Oh this was one of my favs growing up, the first movie I begged to get from the video rental was Childs Play and I think I was about 3 or 4, my mother graciously indulged me and it sent me off on a voyage of horror I've never come back from.

This one was a bigger deal though as this one has a little girl and she was the same age in the movie as I was when I watched it.

The movie starts when an archaeologist unearths some kind of tomb and despite scraping sounds from inside he persists in opening it until he's crushed by the door and some very, very cheap red squiggles escape into a nearby factory.

The very same factory that has just been purchased by the embodiment of late 80's/early 90s Americana Elliot Wade or Read (the movie uses both) played by Sam 'godammit I was in Apocalypse now' Bottoms, dressed in the best polyester business casual that the meagre budget can muster. He's moving to Mexico with his early teens son, Jimmy, who is also inexplicably dressed in business casual, his wife, Denise 'why are my movie kids always trying to kill me' Crosby dressed as a Sears summer catalogue and their cute little daughter, Jessica, in her adorable summer dresses.

The Read/Wade's have relocated from LA so Elliot can pursue his dream of...owning a business? I think...makes more sense than it being his lifelong dream of owning a doll factory.

After seeing the factory is in a terrible state of disrepair he gets back on the plane...no, not really, he decides to try to make it work.

Jessica spots one of the dolls that was made by the last owner and asks if she can have it, Sam obliges and then before you know it kids acting weird, small clicking noises in the night, housekeeper and factory employee's die in mysterious 'accidents', kid starts talking in a dead language and Rip Torn shows up in an accent that makes Al Pacino's attempt at a Scottish accent seem very good indeed.

Rip is this movie's exposition fairy as he tells us there was a cult in the town called Sansea? Sansia? SansaStarks? anyway, they were an offshoot of Mayans who had some plan to bring Satan to earth by making a 'devil child' with the head of a goat and the body of a child ¬_¬ which they fed with the warm blood of slaughtered children which sounds time consuming and labour intensive as where is one going to find 3 kids a day to kill? you'd run short of kids pretty quick and who's going to keep birthing them? the women you have birthing them will get too old eventually and then who's going to make the new ones as you've killed all the kids to raise a satanic goat child...anyway Jimmy demands to be Rip's assistant much to parental disapproval but also comes in handy at the end. It takes three quarters of the movie for anyone to notice Jessica is possessed and not just cranky, there's a part with a nun which is reminiscent of The First Power and a couple of scenes try, ambitiously, to rip off The Omen and it's actually one of the better scenes in the movie, very young Candy Hutson pulls off her role admirably. I mean that sincerely, I don't think she's an actress anymore but she was very talented. Another thing pilfered from The Omen is Jimmy being chased from a cemetery by a dog .

It's all very cheesy and predictible but I have such affection for it that I can't be objective. If you watch it try and keep in mind that it is to horror what things like Commando is to action, eg. not 100% serious, not entirely good but also not meant to be.

Interesting Stuff:

The stunt man doing a leap for Sam Bottoms at the end leaps so enthusiastically his wig nearly flies off

The people who made this movie did a lot of 70's softcore stuff and this movie is a huge departure as well as out of the blue so I'm not sure if money laundering, passion project or last gasp cash-in on the 'killer doll' thing that was going on 

It tried to pull a Ghosthouse and call itself Child's Play 4 but had to change it's title