Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Doc of Chucky’ on Shudder, an Insanely Thorough Five-Hour Chronicle of the ‘Child’s Play’ Franchise

This week on Lunatic Minutiae Theatre is Doc of Chucky (now on Shudder), a five-hour making-of retrospective about the Child’s Play films. Yes, five hours – and it covers only the first seven films in the franchise, skipping the 2019 reboot and three seasons of the TV series (which was recently canceled). Before you shake your head in bewilderment that such a thing exists, I’d like to contextualize this by reminding you that a five-hour making-of-RoboCop documentary was released last year, and that only covered ONE MOVIE, thus rendering Doc of Chucky an ever so slightly less insane project. The question surrounding this one? Whether it’s for fans only, or if it’s only for fans that think Seed of Chucky is a Citizen Kane-level masterpiece.

DOC OF CHUCKY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: One assumes Don Mancini didn’t expect to be talking about Chucky a couple decades into the 21st century, but here he is. He wasn’t too far out of film school when he penned a screenplay about a maniacally possessed doll that comes alive and murders people. It was called Batteries Not Included, a title that didn’t last long once a Steven Spielberg-produced movie bearing that name, not to mention some eventual rewrites, forced a name change to Blood Buddy and, eventually, Child’s Play. Mancini was inspired by a few poignant, timely things: One, he wanted to satirize the mid-’80s commercial-toy phenomenon, where toy companies developed animated TV series that functioned as advertisements for their products (He-Man and Transformers are prime examples). He also watched in awe while people rioted in department stores over Cabbage Patch dolls, and noted one of the hot toy trends was talking dolls like My Buddy and Corky. His father worked in advertising, and Mancini, noting the crass cynicism of the business, wanted to satirize it. 

And so, Chucky was born. The doll’s nasty demeanor was, per Mancini’s script, going to be a manifestation of a little boy’s unfettered id which is, you might’ve noticed, rather dark – darker than a cute toy cutting people up with a butcher knife, even. But once the script landed on director Tom Holland’s desk, the filmmaker tweaked the idea to something that’s a little easier to swallow: Voodoo did it! And then – well, I’m getting lost in the weeds here in the opening minutes of a five-hour documentary. But the origin of Chucky is fun and fascinating, because it suggests that Mancini, at least with the first movie, had at least a little something to say beyond throwing together a ridiculous slasher-comedy with explosions and grisly kills and crazed animatronics and a highly memorable vocal performance by Brad Dourif, a vocal performance that once might’ve been handled by one Jessica Walter (of Play Misty for Me and, later, Arrested Development fame).

That’s one bit of trivia amidst a mountain of it in Doc of Chucky, which spends about 90 minutes chronicling the first film, released in 1988, before going movie-by-movie through the series, unearthing major and bit players for interviews chock full of minutiae and reminiscences. Mancini and Dourif are significant contributors to this lengthy chronicle, the former pretty much making a career out of developing the franchise with sequels and reboots and TV spinoffs. Nearly everyone of note is unearthed here: Jennifer Tilly, Catherine Hicks, Alex Vincent, the guy who played the hobo who sold the possessed doll, the guy who made all the original Chucky doll hairpieces, the costumer who jumped from Weird Al’s ‘Fat’ video to help design Chucky, etc. I mean, you can’t say this thing ain’t thorough.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Before anyone derides weirdos who might devour every last second of a far-beyond-absurd doc like this, let it be known, I devoured every last second of RoboDoc, and refuse to apologize for it. 

Performance Worth Watching: Here’s a reminder that Brad Dourif is an absolute gem of an actor. Oh, and any documentary that can sit John Waters down for an interview (he had an acting role in Seed of Chucky, remember) is one big step closer to being a winner.

Memorable Dialogue: Holland understood that no actor could ever upstage that homicidal doll: “You knew that a star was born, and it wasn’t human. It was the doll, Chucky!”

Sex and Skin: I caught a bit of a boob in an archival clip from Showgirls. Note, any documentary that can fit in an archival clip from Showgirls is one step closer to being a winner.

Our Take: There’s nothing special about Doc of Chucky, except maybe its subject. The Child’s Play films fall somewhere between bigger, more ubiquitous horror franchises like Halloween or Friday the 13th and niche-y stuff a la Evil Dead and Terrifier, but I’d wager more of the general populace could pick Chucky out of a lineup than have actually seen one of his films. He’s at the very least an icon – and a brand, which might rub the wrong way against Mancini’s original satirical intentions – so there’s no arguing whether he deserves a documentary. 

Now, whether that documentary needs to be five hours long and cover direct-to-video titles like Cult of Chucky is debatable. But Doc of Chucky is perfect for Shudder, which doesn’t tend to draw fairweather subscribers who’d be fine with watching the first hour or two and getting out before things get too dense. No, this retrospective feels like a labor of love designed for the diest of hards who’d fight tooth and nail to get Cult of Chucky recognized by the National Film Registry. Fans will eat this stuff up (even if they already know it), despite director Thommy Hutson’s DVD-bonus-feature talking-heads-and-archival-photos-and-movie-clips visual method. The doc is less concerned with presentation than getting key and minor creatives to dig through the annals of memory for all the tidbits and tensions – credit Hutson for occasionally letting the lovefest become at least a little journalistic – that’ll tickle Chuckophiles’ sick little cockles. 

Our Call: STREAM IT. You can’t get past it’s five hours long without already knowing if you want to watch Doc of Chucky. At the very least, it gives a fascinating glimpse into the filmmaking methods of the 1980s, and how those methods evolved through the next couple decades. At the very most, it’s a whole lotta doc, and its breadth of ambition is as unhinged as its title character.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.