#33 - The Worst Remake in History | Child's Play (2019)

Rabbits are the new pennywise. Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss Donnie Darko, the 2001 cult film directed by Richard Kelly and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Set in October 1988, the film follows Donnie Darko, an emotionally troubled teenager who inadvertently escapes a bizarre accident by sleepwalking. He has visions of Frank, a mysterious figure in a rabbit costume who informs him that the world will end in just over 28 days. Frank begins to manipulate Donnie to commit several crimes. Follow the Complete Guide to Horror Movies podcast on our social channels below. ↪ Facebook ↪ TikTok ↪ Twitter ↪ Instagram ↪ Subscribe to our YouTube channel ↪ Tip us $5 Development began in late 1997 when Kelly had graduated from film school and started writing scripts. He took an early idea of a jet engine falling onto a house with no one knowing its origin and built the story around it. Kelly insisted on directing the film himself and struggled to secure backing from producers until 2000, when Barrymore's Flower Films agreed to produce it on a $4.5 million budget. Filming took 28 days in the summer of 2000, mostly in California. The soundtrack features a cover of "Mad World" by Tears for Fears by American musicians Gary Jules and Michael Andrews, which went to No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks. The film premiered on January 19, 2001 at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by a limited theatrical release on October 26. Because the film's advertising featured a crashing plane and the September 11 attacks had occurred a month and a half before, it was scarcely advertised, which affected its box office performance; it grossed just $517,375 in its initial run. Donnie Darko received positive reviews and was listed No. 2 in Empire's "50 Greatest Independent Films of All Time", and No. 53 in Empire's "500 Greatest Movies of All Time". After reissues, it went on to gross $7.5 million worldwide. The film went on earning more than $10 million in US home video sales and gained a cult following. Kelly released Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut in 2004. The film was adapted into a stage production in 2007 and a sequel, S. Darko, followed in 2009 without Kelly's involvement. In 2021, he announced that work on a new sequel is in progress. Tune in next week to our recap on Wes Craven's 'The People Under the Stairs'. #donniedarko #jakegyllenhaal #franktherabbit #horror #movie #death #horrorfilm #splatter #deathscene #blood #gore #scarymovie #horror #completeguidetohorror #horrormovie #scary #creepy #graphic #teenangst #mcr #mychemicalromance #teenagers #bluesclues #sethrogen #pineappleexpress #amberheard #drawntogether #daveighchase #madworld #chucky #riverdale #drewbarrymore #thepeopleunderthestairs #wescraven

24 Sep 202249min

Starring Hugh Grant, the personification of teeth himself! Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss The Lair of the White Worm, the 1988 British horror comedy film loosely based on the 1911 Bram Stoker novel of the same name and drawing upon the English legend of the Lambton Worm. The film was written and directed by Ken Russell and stars Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi. Angus Flint (Peter Capaldi) is a Scottish archaeology student excavating the site of a convent at the Derbyshire bed and breakfast run by the Trent sisters, Mary (Sammi Davis) and Eve (Catherine Oxenberg). He unearths an unusual skull which appears to be that of a large snake. Angus believes it may be connected to the local legend of the d'Ampton 'worm', a mythical snake-like creature from ages past said to have been slain in Stonerich Cavern by John d'Ampton, the ancestor of current Lord of the Manor, James d'Ampton (Hugh Grant). When a pocket watch is discovered in Stonerich Cavern, James comes to believe that the d'Ampton worm may be more than a legend. The watch belonged to the Trent sisters' father, who disappeared a year earlier near Temple House, the stately home of the beautiful and seductive Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe). The enigmatic Lady Sylvia is in fact an immortal priestess to the ancient snake god, Dionin. As James correctly predicted, the giant snake roams the caves which connect Temple House with Stonerich Cavern. Lady Sylvia steals the skull and abducts Eve Trent, intending to offer her as the latest in a long line of sacrifices to her snake-god. Before Lady Sylvia can execute her evil plan, Angus and James rescue Eve and destroy both Lady Sylvia and the giant snake. However, Lady Sylvia bites Angus before she dies, and Angus finds himself cursed to carry on the vampiric, snake-like condition, after he finds, to his shock, that the snake anti-venom he used was actually a new form of arthritis medication he got by mistake. When Lord D'Ampton invites him for a dinner celebration, Angus sinisterly smiles and accepts his offer. Follow the Complete Guide to Horror Movies podcast on our social channels below. ↪ Facebook ↪ TikTok ↪ Twitter ↪ Instagram ↪ Subscribe to our YouTube channel ↪ Tip us $5 On movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, as of September 2021, the film had an approval rating of 68%, based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10.Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four and called it "a respectable B-grade monster movie." Variety called it "a rollicking, terrifying, post-psychedelic headtrip." Russell said the movie "became a cult film, appropriately enough, down under. It did well in other countries, but not in Merrie England, where our dour-faced critics insisted on taking it seriously. How on earth can you take seriously the vision of Catherine Oxenberg, dressed in Marks & Spencer’s underwear, being sacrificed to a fake, phallic worm two hundred feet long?" Russell later used Donohoe and Davis in The Rainbow.Donohoe says there was some talk of a sequel but none was made. #horror #movie #death #horrorfilm #splatter #deathscene #blood #gore #scarymovie #horror #completeguidetohorror #horrormovie #scary #creepy #graphic #hughgrant #thelairofthewhiteworm #britishhorror #bmoviehorror #monster #monstermash</

17 Sep 202237min

Teenagers scare the living sh*t out of me! Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss Eden Lake, the British 2008 horror in which Nursery school teacher Jenny Greengrass and her boyfriend Steve Taylor journey to a remote lake in the wooded English countryside. Steve has visited the spot before, and remembers it as an open area, but since his visit the land has been bought up by a development company. Despite “Keep Out” signs, they proceed to the lakeside, where they meet Adam, a young boy gathering insects. As Steve and Jenny relax beside the lake, the peaceful setting is disrupted by a gang of rowdy teenagers, who have ridden their bicycles to a spot within a few metres of the young couple. Steve asks them to keep the noise down, but is met with abuse, and one boy accuses Steve of ogling his girlfriend. The next morning Steve and Jenny find their food supplies infested with insects, and their car tire damaged by a bottle left behind by the teens. Driving into town for breakfast, Steve spots a house with bikes outside that he thinks belong to the teens. When no one answers the door, Steve enters the house and proceeds to snoop around. But on the return of Jon, the surly homeowner, Steve is obliged to make his escape from an upstairs window. Back at the lake, Steve goes scuba diving while Jenny sleeps on the shore. Steve has been planning to propose, and is starting a story about “finding” the ring in the lake when he discovers that the bag with their car keys, phone and wallet is missing; their car is also gone. Returning to town on foot, they avoid collision with their own car, driven recklessly through the woods by the gang's psychopathic leader, Brett. Finding the gang in the woods after nightfall, Steve demands the return of his belongings, only to be pounced by the knife-wielding teens. In the scuffle, Brett's rottweiler Bonnie is mortally knifed, provoking Brett into a maniacal rage. The couple grab the keys and drive off, but the gang throws stones at them, causing Steve to crash the car. With Steve trapped, Jenny is forced to run for help. Follow the Complete Guide to Horror Movies podcast on our social channels below. ↪ Facebook ↪ TikTok ↪ Twitter ↪ Instagram ↪ Subscribe to our YouTube channel ↪ Tip us $5 On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, 80% of 28 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A brutal and effective British hoodie-horror that, despite the clichés, stays on the right side of scary." Dennis Harvey reviewed the film for Variety and said that it was "an effectively harrowing Brit thriller-cum-horror pic," comparing it to Last House on the Left and Lord of the Flies. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw drew parallels with Deliverance, Straw Dogs and Blue Remembered Hills, and stated that "this looks to me like the best British horror film in years: nasty, scary and tight as a drum," concluding that the film was "exceptionally well made, ruthlessly extreme, relentlessly upsetting." Other critics, however, have savaged the film, denouncing it as an incitement to class prejudice against working class people in Britain. The Sun condemned the film's "nasty suggestion that all working-class people are thugs" while The Daily Telegraph concluded that "this ugly witless film

10 Sep 202231min

Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss the first season of Chucky, the sequel television series in the Child's Play/Chucky franchise. The series takes place after the events of Cult of Chucky. In the city of Hackensack, New Jersey, 14-year-old Jake Wheeler buys a Good Guy doll at a yard sale to use it in his contemporary art project. He later discovers that the doll is possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, who in this form is known as Chucky. Jake soon becomes a suspect in a series of strange events involving the doll, who unleashes a wave of shocking murders around the town. Some of the boy's classmates will also see themselves linked to these events. In addition, a series of flashbacks explore Charles's past as a seemingly normal kid who somehow became one of Hackensack's most notorious killers Follow the Complete Guide to Horror Movies podcast on our social channels below. ↪ Facebook ↪ TikTok ↪ Twitter ↪ Instagram ↪ Subscribe to our YouTube channel ↪ Tip us $5 Mancini, who began working for television on the Hannibal series, wanted to "reinvent" the Chucky franchise by bringing it to this format, and subsequently expand its fandom. He took a somewhat autobiographical approach to Jake's character, a gay teenager whose father is not accepting of the boy's "burgeoning sexual and romantic identity". The director cites this conflict as referential to his own adolescence. The show is a direct sequel to Cult of Chucky (2017), where the cliffhanger ending puts the titular character "on the road to a sexual exploration" after he transfers his soul to a female body. As an innovation for the character, Chucky is also used as a "metaphor" of the real life bully, guising himself to be "charming [and] funny" and manipulating people (what Mancini called "the ultimate bully"). By making him close to Jake, whose struggles are related to those of the LGBT community, the series also acknowledges that "Chucky himself has a queer kid" (Glen/Glenda, from Seed of Chucky). With eight hours to explore different sides of the story, Mancini saw the opportunity to elucidate the killer's past and answer questions that fans had been asking, like who his first victim was and how he met his bride Tiffany. While working on the show, Mancini was concerned with the potential impact the 2019 Child's Play reboot could have had in the franchise, speculating that, had it been a success, Universal Pictures could have decided to abandon the original film continuity. However, the reboot film was not the success Universal expected and a sequel has not been produced. On November 29, 2021, USA Network and Syfy renewed the series for a second season which is set to premiere in 2022. #horror #movie #death #horrorfilm #splatter #deathscene #blood #gore #scarymovie #horror #completeguidetohorror #horrormovie #scary #creepy #graphic #gay #lgbt #chucky #charlesleeray #andybarclay #donmancini #braddourif #childsplay #gayhorror #cultofchucky #tiffany #tiffanydoll #jennifertilly #devonsawa #scifi #scifichannel #lexi #tvshow #chuckytvseries #chuckytv #glen #glenda #nonbinary #transrights #wheatus #teenagedirtbag

4 Sep 202245min

Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss Cult of Chucky, the direct-to-DVD and streaming sequel to Curse of Chucky (2013) and the seventh instalment in the Child's Play/Chucky franchise. In 2017, Andy Barclay has been torturing the disembodied head of Chucky for four years. Meanwhile, wheelchair-bound Nica Pierce has been in a mental institution after being framed by Chucky for the murders of her family. Nica now believes she was responsible for the murders and that Chucky was a manifestation of her psychosis. Dr. Foley, Nica's doctor, has her transferred to a medium-security psychiatric hospital. In group therapy, Nica meets Malcolm, a man with multiple-identity disorder; Angela, a woman who believes she is dead; Claire, a woman who burned her house down; and Madeleine, a patient who smothered her infant son. Foley introduces a therapy technique involving a Good Guy doll. Most of the patients are unsettled except for Madeleine, who treats it as her baby. Nica is visited by Tiffany Valentine, the legal guardian of her niece Alice, and is devastated to learn that Alice has died. Tiffany leaves Nica a Good Guy doll, which she claims was a gift from Alice. That night, Chucky awakens and discovers Nica has slit her wrists. The next morning, Nica finds that her wrists have been stitched up and that Angela has been killed. After realizing "Valentine" was the last name of Chucky's girlfriend, Nica realizes Chucky is real. Fearing Madeleine is in danger, Nica has Malcolm warn her. Madeleine throws both the doll and Malcolm into an empty grave, but they are rescued by orderlies. Malcolm begins to refer to himself as "Charles" and act in a manner similar to Chucky, making Nica suspect he has been possessed. Chucky then kills Claire by decapitating her. Andy learns about the murders and realizes Chucky has somehow managed to transfer his soul into multiple bodies at once. Follow the Complete Guide to Horror Movies podcast on our social channels below. ↪ Facebook ↪ TikTok ↪ Twitter ↪ Instagram ↪ Subscribe to our YouTube channel ↪ Tip us $5 In December 2013, following the release of Curse of Chucky, Don Mancini confirmed that he was planning on developing a seventh installment in the Chucky franchise. By February 2015, Mancini was in the process of writing the script for the film. A year later, Mancini, Jennifer Tilly and Fiona Dourif confirmed that shooting would soon begin for the film. The production office for the film was opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in December 2016. Subsequently in January 5, the premise, cast, production schedule and distribution details for Cult of Chucky were revealed, with shooting set to commence four days later. Tony Gardner returned as one of Chucky's puppeteers. In an October 2013 interview, Mancini revealed that since Child's Play 3, he had always wanted to introduce the concept of "Multiple Chuckys" but was unable to do so due to budget constraints. He eventually used the concept in Cult of Chucky, 26 years later. A reference to Glen/Glenda (a character from Seed of Chucky) was cut out of the film, although it was something that Mancini "definitely wanted to keep". The film received a nomination for Best DVD or Blu-ray Release at the 44th Saturn Awards and is followed by the Chucky television series, r

20 Aug 202224min

Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss Curse of Chucky, the 2013 direct-to-DVD sequel that reignited the Chucky franchise as it returned to a more horror centric film. In 2013, a Good Guy doll called Chucky mysteriously arrives in the mail at the isolated home of paraplegic Nica Pierce and her mother Sarah. Sarah repeatedly and compulsively paints pictures of the same flowers. Later that night, Sarah is found dead from a stab wound and her death is ruled as a suicide. Nica is visited by her sister Barb, accompanied by her husband Ian, their daughter Alice, live-in nanny Jill, and priest Father Frank. Alice finds Chucky and is allowed to keep him. That evening, while Alice and Nica are making chili for dinner, Chucky secretly pours rat poison into one of the dinner bowls. Father Frank eats the poison. After he leaves, he gets sick and ends up in a car accident that decapitates him. That night, Nica wonders where the doll came from and investigates Chucky on the internet; she finds news articles about the murders tied to both the doll and Charles Lee Ray. Follow the Complete Guide to Horror Movies podcast on our social channels below. ↪ Facebook ↪ TikTok ↪ Twitter ↪ Instagram ↪ Subscribe to our YouTube channel ↪ Tip us $5 In a post-credits scene set six months later, Chucky, still in his doll body, is delivered to Andy, now an adult. When Andy turns his back to answer a phone call from his mother, Chucky cuts his way out of the package with a knife. Chucky looks around the house, only to have Andy shoot him with a shotgun. In an August 2008 interview, Don Mancini and David Kirschner spoke of a planned reboot of the Chucky franchise, to be written and directed by Mancini. They described their choice of a remake over a sequel as a response to the will of the fans, who "want to see a scary Chucky movie again... to go back to the straightforward horror rather than the horror comedy." They indicated that Brad Dourif would return as the voice of Chucky. In a subsequent interview, Mancini described the remake as a darker and scarier retelling of the original film, but one that, while having new twists and turns, would not stray too far from the original concept. At a 2009 horror convention, Dourif confirmed his role in the remake. At a reunion panel at the Mad Monster Party horror and sci-fi convention, the cast and crew from the original film confirmed that both a remake and a spin-off are in development. Writer Don Mancini and producer David Kirschner worked on a sequel then titled Revenge of Chucky. On Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of 21 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's critics consensus states: "The franchise hex of disappointing sequels is broken by going back to basics in this chilling entry, restoring a sense of playfulness to the Chucky saga." According to Metacritic, the film received "mixed or average reviews" based on an average score of 58 out of 100 from 5 critics. An early review posted on Bloody Disgusting on August 2, 2013, was very favourable of the film. In it, Brad Miska stated, "Curse of Chucky may just be the best home video sequel since Wrong Turn 2. It's alarmingly good, which puts pressure on Universal to answer as to why they didn't let Mancini shoot this for theaters." He continued to say, "Ch

13 Aug 202231min

Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss Seed of Chucky, the 2004 sequel that takes a more comedic-horror turn for the Chuck franchise. The film is set six years after Bride of Chucky and follows a young doll named Glen, the son of Chucky and Tiffany, resurrecting his parents, causing chaos. Follow the Complete Guide to Horror Movies podcast on our social channels below. ↪ Facebook ↪ TikTok ↪ Twitter ↪ Instagram ↪ Subscribe to our YouTube channel ↪ Tip us $5 The film, shot in Romania, continues the series' evolution from the pure horror genre of the first three films to a hybrid horror-comedy. It was the last Child's Play film from the original continuity to be released in theaters, with all future instalments to be released direct-to-video until the 2019 reboot. The film was followed by another sequel, Curse of Chucky, released on home video and Netflix in 2013. Seed of Chucky grossed over $24 million against a $12 million budget, and received "mixed or average reviews" according to Metacritic. Production on a new film called Son of Chucky began on October 18, 1998, two days after the successful release of Bride of Chucky, whose director Ronny Yu was unable to return due to scheduling conflicts. Don Mancini, who is gay and was interested in exploring LGBT-related themes in the next film, decided to write a screenplay inspired by the 1953 cult classic Glen or Glenda in which Chucky's son is an innocent person suffering from gender dysphoria. He also decided to continue the shift in the series towards comedy after noting that horror villains such as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger became less scary as they became more familiar with audiences. Universal Pictures, which produced the previous three films and had expected a more conventional slasher film with the son being a murderous villain, rejected the script with the note "This is too gay." Production ultimately resumed when the project was approved by Focus Features after the successful release of Cabin Fever in 2003, and was ultimately released through Rogue Pictures. Mancini claimed in a podcast that prior casting Redman, he had offered to cast Quentin Tarantino as himself but he declined. All of the animatronic and makeup effects were the handiwork of Effects Designer Tony Gardner, who also appears in the film as himself in a cameo, and his company Alterian, Inc. In Australia, Seed of Chucky opened at #8 with $260,958 for the week of February 6–8, 2005 #horror #movie #death #horrorfilm #splatter #deathscene #blood #gore #scarymovie #horror #completeguidetohorror #horrormovie #scary #creepy #graphic #chucky #charlesleeray #andybarclay #donmancini #braddourif #childsplay #gayhorror #seedofchucky #tiffany #tiffanydoll #jennifertilly #sclub7 #hannahspearitt #kids #kylieminogue #robbiewilliams #sclubparty #johnwaters #gay #lgbt #britneyspears #familyguy #scarymovie #glen #glenda #redman

6 Aug 202217min