Someone once asked me what was the best part of about running TrueHorror.net. Ever since then the answer has always been the same, the new friends I have made. Through it all I have made all kinds of new friendships and acquaintances. There is something very fulfilling about meeting a like minded individual and hitting it off from the start. Diandra was no exception. We had been wanting to work together for quite sometime, sadly the timing never worked out, until now.

“Halloween is the one night of the year when all bets are off. Anything can happen” –Michael Dougherty 

Every now and then a film comes along that gets it right. These movies make you say, “Yes! That’s how it’s supposed to be!!” and make you wish you had directed them because they are so in line with your own sensibilities. Trick r’ Treat is that movie for me. Writer/ Director Michael Dougherty’s declaration of love to all things Halloween perfectly depicts everything about the holiday we all love so much. Trick r’ Treat is simply the best Halloween themed film since, well, Halloween. Yet in a sense it actually is a better Halloween film for the simple fact that it's all about the Holiday itself. This is why it has become tradition for myself and many others to watch it every October. 

One of the things I love about Trick r’ Treat is it provides us with different perspectives of the holiday from various stages of our lives. From a young child who is fascinated and excited by the traditions of Halloween taught to him by his father (however demented he may be) all the way to the elderly man who has become disenchanted and bitter towards "All Hollows Eve" and the annoyances he feels it brings. Dougherty weaves all the age group's stories together with ease and makes them feel organically intertwined while thoroughly exploring various subjects of Halloween lore. 

Trick r’ Treat is set in the fictional town of Warren Valley, Ohio. At the center of town a huge Halloween Parade takes place where the streets are filled with costumed people enjoying the sights and sounds. The air is visibly cold and damp, the sidewalks paved with colorful yellow, orange and red leaves, Jack O Lanterns illuminate front yards and porches-- THIS is Halloween. The care and attention to detail that the production design is handled with might be easily overlooked by a regular viewer, but to anyone who truly holds Halloween near and dear to their heart, the moment those opening credits start to roll you instantly fall in love with the film. 

The film begins with a couple returning home after a night out at the parade. It is here that we are first introduced to the fact that Trick r’ Treat is all about the preservation of Halloween's ancient traditions and the respect it deserves as the husband tells his wife not to blow out the candle in the Jack O’ Lantern. As a lifelong Halloween enthusiast, Trick r’ Treat came along at the perfect time for me. I have always loved the holiday, but being in a warm climate took some of the oomph out of the holiday, especially since I grew up with the traditional brisk-autumn-pumpkin-patch Halloweens. As my enthusiasm and spirit waned to the point where I hardly even decorated anymore, I was still anticipating seeing the little anthology movie about Halloween that had been making so much noise throughout the Horrorsphere. I remember running around to different stores to find it the day it was released. I came home, made some popcorn, turned it on, and once it was all was said and done, I was blown away by how enjoyable it was. As soon as it was done, I restarted it from the beginning and decided to break out my box of Halloween stuff and decorate my apartment while the film played in the background. It was like a shot of Halloween adrenaline that has flowed through my veins ever since. 

There are a lot of things in Trick r’ Treat to love, whether it be the tragic backstory of the “Halloween School Bus Massacre” that is used by a group of adolescent kids to play a cruel prank on the class outcast Rhonda; the aforementioned story about the murderous school principal Mr. Wilkins and his son Billy who have a much more sinister way of celebrating the Holiday than most; or the “pack” of beautiful women on the prowl for their next meal...er…date. There is something for everyone in the film: younger kids, adults, gorehounds, and fans of the spooky. All of these things fit the bill of iconic Halloween themes and ideals, however ask any fan what the best thing about the film is and you will get the same answer: "Sam". 

Throughout the film, we are provided glimpses of a small creepy figure dressed in orange footie pajamas, hiding his face in burlap mask with buttons for eyes. It isn’t until the final act that we discover just who this mysterious little character is when he enters the home of the Halloween despising, candy stealing Mr. Kreeg, and proceeds to torment him until he finally heeds the rules of Halloween. Writer/ Director Michael Dougherty said it best: “Every Holiday has a cool mascot, Halloween is the only one that didn’t have something. There’s a lot of iconic images but there wasn’t just that one mascot character.” For him, Sam was the opportunity to create one such character. Sam is one of the coolest creations I have seen: a mini pumpkin headed demon born in a pumpkin patch who dresses up in orange footy pajamas and a burlap sack mask; a perfect Halloween character that I will forever be jealous that I didn’t create myself. Sam is essentially Halloween's version of the "Ghost of Christmas Past," the enforcer of the holiday’s traditions and rules. While he may not be fully acknowledged as Halloween's official mascot, for serious horror and Halloween fans alike, he is definitely held in high esteem and is loved right up there with Michael Myers and Jack Skellington in terms of Halloween iconography. 

Michael Dougherty believes in the spirit of the holiday and did his utmost to present it in Trick r’ Treat so that it can be further appreciated and preserved for future generations. Whenever I’ve spoken to people about this film, everyone agrees the filmmaker's get what makes Halloween special and have created a vision of it that is timeless while still being contemporary. The world presented here is one I find myself wanting to visit every October and spend the night exploring regardless of what creatures lurk throughout: I want to wander through the Halloween Parade, I want to walk the dark streets with a lit Jack O’ Lantern, hike through the foggy pumpkin patch as I make my way to the haunted rock quarry that is site of the School Bus Massacre. Of course I would like to avoid being eaten alive by beautiful werewolf women, but I suppose there are worse ways to go. After all, it’s in the spirit of Halloween.

“Hi, I’m Chucky and I’m your friend to the end. Heidi Ho, hahaha!” 

As children we all had fears, rational and irrational. Some of us feared sharks in the ocean, spiders in our hair, the boogeyman waiting in the closet, the monster under the bed, or some just simply afraid of the dark. These fears are rather common in our early years; however, these fears have the potential to be enhanced when a horror film is introduced to our young and highly impressionable psyche. This brings us to another common if not irrational fear, one shared by both children and adults alike: pediophobia, the fear of dolls. 

I wouldn’t say I outright suffered from this phobia in my early years, but I certainly had a distrust or wariness towards dolls as a kid. Whether it was my big sister's Raggedy Ann doll, the odd cartoonish red doll we had in the house when I was growing up, or this creepy clown doll my best friend had whose laugh feature would activate on its own during sleepovers like the infamous clown scene in Poltergeist. The next level of my doll fear was introduced to me by my older brother, who for some odd reason thought that it would be a good idea for me to watch the Zuni fetish doll segment of the Karen Black classic Trilogy of Terror at the age of 6-- can you say traumatized? He and I watched this in the living room at 1am, lights off, head first at the end of the sofa bed close to the TV staring into pure terror. I was too scared to set one foot off that sofa bed because I was certain that maniacal little monster doll would start screaming and tear my feet and legs up as soon as I would set one foot on the cold hardwood floor. Without a doubt, this solidified living evil dolls as the bane of my existence for the foreseeable future. After witnessing the Zuni fetish doll terrorizing Karen Black for 20 or so minutes, the good news was I knew it couldn’t possibly get any worse…or so I thought.

Growing up in a family who was very much into Halloween and horror, I already had my initial run-ins with Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface and Jason Voorhees by the age of 9. They certainly scared me and kept me awake for a few nights, but I was able to handle watching those movies without much of a hitch other than the usual minor scares; however, that would all soon change. I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment I was first exposed to Child’s Play, but I know it was before its theatrical release. The earliest memory that pervades my mind were the TV spots. The two things that stood out in those spots for me as a kid were the teaser glimpses of Chucky we see, the first being his shadow walking down the hallway and the second being the close up from the same scene of his hand holding the knife as he walks down the hallway. There was something about the shadow's jerky movements that creeped me out. There was another TV spot that had Andy (the little boy who Chucky torments in the films for those not familiar) saying “Chuuuucky” that had a great creep factor because you never actually saw Chucky. I wish more movies nowadays would stick to keeping their surprises. I guess the reason I was really taken back by this is because I didn’t know what this thing was. I knew it was some sort of little creature or doll, but with the new TV spot , the source of my new fear now had a name: Chucky. I had enough at that point and, from there on out, I tried to avoid the commercials when anyone in the house was watching TV. I did a pretty good job of steering clear of anything to do with the movie, but that would all go down the drain the day I went to my Dad’s apartment to spend the day.

At my Dad's apartment that day I came across a Fangoria magazine with the title: “Gore Drenched Halloween Special.” Perfect reading material for a 9 year old, right? As I got closer to the magazine, I saw Michael Myers on the cover and focused on the release of Halloween 4. As my eyes scoured the cover, I slowly turned my gaze down towards the left corner, and there he was. This was the first time staring directly at the thing that would be the prime source of my biggest fears and nightmares for the next few years. This wasn’t just a picture of Chucky in his Good Guy form, this was Chucky fully transformed, holding a large knife, peering back at me with his sinister stare. It took a moment to process what I was looking at but I was freaked out; from then on I hated him. Once the movie left theaters, I thought I was free and clear, but Chucky continued to haunt me to the point I avoided the neighborhood video store on the way home from school because Child's Play posters covered the entire storefront. This went on for months until I finally decided enough was enough, it was time to face my fear and finally watch Child’s Play.

I clearly remember having my mom rent the movie for me. After popping it into the VCR, what followed was every bit as creepy and scary as I had imagined. I certainly couldn’t dissect a film like I do now, but I did realize it wasn’t cheesy. It had a serious tone and the skills and technology used to bring Chucky to life was as impressive as it was terrifying. One of my favorite things that is often lost on non-die-hard fans is F/X artist Kevin Yaghers' decision to give Chucky's appearance a gradual visual shift from doll to human form (which was abandoned after the first film). In doing so, Chucky ends up looking more like a distorted version of the human figure than a doll brought to life by a puppeteer and animatronics towards the film's end, and it’s very effective. In the final act of the film, Chucky is burned in the fireplace and thought to be dead, but when he shows up again, he is even more nightmarish looking. While burnt to a crisp and still smoldering, he stalks Andy and his mother throughout their apartment in one of the film's best scenes. A scene that really freaked me out, mostly because Chucky is after this little kid close to my age and wants to kill him to transfer his soul into Andy’s body. All of the other killers I had seen in horror films never went after little kids, but this was Chucky’s main goal!

Looking back on the film, everyone involved was on their A-game. Tom Holland directs the film with a great deal of restraint, leaving Chucky to lurk in the shadows for a large portion of the film until his big reveal. The urban setting of Chicago in the dead of a snow-filled winter was also a great choice, adding to the overall sense of dread and despair that permeates the films overall tone. It’s a cold film with a sadistic touch that can easily be lost on the casual viewer. The idea that Chucky tells Andy that he’s been sent down from Heaven by his dead father to play with him is just creepy and sick, and that’s something I love about the movie.

The films score by Joe Renzetti is also handled differently than most would attempt for a movie about a killer doll. Most musicians would create some type of whimsical sounding themes like we hear in the sequels, which work for those films, but would seem a bit out of place here in the original. Instead, Renzetti's score is very minimal and has an almost industrial sound to it with eerie ambient sounds and jarring chord strikes. These soundscapes merge perfectly with realism of the visuals. 

Last but not least is the acting. In a movie about a killer doll possessed by the soul of a serial killer, things can go awry really fast when it comes to casting and acting. That is not the case here. Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, and of course Brad Dourif all deliver convincing performances that really help sell the otherwise outlandish material. Whenever a movie hinges on the performance of a child actor, it can be a recipe for disaster, but in Alex Vincent the filmmakers cast someone who was not only likeable but believable. Most importantly they cast Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray and subsequently the surprisingly vulgar and masculine voice of Chucky. I know I couldn’t have been the only person who was not expecting that voice to come out of that doll when it is finally revealed to be alive, especially after the hearing the doll speak in its friendly and innocent Good Guy doll voice in the first half. To me, his voice has been the key attribute crucial to Chuckys popularity throughout the years.

25 Years is a long time, especially in movie years. A lot of movies released in 1988 simply do not hold up to the test of time, but Child’s Play does. The effects still manage to impress and the film is just as creepy to watch now as it was back then. Since the original, the series has gone on to spawn five sequels with the latest being the just released (Curse of Chucky). The characters popularity is once again high and remains one of the most well-known horror icons. Throughout the past 25 years, I have grown from being absolutely terrified of this malevolent doll to becoming one of his biggest fans. I suppose part of the fascination lies with the fact that it was the one character that completely frightened me for quite some time, perhaps an odd type of respect has formed over the years. Whatever the case may be, the original Child’s Play is still one of the most renowned horror films to ever hit the screen and is still fully capable of providing new generations plenty of sleepless nights. 

Chucky has made good on his 25 year old promise to be our friend til’ the end.

25 years have passed since Chucky first broke out of his Good Guy doll box and into the nightmares of filmgoers across the world. 

The first Child’s Play (1988) was an instant success introducing audiences to the foul mouthed doll possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray. Two years later, Child’s Play 2 was released to a positive reception, solidifying his status as a horror icon. Surprisingly, the studio followed up Part 2’s success by releasing the lackluster Child’s Play 3 only one year after part 2 hit theaters. After that Chucky laid dormant until 1998’s Bride of Chucky, which reintroduced Chucky to viewers along with his murderous bride, Tiffany. The film was a dark horror comedy that brought Chucky front and center as the star of the film. While many fans debated whether it was the right move to make turning the series into more of a self-aware comedic story with a shocking ending no one saw coming, Bride was a hit. After some studio shuffling Seed of Chucky was green lit and directed by series writer Don Mancini. The film, which further entrenched the series in comedy, had good intentions with Don Mancini valiantly doing everything he could with a limited budget, but was poorly received and effectively killed off Chucky for the next 9 years. 

Talk of a horror centric remake surfaced a few years back, but after rights issues between studios arose, that idea was laid to rest and a new sequel Curse of Chucky was finally announced in June of 2012. Fans of Chucky were excited, though one major cause for concern that came with the announcement was that this newest installment would be direct-to-video with yet another limited budget. So the question remained: did this matter and/or affect the quality and care that Curse would be made with? The answer: a resounding no. 

The major selling point for a diehard Chucky fan such as myself is the fact that this installment is straight horror and not full of the jokes or self-referential humor that was prevalent in the previous two films. Early on we are introduced to a family in turmoil as a result of a recent death. The main character, Nica (played by Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif's daughter Fiona), is dealing with her grief and the tension the sudden death in the family has brought out between her and her sister Barbara. As you can imagine, the trouble begins when Chucky is brought into the picture via a creepy friendship he forms with Nica’s niece, Alice. Writer-Director Don Mancini makes a bold and appreciated move with this film as he takes his time setting up the film and developing the relationships and motivations behind all the characters involved. While I have heard some people complain about the film being slow or boring, I attribute this to them being so used to Chucky being front and center in the last two installments from the jump. Here, the actors do a solid job and keep you interested in whats going on even when the main attraction isn’t on screen. Fiona Dourif is a revelation and carries the film on her shoulders with a sympathetic and believable performance as Nica. A lot of people assumed she got the job because of who her father is, while this may have been the case, she honestly was great and deserved the role regardless. 

For most of the film, Chucky remains in the shadows and it works, Mancini utilizes his one location-- a large old gothic home-- to great effect. By keeping the action contained in this one spot, he maximizes budget and gives us a bit of a haunted house vibe to the entire thing. Using stylish setups and confident camera work, he clearly shows he is influenced by classic horror filmmakers. One thing Mancini proves here is that Chucky and his alternate Good Guy look can still be very creepy when used properly. Here we are treated to a Chucky that is as sadistic and disturbing as he's ever been. When reviewing a film, I don’t feel it necessary to go into detail about the story so as not to ruin any surprises or moments that are there for fans to be excited about seeing (there are quite a few), but I will say this: there are plenty of callbacks to previous Child's Play films for fans to geek out over when they catch them, some subtle, some not, but most are welcome and exactly what fans of these films look for. 

The movie is not perfect. There are a few lapses in logic that just come with the territory, along with some character moments that I am not entirely sure how to feel about that may contradict things to a small extent from earlier films; however, these won’t hinder your enjoyment of the film. The score is generally solid, if not misplaced in some portions of the film, but there are some moments that I loved that are callbacks to the score from the origial Child’s Play. I will say my main issue lies with Chucky himself. Here, Tony Gardner who did the FX work for Seed, has his work cut out for him and it shows. For the most part Chucky works, but there are a few scenes where he doesn’t feel as lively and fluid as Kevin Yagher's puppeteering from previous films, but that also could be a result of budgetary constraints. 

While going straight-to-video, Curse of Chucky looks great and doesn’t feel like that type of film. It’s a stylish creation made with a lot of love that features solid acting and returns Chucky to his horror roots while honoring the preceding films in what is a true love letter to the fans. When you take it into account that it’s the 6th film in the series that has had its ups and downs, it’s even more impressive that it wasn’t just a name recognition cash grab like most DTV horror sequels are. Curse of Chucky actually adds to the mythos and is a worthy addition to the series. It’s a shame it did not get a theatrical release, but don’t let that discourage you from checking out what has to be a considered a triumphantly horrific and bloody return of one of horror's most beloved characters.