Cindi Hagley looked at the spot where the woman had been bludgeoned to death and paused. It had happened on the front lawn of an expansive property in the Midwest, with distinctive landscaping work acting as a backdrop for the media that had descended on the scene. The arrangement of flowers and other foliage would be familiar to anyone in the area who had looked at a local newspaper.
“What you need to do,” she told the seller’s agent, “is change the lawn. Rip it up. Plant something else. Make it look softer.”
Like an FBI profiler called in to consult with local authorities on a murder, Hagley had been summoned by the property’s representatives for advice on how best to market what’s known in the business as a “stigmatized home”—a slice of real estate that’s been the site of a violent crime or one purported to harbor spirits. As one of just a few realtors who specializes in houses with tumultuous histories, Hagley knows how to rid a listing of negative connotations.
It’s a skill that goes beyond simple remodeling. In many cases, Hagley is approached to market houses that owners are convinced are a hub of disturbing paranormal activity. That might require psychic consultations, signed disclosure forms, or the presence of a rabbi.
In 12 years, she has never failed to close on a haunted property. “Marketed properly,” she tells mental_floss,” I don’t believe a stigmatized home should sell for a penny less than market value.”
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Hagley grew up in Southern Ohio experiencing what she calls a “sensitive” awareness to peculiar activity. When she was in high school, her family unknowingly moved into a home that was once a funeral parlor. “Faucets would turn on by themselves,” she says. “There were apparitions, noises in the basement. I believe it was haunted.”
After a stint in network television ad sales, Hagley made a move into real estate. While preparing for her first open house, she sensed movement out of the corner of her eye. When she asked the seller if she had ever noticed anything unusual, the seller said that her boyfriend had seen some sort of apparition.
Hagley believed her. She also wondered how a ghost could potentially affect the value of a home. “I asked my broker if I had to disclose that,” she says. “And I did. It can affect the material value of a home.”
California requires sellers to be forthcoming if a property is “stigmatized”—that is, if it has been the site of a death within the past three years, if it was home to drug manufacturing, or even if a spirit is believed to inhabit the premises, which are all considered psychological impactions that can affect a buyer’s perception of the home. It’s one of roughly 25 states that have such a mandate on the books, urged by a desire for real estate sales to be transparent (and made more relevant by the fact that one in five Americans have seen a ghost). A California appellate court once ruled in 1983 that such a belief can lawfully have a material effect on price. (A woman bought a house and was not informed five people were murdered in it. She was unhappy, sued, and won.)
Hagley studied the requirements carefully and became intrigued by the potential for a sub-specialty in her business. “Not long after that house, I had two homes where people had died a natural death,” she says. “No one else was an expert in this, so I just decided to run with it.”
Word of Hagley’s willingness to tackle properties with lurid histories spread: Sellers started reaching out and requesting her services. If they claim their house is haunted, Hagley will arrange for a walk-through to see if she can observe any unusual activity herself. She’ll also interview the homeowner to get details of what he or she may have experienced. Historical research on the address might lead to a possible cause of the disturbance—if someone was murdered there, or if previous owners had expressed concern over ectoplasmic squatters.
What Hagley does next depends on whether she considers the spirits to be generally benevolent or not. “Some buyers will be okay if the spirits are believed to be gentle,” she says. “Sometimes they need to be removed.”
If it’s the latter, Hagley has a psychic she works with regularly. Other times, prospective buyers will request that a representative of their church perform a kind of spiritual audit on the home—a “bless and assess.”
“I’ve had priests and rabbis walk through,” she says. “I’ve held séances. I’ll do whatever the prospective buyer feels they need to do.”
If someone is still unsure, Hagley offers to call a caterer and let them stay in the house over two or three nights. Safe in the knowledge that the dark doesn’t lead to any kind of real disturbance, they’re more likely to stand behind their offer.
The Hagley Group
Hagley doesn’t openly advertise homes as haunted or stigmatized. That kind of publicity just results in crime scene tourists or would-be ghost hunters wasting her time, she says. Instead, buyers interested in a home are told about its colorful history in person, with written disclosure forms sent as a follow-up.
Hagley is not required by law to get into details. “I might say, ‘There was a death on the premises in 2014,’ or ‘The seller believes there is paranormal activity here,’” she says. “I’m not going to say, ‘Someone was swinging from the chandelier with a gunshot wound to the heart.’”
If an interested party presses for details, Hagley will explain further: “At least 75 percent of people just don’t care. If they do care, I have three or four final offers in already. Someone is going to buy it if they don’t.”
Although Hagley hangs a shingle, Past Life Homes, to remind people of her unique skill set, she says less than 3 percent of her business comes from stigmatized deals; most of her homes are high-end luxury properties. Past Life is simply a way to satisfy both her curiosity about spectral entities and to assist sellers who may feel their home is unmarketable.
Despite her spotless record, she won’t take on everything that crosses her desk. “Recently, I got a call to consult on a haunted house in West Virginia,” she says. “I found out the owners had been offering Halloween tours, opening it as a haunted attraction. To me, that’s taking advantage of spirits. And while I don’t like to say I’m superstitious, I don’t want to piss them off.”
Watch the above video and you might suddenly feel very self-conscious about your halfhearted attempts at pumpkin carving.
The elaborate, synchronized light display—which features flickering scenes and a soundtrack from The Rocky Horror Picture Show—is part of Riverside, California resident Kevin Judd’s annual Halloween extravaganza. Every season, he installs an LED presentation on a residential property for the amusement of locals. The Rocky Horror theme follows his 2015 effort, which featured pumpkins singing Ray Parker, Jr.’s Ghostbusters theme:
Judd began staging the displays in 2008, garnering an audience of just a few residents on his block. But in 2011, videos of his displays began going viral, and thousands of spectators started showing up to enjoy the show. This created a bit of a problem with the local Homeowner’s Association, which didn’t particularly appreciate the blocked driveways and discarded trash. But: singing pumpkins!
If you want to try and emulate his work, you’re in luck: Judd heads up Creative Lighting Displays, a business devoted to helping other lighting enthusiasts design and program the presentations.
As a film student at UCLA in the mid-1980s, Don Mancini was amused by the hysteria surrounding the Cabbage Patch Kids, those ubiquitous, slightly homely dolls that were disappearing from toy shelves and prompting physical fights between parents. Mancini’s father had worked in the advertising industry all his life, and his son knew how effective marketing could pull strings, resulting in consumer bedlam.
“I wanted to write a dark satire about how marketing affected children,” Mancini tells mental_floss. “Cabbage Patch was really popular. I put the two impulses together.”
Out of Mancini’s efforts came Child’s Play, the 1988 film written by a college student, directed by a horror veteran, and produced by a man who had just finished an animated family film for Steven Spielberg. Like 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, the movie was a well-received, effects-heavy twist on the slasher genre. And like that film, it birthed one of the great horror icons of the 20th century: Chucky, the carrot-topped doll possessed with the soul of a serial killer.
The portable monster—or, as Mancini puts it, an “innocent-looking child’s doll that spouted filth”—went on to star in five sequels, a Universal Studios horror attraction, and a comic book, launching Mancini’s career and providing horror fans with another antihero to root for. With a new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray from Scream Factory, mental_floss spoke with the cast and crew members who endured an uncooperative puppet, freezing weather, and setting an actor on fire to break new territory in creating a highly animated, expressive tiny terror. It was the kind of chaos only Chucky could love.
I: BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED
After two years as an English major at Columbia University, Don Mancini transferred to UCLA with an eye on becoming a filmmaker. A teacher was impressed with his first script, Split Screen, about a small town overtaken by a horror production. Riding on that enthusiasm, Mancini tackled his second script by exploring the idea that a doll could be a child’s violent alter ego.
Don Mancini (Writer): Being a horror fan all of my life, I had seen Trilogy of Terror, I had seen the Talky Tina episode of The Twilight Zone, and I knew the killer doll trope. But what I realized was that it had never been done as a feature-length film in the age of animatronics.
Howard Berger (Special Effects Artist, KNB): Animatronics were not exactly booming, but we were doing what we could with them. At the time, they were not nearly as advanced as what would eventually be required for Chucky.
David Kirschner (Producer): I had just done my first film for Steven Spielberg, An American Tail, and was in London where I bought a book called The Dollhouse Murders. I read it, got back home, and told my development person that I’d love to do something with dolls.
Mancini: This was shortly after Gremlins, and effects had progressed to the point where you could create a puppet that was extremely articulated.
Kirschner: Talky Tina terrified me as a kid. My sister’s dolls did, too. They had a night light under them, like when you hold a flashlight up to your chin.
Mancini: Before, the doll jaws in movies had been kind of floppy or Muppet-like, but there was a new level of nuance I thought I could take advantage of.
Kirschner: I had co-written a movie with Richard Matheson, The Dreamer of Oz, which we did with John Ritter. He was a paternal figure in my life, and strangely, I never did ask him about Trilogy of Terror.
Tom Holland (Director): I quoted Trilogy of Terror to everyone. I basically got involved with this movie due to the sequence, “Prey,” and how they put a camera on a skateboard for a doll to terrorize Karen Black, shaking it from side to side. It looked terrific.
Mancini: This was shortly after A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was really important in the development of the slasher genre. Freddy was a villain with a very distinct sense of humor, someone who could taunt victims verbally. I was quite consciously influenced by that with Chucky, the idea of an innocent-looking child’s doll that spouted filth.
Kirschner: It was in many ways what Spielberg had done with Poltergeist, which was about suburbia and bringing the terror home.
Mancini: It was originally titled Batteries Not Included. I was living in a house off-campus with three other film students, one of whom had graduated and was working as an assistant to a producer at Orion Pictures. She passed it on to his boss, who read it and passed it on to an agent. He got wind Steven Spielberg was doing a movie with the same title and suggested I change it. So it went out as Blood Buddy.
Kirschner: The development person said, “Actually, there’s a script that’s been making the rounds called Blood Buddy, but everyone’s passed on it.” I read it and loved Don’s idea.
Mancini: It’s not completely true [that everyone passed]. I did get some bites. Charles Band was one producer who saw it and liked it. He had a studio that turned out really low-budget horror and exploitation films. I don’t remember why he didn’t buy it, but he did end up doing movies called Dolls and Puppet Master. And he hired me to write a movie called Cellar Dwellers, which I used a pseudonym on.
Holland: In Don’s original script, there needed to be a way to sympathize with the son and mother.
Mancini: In my script, the doll was not possessed by a killer. The doll was a manifestation of a little boy’s unconscious rage, his id.
Kirschner: The idea of what brought the doll to life wasn’t there yet.
Mancini: If you played too rough with him, his latex skin would break and he’d bleed this red substance so you’d have to buy special bandages. So the boy, Andy, in a rite of brotherhood, cuts his thumb and mixes it with the doll’s blood, and that’s the catalyst that brings the doll to life.
Kirschner: At that point, I was a relatively new father and wasn’t sure anybody would buy a doll with blood in it. It didn’t make sense to me, but there were a lot of cool things in there, some cool deaths.
Mancini: He starts acting out against the boy’s enemies, which he might not even be able to express. Like a babysitter who tells him to go to bed, or a teacher who gives him a bad grade.
Holland: What Don wrote originally felt more like a Twilight Zone episode. The little boy fell asleep and the doll came to life. It didn’t emotionally involve you.
Mancini: Ultimately, the mother was a target, too. The kid had an unconscious resentment toward her. She was an ambitious single mother who wasn’t around, so she got him the hot toy.
In my script, the doll wasn’t really seen until the third act, where he’s spouting one-liners and killing the kid’s dentist. I should really bring that back at some point.
Kirschner: I did two drawings of the character and went out to studios. A guy I had never heard of named Tony Thomopoulos from United Artists came to my office and said, “We want to make this movie.” He was wonderful and he lived up to everything he ever promised.
With Kirschner attracting interest in Blood Buddy, he began the process of revising the script on the belief that audiences needed a more sympathetic character than a boy with a murderous alter ego.
Kirschner: The studio did not want Don, so we brought in John Lafia.
John Lafia (Co-Writer): I believe David and I were at the same agency at the time and got introduced that way. He showed me Don’s draft and that’s how I got involved. He told me his take on it and I did two drafts. This was after Tom had come on for the first time.
Holland: I had come on the project once before and couldn’t solve it. In horror, the audience is involved in direct proportion to how much you care about the people. And that wasn’t the situation here. So I left to go do Fatal Beauty with Whoopi Goldberg.
Lafia: I went to a toy store and looked around. I remember picking up a Bugs Bunny, pulling the string, and hearing a scratchy voice. There was also a freaky Woody Woodpecker that talked.
Holland: You had to set up a situation where you can believe in a possessed doll, which sounds silly in the light of day, but that was the job.
Lafia: I was thinking of The Terminator, actually, but in micro form. Just this thing that keeps coming.
Kirschner: John got us to a point where we could go to directors. I met with William Friedkin, who I was terrified of, but he was a wonderful man. And I talked to Irvin Kershner, who did The Empire Strikes Back.
Lafia: I think the biggest contribution I made was to give the character a back story so it was a human who somehow became a doll. In my draft, it became Charles Lee Ray. I coined the name Chucky.
Holland: By the time I came around a second time, Lafia had done a rewrite and I think they had spoken with Joe Ruben, who had done The Stepfather. In the year or so I spent away from it, I figured out how to involve the killer.
Kirschner: I had seen Fright Night, which I loved. Tom seemed nice. I called Spielberg because Tom had done an Amazing Stories for him. He said Tom was an arrogant guy, but talented.
Mancini: I was still just a kid in school. It was just sort of this unspoken thing—pushing you out the door. Let the adults take over.
Lafia: My take on it, and I don’t think Don’s was that far off, was more like Poltergeist, with a family threatened by supernatural forces. I remember David and I watching that movie to refresh our memory.
Mancini: I was excited. I was a fan of Fright Night, of Psycho II.
Holland: I learned so much by writing Psycho II about moving movies forward visually. I had to study Alfred Hitchcock.
Mancini: It was Tom or David or John who brought in the voodoo, which I was never thrilled with and a mythology we got stuck with for six movies.
Lafia: My device was not voodoo. It was more of a Frankenstein-type of moment at a toy factory. A prisoner was being electrocuted on death row and his spirit got into the doll. We would cross-cut with his execution and the doll being manufactured.
Mancini: Tom has said over the years that it’s an original screenplay even though the credits say it isn’t, which is complete bullsh*t.
Holland: The Guild is set up to protect the writer. It is what it is. Failure has no fathers, success has many.
Securing Holland gave Blood Buddy—now titled Child’s Play—a strong anchor, but the film would succeed or fail based on whether the movie could convince audiences a malevolent doll could go on a killing spree. Kirschner enlisted Kevin Yagher, a 24-year-old effects expert who had worked on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Yagher and a team of effects artists, including Howard Berger, would spend months perfecting ways to bring the puppet to life.
Kirschner: I drew Chucky in graphite, and Kevin brought him to life incredibly.
Berger: David’s drawings were a great jumping-off point. We had so many versions of Chucky. The one we used most was from the waist-up.
Mancini: I was so involved with school that it was all just moving along without me. I had no involvement with the doll’s development.
Berger: He really couldn’t walk. We tried putting him on a six-foot dolly, but it just sort of dragged itself along.
Kirschner: If you’ve got someone controlling the eyes, someone else the mouth, someone else the hands, something will go wrong. It’s going to take a very long time. But Kevin and his team were amazing.
Berger: We made the doll heads to look increasingly more human as the movie goes on. The hairline begins to match Brad Dourif’s.
Mancini: Over the course of the movie, his hairline is receding. At the top of the movie, he’s got a full mop of hair. Visually, it was cool, but I was never down with the story logic. Why would that happen? What does it mean? Does it mean he’d ultimately be a human thing?
Berger: We had different expressions. A neutral one, angry, one that was screaming. One Chucky we literally just hooked up to a Nikita drill motor. When you turn him on, he’d just spin and flail around, kicking.
Mancini: While I was still writing the script, a lawyer had encouraged me to describe the doll in great detail—in as much detail as I could think up. Because if the movie became a hit and if there was merchandise, there would be a scramble over who was legally the creator of the character. And sure enough, there was.
Berger: Chucky went through a few iterations. Originally his head was more football-shaped, like a Zeppelin.
Mancini: I was very distinct in the script: red hair, two feet tall, blue eyes, freckles, striped shirt. David designed the doll, but didn’t deviate from those details.
Kirschner: After American Tail, I wanted to do something different. My agent was not happy about it. My mother was not happy about it. My wife thought it was great.
II: THE ASSEMBLY LINE
Child’s Play began production in the winter of 1988 in Chicago and Los Angeles—the former during the coldest time of the year. Holland’s cast included Catherine Hicks as Karen Barclay, Chris Sarandon as Detective Mike Norris, and Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray, the killer fated to become trapped in the plastic prison of a retail toy.
For shots beyond the ability of the puppet to perform, Holland enlisted actor Ed Gale, a three-foot, six-inch tall performer who had made his film debut as the title character in 1986’s Howard the Duck.
Ed Gale (“Chucky”): I knew Howard Berger from other projects. I met with Tom having just done Spaceballs. I wound up doing Child’s Play and Phantasm II at the same time. I don’t take credit for being Chucky. It’s Brad [Dourif], the puppeteers, and me.
Holland: Brad is wonderful, a genuine actor.
Alex Vincent (“Andy Barclay”): Brad’s voice was on playback on the set. The puppeteers would synch the movement to his voice, sometimes at half-speed.
Mancini: There was a Writers Guild strike and I wasn’t legally allowed to be on the set, so I didn’t rejoin the process until after shooting was over. But I don’t think I would’ve been welcome anyway.
Holland: I don’t remember ever meeting Don. I thought the writer’s strike was toward the end of shooting.
Mancini: My understanding through David is that Tom was the auteur and wouldn’t want anyone else around.
Holland: He certainly would have been welcome to come to the set.
Although a few of Holland’s leads struggled—Sarandon’s vocal cords once froze during a sub-zero exterior shot—nothing caused more trouble with the production than Chucky, a complex mechanism requiring multiple puppeteers. His presence led to differing opinions over how best to approach the tone of the film.
Kirschner: This was my first live-action film project. I was a real quiet, shy person, and Tom was a real presence.
Gale: Tom was very driven and focused. I very distinctly remember a scene where Alex needed to cry and Tom was spitballing how he could get him to react. He was asking the social worker, “Can I blow smoke in his face? Can I pinch him?”
Holland: I was very sensitive to Alex’s feelings. He was not an actor with experience. I hugged him after reach take.
Vincent: Tom was very passionate about getting specific things from me and being really happy when he got them.
Gale: I think he wound up telling him scary stories.
Holland: I don’t remember any scary stories. I just kept having him do the scene.
Vincent: I don’t remember anything specific he said. I do remember that they ran out of film when I was doing it and I told them, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep crying.”
Gale: When you look at the crying scene, it’s pretty convincing. Tom is a genius director. As a person, I won’t comment.
Kirschner: I felt he kept showing too much of the doll. I wanted to be gentlemanly about it and kept whispering in his ear, and he was getting fed up with me.
Berger: The doll was a pain in the ass. Everything was a hassle. I remember the scene where Chucky was in a mental hospital electrocuting a doctor. It took 27 takes to get him to press a button.
Vincent: I was aware of the puppet [being slow] because I’d be standing there for 43 takes. Having him flip his middle finger was this whole process.
Kirschner: The doll was not working great. Jaws had come out and I had seen how great that worked. You were postponing the fear. Tom wanted to show the doll.
Holland: The studio was applying pressure because of costs. It became more tension-filled.
Berger: Chucky made a horrible noise when he moved because of the servos—like scree, scree. He was very noisy.
Kirschner: I felt it should be more like Jaws or Alien where you don’t see anything for a long time.
Holland: There was a disagreement as to tone. David made movies for children.
Vincent: I remember being taken off set a couple of times when there was a fight or disagreement. I’d have some big production assistant put me on his shoulders and carry me out.
Berger: What you have to remember is, it took quite a few of us to make the doll work. Someone was doing the hands, then someone else the eyebrows, and someone else the mouth. It was like we all had to become one brain.
Gale: It didn’t really involve me, but I do remember David calling me up at 3 or 4 in the morning just to talk. I told him, “You’re the producer. Put your foot down.”
Kirschner: I won’t go into the near-bloody details of the fight we had.
Holland: David was a skinny kid then. It never got physical. There was just a difference in temperament.
A difficult performer, Chucky would go on to become the catalyst for strained working relationships on the set.
Kirschner: Kevin Yagher was brilliant at what he did, but he didn’t have a ton of experience. And Tom is screaming and shouting at him.
Holland: It was no knock on Kevin, but it was all the doll could do to take a step.
Berger: Chucky’s fingers would get worn out quickly. The aluminum fingers would begin to poke right through the latex skin. I had this big bag of Chucky hands and changed them three times a day.
Holland: I had a terrible time with the eyeline of the doll. He couldn’t look at actors. The puppeteers were under the set and for reasons I could never figure out, the monitors they had were reversed. He’d look left instead of right.
Kirschner: It took like 11 people to make the puppet work.
Berger: This was a puppet that was radio-controlled who was in half the movie. It was brand-new territory.
Holland leaned on Ed Gale to perform broader movements. Because he was significantly larger than Chucky, the production built sets 30 percent larger than normal to maintain a forced perspective.
Holland: That was something I learned from Darby O’Gill and the Little People. You use forced perspective with overbuilt sets.
Mancini: I thought that was really cool. I love those sleight of hand things.
Gale: Facially, nothing can beat a puppet. But to make it actually work full body, running, or jumping, they needed me.
Mancini: Tom had directed him to walk in a sort of mechanical way, almost like a clockwork. He just marches.
Gale: The puppet would move more smoothly and I’d walk a little more like a robot and we’d meet in the middle. The problem was that I had zero visibility. I’d rehearse and walk through a scene with my eyes closed. It’s like taking a drink while blindfolded. You look like an idiot. I was also set on fire.
Holland: Ed is a very brave guy.
Gale: I got weaned into it. They set one arm on fire first, then my chest, then both arms. You wear an oxygen mask.
Vincent: I did not want to see that. Ed was my friend and I didn’t want to see him spinning around on fire.
Gale: I did the scene in segments. First I was on fire in the fireplace, cut. Kicking the gate open, cut. Walk out on fire, cut. Each was only about 45 seconds, which is a little less than a lifetime when you’re on fire.
The only close call was when they wanted to drop me into the fireplace. They could see the assistant’s shadow, so they wound up hoisting me up further and I dropped six or eight feet, hurting my back. It put me out of work for a few days. I also got burns on my wrists. Nothing bad.
III: CHUCKY UNLEASHED
After filming on Child’s Play was completed in spring 1988, Kirschner wanted to separate himself from Holland, with whom he had developed an acrimonious working relationship.
Kirschner: The film did not screen well. It tested horribly. Tom had a right to his cut. After that, we took him off the film.
Mancini: David invited me to watch the original cut, which was much longer. It was about two hours.
Kirschner: We invited Don in at certain times to bring him back into the process.
Mancini: At that point, David needed a relatively objective opinion of where the movie was. For him to have me voice mine was very gracious. Not all producers would do that.
Kirschner: We cut about a half-hour out of the movie.
Mancini: Seeing the edit was my first time seeing Chucky, which was thrilling. But the voice in the cut was not Brad. It was Jessica Walter [of Arrested Development].
Holland: I tried to use an electronic overlay to the voice, like a Robbie the Robot kind of thing, because that’s how the toys with sound chips worked. Then I tried Jessica Walter, who had been in Play Misty for Me. She could make the threats work, but not the humor. So we went back to Brad.
Mancini: Tom’s logic was that the voice of the devil was done by a woman in The Exorcist. But her voice, while being creepy, just didn’t fit.
Child’s Play premiered on November 11, 1988. Mancini and Kirschner had already gone to test screenings to gauge the reaction of an audience.
Mancini: The scene where the mom finds out that the batteries are included and still in the box was like a cattle prod. The audience just roared.
Holland: I kept building up to that moment where Chucky comes alive in her hands. The doll does a 180 with his head, which is a nod to The Exorcist.
Kirschner: Brad Dourif ad-libbed the line where he’s in an elevator with an older couple and the wife says, “That’s the ugliest doll I’ve ever seen.” Chucky says, “F*ck you.” The audience loved it.
Vincent: My grandfather rented out an entire theater in our hometown for a screening. I wore a tuxedo.
Lafia: I actually didn’t like when they had a little person in the Chucky outfit, only because he looked thicker and bigger. No matter how well a human being moves, your brain just knows it’s not the puppet.
Mancini: There’s a good shot of Ed climbing on the bed with a knife. I thought most of his shots were very successful.
Earning $33 million, Child’s Play became the second-highest grossing horror film of the year, behind the fourth installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. But United Artists, which had supported the production, made the decision not to be involved in a sequel for a reason almost unfathomable in Hollywood: moral grounds.
Kirschner: It was the second highest-grossing film for United Artists that year after Rain Man.
Mancini: The studio initiated a sequel immediately. I was set to work on writing the script by Christmas 1988. John Lafia, who did a draft of the first, was going to direct it. By summer of 1989, the script was done and going into production. Then United Artists was sold to Qintex Group, and they had a reputation for family entertainment. And it wasn’t a project they were interested in pursuing.
Kirschner: I got a call from the head of the studio, Richard Berger. He said, “David, I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but the company buying UA doesn’t want it. They want to be more like Disney.”
Lafia: We were green-lit and all of a sudden they make this ridiculous pronouncement.
Mancini: Because David was under an overall deal there and they wanted to maintain that relationship, they literally just gave it back to him. And he went out and made a deal with Universal, where we’ve done all the subsequent movies.
Lafia: They basically gave him the franchise for next to nothing. It was an unbelievably stupid thing for them to do.
Kirschner: They were decent guys. I got a call from Spielberg who said, “I know you’re getting calls about this from all over the place, but do me a favor and give Universal the first shot.” Well, of course, Steven.
Child’s Play 2 opened at number one in November 1990.; Child’s Play 3arrived less than a year later. In 1998, the franchise took a turn into dark comedy with Bride of Chucky, where the maniac finds a love interest.
Vincent: I did the second [movie]. We shot it on the same lot as Back to the Future Part III. I had lunch with Michael J. Fox. It was awesome.
Mancini: John wanted to shoot with a puppet 100 percent of the time, but Ed was around for the whole production.
Gale: Lafia was a complete idiot to me. He did an interview with Fangoria where they asked him if he used me like Holland did, and he said, “No, I hired a midget but never used it.” That’s an offensive word. When Child’s Play 3 came along, I hung up the phone.
Lafia: Ed did a great job, but I wanted to avoid it. He moved too much like a person.
Gale: On Bride of Chucky, they begged and begged, and I finally did it. And then they used the word “midget.” So I refused Seed of Chucky. They filmed in Romania, too, and I don’t fly.
Mancini: I take full responsibility for the line. Katherine Heigl improvised it. That’s wrong, very wrong. But in my defense, no one wrote it.
Gale: One of the reasons they credited me as Chucky’s stunt double was so they could pay me fewer residuals.
Mancini: One reason we used fewer little actors as the series went on is because it’s expensive to build sets 30 percent larger. Each successive movie, we have less and less money. On Curse of Chucky, I used Debbie Carrington to double Chucky—partly because she’s a good friend of mine, and partly because bodies change as people age. Ed physically became too large to play Chucky. It’s just the reality we were facing.
In 2013, Mancini wrote and directed Curse of Chucky, a critically-praised return to Chucky’s more sinister roots.
Mancini: To this day I prefer my concept of the doll being a product of the little kid’s subconscious, but the concept used ended up being gangbusters. Tom was a seasoned writer who made improvements.
Vincent: Starting with the second one, the movies really became Don’s. He came into the forefront.
Mancini: We start production on the next Chucky in Winnipeg in January. It continues the story of Nica, who was introduced in Curse of Chucky. At the end of that movie, she’s taken the rap for the murder of her family and has been institutionalized in an asylum. That’s the basic premise and setting.
Vincent: What’s interesting is that you can tell different types of stories with Chucky. There’s a balance between playfulness and that anger.
Mancini: Even in the movies that aren’t overt comedies, there’s an amusement factor of a doll coming to life. It’s disturbing on a primal level. Dolls are distortions of the human form. They’re humanoid. There’s something inherently off and creepy about them.
Kirschner: Chucky’s become so iconic. When you refer to a kid being awful, you refer to him as Chucky.
Lafia: Chucky has a very unique skill set for a villain, which is that he can be sitting in a room and you don’t think he’s a threat at all. He’s hiding in plain sight.
Mancini: He’s an ambassador for the horror genre, for Halloween, for why we as a culture enjoy this stuff. It’s celebrating the fun of being scared.
Gale: I have the screen-used Chucky hands. No one else does. So if you buy a pair that claim to be worn in the film, you got ripped off.
Before Creepypasta, mysterious audio recordings on YouTube, and disconcerting clown sightings, the best way to terrorize your friends was by repeating a popular urban legend. As a kind of oral history handed down through the years, these stories typically feature a hapless protagonist who is oblivious to a threat lurking right under their nose—or in the back seat.
With Halloween looming, we’ve rounded up some of the more frightening examples of modern folklore to do some fact-checking and see just how much truth is lurking behind the fiction.
1. THE KILLER IN THE BACK SEAT
The Story: A woman is driving alone at night when she glances in her rearview mirror and sees a vehicle bearing down on her. The car continues to follow her on her winding route, rattling the driver. The mystery man even flashes his brights every so often. Finally pulling into a gas station for help, the woman goes running out of her car. When confronted by a policeman or pedestrian, the stalker reveals his true motivation: He noticed that a man was lurking in the woman’s back seat and kept flashing his lights every time he reared up to try and strangle her.
The Truth: Versions of this story began appearing as early as the 1960s, with the “victim” alternately a teenager driving home from a school play or a woman coming back from a social engagement. Occasionally, the tail would be a massive commercial truck that seemed ready to run her over. The fake-out savior might be a gas attendant, a husband, or a cop who roughs up the “stalker” before his altruistic intention is finally revealed.
At least half of the tale is grounded in reality. Over the years, there have been several incidences of lurkers who have stowed away in the rear seat of vehicles, emerging to attack drivers or simply to evade capture by police. In 1964, one criminal made the mistake of hiding in a car owned by a police officer: the detective turned and fired on his uninvited passenger. The addition of a good Samaritan who notices the danger and tails the terrified driver appears to be pure embellishment, however.
2. THE VANISHING HITCHHIKER
The Story: Hitchhikers typically don’t make life easy for the characters in folk history, and this one is no exception. Typically, the story picks up when a couple of young men are driving along and spot an attractive woman walking on the side of the road. They pick her up and she tells them she’d like to go straight home. The drivers indulge her—but by the time they make it to the address she’s provided, she’s fast asleep. Not wishing to disturb her, the men go to the door and inform the woman who answers that her daughter is dozing in their back seat.
The woman is perplexed. Her daughter has been dead for years. When they return to the car, the passenger is gone, with only her clothes remaining.
The Truth: One of the most flexible urban legends of all time, the Vanishing Hitchhiker has been traced as far back as the 19th century, where horse-and-wagon rides took the place of a car. In Hawaiian versions, the ghost has even been picked up in a rickshaw. The apparition might have a warning before disappearing; in other versions, she’s known to have died a violent or tragic death while in the process of returning home.
The appeal of a spirit with unfinished business in life seems to have no cultural boundaries: Researchers have found variations of the tale in countries like Algeria, Romania, and Pakistan. There’s even a Swedish tale that was first mentioned in 1602 of a ghostly woman walking along a road who warned two passersby of impending plagues and wars before disappearing.
3. THE LICKED HAND
The Story: In the dead of night, a child (or, in some versions, a young or old woman) hears some strange noises. For comfort, the kid lets his or her hand dangle off the edge of the bed so their dog can lick it in a comforting gesture. The process might repeat itself throughout the night, with the child receiving a few more wet kisses before morning.
When the child wakes up and begins walking around the house, they might find the dog hanging from a noose—or worse, their parents bludgeoned to death. A bloody note reads, “Humans can lick, too.”
The Truth: A particularly grisly legend, the Licked Hand made the rounds in the 1960s as a way to scare marshmallow-roasting campers with a gut punch of an ending. But the tale’s first appearance may have come as early as 1871, when someone wrote of a story they had heard in England about a jewel thief who evaded detection by licking the hand of a man who awoke to strange noises, reassuring him it was only his dog.
4. THE GIRL WITH THE RIBBON AROUND HER NECK
The Story: Two lovers meet and grow consumed with one another. But as their meetings become more frequent, the man becomes curious about the fact that his girlfriend always wears a green ribbon tied around her neck. Time and again, he asks if it’s significant; she always answers that it is, but she can’t elaborate.
Before long, the man grows frustrated at how coy she’s being about the ribbon. Despite his anger, she refuses to take it off, or explain why it’s important. Finally, he takes a pair of scissors to her sleeping frame, snips the fabric—and watches as her head slides off her neck and goes bouncing to the floor.
The Truth: Unlike many legends, there’s really no pretense that the story has roots in reality. Typically, the punchline evokes laughter and shock; some versions have the woman cautioning that her lover “will be sorry” if he pushes the issue, then admonishes him with a “Told you!” as her head travels across the floor.
In all likelihood, it was writer Washington Irving who got the ball—or cranium—rolling. Irving published a short story in 1824 titled “The Adventures of a German Student” where a young man becomes enamored with a Parisian woman whom he meets while she looks on mournfully near a guillotine. After consummating their mutual attraction, she’s found dead in his bed the next morning. A policeman undoes a ribbon tied around her neck, prompting her head to slide off. Irving’s poor protagonist is quickly committed to an insane asylum. It’s believed that Irving heard this story from his friend, the Irish poet Thomas Moore, who had heard it from the British writer Horace Smith.
5. THE HOOK
The Story: Two young lovers are parked in a make-out spot when a news story breaks on the radio: A killer has escaped from custody, with his sole distinguishing feature being a hook in place of an amputated hand. The woman is unsettled and implores her lover to lock the car doors, which he does. But the thought of the hook crashing through the window begins to consume her, and she pleads for them to drive off. Annoyed, the boyfriend agrees. When he drops her at home, she exits the car and notices that a hook is dangling from the door handle.
The Truth: Aside from the hook-hand twist, couples who parked in designated “lover’s lane” spaces had plenty of reason to be terrified. A former military man named Clarence Hill was convicted in 1942 of several murders in Pennsylvania, with Hill creeping up on unsuspecting car occupants and shooting them through the windows. These attacks and others made for ripe stories over avoiding necking in parked cars in the 1960s: even Ann Landers printed the tale as a “warning” to hormonal teens.
6. THE BABYSITTER WHO ISN’T ALONE
The Story: A teenage girl agrees to sit for a trio of young children while their parents enjoy a night out. At first, the evening is almost mundane: With the kids in bed, the sitter chats with friends and finds ways to pass the time. But then the phone begins to ring. On the line is a sinister voice who advises her to check the children. After multiple calls, the sitter finally dials the police, who phone back with a shocking warning: The calls have been coming from inside the house. The murderous caller was upstairs with the children the entire time.
The Truth: Thanks to the 1979 film When a Stranger Calls, which used this story as the premise for its riveting opening sequence, this might be the most infamous urban legend of all time. The story has been widely told since 1960, with some versions indicating both the children and the sitter meet a bloody end.
The emergence of the story seems to coincide with a rash of media reports about babysitters who were assaulted or even murdered in the ‘50s and ‘60s, lending credence to the idea that it likely came out of a fear of leaving a vulnerable young woman alone in a strange house. Some folklore theorists have also observed that the “man upstairs” conceit spoke to a cultural rebellion over women taking increasingly dominant positions in society instead of adhering to their role as domestic caretakers. Left to her own devices, the babysitter fails to protect the children from harm.
Was it anti-feminist propaganda? Perhaps. But the Babysitter Who Isn’t Alone trope also speaks to a pretty primal fear of being helpless to guard yourself or others from unseen forces. And two-line phones.
The body has a tendency to sprout hair in many strange places: Ears, noses, knuckles. For those afflicted with a rare type of tumor dubbed a limbal dermoid, it can even grow out of an eyeball.
But few follicles cause as much stress as a synophrys, the medical term for the unibrow—hair in the center of the forehead that creates the impression of a single, unified, stern-looking eyebrow.
Sesame Workshop
Waxing, laser treatments, or just old-fashioned shaving can alleviate symptoms. But if you’re curious what actually causes it, you’ll need to turn to your DNA. According to a recent study published in Nature Communications, an investigation of more than 6000 subjects yielded specific genes that were associated with hair density, greying, curling, and brow fusion. Unibrows were found in people (specifically, men) with the gene dubbed PAX3. The paper’s authors theorized that once a feature has been isolated to a specific gene, the cosmetics industry may one day come up with a product that can inhibit or alter its behavior.
That assumes you would want to. While unibrows aren’t the style of choice in the United States, the Asian nation of Tajikistan considers it to be a trademark of beauty. Women lacking in PAX3 use a green herb called usma to fake it, creating a solid line of brow.
Women have always endured the brunt of responsibility when it comes to arranging for pharmacological birth control methods, with drug companies slow to provide options for men. Attempts like an injectable gel or an implant that inhibits sperm cell production are in various stages of development, but it appears one contender might be closer—and more practical—than the rest.
A new study published in The Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism [PDF] found that men who were given injections of the hormones testosterone and norethisterone enanthate every eight weeks had a reduced sperm count within six months that was sufficient to prevent pregnancy 96 percent of the time.
Exogenous testosterone—meaning testosterone that has been added to, not produced by, the body—inhibits sperm production, although past attempts to use it as a form of birth control have been mixed: Too much of it can result in long-term endocrine issues. By using it alongside the norethisterone, researchers could reduce the dose and still be successful in suppressing sperm count below 1 million per milliliter.
While the numbers are promising, researchers still have their work cut out for them. Although the amount of testosterone administered was reduced, it can still affect numerous functions in the body, and subjects experienced a cascade of side effects: depression, irritability, and libido changes. Nearly half of participants complained of acne.
Some of these unwanted symptoms were severe enough for subjects to drop out, although the study’s authors maintain the effects were usually mild in nature and not dissimilar to those experienced by women, who have long struggled with the hormonal roulette that birth control can ignite. But with the vast majority of the male enrollees—75 percent—saying they were satisfied and would use the method if it became commercially available, they may not have to endure it for much longer.
For decades, non-compete clauses were used by large businesses to bar former employees from using their expertise against them. Without them, someone well-versed in programming, for example, could make a move to a competing software company and exploit the trade secrets collected in their previous position. Increasingly, non-competes have been popping up in jobs as varied as summer camp counseling, teaching, and even exterminating, severely limiting how a worker can gain experience within their field. And now, the White House is beginning to pay attention.
The White House estimates 20 percent of the workforce is affected by restrictive non-compete agreements, and on Tuesday, the Obama Administration asked for a ban on such clauses for low wage and non-executive level employees. They believe that loosening restrictions on employment would lead to a more competitive job market and faster wage increases.
Speaking on behalf of the Administration, Vice President Joe Biden said he was surprised to hear about situations involving a teacher barred from taking a summer job selling pet food, as well as a laid-off salesman who was prohibited from accepting other sales jobs. The man was forced to tap into his retirement savings.
Currently, only a handful of states have banned non-compete clauses. In the case of California, economists cite the lack of non-competes as a major reason why the tech industry continues to thrive.
For people living with a peanut allergy, the innocent-looking legume might as well be cyanide: Even trace amounts left over from a shared food preparation space can lead to a dangerous swelling of the airway. This kind of selective toxicity has led to arash of well-meaning reactions over the years, from schools inspecting lunch boxes for peanut contamination to one Massachusetts school even evacuating a bus because a single peanut had been left on the floor.
But the day may be coming when both the peanut-allergic and the non-responders alike can breathe more easily. Gizmodo reports that a skin patch to treat the allergy just finished the first stage of a highly promising clinical trial.
Dubbed the Viaskin Peanut Patch, the small disc is placed on the arm or between the shoulder blades and delivers micro-doses of peanut protein. Like a vaccine, the idea is to expose the wearer’s immune system to small amounts of the allergen so it can develop a reasonable tolerance.
The first part of the study, which just concluded, gave 74 volunteers aged 4 to 25 with an existing peanut allergy a patch with a high concentration (250 mg), a low concentration (100 mg), or a placebo with no peanut protein at all. A new disc was applied every day for a year, with the subjects returning for a follow-up. Nearly half experienced increased tolerance to peanut exposure, with children aged 4 to 11 seeing the largest amount of improvement. Subjects who responded to treatment could consume at least 10 times the amount of peanut protein that they could prior to the trial.
The Viaskin is not necessarily intended to allow the wearer to enjoy peanuts on a whim, but it may significantly reduce the chances of having a severe allergic reaction to accidental exposures. DBV Technologies hopes to continue the study in pursuit of eventual Food and Drug Administration approval, with an eye on producing similar treatments for those with milk and egg allergies.
Police in Los Angeles had a problem. Over the span of five months in late 1987, more than 40 vehicles had seen their windows smashed in. When officers arrived on the scene to take reports, they were surprised to find stereos, purses, and other valuables had been left behind.
In most cases, the only thing missing was a plush Garfield that was last seen hanging from one of the car windows.
The cheap toy, which was about six-and-a-half inches tall and used suction cups on the paws to adhere to the glass, retailed for roughly $20. A new side window might set the owner back $140.
“They’d be better off,” detective Ken DeBie told the Associated Press, “if they stuck the cat on the outside of the car.”
Debuting in 1978, Garfield’s destiny as a merchandising phenomenon was no accident. Creator Jim Davis was a former advertising agency employee who had very specific notions about what kind of comic strip character would be appealing to the same licensees who had made Charles Schulz a very rich man by marketing his Peanuts cast at retail.
Davis knew items bearing the likeness of Charlie Brown were outsold by Snoopy, who made bestsellers out of everything from sno-cone machines to telephones: Garfield was a direct response to cat owners who might have felt slighted by the lack of a feline hero on the comics page.
By 1981, Garfield’s lasagna-smeared face was a big enough licensing success for Davis to start Paws, Inc., a business devoted exclusively to sifting through the merchandising opportunities available. Although the syndicate owned those rights, Davis profited handsomely from them—and eventually had the capital to buy them outright in 1994 for an estimated $15 to $20 million.
In between, Davis had been struck with an idea for a product that promised to be significantly different than the T-shirts, posters, and calendars that were in wide circulation: the artist toldmental_floss in 2014 that he took a plush Garfield and attached Velcro to his paws with the expectation people would be amused enough to hang him on their curtains.
When he got the prototype back, the factory had made an error and placed suction cups on instead. Davis wasn’t too bothered; since they adhered well to glass, he assumed people might want to apply it to residential windows.
“It came back as a mistake with suction cups,” Davis said. “They didn’t understand the directions. So I stuck it on a window and said, ‘If it’s still there in two days, we’ll approve this.’ Well, they were good suction cups and we released it like that. It never occurred to me that people would put them on cars.”
Davis assigned the license to Dakin, a veteran manufacturer of plush toys that once employed future Beanie Baby ringleader Ty Warner. When the toy—which was marketed as Garfield Stuck on You—debuted in mid-1987, consumers were in the middle of a car decorating frenzy, having scooped up everything from Baby on Board signs to fuzzy dice to opinionated bumper stickers. It was a practice that had started with hanging fake beaver tails from Model Ts in the 1920s.
Garfield was already a proven commodity, and the marriage of cat to car decoration was a gold mine. Dakin sold two million in the first year alone, making it the biggest success in the company’s 30-year history. In a rare move for the plush industry, the company even produced a television commercial. For a time, it seemed like every other car on the road bore the character’s smirking expression.
Acknowledging a phenomenon, the media tried to identify what made the toy so pervasive. Speaking with The Santa Fe New Mexican, pop culture analyst Michael Marsden said that cars had become a mobile living room, with drivers wanting to express their identities with stickers and window decals. With his caustic sense of humor, Garfield could broadcast his owner’s sense of irreverence.
Naturally, copycats followed. Pee-wee Herman, ALF, and other ’80s pop culture icons had suction cups glued to their hands. In one instance, a company marketing a line called Krushed Kats that appeared to be felines abandoned and mangled in trunks came under fire from humane societies for making a joke of cruelty to animals.
Amazon
Dakin itself wasn’t immune to the hysteria, selling smaller Garfields for $7.97, marketing Odie, and trying to create their own proprietary passenger with Goro the Gorilla. None sold as well as the orange pioneer.
It wouldn’t last. With $50 million in sales, Garfield Stuck on You squeezed in just as the plush industry was about to go into hibernation before the Beanie Baby revival of the mid-1990s. In 1988, the category was down 44 percent at the wholesale level.
Dakin eventually merged with onetime rival Applause in 1991 and began to look for a licensed hit that could recapture Garfield’s success, but it would prove to be a hard act to follow. In 2004, Davis’s Paws, Inc. reported over $750 million in annual revenue. No other cartoon cat was going to move product like his.
1988 also marked the end of the crime spree that had confounded Southern California law enforcement. Arrested on an unrelated charge, a burglary suspect told police that some of his adolescent friends had taken to stealing the plush toys from cars in order to give them to their girlfriends as gifts. Dakin promised to send replacements to anyone who mailed in their copy of the burglary report.
At one point, KFC was one of the greatest fast-service chicken franchises in the world. Then, a series of advertising missteps—like a rapping Colonel Sanders—and competition from upstart chains like Chick-fil-A knocked it off its perch.
The company has managed to turn its ailing fortunes around over the past year by enlisting a succession of actors—including Norm Macdonald and George Hamilton—to portray the Colonel and retraining employees on proper methods of food preparation. There’s also an ambitious plan to remodel 70 percent of its 3000-plus U.S. restaurants over the next three years. But the core of its appeal remains chicken, and the brand is hoping it can reinvent its menu thanks to additions like the Chizza.
A mash-up of chicken and pizza, the Chizza is a breaded chicken breast slathered in marinara sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and peppers. The result is probably something close to a chicken parm dish without the pasta, though we’ll probably have to wait for international food bloggers to weigh in. The Chizza is currently only available in the Philippines and India, with Japan expected to launch the item November 1.
