by MATTHEW HAYS

Call me twisted, but there's something so incredibly appealing about a possessed evil doll. They are child-like, but murderous. Small, but capable of big things - like mass slaying. And those one liners!

I'm talking, of course, about Chucky (again voiced by the Oscar-nominated Brad Dourif), the cocky little doll who will slash his way into the hearts of horror fans this weekend with his fifth big-screen entry, Seed of Chucky. We catch up with our anti-hero as he and Tiffany (his bride from the last film, voiced by Jennifer Tilly) deal with the responsibilities and intricacies of parenthood. Things are made even more complicated by the fact that their offspring has no genitals, and is thus gender confused. Is their child Glen, a boy, as Chucky wishes, or Glenda, a girl, as Tiffany would prefer? Needless to say, this battle between mom and dad is particularly hard on the wee lad/lass. The film is utterly hilarious, filled with loads of sight gags, cheeseball dialogue and numerous in-jokes for horror buffs. Chucky isn't just going to kick ass at the box office with this one, he's going to kill ass.

Though this is the fifth time around for Chucky, Seed of Chucky is a first: his openly gay creator, Hollywood screenwriter Don Mancini, makes his directorial debut with the feature. And he confirms that the camp quotient is cranked up to 11. "With Bride of Chucky, we made a very conscious decision to embrace humour and make it an all-out comedy-horror. The first three were more straightforward horror films. When you do these sequels, the audience demands that you get to see Chucky more. The problem with iconic horror figures, whether it's Freddy or Jason or Chucky, is that the more you see of them, the less scary they are. It's a particular problem with Chucky, because he's two feet tall. It's already absurd to begin with."

It's a far cry from where Chucky began, as a seed in the mind of Mancini when he was a student at UCLA's film school. "I had taken one screenwriting class and found I had a facility for it. Being a lifelong horror fan, I wanted to write a horror script. My original impetus was that I wanted to write about how marketing and advertising affects children. My dad had worked in marketing, so I had been exposed to it, and it's a pretty crazy world that deserves to be treated in a satirical way."

Gays and dolls

From the evil doll episode of Night Gallery to the clown doll under the bed in Poltergeist, there's something of a tradition of possessed plastic in pop culture. Mancini confirms he and producer Don Kirschner thought about this when brainstorming about their doll. "Dolls are humanoid, they are distortions of the human form. There's something very creepy about that. I think they represent childhood innocence, and when you introduce the idea that they're evil, there's a very primal response to that. Chucky was based on a Cabbage Patch Doll." Chucky's name was a composite of some of the murderers Kirschner had found particularly horrifying; the dead killer who possesses Chucky is named Charles (from Manson) Lee (from Harvey Oswald) Ray (from James Earl Ray).

As the camp factor is upped considerably in Chucky's evolution, Mancini acknowledges that his gay sensibility is a bigger part of the films. "The last two movies in particular have a strong gay sensibility about them. The horror genre in general tends to attract a gay following, in terms of practitioners as well as audiences. There's Clive Barker, Kevin Williamson, and way back to James Whale. I think the genre is marked by a kind of operatic, over-the-top stylization, and that's something that I think gays really respond to. I was glad I was able to include a character like Glen/Glenda, who really doesn't know if he's a girl or boy. I think many will be able to relate to the gender confusion he's confronted with, and with the pressure he feels from his parents."

And in light of last week's U.S. presidential election, it must be asked: what's scarier to Mancini, a possessed doll or a second term for George W. Bush? "The latter, hands down. Bush is like this frat-house asshole. I think he's much scarier than Chucky, but could Chucky vote, and he can't because he's a doll, but if he could, he would be a Republican. Which is part of why he's funny. He's very Archie Bunker. He's a little guy who's filled with a lot of rage and is thus very reactionary."

Seed of Chucky opens Friday, Nov. 12

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