Charles Lee Ray (also known as "The Lakeshore Strangler", or nicknamed "Chucky") is a fictional character and the primary antagonist of the Child's Play series. In 1988, Chucky was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain. He was created by Don Mancini and is voiced by Brad Dourif.
History of Chucky Films
Child's Play (1988)
While Karen is working late, her friend Maggie baby-sits Andy. When she tells Andy go to bed, which keeps Chucky (what the talking doll calls itself) from watching a 9:00 news story about Edward "Eddie" Caputo (his former accomplice who had left him stranded leading to him being killed), he causes Maggie to fall out a window to her death on a car.
The next day, upon Chucky's request, Andy visits the house of Eddie (Neil Giuntoli) and causes it to explode by turning on a gas oven, and shooting it with a gun while Andy is away urinating.
Andy is questioned by police about his presence at the explosion; he blames it on Chucky, and is placed in a psychiatric ward for a few days. Karen discovers that Chucky has no batteries and thus should not be able to talk on his own. When she threatens to burn him if he doesn't talk, Chucky attacks her and eventually flees the apartment.
Karen contacts Mike, who is now investigating Aunt Maggie's death. Although he initially doubts her story, he realizes Chucky is alive after he is attacked by the doll in his car, surviving by shooting Chucky in the shoulder.
Chucky later meets with John, his voodoo instructor from years past, and asks why his gunshot wound bled. John states that it was due to Chucky's slowly turning human; the more time he spends in the doll, the more human he becomes until the doll's body eventually becomes his own. Chucky makes a request for a way for him to have his so he can have his soul leave the doll's body, but John refuses as Chucky has corrupted everything he taught Chucky. However John gives in after Chucky tortures him through a voodoo doll, and informs Chucky that in order to leave his old body and possess a human being, thus become human himself, he must possess the first person who he confided with about the truth of Chucky's actually being alive and not truly a doll (hence 'the first person he told his secret to'...which is Andy) and in particular; what his real name is. Chucky knows that his new body would automatically have to be Andy's and laughs, joking that he was "going to be six-years-old" again, then leaves John to die in his apartment.
Mike and Karen find John before he dies, learning that Andy is in danger and that the only way to stop Chucky is to destroy his heart.
Meanwhile at the hospital, Andy becomes terrified after seeing Chucky climbing up the stairway to the hospital and tries to inform the head doctor that Chucky was here and was after him, but his pleas and warnings fall on deaf ears. This leaves a frustrated Andy in tears and hysterics.
Andy escapes from the psychiatric unit as Chucky brutally kills the same doctor. Mike and Karen rush back to the apartment hoping that Andy is there. Chucky reaches the apartment through the furnace and knocks Andy unconscious with a baseball bat to possess him. After a prolonged struggle, Chucky is tossed into the fireplace by Karen and set on fire.
Still alive he attacks again but Karen takes Mike's gun and shoots part of Chucky's body until they presume that he is dead. However, Mike's partner Mario comes and plays with Chucky's head. His arm pops out from the air ventilation, strangles him, and Mike shoots Chucky's heart. Mike then takes the rest of the body parts as evidence.
Child's Play 2 (1990)
In the sequel, set two years after the first film, Andy lives in a shelter, and his mother is under psychiatric observation for supporting Andy's story. Bad publicity about Play Pals Inc. (the company of the Good Guy Doll franchise) is all over the newspapers regarding Chucky. The company has the original doll reconstructed for analysis, and a worker is electrocuted at the completion of that process
A Yuppie-style couple with no children of their own who have often fostered children, Joanne and Phil Simpson (Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham), agree to foster Andy until his mother is able to look after him again. Andy meets an older girl, Kyle (Christine Elise), who is also living with them.
Mattson, a Play Pals executive, takes the rebuilt Chucky doll off the factory grounds, under the orders of Play Pal's president, Mr. Sullivan. While doing so, he goes in to a liquor store for vodka for his girlfriend for their two week dating anniversary. While he is alone Chucky manages to call the crisis center, and learns Andy's whereabouts by pretending to be his "Uncle Charles"; once Mattson returns he forces him to drive him to Andy's new home, then kills him by suffocating him once they've stopped in a parking lot. Breaking into Andy's foster home, Chucky finds another Good Guy doll named "Tommy" and takes its place by destroying and burying it in the yard.
The following day, Phil confronts Kyle and Andy about the broken vase, which Chucky used to wreck Tommy. When both children defend themselves, Phil makes the decision to ground both of them for the crime, believing that one was guilty and may confess as a result. Meanwhile, Kyle and Andy gradually form a relationship with one another seeing as they were both foster children and "homeless" and were without their real parents. Andy finds Chucky, who he believes to be the Good guy doll Tommy, at the stairway and (remembering the clues that lead to the conclusion that Chucky was alive from the first film) checks to see if Chucky has batteries to assure himself that Tommy was just a doll. Andy is relieved to find batteries in Chucky's back that were most likely placed there by Play Pals Inc.,.
That same night, Chucky ties Andy to his bed and tries to possess Andy again, but is interrupted by Kyle who has snuck out to meet a boy and tries to successfully sneak back into Andy's room through a window without their foster parents' knowledge, most likely to check up on Andy or to because she heard Andy's screams and decided to find out the reason for this. Phil and Joanne then come into the room, alerted by the noises in Andy's room. Observing the scene, Phil and Joanne don't believe that Chucky is really alive and blame Kyle for tying Andy up. In order to calm Andy down, Phil throws Chucky into the basement. As Phil exits, Chucky gets up and realizes that he's bleeding, knowing now that he is turning human again and that he was losing time for him to try to possess Andy.
On Andy's first day of his new school, Chucky follows him onto the bus. He finds Andy's school paper and writes profanity ("Fuck you, bitch") on it and was indicatively left for his teacher. The seemingly strict teacher, Miss Kettlewell, gives Andy detention as punishment right after Andy finds out that Chucky was in the classroom and followed him to school when putting a toy in the cupboard Chucky was hiding in. Noticing Andy's attention directed at Chucky, Miss Kettlewell also throws and locks Chucky in the classroom closet. She then leaves the room to call Phil and Joanne about the incident, also locking Andy into the classroom. Andy goes to the closet door, where Chucky proceeds to beat on the door, at first sugar coating Andy to let him out but changes his promises to threats when Andy doesn't comply. Andy escapes the locked room through the classroom window and when Miss Kettlewell returns and discovers Andy's missing, she unlocks the closet door and goes in to find Andy, then Chucky kills her by beating her to death with a ruler stick.
Back at the house, Andy tells Phil and Joanne that Chucky followed him to school. Fed up with and frustrated by Andy's constant beliefs about Chucky, Phil takes Andy to the cellar door to show Chucky lying exactly where he was when he was thrown down there. Andy is shocked and discouraged to find Chucky at the bottom of the stairway to the basement, exactly as he and Phil left him the previous night. That night, Andy takes an electric knife from the kitchen and goes down into the cellar intending to finally confront Chucky himself. Chucky attacks Andy, and kills Phil, who came down to investigate the noise. Joanne is horrified to find her husband dead and believes it is Andy who murdered him. Kyle, who discovers Phil next, does not believe Chucky is the culprit but but does not necessarily think Andy is either.
Andy is taken back to the center after being suspected for involuntary manslaughter. Kyle later finds Chucky and puts him in a trash bin outside. While spending time outdoors, she finds what appears to be a grave out in the backyard, and discovers the "Tommy" doll after digging it up, and then discovers that Chucky is gone from the trash can bin. Kyle enters the house to warn Joanne of what is truly happening. When upstairs, Kyle finds Joanne dead, and then is attacked by Chucky, who forces her to drive him to the Crisis Center. Kyle attempts to fight and harm Chucky after she causes him to fly out of the car window when she suddenly stops the van after driving so fast to reluctantly follow Chucky's instructions. Under Chucky's threats, Kyle sets off the fire alarm of the Center to get everyone downstairs and out of the building to find Andy. Chucky kills the center's director who accompanies Andy as they descend the stairs and find Kyle and Chucky, then locks Andy and himself in a room with Kyle outside the door.
Chucky and Andy escape the crisis center, then forces Andy as he hangs on to his back by his shirt, into the back of a van, in which Kyle pursues them. After a wild car chase after the van, Kyle manages to get the driver to stop, but Chucky escapes with Andy into the nearby Play Pals factory.
When assured that they were finally alone, Chucky knocks Andy unsconscious and tries to performs his ritual, but the ritual is suddenly halted. Because by then it was too late. Realizing that he is trapped in the doll's body, Chucky is infuriated and changes his purpose to killing Andy in retaliation. Kyle finds Chucky and Andy, and helps Andy escape with Chucky pursuing them. She manages to trap the doll by dropping a gate on his hand. To get out, Chucky tears his own hand off, then replaces it with his knife, and continues chasing them into the manufacturing floor. After chasing them to a conveyor belt where the dolls are constructed, Andy and Kyle staple Chucky to the conveyor platform and he is impaled with doll parts. They escape through the factory thinking they have killed him, but Chucky returns, having cut off his own legs to escape. Ultimately, Andy coats Chucky with molten plastic after Chucky chases him near a vat containing the plastic. Kyle then forces an air hose into his mouth. The resulting air pressure builds up and causes Chucky's head to explode, killing him.
In a televised alternate ending it reveals that half of Chucky's exploded head is in a vat of melted plastic, which in turn creates another doll head (after sinking into the plastic) which smiles.
Eight years later, he reopens the factory. Chucky's remains are lifted away by a claw-crane. As it passes a vat of plastic, the remains bleed into it, causing Chucky's soul to inhabit a new doll. Chucky kills the CEO of the toy company by strangling him to death and traces Andy on the CEO's computer, finding him at a military school. Chucky delivers himself to the school, hoping to transfer into Andy's body, but is instead found by young recruit Tyler who, once finds out the package for Andy is a Good guy doll, decides to keep the doll for himself. Chucky is aggravated by this twist of events at first, but inadvertently reveals his secret when realizing that Tyler is completely unknowing to who he really is and his true intentions, unlike Andy, thus he'd be easier to manipulate and repossess. Chucky's former plans thus transit to killing Andy to prevent him interfering as much as to avenge the suffering he endured because of Andy's past resistances. He sabotages a game of capture-the-flag, replacing one sides paintballs with live ammunition. Tyler eventually realizes what Chucky wants to do as well as what kind of person he truly is and runs, seeing now that Chucky was a "bad guy". The chase leads them into a fairground ride, where a scythe cuts half of Chucky’s face off. Chucky catches Tyler, planning to transfer his soul, but is shot several times by Andy, as Andy cuts Chucky's hand off while he is grabbing at Tyler and is then thrown into a large fan, where he is sliced to pieces.
Bride of Chucky (1998)
Right after the end of Child's Play 3, Chucky's remains are recovered by his old girlfriend Tiffany, who has searched for the legendary Chucky doll for evidently and approximately ten years. She stitches the pieces back together, and performs the ritual to bring Chucky to life. At first the Chucky doll remains comatose, and this leads to Tiffany believing that the ritual did not work. Meanwhile, teenagers Jesse and Jade have made an attempt (indicatively not their first) to see each other again despite Jade's uncle, Warren her legal guardian, preventing any further reunion between the couple. They are driving through the rain in their openly gay friend, David's car when they are soon pulled over by Needlenose, a local policeman who is hired by Warren to track down Jesse and Jade if together. Needlenose agrees to this task due to an increase in his paycheck as a result.
Back at Tiffany's home, she is visited by Damian, a current flame who obviously means very little to Tiffany. He tries to deceive her into thinking he has committed a murder to please her by editing a bloody photo of his alleged "victim" that he has taken of himself, but Tiffany quickly catches on and calls him a "pathetic worm" and flings the card on Damian's head. It is at this point that Tiffany turns around to see that Chucky was no longer lying in the place that she left him, which was the pentagram she made for on the floor of the trailer for the ritual. Tiffany then proceeds to find ways for Damian to stumble upon Chucky in the trailer, and have Chucky kill him as a result. When Damian tries to seduce Tiffany, Chucky appears sitting beside her. After Damian makes fun of Chucky and Tiffany's "obsession" with him, Tiffany deceives Damian into thinking that they were actually going to have sex and use Chucky as a "toy". She handcuffs Damian to her bed and places Chucky on Damian's chest, and dances for Damian, but truthfully just for Chucky. After Damian crosses a final line by saying, "He ain't big enough to take care of a woman like you, babe" Chucky comes back to life and tells Damian, "It ain't the size that counts, asshole, it's what you do with it". He tears out Damian's labret piercings, causing excessive bleeding that could prove to be fatal, and suffocates and kills Damian with pillow. Afterwards, Tiffany and Chucky share a happy reunion. However it doesn't last when she learns that what she thought was an engagement ring he left her was just a piece of stolen jewelry from one of his previous victims named Vivian Van Pelt. She promptly refuses to help Chucky become human, and locks him in a baby crib, intending to just keep him there as a prop for the next couple of days. She taunts Chucky, coming home and telling him that she thinks he was right when he said it would be best if they got married, to later bash Chucky's hopes of being freed by giving him a doll bride to "marry" instead (in which Chucky gives his famous quote, "You are so dead" in response to Tiffany's cruel joke). It is hinted that Tiffany originally plans to move on to another guy when she asks Jesse, who happens to be her neighbor, if he would be free to hang out some time later on while getting rid of Damian's body, who she locks away in a chest.
Later that night while taking a bath and watching the news about Officer Bailey's and Damian's bodies being discovered and later on The Bride of Frankenstein, Chucky escapes using the sharp engagement ring as the bars in the crib are wood, and in retaliation, kills Tiffany by throwing a small TV in her bathtub and electrocuting her, and then transferring her soul into the bride doll as a form of revenge. Tiffany is furious when she wakes up and discovers what Chucky has done, but reluctantly follows Chucky's lead when she realizes that in order to transfer her soul into a human body, they would both need an amulet that was buried with Chucky's body in Hackensack, New Jersey, since Chucky wore it the night he died as Charles Lee Ray, the Lakeshore Strangler.
The two of them soon hatch a plan, and Tiffany calls Jesse to ask him to take two dolls to a "friend" at the Hackensack cemetery in New Jersey and promises a couple thousand dollars as a reward for complying. Pulled in by the money and the thought of what he could do with it for himself and Jade, Jesse decides to do the favor for Tiffany. Jesse stops by Tiffany's to pick up Chucky and Tiffany and finds them in their doll state. He then goes to Jade's to pick her up and run away with her. It is then that Chucky and Tiffany plan to possess the young couple once they have the amulet needed for the ritual.
During the road trip to Hackensack, Chucky and Tiffany kill anyone who stands in Jesse's and Jade's way, therefore their, way; including Jade's uncle who comes to leave a bag of drugs for Needlenose to find and arrest Jesse for, and Needlenose who pulls Jesse and Jade over, finds the drugs, and intends to arrest Jesse thus stopping the teen's trip to Hackensack to Chucky's amulet. Jesse and Jade are soon on the run when they are informed by David that the police are pinning the murders on them, comparing Jesse and Jade to "Bonnie and Clyde", a couple who were coincidentally mass murderers themselves. Jesse and Jade are completely unaware that Chucky and Tiffany are not only alive, but the real culprits behind the murders and Warren's disappearance (it is not known yet that he was murdered as well) and begin to gradually suspect each other, both too horrified and in love to leave the other and sell the other out to the cops.
Jesse and Jade soon stop at a hotel, and are married by the hotel's minister. While watching the news about the murders and the cops' search for them in their hotel room, their room is entered by another pair of intrusive newlyweds, Russ and Diane. While talking, Diane steals Jade's ring as well as the money Tiffany gives to them for taking them to the cemetery. Angered, and calling Diane a "thieving slut", she decides to kill both Russ and Diane that night. Later on, she carries out her decision by throwing a beer bottle up into a mirror that hung over the couple's bed while the couple were having sex, and Russ and Diane are killed by the sharp shards of glass that fall onto them. The glass also destroys the water bed, causing it to explode and for water and blood to engulf the bedroom floor. Chucky witnesses the killings, and acknowledges his deep love for Tiffany as a result and tells her that he loves her. He then proposes to her, and they themselves proceed to make love, leading to the humorous dialogue they have about Chucky not needing a "rubber" when he was a rubber-skinned doll himself.
The hotel's housekeeper finds Diane's and Russ's corpses, and her screams are alerted by Jesse and Jade who check to see what the matter is and find the bloodbath themselves. They flee from the hotel with Chucky and Tiffany, horrified and suspicious of one another more than ever. They argue with each other, accusing each other of all of the evil doings that had occurred throughout the whole road trip when they are approached by David, who had tracked them down after speaking to each one about the couple's suspicions of each other.
Chucky and Tiffany finally reveal themselves to Jesse and Jade after David finds Warren's body during the continued trip to Hackensack and alerts the nearby police. David, terrified by the dolls, backs out of the van and unknowingly into a passing truck, which kills him brutally and immediately. After escaping the police, Chucky and Tiffany reveal their true identities to the teens as well as their true inentions to possess them in order to become human, again. The group finds an old couple on a mobile home, with most likely both Chucky and Tiffany killing off the elderly couple to gain a "new set of wheels" to throw off the police.
During the ride in the mobile home to Hackensack, Jesse and Chucky ride in the front with Chucky armed with a gun to most likely keep Jesse under control, while Tiffany prepares Jade (by putting Tiffany's style of make-up on her) for the ritual and prepares Swedish meatballs and bakes cookies for Chucky as well. After Tiffany serves him a plate of cookies, Chucky tells Jesse about the new pleasures of being married and having a wife, saying he would have never "waited this long to tie a knot". Jesse spots the pile of dirty dishes left by Chucky, and remembers that Tiffany, due to morals and old sayings her mother would consistently tell her as a little girl, despises men who enjoy being served to but can at least wash the dishes (this would be, according to Tiffany, a guy treating his girl right). Jesse comments on Tiffany "not being much of a housekeeper on the other hand", which leads things between Chucky and Tiffany in the direction that he hoped for when Chucky orders Tiffany to wash the dishes.
Chucky's callous request of her to wash the dishes ("Those dishes aren't going to wash themselves, you know") sparks Tiffany's fury, and leads to an explosive argument between the two that involves throwing plates and a cookie at one another. Jade then takes advantage of the situation and Tiffany's distractions by kicking her into the oven. Jesse then shoves Chucky through the window, but Chucky shoots at both Jade and Jesse at the same time and causes Jesse to drive the mobile home off the highway and crashes it, nearly destroying the vehicle.
Jade escapes the mobile home with the help of Jesse, who saves her from the vengeful Tiffany before this. However, Jade is later found by Chucky who still has the gun he had on the mobile home. Jesse manages to get off the mobile home before it explodes due to broken wire/ shocks coming into contact with gasoline, and finds Tiffany. Seeing Chucky forcing Jade to go to the cemetery and find his grave, Jesse grabs Tiffany by her hair and runs off, pursuing Chucky and Jade while carrying the horribly injured and burned Tiffany.
Finding his grave and killing a man who is digging it up for investigation into the murders (one detail within the news stories was that the DNA found on a lighter that was at the scene of the crime possessed the DNA of Charles Lee Ray, the Lakeshore Strangler, which was Chucky's former identity before he was shot down by the police and transferred his soul into a Good Guy Doll to escape death), Chucky forces Jade to open the coffin, then has her take the amulet and toss it up to him.
Jesse, with Tiffany, finds them, and both Jesse and Jade trade both women to have their own wives back. Chucky ties up Jesse and Jade, and, with a now reluctant Tiffany, proceeds to perform the ritual. Right before the ritual is completed, Tiffany stops it by slipping a knife out of that Chucky left in his pocket while they kiss and stabs him in the back. Chucky falls, and when he looks up at Tiffany and asks her why, she tells him to just look at them, and that they truly belonged dead. Chucky appears to have lost consciousness at first, in which Tiffany tells him good-bye, "Good-bye, Darling. I'll see you in Hell". However, as Jesse and Jade free themselves and Tiffany watches them and is thus distracted, Chucky picks up a shovel and attacks her. Finding another shovel, Tiffany fights back and the two proceed to fight to the death, with Chucky coming out on top after he fatally stabs her.
Jesse then knocks Chucky into his grave, and just at that moment a crime investigator shows up to arrest Jesse and Jade. He stops and discovers the truth, however, when he sees the distraught Chucky who is trying to escape, yelling out, "Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!" Jade grabs the gun from the crime investigator, and before she kills him, Chucky tells her that he'll come back because he always does, but ends his fifth life with a quite comical quote, "But dying is such a bitch." Jade then proceeds to shoot Chucky multiple times and kills him.
The crime investigator lets Jesse and Jade go, and tells them that he would tell the police that they weren't the murderers after all. As Jesse and Jade leave the gruesome scene, the crime investigator stays behind waiting for the cops' arrival. Wondering how to tell the police the truth and that Chucky and Tiffany were the culprits behind the murders the whole time, he stumbles upon Tiffany who suddenly awakens in labor. The crime investigator realizes that Tiffany is in labor, and watches, horrified, as she gives birth to her and Chucky's child, Glen. The movie transitions into its ending credits with a short shot of the newborn baby jumping up and promptly killing the crime investigator, thus hinting that a sequel of Chucky's legacy and the Child's Play series is soon to follow.
Seed of Chucky (2004)
Six years after the previous movie, Chucky and Tiffany's child Glen/Glenda, born in the closing moments of the previous film, locates animatronic models of the two created for a film based on their exploits. Using a voodoo ritual, the puppet brings the models to life. Chucky is initially shocked that he has a child and faints, but then enthusiastically tries to bring the new addition into the "family business." But Tiffany, feeling a new sense of parental responsibility, wants them to swear off killing, while at the same time planning for them to inhabit the bodies of Jennifer Tilly, her chauffeur, and her unborn child. Chucky, exasperated by these experiences, finally decides that he prefers life as a doll to life as a human. He tries to kill Tiffany and Glen, but the child doll intervenes and hacks Chucky to pieces. Tiffany succeeds in transferring her and her child's souls into their desired bodies. Five years later, at Glen's birthday party, he is sent a package containing Chucky's severed arm, which then tries to strangle him and the film ends with Chucky laughing.
Curse of Chucky (2013)
Chucky arrives to wreak havoc within a family that’s regrouped for a funeral. In the wake of her mother’s passing, a young woman – in a wheelchair since birth – is forced to put up with her sister, brother-in-law, niece and their nanny as they say their goodbyes to their mother. When people start turning up dead, the fearless Nica discovers the culprit might be a “strange doll” she was sent a couple of days earlier.
Chucky Family Side Shows
Bride of Chucky
