["U Make Me Feel" by MK2 plays]
[James:] Welcome to The Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I'm James A. Janisse, and today, we return to our favorite killer doll, with Child's Play 3,
released in 1991, a mere nine months after Child's Play 2.
While the second film took place contemporaneously, in 1990,
Child's Play 3 jumps forward eight years into future, to 1998,
with Andy now a teenager at a military academy, trying to get over his traumatic past.
The film is directed by Jack Bender, who would go on to direct some of the most iconic episodes in two of my favorite shows, Lost and Game of Thrones.
But even his able direction isn't enough to make this movie all that interesting to me.
Child's Play 3 is mostly a retread of what we've already seen in the first two,
with Chucky sliding even further into self-parody, with increasingly comical one-liners.
Add in a bunch of very stereotypical characters, like the nerdy friend,
the badass chick love interest,
and the abusive drill sergeant,
and there's just not a lot of interesting stuff going on here.
But whether it's a good Chucky movie or a bad Chucky movie,
you know Chucky's gonna be doing one thing for sure, and that's killing people, so let's get to the kills.
["Slow Shock" by Silent Partner plays]
[James:] The movie begins in the Good Guy factory, and I guess in eight years nobody bothered to clean up the mess from the climax of second film.
They're finally getting around to it now, though, sweeping up doll parts and using a crane to take care of that Chucky mound,
'cause hell if those underpaid janitors are gonna touch that thing with their bare hands.
Too bad the crane punctures the body and causes Chucky's blood to run out,
so when it's moved over a vat of plastic, a bunch of it seeps in and starts to bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.
The swirling blood takes us into the title card, and the opening credits play against some cool drippy effects on a black background.
We cut to a dim, smoky boardroom, where Good Guy executives--
--that's, y'know, executives at the Good Guy company, not executives who'll like, lend you a ten-spot or help you move or anything--
--briefly go over the events of the first two films for the same generic-looking CEO from part 2, Mr. Sullivan.
He wants the Good Guy dolls to go back on the market, now that the hubbub surrounding Andy Barclay and his murder-doll-accusations have finally settled down.
[Sullivan:] Andy Barclay is ancient history. No one remembers him. Nobody cares.
[James:] Sullivan's replacement toady gifts him with the first new Good Guy doll off the assembly line,
and I bet you can guess what kind of factory defect it has.
Oh, and in case you were thinking, like I was, that a blood-infected vat of plastic would produce multiple murderous reincarnations of Chucky,
apparently Mancini wanted to do the same thing but couldn't because of budgetary restrictions.
And so, bound by the metric of ROI, we instead just get a singular incarnation of Chucky,
who escapes from his box when Sullivan isn't looking.
Sullivan goes to watch TV, and it seems like the anchor was just waiting for him to turn it on so he could talk.
[Anchor:] [pause] Well, despite a downdraft in the bond markets--
[James:] Dude's all like: 'Finally, I can speak!'
But then Chucky turns him off and starts messing with Sullivan,
tripping him with marbles and sending a whole bunch of remote control toys at him.
Then he sets up a pair of Good Guy dolls to talk to each other.
[Larry:] Hi, my name is Larry!
[Pauly:] Hi, my name is Pauly!
[James:] He finally shows himself openly by knocking Sullivan down, and delivering a one-liner right off the bat.
[Chucky:] Don't fuck with the Chuck!
[James:] He takes a dart and throws it into Sullivan's back, and somehow that manages to take this grown-ass man down.
Maybe it hit the right spot to paralyze him or something?
And then Chucky takes a yo-yo and wraps it around Sullivan's neck,
strangling him to death for our first kill of the movie, thirteen minutes in.
Fun fact, this is the longest it takes to get to a first kill in any Chucky movie, twice as long as any of the others, actually.
Chucky hops on the computer and finds Andy's information, revealing he's sixteen and is now at Kent Military Academy.
Let's go there!
Great, now we're here! And I immediately regret it.
The military school setting just bores me, and is one of the reasons this sequel does nothing for me.
Andy doesn't look like he's a big fan either, in his meeting with the head of the school, Colonel Cochrane.
Cochrane tells him he needs to let go of the idea of killer dolls, and essentially to kill the boy and let the man be born.
Part of killing the boy is getting rid of Andy's perfect 90's hair, so he goes to the barbershop,
where he manspreads and meets the little kid cadet, Tyler, who'll be our replacement cute kid for this movie.
He also meets the barber, Sergeant Botnick, a guy who's so into chopping off hair that it borders on sexual fetish.
During Andy's salon appointment, a commercial for Good Guy dolls comes on and freaks him the fuck out.
Tyler has the opposite reaction, getting real pumped about it in slow motion.
[Tyler:] [in slow motion] Wow.
[James:] Andy and his crappy new haircut ends up finding a guy tied up in the closet.
It's a fellow cadet named Whitehurst, a vintage-variety nerd who complains that he was tied up in the closet by Lieutenant Colonel Shelton,
a big ol' bully who also targets Andy with drill sergeant techniques he surely learned by watching Full Metal Jacket while falling asleep every night.
As Shelton is harassing Andy and Whitehurst, he gets called out by cadet De Silva,
who shows how tough she is by doing the twenty push-ups he demands of her.
Even if she stands up super funny when she's done.
Cadet Tyler is instructed to deliver this giant box to Andy,
and after two movies of watching these obscenely-sized Good Guy dolls, we know exactly what's inside.
Tyler discovers the contents of the package too, when it gets knocked out of his hands and tumbles down the steps,
tearing open the packaging to reveal the Good Guys logo.
This excites him like he's Tommy Jarvis coming across a bunch of skinny-dipping teens, so he runs off with it to inspect it up close.
[James:] Chucky bursts [sings] out of the box [claps]
and is not too pleased to see Tyler.
[Chucky:] Who the fuck are you?
[Tyler:] I thought you guys only said three sentences.
[Chucky:] I'm new and improved.
[James:] Tyler takes a liking to Chucky, who realizes that with his brand new body,
he can change the rules and transfer his soul into Tyler's body, as long he's the new first person he tells his full name to.
[Chucky:] My real name is Charles Lee Ray.
[James:] Chucky gets straight to work with his favorite game--
[Tyler:] What do you call this game, anyway?
[Chucky:] Hide The Soul.
[James:] --and starts his ritual with Tyler.
[Chucky:] Ade due damballa, give me the power, I beg of you!
[James:] Clouds roll in, but it's interrupted by Colonel Cochrane,
who reprimands Tyler for playing with dolls, and takes Chucky out to the trash.
As Cochrane takes Chucky to the dumpster, Andy sees them both and starts getting some PTSD.
Shelton yells at Andy for getting distracted, and he makes some other kid quote his favorite movie.
[Cadet:] This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for shooting, and this is for fun.
[James:] Probably not the best idea to constantly remind viewers of a far superior movie in a similar setting,
but you know what, you do you, Child's Play 3.
Chucky gets thrown in the dumpster, but when he's transferred into the garbage truck, he starts screaming and pretending to be a kid trapped back there,
alarming the driver, who gets out and climbs into the back of the truck to be a good Samaritan.
Chucky climbs out and starts the garbage truck up, trapping the poor driver inside,
where he gets crushed and grinded to death for our second kill of the film.
Dude made a living off that truck, but Chucky made a killing off it.
That night after Andy sets up his room with pictures of his mom,
Chucky attacks him and tells him that Andy's body is old news, and that he's going after Tyler now.
Andy throws a shoe at him--honestly, who does that?-- and starts beating the crap out of him just in time to look crazy when Shelton walks in.
Shelton threatens Andy because it was his shoe that got thrown, and then takes Chucky away to send to his kid sister for her birthday.
Later, when Andy tries to sneak into Shelton's room to get Chucky back,
he only manages to wake Shelton up, allowing Chucky to escape.
The Lieutenant Colonel gets real pissed and makes all the other cadets march around outside as punishment.
While this group flogging is going on, Tyler's trying to engage Chucky in a game of Hide And Seek,
which is a much funner game than Hide The Soul.
They're found hanging out in Colonel Cochrane's closet by De Silva and her friend, who talk to Chucky, prompting him to say his catchphrase.
[Chucky:] Hi, I'm Chucky, and I'm your friend to the end! Hidey-ho! Ha ha ha!
[James:] De Silva takes her lipstick and gives Chucky a perty mouth.
A noise scares them back to bed, so they leave Chucky behind in Cochrane's office as he comes down to investigate.
When Chucky pops out with his knife to kill him, Cochrane grabs at his chest.
Is that dude having a heart attack?
[Chucky:] You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me!
[James:] We're not, Chucky, because he is.
He must've been so shocked at seeing a boy in lipstick, his ticker just couldn't handle it anymore.
He falls backwards into his regulation glass display of military models that all commanders must have in their office and dies, his face a sweaty, sweaty mess.
After a moment of silence at breakfast the next morning, Sergeant Botnick makes his rounds looking for his next victim,
and probably giving himself blue balls with all the heads of hair he keeps grabbing.
Andy tries to talk to Tyler and tell him that Chucky's a bad guy, not a good guy,
and even though Tyler doesn't believe him, Andy gives him his knife for protection.
Sweet, free knife!
Botnick gets off cutting Whitehurst's hair, even delivering what he probably thinks is a pretty cool catchphrase.
[Sergeant Botnick:] Presto, you're bald!
[James:] And then he finds Chucky, and is like: 'Oh, I've never used a doll for this before, wonder what it feels like...'
He goes to give Chucky a buzz cut, but fights back with a razor and turns his shitty line back around on him.
[Chucky:] Presto, you're dead.
[James:] Hey, turns out a shitty line repurposed makes for an even shittier line. Who'd have thought?
With his throat slit, and bleeding out, Botnick dramatically looks at the man in the mirror,
and then collapses backwards onto his barber chair, dying during his profession like so many other people in these movies.
Whitehurst comes back to find Chucky standing behind Botnick's body, but gets scared away with a single 'Boo'
He runs outside, where the cadets are getting briefed for their annual war games,
where they'll be using paintball guns to shoot at each other.
Chucky oversees this and decides to make things more interesting by replacing the paint-balls in the red team guns with live ammunition.
Which I'm sure is totally possible, and not just a convenient writing shortcut here.
On the march out to their playtime-war, Andy tries to press Whitehurst,
to get him to admit to what he saw, but Whitehurst is a big baby, and refuses to say anything.
That night at battle-camp, after some ghost stories around the campfire,
Andy and De Silva go off alone into the woods, where they look at a carnival going on.
[De Silva:] Pretty cool, huh?
[James:] Uhhh, I guess? It's, it's a carnival.
Andy goes along with it though, and says carnivals are super cool,
and that earns him a steamy woodsy makeout sesh'
Andy sneaks out of his blue team camp to go find Tyler--who's on the red team--and protect him.
But when he gets to Tyler's tent, he finds him AWOL,
because he and Chucky are out in the woods playing Chucky's favorite game.
[Chucky:] We can play Hide The Soul...
[Tyler:] I'm tired, I don't wanna play that dumb game anymore.
[James:] Yeah, I'm with you, Tyler, that game needs some new DLC to keep it fresh.
Chucky hates DLC, though, so he takes out his knife and threatens Tyler,
causing Tyler to take Andy's knife out and stab Chucky in the shoulder.
Meanwhile, the blue team has moved out for a late-night attack, and they find Andy before he can locate Tyler.
Andy asks Whitehurst for backup on his story, but Whitehurst keeps his mouth shut because he knows the policy.
Don't ask about killer dolls, don't tell about killer dolls.
The blue team captures Tyler when he runs to them for help, and Chucky radioes in to tell them to hand over the little boy,
or the love interest gets killed, since he captured De Silva earlier, and is now holding her captive with a grenade.
Then he radioes the red team and tells them to come to the same location as the blue team, 'cause he's one chaotic evil dude.
Andy and Chucky meet up and make their prisoner exchange, trading Tyler for De Silva, which like, what the fuck, Andy?
The blue team shows up, and Chucky flips Shelton the bird,
distracting him long enough to stand there dumbfounded as the red team arrives and shoots him with their live ammunition.
The real bullet goes straight through Shelton and kills him in what is one of the most mean-spirited kills I've ever seen.
Like, Chucky just gave whoever fired that rifle PTSD for the rest of his fuckin' life.
I should add that red team cadet's emotional well-being to the kill count, honestly.
To spice things up even further, Chucky takes his grenade and lobs it through the air in slow motion to land right next to the group of cadets,
who are too busy arguing to notice it.
Whitehurst sees it though, and leaps on it just in the nick of time, blowing the fuck up and TOTALLY REDEEMING HIMSELF, with the sixth kill of the movie.
Way to go, Whitehurst, you lived a coward but died a hero.
Tyler manages to get away during all this confusion, running to that carnival that's pretty cool, huh?
He tries to enlist a security guard for help, giving a cute little salute in the process,
but I guess Chucky managed to beat him there, because the guard presents him to Tyler as a gift.
Alex and De Silva also arrive at the pretty cool carnival and find the body of the security guard lying on the ground behind his desk.
Looks like, what, he was shot in the head? Is that what's going here?
I guess so. But not with his own gun, that's still on him.
So De Silva loots his corpse and takes it, because she is a smart cookie.
Chucky directs Tyler into a ride called the Devil's Lair, 'cause I guess now he cares about ambiance for his incantation.
Shit, last movie he was doing it in the back of a newspaper truck,
but this time he feels the need to do it surrounded by a bunch of fake skeletons?
Eh, who knows, maybe it'll help the process.
By the way, look at this gigantic freaking ride. There's no fucking way this thing is part of a pop-up carnival.
You think a bunch of drunk carnies are gonna hang that many fake cobwebs? Hell nah.
Andy and De Silva track them down, but Chucky's a faster draw, so he shoots De Silva in the leg and gets away.
She gives Andy her gun as Tyler escapes into, what is this, another giant fuckin' room in this ride? What the hell?
And why are they running it without any people in the carts?
And why is that robot reaper's scythe so sharp?
Sharp enough to slice off part of Chucky's face as he's trying to get Tyler.
This ride is fuckin' insane, yo.
Chucky-Dent keeps stalking Tyler down, causing the kid to become the Mother of Dragons,
and fly on a prop that probably cost more than this carnival makes in a week.
Chucky hitches a ride on its feet, so both he and Tyler wind up at the top of this mountain, when the dragon knocks Tyler on his ass.
Chucky starts his reanimation incantation--
[Chucky:] Ade due damballa...
[James:] --and gets about as far as he always does, with the giant ominous clouds sweeping in over the carnival,
before Andy manages to climb to the top of the mountain and shoot off Chucky's chantin' arm.
Then he shoots him in the chest, knocking him down and away from Tyler.
When Chucky does his usual I'm-not-dead-yet jumpscare,
Tyler gives Andy his knife back, and Andy uses it to cut off Chucky's hand.
Then he pushes him off his back, so he falls for a very long time,
straight into a dangerously open giant fan-blade, that's just chilling inside this,
again, let me stress, pop-up fuckin' carnival operation.
The fan blows him to pieces, and gives us our Chucky death of the film.
And this is one of the most satisfying Chucky deaths in the series,
since that fan chopped up everything, so it definitely killed the harr.
De Silva is taken to the hospital as Andy looks after her, then he's taken away in a cop car,
for a future that'll surely ruin his development as a functional human being even more.
The movie ends with the carnival shutting down, probably for fuckin' good,
after their expensive-ass devil ride got fucked up with a bunch of blood and doll parts.
So yes, once again Chucky winds up dead.
But hey, y'know what? It's not about the destination death, but the kills you made along the way.
How many kills was that? Let's find out and get to the numbers
["U Make Me Feel" by MK2 plays]
[James:] Just like in the previous film, eight people died in Child's Play 3.
Unlike either of its predecessors, though, all the victims in this movie were male,
giving us one of those rare instances of a vic list consisting entirely of one gender.
At a runtime of eighty-nine minutes, that leaves us with a kill on average about every eleven minutes.
I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for coolest kill to Chucky.
It's one of those kills you always wish people would try on seemingly unstoppable killers.
Just chop 'em up into a billion different pieces, how're they about to come back from that?
Well, Jennifer Tilly will show us next week.
Dull Machete for lamest kill will have to go to the carnival security guard.
I almost gave it to Shelton, just 'cause of how mean that kill is,
but it's hard to get lamer than a single offscreen gunshot wound.
And that's it. Child's Play 3 came out in 1991, and would be the last Chucky movie for a full seven years,
as Don Mancini felt that Chucky's escapades were getting too repetitious at this point.
Everything would change after Scream revitalized the slasher genre,
and paved the way for Bride of Chucky in '98, which we'll be looking at next week.
Until then, I'm James A. Janisse, this has been The Kill Count.
Hey guys, thanks a lot for watching the Kill Count for Child's Play 3.
I know some of you were upset we took a week off, but hey man, we're back to Chucky, don't worry.
I want to thank some of Patrons, like Trent Curris, Alejandro Flores, Dylan Cooper, and Shelby Johnson.
If you want to join the Patreon family, you can click that button right over there and help support this channel for as little as a dollar a month.
Right now, my Patrons are voting on which series I'm going to cover after Child's Play.
Get in on that shit...[blows a kiss]