The Port Arthur Massacre And Child’s Play 2
Universal PicturesMartin Bryant watched Child’s Play 2 (1990) obsessively prior to his killing spree.
Martin Bryant grew up without any friends. Bullied and resentful, the socially awkward loner from Hobart, Australia, would curse his peers and brag about his family wealth. His only refuge was horror films and diving outings with his father.
His IQ of 68 and learning disabilities had isolated him as a child. And he was only diagnosed with Asperger’s when he got to prison. The troubling signs had been there all along, however, as he had tortured animals in his youth, grew fond of filmed sex acts between humans and animals — and became obsessive over Child’s Play 2 (1990).
YouTubeBryant frequently told his girlfriend, “Don’t f— with the Chuck.”
“He loved Chucky and used to go on about it all the time,” said his ex-girlfriend, Jenetta Hoani. “It comes to life and has to kill this boy so it can be real and then it just goes around killing all these people. There was a phrase in that movie that he used to say, ‘Don’t f**k with the Chuck.’ He used to get excited when he’d say that.”
“He would think he was really cool.”
After completing his special education curriculum, Bryant worked as a gardener and met wealthy 59-year-old heiress Helen Harvey in 1988. The 21-year-old soon moved in with her and inherited over $470,000 when she died in a car accident that Bryant survived. In 1993, his father was found mysteriously drowned with a diving weight belt around his neck and an inheritance left to Bryant.
Martin Bryant was 29 years old when he murdered 35 people on April 28 and 29, 1996. Known as the Port Arthur Massacre, it was the worst mass killing by a single person in Australian history, as he stalked from cafes and gift shops to toll booths and gas stations. Gunned down with a semiautomatic AR-15 and L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle, his victims ranged in age from 3 to 72 years old.
By the time he was captured, Bryant had killed 35 and injured 23 people.
Bryant’s nightmarish, horror movie-inspired killing spree also led to historic new gun laws in Australia. The federal government implemented new restrictions on self-loading rifles and shotguns and started Australia’s first buyback program for firearms that fell afoul of the new regulations. Before the massacre, Australia had left gun regulations up to each territory or state.
