Condemned to Live (Frank R. Strayer, 1935)

This is my fourth encounter with a Frank Strayer film, following The Monster Walks, The Vampire Bat, and The Ghost Walks, and he hasn't won me over yet. The Vampire Bat benefited from a great cast, a weird script, and leftover sets from Frankenstein, but, for the most part, Strayer is an extremely clunky and pedestrian visual stylist (though he usually had to work within serious financial constraints). The 1930s were a golden age for horror, but I wouldn't include Strayer anywhere near the pantheon of legends. To put it in 1980s pro wrestling terms, Strayer is the Bill and Randy Mulkey of '30s horror, and The Vampire Bat was his Mulkeys vs. Gladiators match.

Condemned to Live does have an unusual story with some potential, however unrealized. It's a vampire tale with the vampire not even aware he's a bloodsucker until it's too late. Professor Paul Kristan (Ralph Morgan) is the town doctor, advice-giver, and benevolent figurehead. The other villagers go on and on about what a swell guy Paul is and also how he works too hard. These two points are addressed roughly every three minutes. He's engaged to marry kindly and sweet Marguerite (Maxine Doyle), irritating her previous sweetheart David (Russell Gleason), who is still in love with Marguerite but knows that his broke ass will never get permission to marry her from her old man John (Carl Stockdale). Our other important characters are Paul's foster father and colleague, Dr. Anders Bizet (Pedro de Cordoba), his hunchbacked and devoted assistant Zan (Mischa Auer), and his fiercely protective housekeeper Mother Molly (Lucy Beaumont).

Things would be relatively hunky dory, except villagers are being murdered and drained of blood, and Paul is experiencing brutal headaches and loss of memory. Could these events be connected? Duh. Unfortunately for Paul, and unbeknownst to him, he's a damn vampire. His vampirism origin story is convoluted and racist, and only Anders knows about it. Paul's parents were explorers, and they and a colleague were on an expedition in "deepest, darkest Africa" while his mother was pregnant. Incurring the wrath of the natives, they hid in a cave infested with large vampire bats, one of which bit Paul's mother shortly before she gave birth. She died, and shortly afterwards Paul's father and his colleague died as well. Family friend Anders adopted the young Paul, and kept a close eye on him to see if he would become a vampire. Paul showed no signs of vampirism until the present day, when stress and overwork caused his dormant vampire to bloom. I'm all for suspension of disbelief within a film, but that's a pretty weak (and deeply strange) excuse.

Condemned to Live takes the unusual and fiscally responsible tack of completely foregoing special effects, except for the giant rubber bat in the opening scene. There are no vampire teeth, no transformations, no blood, no makeup effects besides the normal stage makeup for the actors. Morgan just scrunches his face up into a tortured expression whenever he has to deliver Paul's vampire self, and the bodies are placed with their faces away from the camera so we never see the bite marks or the effects of blood drainage. A visually skilled filmmaker could do fascinating things with performance and camera movement in place of special effects, but in the hands of Strayer, it just adds to the movie's lack of punch.

Condemned to Live is full of boringly static shots, stiff performances, and a real lack of suspense, excitement, and terror. I like the angle of a tragic villain who has no idea he's the one killing the villagers, but it's just not that excitingly delivered. In the film's defense, it is only 67 minutes long. Proceed with caution. 

Child's Play (Tom Holland, 1988)

The last major horror franchise to kick off in the '80s, Child's Play is unusual in that screenwriter Don Mancini, who created the characters, has written or co-written every single Chucky movie (with the exception of the mediocre 2019 remake) and directed the last three and is the show runner, head writer, and one of the directors of the Chucky TV series. Except for a few unproduced screenplays, Cellar Dweller (reviewed on this site a few months ago), and episodes of Tales from the Crypt, Hannibal, and Channel Zero, Mancini's entire career is joined at the hip to a killer doll voiced by Brad Dourif. And he's pretty damn happy about that (except for Child's Play 3). I've heard good things about the Mancini-directed Chucky movies but haven't watched them yet, and I haven't seen Child's Play 2 and 3 since they first appeared on home video in the early '90s, but the original Child's Play is a surprisingly intense, skillfully made, exciting, and darkly funny '80s horror movie that held up well to a decades-later rewatch.

Mancini, a UCLA film student with one screenwriting credit under his belt (Cellar Dweller, though he's credited as Kit DuBois because he was unhappy with the changes made to his script), was fascinated with the killer doll subgenre and thought a pretty effective movie could be made with '80s animatronic effects.

Mancini was also interested in how his father's profession of advertising manipulated consumers and manufactured demand, and he thought those ideas could be easily incorporated into a killer doll movie. Additionally, Mancini's difficult relationship with his father made it into the script in an indirect way. Openly gay in the homophobic 1980s, Mancini says his father never accepted him or his sexuality, and he felt like his mother was a single parent to him, so he decided to make the main characters in his screenplay a widowed single mother and her young son. Though these issues are subtext and background detail in the first movie, queerness and gender identity become larger and more overt topics in the later films and the TV series.

Mancini's original screenplay was even darker than the finished product, with the little boy a willing and vengeful accomplice in Chucky's killing spree and with the Chucky doll deliberately marketed as a scary toy with fake blood included, the doll fully coming to life when the boy's blood mixed with Chucky's. Co-writers John Lafia (who would go on to direct the second movie) and Tom Holland (director of this one) decided to make the boy more sympathetic and change the scary doll angle since they figured no parents would buy a doll that comes with fake blood.

Child's Play was director Tom Holland's third feature, and he got the job after Steven Spielberg, pleased with Holland's episode of Amazing Stories, recommended him to the producers. Holland had already worked in film for years as an actor and a screenwriter, and he wrote the screenplays for The Beast Within, Class of 1984, Psycho II, Cloak & Dagger, and Scream for Help before kicking off his directing career in a big way with 1985's Fright Night, one of my favorite '80s horror movies. He followed that up with a Whoopi Goldberg action-comedy, Fatal Beauty. A bit of a curveball, but at least he met Brad Dourif. After Child's Play, Holland's directing credits include The Temp, Thinner, the miniseries The Langoliers, and several episodes of Tales from the Crypt.

Child's Play begins with serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) running from homicide detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon, reuniting with Holland after Fright Night) on the mid-winter Chicago streets. The chase concludes in a toy store, with a mortally wounded Charles performing some voodoo-like ritual to transfer his soul into a Good Guys doll. This ritual also makes lightning strike the toy store, exploding most of it. That's one hell of a ritual, my friend.

Meanwhile, it's little Andy Barclay's (Alex Vincent) birthday, and all he wants is a Good Guys doll. Sadly, his mother Karen (Catherine Hicks), a single mom working the jewelry counter at a department store, didn't find out about the doll until after she bought Andy's gifts. I like how the movie doesn't beat the viewer over the head with the dead father/single mom business. We just get one line of dialogue about it and a few details, including how Andy is a bit spoiled even though his mom is a working-class single woman and a few glancing shots of a man's picture in a frame. This also makes Karen's intensity in getting her hands on a Good Guys doll believable without belaboring the point.

Karen's coworker Maggie (Dinah Manoff) sees a homeless man in the alley behind the department store selling a Good Guys doll out of his cart. Karen snaps it up and brings it home to Andy. Yes, it's the same doll that got a non-factory upgrade in the form of a serial killer's soul during a toy-store shootout/explosion. Oh shiiiiittttttt! As the movie progresses, Chucky gets Chuckier; Andy goes from Chucky buddy to manipulated Chucky accomplice to Chucky enemy; crazy doll-based hijinks, rituals, murders, attempted murders, and foul-mouthed one-liners abound; and any sane audience is reasonably entertained.

Holland does a good job making all this killer doll action creepy instead of silly, and the horror and action scenes are skillfully accomplished without swallowing up the characters. Andy and Karen's Chicago apartment building is a great movie location, and Brad Dourif is the perfect voice for a killer doll, though his involvement almost didn't happen. The producers initially wanted John Lithgow for the part, but he turned the role down, and Holland, who had just worked with Dourif, recommended him. Dourif was available to shoot the opening scene, but he had already committed to another movie and couldn't do the Chucky voice-over. The producers brought in Jessica Walter (Play Misty for Me, Arrested Development) to do the voice of the doll, but that didn't go over well with test audiences. By that time, Dourif was available again, and Chucky's dialogue was rerecorded.

It's a little surprising that a killer doll movie from 1988 has continued to be a viable franchise for three decades plus, but something about it just works. It's a good movie. I'd say check it out, but you probably already have.