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| The Chucktator. |
I didn't really keep up with the long-running Child's Play horror film franchise after the first couple of flicks. I haven't even gotten around to seeing 2004's Seed of Chucky, despite the fact that one of my personal heroes, John Waters, appears in it. I only know that the murderous Chucky doll (voiced by Brad Dourif) acquired a female counterpart and some nasty, Frankenstein-like facial scars along the way. I'm still not wild about those scars, since I think they undermine the whole point of the character, which is that he looks like a creepy but harmless My Buddy doll from the 1980s.
Anyhow, despite my almost-total ignorance of the property, I nevertheless would love the chance to write the next Child's Play sequel, if there is one. I have an idea ready to go. Be forewarned: This gets a tad convoluted.
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| Accurate but not respectable. |
What's really surprising about The Rise and Fall is that, apart from the inclusion of some tasteless urban legends like the depiction of Amin as a cannibal, the script largely sticks to the historical record and depicts Amin as he really was. Some especially horrific details, such as keeping the severed heads of his foes in his kitchen freezer, are drawn from real life. So what makes this movie "exploitation" rather than an Oscar-winning, critically-praised drama, like 2006's The Last King of Scotland? It's all a matter of tone, I guess. The Rise and Fall treats Amin's reign as a horror story, an approach that extends to the music, the camera angles, the acting, and the editing. It's all done for maximum shock effect. That makes critics uncomfortable.
While re-watching Amin: The Rise and Fall, I started thinking of General Idi Amin as a potential horror star. He's a lot more effective than most of the major icons of the slasher genre, who tend to kill their victims one at a time. In terms of his overall body count, Amin leaves Freddy, Jason, Michael, and the rest in the dust. He operates boldly in broad daylight, rather than skulking around in the shadows. Another advantage is that he doesn't have to do all the killing personally. He has soldiers and guards to do a lot of the dirty work for him.
So then I started imagining a franchise film in which a famous horror character becomes the brutal dictator of a small country. Long-running horror franchises often tend to become gimmicky as the years go by, and this seemed no more extreme than, say, putting Jason Voorhees into outer space. But Jason's no good for this kind of picture. He doesn't talk, and he seems to derive no real pleasure from his killing. Ditto Michael Myers and Leatherface. It's difficult to imagine Freddy Krueger holding down a government job for long. Ditto Hannibal Lecter. So who's left?
Chucky, that's who. He's perfect. He seems like the kind of guy who'd get a kick out of bossing around a whole country. I pictured the little doll getting sick of causing mayhem in his home country and moving to some fictional country in Central America or South America, where he becomes known as "El Juguete," an incredibly corrupt, violent, and sadistic martinet. He'd have everything: an army of henchmen, a harem of love slaves, and a torture dungeon. And the image of little Chucky, still doll-sized, in a military uniform dripping with medals is surreal and funny and terrifying to me. I'd call it Reign of Chucky: Puppet Regime and advertise it with this tagline: "Running a country? It's child's play."
As for the content of the movie, just watch this trailer for the Idi Amin flick and imagine that it's Chucky doing all of this awful stuff. Doesn't that sound kind of awesome?