WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Bride of Chucky

Poor old Jesse (Nick Stabile). All he wants to do is skip town with his poor-little-rich-girl sweetheart Jade (Katherine Heigl) and leave behind his trailer park roots. Hell, he’s so hung up on the girl that he even turns down the buxom charms of white trash cougar Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly). But there are obstacles. The chief one being Jade’s uncle and legal guardian Warren Kincaid (John Ritter). And chief is the operative word. The dude’s chief of police. Obstacles two and three are: Norton (Michael Louis Johnson), Kincaid’s deputy who’s been assigned ongoing hassle Jesse duties; and Jesse’s total lack of funds.

Still, Tiffany’s not so miffed at Jesse’s rejection that she can’t offer him $1,000 to drive a couple of dolls from her oddball collection across country, and Jesse eagerly seizes upon the opportunity, finally convincing Jade to run away with him. Only, whaddaya know, there’s another obstacle. See, Tiffany’s been electrocuted in the bath by this point and her soul has transferred into a squat, ugly talking bride doll …

It should come as no surprise between the title and the synopsis above that Tiffany happens to be the former consort of one Charles Lee Ray, a gentleman of psychotic temperament who similarly found his essence trapped in the limited physicality of a plastic doll in Tom Holland’s superlative character drama grubby little slasher ‘Child’s Play’.

The ‘Child’s Play’ franchise limped along for three instalments, winding up with no small degree of contrivance at a military academy, before it received a thorough (and thoroughly unjustified) castigation at the hands of the British press after the gut-wrenchingly horrible killing, in 1993, of two-year-old James Bulger by two boys who were only ten years of age themselves. Just as the tabloids led a witch-hunt against ‘First Blood’ after the Hungerford massacre six years earlier – without any real evidence – so ‘Child’s Play 3’ bore the brunt of tabloid proselytizing and calls for it to be banned.

The seven-year hiatus between ‘Child’s Play 3’ and the revival of the saga with ‘Bride of Chucky’ speaks for itself. Ditto the jettisoning of the ‘Child’s Play’ brand the elevation of Chucky’s name to title-card identifier.

Oh, and there’s also the matter of writer Don Mancini (who has had a creative hand in all the Chucky films to date) re-imagining the whole thing as outright comedy. Sure, Chucky had dealt in pithy one-liners – what stalk ‘n’ slash anti-hero debuting in the 80s didn’t? – but the first three opuses were generally played straight.

Mancini and director Ronnie Yu did us all a favour conceiving of ‘Bride of Chucky’ as a delivery system for bad taste laughs. And they played a blinder in casting Jennifer Tilly. Although Tiffany is consigned to the bride doll’s body less than a third of the way into the film and her performance – like Brad Dourif’s as Chucky – is thereafter voice-over work, her live action turn for those first twenty five minutes is a showstopper. And even afterwards, her verbal sparring with Dourif is priceless.

Stabile and Heigl, however, are bland. Fortunately, Ritter and Johnson as their badge-and-gun wearing nemeses are suitably hissable. Chucky’s targeting of Chief Kincaid gives the film is best visual pun, an homage to 80s horror that is foreshadowed in an enjoyably over-egged evidence room theft sequence early in the film which tips its hat to Jason, Michael and Freddy.

The popularity of ‘Bride of Chucky’ led – inevitably, given the icky final reel hint as to the direction a follow-up might take – to a fifth outing, a few years later: ‘Seed of Chucky’. Then it was all quiet on the killer doll front for almost a decade. But the sneeringly murderous li’l fella’s back next year, though early word suggests (unpromisingly) that it’ll be a DTV release, in ‘Curse of Chucky’. “Chucky’s so Eighties,” someone scornfully, and unwisely, observes after clapping eyes on the doll. That’s as maybe, and his filmography is intermittent at best, but with the Chuckmeister about to embrace his fourth decade as a bona fide genre icon there’s no doubting his durability.

Jennifer Tilly

Happy 54th to Jennifer Tilly.

In addition to her acting work, she's an accomplished poker player. Hardly surprising. Lay down a pair like that, and anyone would fold!

Bound

Released from prison after a five stretch for the "redistribution of wealth", Corky (Gina Gershon) lands a bum job fixing up an apartment in a mob-owned tenement block. The people next door are Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) and his moll Violet (Jennifer Tilly). Caesar works for Gino Marzzone (Richard C Sarafian) and as such has to endure being partnered with Gino's viciously unpredictable son Johnnie (Christopher Meloni).

Violet, tired of all the macho bullshit and her designated role as trophy girlfriend/plaything, is immediately attracted to resilient, tough-talking Corky and the pair soon begin a clandestine relationship. But the secrecy only complicates Violet's life. She wants out; away from Caesar and his cronies; a new start in life.

When Caesar and Johnnie recover $2million in misappropriated funds from light-fingered mob accountant Shelly (Barry Kivel) and the currency is left in Caesar's safekeeping pending Gino's arrival from out of town to collect it, Violet and Corky hit upon a plan to swipe the cash and have Caesar take the fall.
At a cursory glance, I'd say pretty much all the requirements for an old-school crime caper are present and accounted for: a suitcase full of cash, an elaborate sting, an unexpected development that sends the carefully delineated plan spinning into freefall, a duped and vengeful loser, a corpulent mob boss, a loose-cannon wiseguy and a husky femme fatale. One who just happens to like other women.

This is the central conceit of 'Bound' - the machismo of the genre given a fresh spin by the elevation to protagonist of not just the gangster's moll but her lesbian lover - and might easily have been its failing. With its catalogue of shoot-outs, profane verbal stand offs, heads slammed against bathroom fixings and fingers snipped off with secateurs, 'Bound' has its share of exploitative elements. In the hands of many directors - especially, as here, two male co-directors - the romantic element could have been an exploitation scene too far, a bit of steamy soft-focus girl/girl action between the beatings and the gunplay.

Kudos to the brothers Wachowski, then, that they took Violet and Corky seriously as characters, and treated their relationship seriously as well. Don't get me wrong, the big sex scene in 'Bound' is steamy - but it's erotic in the proper sense, a culmination of the attraction and flirtation between Violet and Corky that hasn't so much simmered as ignited into flame and melted the celluloid during the first quarter of the film. Kudos again to the Wachowskis for retaining feminist and sex education expert Susie Bright as a consultant (she cameos in a bar room scene). The imagery and symbolism of the early scenes (most notably in Violet and Corky's first conversation) emphasise the feminine. I'd be willing to bet, if 'Bound' weren't so plot-driven and firmly pigeonholed as a crime movie (and, perhaps, if the Wachowskis hadn't gone onto create the beefed up mythology of the 'Matrix' trilogy and the day-glo vapidity of 'Speed Racer', that critics would be quick to tag the film as pro-feminist.

Umm, actually that's wrong. Andy and Larry Wachowski had already created 'The Matrix' ... well, they'd written the script for the first film anyway. 'Bound' was conceived as a stepping-stone, a low-budget debut that would prove they were capable of making the leap from writers (their original screenplay 'Assassins' had, albeit in a much mucked about with version, been filmed) to directors. Their aim was to instill enough confidence in the money men that 'The Matrix' would go into production with them at the helm.

A film, in other words, that got made purely so they could get another film made. And five films into their career it remains the best thing they've done.