SEED OF CHUCKY
(one star)
Badly directed slasher comedy.
Running time: 87 minutes. Rated R (gory violence, profanity). At the Empire, Loews 84th Street, the Union Square, others.
‘SEED of Chucky,” the campy and fitfully amusing – but funereally paced – latest offspring of the killer-doll franchise that began with 1988’s “Child’s Play,” gleefully rifles the graves of other movies for inspiration.
In the first five minutes, director Don Mancini – who wrote the four previous editions, which became more comic if no less gory with “Bride of Chucky” in 1998 – has clumsily re-staged both the staircase and shower scenes from “Psycho.”
Later, he artlessly evokes “Rear Window” in a scene where a paparazzo played by director John Waters watches Chucky pleasure himself in silhouette.
Perhaps “Pink Flamingos” director Waters could have done justice to Mancini’s relentlessly vulgar script, which borrows from various installments of “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream” the now-familiar premise of actual horror-film characters interacting with characters playing them in a horror film about the characters.
Chucky – a serial murderer whose spirit took up residence in a profanity-spouting doll back in the first film – and his doll wife, Tiffany (animated by the spirit of his dead girlfriend, played last time around by Jennifer Tilly), killed each other at the end of “Bride,” but their offspring brings them back to life with a magic amulet.
The lovers promptly begin a loud argument about whether their anatomically incorrect and sexually confused son/daughter should be called Glen or Glenda – itself a reference to Ed Wood’s notoriously inept gender-bending drama.
Unlike his homicidal parents, Glen/Glenda – also known as S – – – head – is a gentle soul, which prompts Tiffany (again voiced by Jennifer Tilly) to take a 12-step vow to stop her killing habit.
Chucky (voiced as always by Brad Dourif) is having none of this, and insists that Glen/Glenda is a chip off the old block when he/she accidentally melts off Waters’ face in an acid bath.
This is one of the more decorous killings in the blood-spattered “Seed of Chucky,” in which characters are disemboweled, decapitated and immolated.
A car carrying a Britney Spears look-alike flies off a cliff and explodes and Santa Claus is turned into human sushi in a graveyard.
In addition to providing the voice for Tiffany, Tilly appears as a double-chinned, has-been Oscar winner named Jennifer Tilly who is reduced to starring in the latest Chucky movie while whining about Julia Roberts’ career.
Tilly is so desperate she’s not only eager to sleep with the director (rapper Redman, playing “himself”‘) of a biblical epic to land the role of the Virgin Mary – she offers to call her “Bound” co-star, Gina Gershon, over for a threesome.
“You have no self-esteem,” Tilly’s assistant tells her.
To reinforce this point, Tilly takes a turkey baster full of Chucky’s, well, seed.
Tiffany, the doll, uses the baster to impregnate Tilly so the actress can produce a child the Glen/Glenda doll’s spirit can occupy – after Tiffany herself takes over Tilly’s body.
Sadly, Tilly is more convincing playing Tiffany’s voice than playing “herself.”
As one character puts it, “No wonder your career is in trouble.”