Here we go with Child’s Play 3, one of my least favorite sequels. Now the studio is getting greedy and only waiting one year between films. You have to weigh your options. Do you just cash in on the franchise and make a bad film, or do you rush out as many as you can and hope that your lead antagonist can carry the franchise? With Jason and Friday the 13th, that was fine. Nightmare on Elm Street also saw success. Michael Meyers had even made his comeback recently in Halloween 4. I don’t blame them for wanting to try to maintain the momentum. The problem is that you need an average script, at the very minimum. Part 2 won the box office on its opening weekend. This finished in second and it came out 9 months after Part 2. This film never had a chance. It’s like E.T. the video game. In hindsight, it sounds like nobody liked this particular film.
All I remember is that Andy is now a teenager and he goes to a military school with my name involved. When Don Mancini is saying it is his least favorite of the franchise, trust me, this is going to be bad. Here’s to losing 90 minutes of my life that I would ever get back. Let’s delve into Child’s Play 3.
Start Film.
We start off at the old toy factory and it is all covered in cobwebs. A crane picks up Chucky and blood pours out as it crosses the vat of hot plastic. That is apparently all we need to bring him back. Why is there so much blood in the plastic? Only a little trickled in. Christ, I’m already angry and they’re still rolling credits. I had to get up and get a small piece of cheese to counteract my negativity. Ahh, the power of cheese.
Hey, there’s Sullivan again. His top executives quickly go over Andy’s history and the Sullivan decides to re-open the plant. There’s the first Good Guy off the assembly line. How nice. Sullivan is now alone in his office at night and the Good Guy is out of the box. Chucky has grabbed a jar of marbles and turned the TV off while Sullivan is working on his putting game. I used to have a very good putting game. He looks for the remote under the couch and Chucky slides it to him. The marbles are let loose and he falls. Now the toys are attacking. Two Good Guys named Larry and Pauley talk to each other. Sullivan turns around, gets hit in the head by the putter. “Don’t fuck with the Chuck.” Now Chucky is throwing darts. Chucky now strangles Sullivan with a yo-yo. he is the Strangler after all. Chucky uses the computer to somehow look up where Andy is, at Kent Military School.
Jesus, that scene wore me out. I won’t do much play by play, but rather lots of insults. Insults are important when discussing a bad film. Don Mancini wanted to do a film about multiple Chucky’s. That could have been more fun.
The lead man in charge at the school talks about growing up and not being a kid anymore. The barber gets a raging clue from cutting hair. He didn’t even get his hair cut that short. Andy sees a new ad for Good Guy dolls during his haircut. Andy meets Whitehurst who is tied up in his closet. Apparently, Shelton is the asshole who did that. We also met this younger kid, Tyler. We just met Lieutenant Colonel Shelton. He is trying to be a badass, but he bores me. I feel like I would backhand his bitchass until he cried. De Silva, the girl in the film, calls Shelton an asshole, so he makes her do 25 pushups. De Silva was in Old School, so that counts for something.
Tyler delivers this big rectangular package to Andy. Why did they never make the boxes smaller? Tyler has the box knocked out of his hand and knows that it’s a Good Guy doll, so he takes it to the armory and unwraps it. Chucky is pissed because he wanted to see Andy. But it’s a new body and Tyler was the first to see him, so there is that. Everybody has a sweatshirt on that says Kent, and I am still unhappy. What a dropkick to the nuts.
Chucky is trying to play “Hide the Soul” with Tyler. Cochrane is the man in charge here and he finds Tyler and takes the doll away because dolls are for girls. Boys have action figures, damnit! Andy is outside and sees Cochrane with Chucky and Chucky kinda looks and shrugs his shoulders. Oh God, they just did the “This is my rifle, this is my gun” bit from Full Metal Jacket. Was R. Lee Ermey not available? Chucky gets tossed a garbage truck. Then Chucky screams for help and the guy in the truck looks to see who has fallen in and Chucky operates the truck and kills him.
If you’re Andy, don’t you bail right now? Just say fuck it and leave. Chucky is in a trunk in the room with Andy. Aww, Andy has a picture of himself when he was young and with his mom. Chucky tries to slice Andy’s Achille’s tendon. Andy has a “Playpen” porno magazine. Good for him. Chucky just revealed that he’s gonna be a “Bro”. Well, that line has aged poorly, or maybe it was terrible the moment it was uttered. Is Kent short for Kentucky? On the sign at the gate, it was Kent. Military School.
At least I am halfway through this movie. It’s not very interesting, so not much to write about. Barclay pisses off Shelton at night, so everybody is getting punished. All because Shelton thinks that Andy stole the doll but stayed in his room for some reason. No real logic there. Tyler finds Chucky. Andy tries to leave the punishment to find Tyler. Andy gets caught. Is anybody really rooting for Andy? At this point, I’m cheering on Tyler. Are there only two girls at Kent? That sounds about right. The one who isn’t De Silva seems like a good murder candidate. They are snooping and reading Andy’s file. The girls find Tyler and Chucky. De Silva puts lipstick on Chucky and leaves him in the one room. Chucky says “This means war”, ya know, because it’s a military school.
Cochrane is now in the room, I think it may be his office or some trophy room/library. Probably his office. Chucky talks to Cochrane so he drops him headfirst in his garbage can. Chucky is pissed, gives a primal yell, and causes Cochrane to have a headache. That was a boring death. The barber is roaming the mess hall during breakfast looking to see who needs a cut. Oh, that is Botnick. That makes sense. Andy tries to tell Tyler not to trust Charles, but Tyler ain’t having it.
Botnick gives Whitehurst a haircut and then finds Chucky in there. Botnick wants to cut Chucky’s hair. Chucky slices Botnick’s throat with a straight razor. Whitehurst sees Chucky and the dead Botnick. And it is time for War Games. Cool. Chucky is in the armory replacing the fake paint ammo with live ammo. Crafty.
At night, they tell dumb stories around the campfire like they’re the Midnight Society from Are You Afraid of the Dark. De Silva and Andy wander off, then they kiss. Andy needs to go find Tyler and Whitehurst is afraid to help. He’s a coward. Andy stole Shelton’s map and Shelton is pissed. Tyler is with Charles. Now they can play Hide the Soul. Tyler realizes that Charles is evil and takes out a knife and stabs him.
De Silva was sent out on her own and is now attacked by Chucky. Tyler finds the blue team. Chucky gets on the radio to get some chaos started and he has De Silva hostage and a grenade. Andy and Tyler find Chucky. Time to watch shit get real. The blue team still had fake bullets but the red team has live rounds. Shelton is down. Everybody is fighting. Chucky throws the grenade. Whitehurst jumps on the grenade and takes one for the team. Aww, ginger bitch is sad about Whitehurst. Tyler makes his way to a carnival. Tyler goes to the security tent, and the security guy already has Chucky in his possession. Somehow Chucky just knew that was Tyler’s next move. I want to go to bed. Only 10 minutes to go.
The security guard is dead. De Silva is smart enough to grab his gun. Will Tyler and Chucky be on a Ferris wheel. Nope, some lame ride inside that is supposed to be scary. This is just as lame as Hell Fest. Tyler tries to get away. De Silva just got shot. This is beyond ridiculous. Tyler is now trapped and Chucky has him. The Grim Reaper just sliced off part of Chucky’s face. Why was the blade so sharp for a cheap carnival ride? Chucky and Tyler are riding demons. Tyler just got knocked out. Everybody gets knocked out really easily in these films. It’s time for the ritual….again. There’s the lightning and storm clouds. Andy needs like 3 or 4 shots to take Chucky down. Andy is clearly a pussy. Chucky is flung into a very fast-spinning blade. There isn’t much remaining of him.
The cops take Andy away and De Silva is taken away in an ambulance. A man is picking up trash with a stick. That’s how it ends. Trash ends with trash. That makes sense.
End Film
When I was young and saw this, the ending was meh. I simply accepted it the way I accepted many endings to Stephen King’s films. As I got older, this ending pissed me off more and more. Back then horror movies didn’t take 7 year-long hiatuses. This had to because this movie fucking sucks. I have issues.
Why did the doll being made have so much blood in the beginning? They showed us how much blood was spilled. Then they multiplied that by 12. Why wouldn’t Chucky have replaced both team’s ammo with live ammunition? The whole idea is to create more chaos, right? He knew that Tyler would be safe so why be precautionary? Why did Andy get sent to Military school? He was supposedly a psycho, so wouldn’t you want to keep him away from weapons? Discipline is one thing, but training a supposed psycho is a whole other thing entirely. And why was there a random carnival in the middle of nowhere, seemingly? It looks really out of place, given its surroundings.
Also, the ending left us with very little. You didn’t walk away thinking about how you wanted a part 4. No, you walked away very disappointed. You probably walked away thinking that this was the end.
There isn’t much to like here. Chucky tried being funnier with military and war lines that felt forced. The kills felt too familiar with a dire lack of creativity. The acting and writing were both sub-par. Aside from Chucky, did anybody really stand out in this film? Maybe Tyler, but that last 15 minutes didn’t help his cause. Maybe De Silva could have stood out if they did a little more with her. 3 minutes more and she could have shined. I’m not in a bad mood, but this rating isn’t going to be pleasant.
Rating: 2.7 – It’s a bad film with an iconic character doing relatively boring things and spouting off terrible one-liners. Nobody involved should be proud of this other than they made a film in 9 months. That’s the achievement. That’s not enough and shame on the studios for forcing this to come out so fast.
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