Halloween can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For the youngest among us, Halloween means having the opportunity to dress up in an awesome costume, going door to door on an epic trick-or-treat adventure. For older kids and young adults, Halloween might mean going to a costume party and engaging in some debauchery. For me, Halloween is more about getting scared stupid with a great horror movie.
And, much of the time, the best scary movies are the ones that are particularly campy, like the ones that defined much of the 1980s and into the 90s. We have classics like the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th series, characterized by incredibly gruesome gore and unforgettable characters.
And there are few characters as iconic as Chucky.
Movies like the Child’s Play franchise have paved the way for more contemporary Halloween-time fare like Cabin in the Woods and Insidious. But, for my part, it’s almost like these new films aren’t unrealistic enough, if that makes any sense. I miss the days of Pet Sematary and Gremlins. Those films made you suffer in the most wonderful of ways. As Alfred Hitchcock once said, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
If you’ve ever wondered how filmmakers brought Chucky to “life” on the big screen, then you’ll want to check out the “behind the scenes” video that I’ve embedded below. These days, those kinds of effects have largely been replaced by CG. Back then, even the “advanced” animatronics of a psycho-possessed doll were quite the feat.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
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