Kids Today: Facing Childhood Fears

We all have fears to face from our childhood (right? Just me?). My personal fear, that which has haunted my nightmares for over 20 years now, was Child's Play.

I love scary movies. I love Halloween. But for whatever reason, this 1988 horror release was something I could never bring myself to watch. Just the image of Chucky and his horrible sneer sends shivers up my spine. I remember when it came out and my dad made me watch a behind the scenes making of the movie in order to see how Chucky was actually just a robot. His hope was to make me see that it was just a movie, and Chucky isn't real at all, but of course...all I saw was a horrifying robot and some clips from the film. Poor Teddy Ruxpin was banished to my parents' closet, never to be played with again.Qualler has been urging me to confront my fear and watch Child's Play to see that it certainly isn't as scary as the previews and robots made it seem. This weekend I finally took the plunge, and I just have to say....IT'S TOTALLY AS SCARY AS I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE!!!

The concept of Child's Play draws on a couple of our deepest rooted fears: 1. I'll know that there's something evil in our midst and no one will believe me, 2. One of my toys will come alive and try to kill me, 3. The antagonist/evil being is impossible to kill and no matter how you try to fight back you cannot beat it.

Child's Play begins with a shoot off between your typical bad guy (I believe he's a strangler of some sort) and the cop who has finally got him trapped (in a toy store). Rather than die, the bad guy calls on some demon force and somehow places his soul inside a Good Guy doll (irony!). Of course this Good Guy doll is purchased in a back alley from a homeless peddler by Catherine Hicks (7th Heaven! Woot!) and we watch as the nightmare unfolds.

I'm not going to give you much more in the way of plot, except to say that this movie is totally creepy and scarier than it probably should be. In the end, the mom (who of course knows that her child isn't crazy and that the doll really is the one doing all the bad things) the cop (who eventually comes to realize that, indeed, the doll is alive and evil) and the little boy team up to defeat (or do they????) Chucky. But the existence of the sequels suggest that this little doll's reign of terror isn't over yet!

I won't be watching any more of these movies, but I suppose I'm glad I faced my childhood fear. If nothing else, it affirmed that I was totally right to be suspicious of all my toys because any one of them could actually just be housing a killer's being. Which raises other questions, such as: how do I know my dog isn't actually a killer in disguise, too? Maybe I won't be facing any more fears this October.

This entry was posted by Brigitte, on Thursday, October 21, 2010. You can leave your response.