror elements to make the script more appealing - it worked.

3. At this time the script saw 'Buddy' having latex skin and blood. Basically you could apply play bandages to his injuries - because what kid wouldn't want to do that! Andy would make a blood pact with Buddy, bringing the doll to life and doing Andy's bidding whilst he was sleeping. So if you'd pissed Andy off that day Buddy came at'cha hard! Apparently the studio wasn't overly impressed with the idea of a small child containing so much rage, so it was changed.


4. Buddy...er Chucky bears more than a passing resemblance to another popular doll from the era, My Buddy. Mancini claims it was purely co-incidental and was unaware of the My Buddy dolls, but had Chucky's name not been changed then I'd imagine Hasbro, the creators of My Buddy, would've been less than impressed.

5. Charles Lee Ray (aka Chucky) gets his name from that of three notorious killers - Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray.

6.  Originally the Chucky doll was going to slowly grow stubble so it would start to more and more resemble Charles Lee Ray and begin to turn human. That concept was abandoned.

7. Amongst the people considered to provide the voice of Chucky was John Lithgow, but in the end it went to Brad Dourif. Dourif would run around the recording studio to work himself up into a real frenzy before delivering his lines. This would often leave him feeling completely drained after each take. When Dourif recorded the scream for when Chucky gets burned alive, he nearly fainted!


8. Alex Vincent played Andy Barclay, and keeping it in the family his younger sister was featured in the movie too. In the scene where Chucky runs behind Maggie in the hallway, that's Vincent's kid sister dressed as the deranged doll!

9.  When the movie was released a crowd of protesters formed around the entrance to MGM Studios calling for a ban on the film and claiming it would incite violence in children. Local news reporters were broadcasting live from the scene and the producer David Kirschner was watching, disturbed by what he saw. Jeffrey Hilton, who worked with Kirschner at MGM, said he could defuse the situation in ten minutes. He went down and spoke to the ringleader and, just as he said, the group disbanded. Hilton has never specified whether it was threats or diplomacy that saved the day. Maybe he said he'd set Chucky on them!

10. The controversy over Child's Play proved too much for MGM and the movie was disowned by the studio because of qualms with its subject matter. Universal stepped in and bought the rights for the sequels.

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