Horror Times Two

While thinking about the Halloween season this year, I'm reminded that one of my early critiques of horror films took on a bizarre tone and probably alienated Oprah Winfrey fans. As the only critic in America who saw "Beloved" and "Bride of Chucky" on the same day, I became fascinated by the similarities in these two movies. How could I ignore such an incredible discovery? So, of course, I had to reveal these findings. Below are the results reported in my review.

Neither "Beloved," the film version of Toni Morrison’s acclaimed anti-slavery novel, nor "Bride of Chucky," another campy sequel to 1988’s "Child’s Play," should be viewed by the faint of heart. Moviegoers brave enough to see these two films will be surprised at the gruesome plot points they share, in spite of their very different subject matter. Both films deal with the supernatural. "Beloved" features the adult ghost of a dead child come back to life to haunt its killer. "Bride of Chucky" presents the further misadventures of a psychopathic doll that comes to life after a dying serial killer transfers his soul into the doll’s body.

Blood and gore fill the screen in both movies. Beatings, lynchings, and baby killing make up most of the violence in "Beloved," while Chucky concentrates on explosions, severed body parts, and deaths by shattered mirror glass. An eyeball figures prominently in each film. In "Beloved," former slave Sethe (Winfrey) puts her dog’s eyeball back into its socket after the animal is slammed into a wall by a ghost. In "Bride of Chucky," the woman who was once Chucky’s girlfriend (Jennifer Tilley)places a toy eyeball into his doll face before bringing him back to life while performing a kind of “Voodoo for Dummies.”

I know it’s hard to believe, but both Sethe and Chucky’s girlfriends purchase dolls for their loved ones. Sethe spends the last of her meager funds on a doll for the ghost child. Chucky gets (you guessed it) a bride doll. A strange pregnancy occurs in each film also. The ghost becomes pregnant by Sethe’s boyfriend, and Chucky impregnates his re-vamped bride doll.

"Bride of Chucky" mixes weird humor with its scare tactics, including Tilley’s wickedly amusing bubble bath while watching the classic "Bride of Frankenstein" on TV. But there is nothing funny about "Beloved." Instead, it reveals the intense pain and suffering of a woman who will do anything to keep her children from becoming slaves. Clearly, imaginary evils like those on the latest Chucky flick are no match for the real horrors of slavery depicted so graphically in "Beloved."