It All Started in 1988…
Growing up, my dad and his buddies hosted Movie Monday. This group of 20somethings went to the video store and picked out the weirdest grossest movies they could find. Monday also happened to be the night my mom was not at home, and my dad was in charge of watching me. As a result, I was exposed to all the 80’s schlock you could imagine.
By the time I was 5, I had seen any horror franchise that is widely popular and a bunch of hidden gems. Then a new movie came out, Child’s Play. It was one of the first movies I had seen where a kid had to battle the bad guy. As a young child myself, I was obsessed with it. However, rather than being scared of Chucky, I wanted to be his friend.
While the movie could have been incredibly horrible with the wrong voice actor, Brad Dourif gave such life to this doll that he was irresistibly charming. From then on, I was hooked on Dourif. Any time he showed up in TV shows or in movies, I was glued to the TV. He became an actor whose movies I would watch just because he was in them. I have seen many of his films up until this point. However, I have never seen them all.
Brad Dourif Watching Categories & Criteria
Watching an actor like Brad Dourif who defies genres is so much different than watching Dolph Lundgren who almost exclusively lived in the action genre. Instead of trying to watch everything all at once, I will be watching things in tranches. Using his Wikipedia, I have broken things up into 5 categories:
Category 1: Child’s Play Franchise
Category 2: Feature Films
Category 3: Made for TV Films
Category 4: TV Episodes
Category 5: Deadwood
Things I will be skipping include: Uncredited Roles, Video Games, Shorts, Wrestling Appearances of Chucky, and The Extended Edition of Return of the King. Although he is one of the greatest villains ever captured on film, I’m definitely not watching nearly 4 hours of film for only a few moments of Grima Wormtongue. Everything else is up for watching.
As I have already started this challenge, I know that some movies prior to the DVD era have been terribly hard to find. Shoutout to my AWNIS Thematic Thursday co-host with the most Ryan for hooking me up with some hard to find gems. With a little help from my friends, I will watch as many things as I can find!
I will break up my analysis of Dourif by each category. What I am looking for in the Brad Dourif ranking amongst categories is rather simple, was he memorable / fantastic, and was the movie/episode good itself. There is a balancing act of the two that makes sense: if Dourif is good and the movie or show is good, I’m likely to watch it again. My ultimate ranking will require both Dourif and the movie/episode to be good to rank high.
An Epic Quest Begins …
I fully expect to find and have already found some things that will surprise me on this journey. I already found one new-to-me movie that blew me away. I am impressed by Dourif’s ability to surpass genre and typecasting to give great performances no matter what the role requires. His hair, makeup, and costumes enhance his already masterful toolset. It is a crying shame he was not a leading man more often in films.
Join me as I go along on a journey through the good, the bad, and the ugly of his career. Up next is my review of the entire Child’s Play franchise.
