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Does the fine character actor Brad Dourif, as he saddles up to the mic to voice the lines for Chucky, the killer doll, ever wonder what might have been had he not taken his second-ever movie role, as mental-hospital patient Billy Bibbit in 1975's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest?

Because anyone who sees that Oscar-winning picture will always be haunted by his tender, crushing performance as the cowed and stuttering Bibbit, whose illicit act of sexual rebellion leads in part to Jack Nicholson's tragic fate. And so too will Brad Dourif.

Maybe Dourif -- who apparently has not aged a lick in the past twenty-five years -- was destined to play off-putting weirdos and speech-impediment-afflicted inbreds for the rest of his natural-born life. As it stands, Dourif is the human equivalent of a bat flapping out of the shadows, or a sudden sting of frantic string music:he just makes things a wee bit more creepy.

Let's face it: When you get tapped by David Lynch for not one but two films, that's a pretty damn good sign that you can bring the creep. But when even your vocal chords are scary -- and Dourif provides the voice for doll-cum-murderer Chucky -- then you definitely know how to get your creep on.

When he isn't playing weaselly weirdos with names like "Chickie Levitt" and "Zealot" and "Grima Wormtongue" and "Michael McDonnell, gas station attendant," Dourif, oddly, plays a lot of doctors. This must say something about our collective fear of the medical profession. Because Dourif isn't playing genial, avuncular, hop-up-here- so-I-can- take-your-temperature- then-give- you-a-lollipop kind of doctors. These are scary, stringy-haired, rusty-instrument-using, long-needle-unsheathing, DNA-fiddling-without-permission kind of doctors. Even Doc Cochran, his old-west doctor's role on HBO's Deadwood, while not unspeakingly evil, is still, you know, off-putting.