The Origin of Chucky

Who exactly is Charles Lee Ray and how did he become the killer doll that we all love to hate?

That is a tough question to answer seeing as though the Child's Play movie franchise never really gave us a look back at his life. Most of our favorite slasher movies have given us a peek back into the lives of the villains such as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and even Leatherface, but nothing about Charles so far. We did have a flashback in Curse of Chucky right before he became that little shit head doll thanks to Sarah Pierce calling the police! What a bitch, right? I mean who wouldn't want some voodoo creep killing their husband, knocking them up and keeping them in some scuzzy safe house? That sounds like a dream come true to me! So that seems to be the most we are getting to see thus far.

Luckily there is a way to be able to look back into Charles Lee Ray's childhood BUT it will cost you a pretty penny, unfortunately. A novel by Matthew J. Costello titled Child's Play 2, takes a look back at the childhood of Chucky. You can try to search the web for details about his upbringing but you wont find much other than "his mother was a little person and he didn't have a father." Seeing as I am a Chucky enthusiast, I do own the novel and I am going to give you a little glimpse back into his childhood. So lets see what created little Chucky Ray to become that heartless, soulless creep known as the Lakeshore Strangler.

We can thank a woman named Minna Elizabeth Ray for giving birth to this little gem of a child. She was a midget, just under 4 feet tall. From what Costello wrote in the novel it seems like Chucky received his mothers personality, which I will get to in a minute. Chucky never knew his father, nor had he ever seen even a photograph of him. He can only assume by the way his mother would speak of his dad, that he was a normal size person. She would name call his dad a lot and always used the word "big" in her insults, such as "he's a BIG rat" or "He's a BIG slob". Minna was an evil, drunk midget but she would put on a sweet face when she was out in public. So Chucky had to live in a home with no father and a mean midget for a mother. He feared that he would grow up to be a midget too and school was no escape from his worrisome mind. He was bullied at school for his mom being shrimp sized. It doesn't seem as though his mom was mean to him personally until he grew past her in size. Why would she be mean to her own child just for him being of normal stature? We can only assume she was jealous of his height and that he reminded her of his dad. She started to verbally abuse Charles, name calling him all the time and comparing him to his father. Rotten words then turned into violence, in her drunken rages she started to hit him, punching him all over. His schoolmates didn't help the situation and now that they couldn't pick on him for possibly being a little person, they moved on to saying perverted mean things about his mother. At this point he hated his mom and wanted her dead. He first thought about running away but he had nowhere to go, so of course if you can't just run away then kill the wrench instead, right? Yup, that's exactly what he did. At the age of 15, Charles Lee Ray had claimed his first victim, his mother! Strangling her and putting her body in a trash bag and burying her in a park that no one except drug dealers went to. Charles was eventually caught but there was never a trial and he never served jail time. He was just sent to a juvenile home in Illinois. Funny how karma works though...now Chucky will forever be a little person, trapped inside a Good Guy doll. I guess it's better than being stuck inside a barbie doll, things can always be worse!

So there you have it, the only bit of information that has been told about Chucky's life. Who knows if Don Mancini will ever portray Chucky's childhood the way Costello has, but us fans needed something! Now we can just imagine how sick and twisted his life became from then on. It would be pretty entertaining to be able to see all this unfold on screen one day. So even though I couldn't give THAT much insight into Chucky's past, I hope I made a more clear picture for you of what made Chucky who he is today.