A lot of people might not know who John Lafia was largely due to the idea that a good number of people don’t follow directors, writers, producers, and so on and so forth, but being that he was a big name around the Child’s Play set and actually directed the second movie he was definitely someone of importance. Sadly the director/writer committed suicide recently, but there’s no reason as to why at this time. The most saddening part of this is that he’d helped to create a very sizable fan base as Child’s Play has throughout the years become a franchise that has managed to gain the attention of many a horror fan as the doll, Chucky, has become one of the most famed horror monsters of the modern era. Jeremy Dick of MovieWeb has more to say on this matter. If anyone can recollect there was actually a time when people would state “Look out Freddy, here comes Chucky.” The saying was a bit staged and even ridiculous given that pitting certain monsters against one another is at times laughable, especially when pitting anyone against Freddy, who’s gone up against the likes of Jason Voorhees and done fairly well even when dragged into the real world. Chucky is impressive, but at the end of the day he’s a possessed doll with the urge to kill and do so in new and inventive ways, but still just wiring and plastic given a will.
When left on his own though and without a need to contend with other movie monsters, Chucky is the type of terror that gets the heartbeat to quicken as the patter of little feet is able to get almost anyone breathing heavily since it typically means that he’s finding another way to kill whoever’s in the room with him. Over the years the Child’s Play movies have become a bit silly to be fair, but a lot of fans have stuck by the idea and continued to support the efforts to keep the franchise moving forward. The most recent attempt however had a chance to be insanely creepy and even epic, but replacing the idea of possession with a faulty bit of programming felt wrong in a way, as though it wasn’t quite good enough. Pitting the current Chucky against the one that a lot of us remember from back in the day would be an interesting battle to be certain. It’s a wonder as to whether the Child’s Play story will ever go forward any longer since not only is Lafia, one of those that knew the story best, now gone, but it almost feels as though the idea has been tarnished by the last attempt in a way. Had Child’s Play stopped at the second movie it might have actually stood a chance of being considered one of the best movies of all time.
The second movie did in fact gain a great deal of acclaim from fans since there was something far more devious about it than the first movie, which was a basic intro to Chucky and the idea of whose spirit was driving the doll. In the second movie we already knew who Chucky was, and we knew what he could do. At that point it was a matter of what he was going to do and how many new inventive ways he was going to find to do them. Burying the “Tommy” Good Guy doll was a nice trick, and there were a few interesting death scenes in the movie that Lafia managed to pull off in a way that made Chucky appear even more demented and vindictive. Given the fact that he was still after Andy it’s easy to figure out his motivation, but the fact that he went after various people that just got in the way was more proof that he was the same old psychopath. Still, Lafia made it work in one of the best ways since trying to convince anyone that Chucky was anything but deranged was kind of pointless since everyone agreed at that point. It’s interesting to learn that he also directed the little-known horror movie Man’s Best Friend, which many people likely don’t even know about to this day. The movie starred Allie Sheedy and Lance Henriksen and one mean-looking rottweiler that had, according to the plot of the movie, been highly modified to be the perfect weapon. This was a dog that could climb a tree like a jungle cat, was highly intelligent, could unhinge his jaws like a snake, peed acid, and was faster than the average dog had any right to be. In other words it was a killing machine on paws, which sounds like a great movie. Unfortunately it didn’t really go that far.
Given what he’d already offered to the public and the skill he had to tell a story it’s hard to hear of the loss of yet another great creative mind. Rest in peace sir.
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