Gender confused toys, masturbating dolls and very sharp knives: whatever else you want to say about it, Seed Of Chucky definitely isn't Child's Play. The fifth outing in the long-running demonic doll franchise comes with a hefty dose of irony and plenty of risqué humour as Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif) comes back to life all over again to stalk Jennifer Tilly (playing herself - deliberately badly). Profane, demented and utterly wretched, it's like watching Barbie and Ken on crack. Which at least makes it entertainingly bad.
Perhaps it's a reaction to the negative press that the series has generated over the years, but Chucky's got funnier as he's grown up. Following in the same vein as franchise-reviver Bride Of Chucky - which teamed the killer doll with a lady friend named Tiffany (Tilly) and upped the guffaws instead of the gore - Seed Of Chucky goes all out for cult appeal as the pair are revived by their anatomically-incorrect son (Billy Boyd) on the set of trash B-movie Chucky Goes Psycho.
"JENNIFER TILLY GAMELY SLUMS IT"
It's a car wreck of a movie - foot on the pedal, tires on fire, hurtling through all barriers of taste and decency towards the cinematic junkyard. Jennifer Tilly gamely slums it, playing herself as a plump, over-sexed bimbo who'll even bed a casting director (rapper Redman) to get a part as the Virgin Mary (!). She's rewarded with all the best lines: "You'll go to hell," her friend warns her. "No," says Tilly. "Hell would be being on Celebrity Fear Factor in a worm-eating contest with Anna Nicole Smith".
The gags are occasionally impressive (note the running joke about Ed Wood's transsexual camp classic Glen Or Glenda; and the cameo from legendary director John Waters). Yet they're barely enough to keep this creaky old bandwagon rolling towards its inevitable retirement. By the time Chucky sets about a gagged and Bound (geddit?) Tilly to impregnate her using a turkey baster, it's obvious that this series really has gone to seed.