Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Directed by:
Lee Harry

Thanks to a parent-infuriating ad campaign featuring everyone's favorite ambassador of Christmas goodwill as an axe-murdering maniac, the original SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984) gained almost immediate infamy as a slasher flick in particularly bad taste. This first sequel, however, took a little more time to gain its own kind of infamy... as one of the worst films ever made! Pretty much flatly dismissed in its day as useless trash, Part 2 has slowly but steadily gained its own devoted fan following and has been wowing bad movie fans for the past 25+ years with its hilariously awful acting and dialogue and pathetic attempts to pad it out to feature length status by recycling tons of footage from the original film. Just how much footage? At least half of the running time! This was never even intended to really be a sequel in the traditional sense. The producers of the original had hired director Lee Harry to film some framing sequences (all set in an asylum) and then simply re-cut the first film to try to pass it off as a sequel. Instead, Harry (along with three other writers) scripted more than was originally intended and the resulting film (which has about 40 minutes of new footage) was then shot over a 10 day period. I suppose we should thank Harry for at least doing that much.

On Christmas Eve, Ricky Caldwell (Eric Freeman), the equally unhinged brother of the original film's "Santa Claus Killer" Billy Chapman (not quite sure how that surname change came to be), sits in a mental institution angrily scowling and puffing away on cigarettes. Psychiatrist Dr. Henry Bloom (James Newman) shows up, sets up his tape recorder and attempts to get Ricky to tell him his life story. Ricky isn't too fond of recounting his tale for this nosy "pencil neck piece of shit" but seeing how it may be his last chance to come clean he decides to humor him. And thus begins a long series of flashbacks to the original film, including repeat scenes of Billy and Ricky's parents being killed by a psycho Santa, their ill-treatment at Saint Mary's Orphanage at the hands of the cruel Mother Superior and 18-year-old Billy's eventual murder spree before he's shot and killed by the police. Ricky seems to have amazingly vivid recollections of some of the events, especially when you take into consideration he wasn't even there to witness most of them!

It isn't even until the 40 minute mark that we get to hear a little about how Ricky ended up in the mental institution, which is then shown in a series of side-splitting flashbacks. At age 12, he's adopted by Martha and Morty Rosenberg (Corinne Gelfan, Michael Combatti), who are concerned over the fact that young Ricky has seizures whenever he sees nuns and seems to react violently to the color red ("Red car. Good point."), but Sister Mary (Nadya Wynd) ensures them that all he needs is a stable family. Five years later, Ricky's stepfather dies, which hits him pretty hard. After all, "You tend to get paranoid when everyone around you gets dead." Ricky goes for a walk and encounters a man roughing up his girlfriend, which brings on traumatic flashbacks to his parents getting killed... never mind the fact he was an infant when that happened. After he runs over the guy repeatedly with a jeep, the victim's girlfriend walks up to him, smiles and calmly says "Thank you" (?) A year later, Ricky hears something that sounds like "some squirrel getting his nuts squeezed," gets into an altercation with a thug (Frank Novak) and then impales him him with an umbrella that is then opened.

Ricky ends up bumping into the beautiful Jennifer (Elizabeth "Cayton" / Kaitan), but even she cannot calm the snarling beast. The two go on a date to a movie theater where we see even more footage from the original Silent Night and Ricky kills an obnoxious heckler in the audience ("Naughty!"). He uses a battery charger to make Jennifer's ex-boyfriend's eyeball explode, strangles Jennifer with a car antennae ("Uh oh!") and then shoots a cop in the head with own gun before going on a ludicrous shooting rampage through suburbia while laughing maniacally and shouting things like "Punish!" and, most famously, "Garbage Day!" (a clip of which has managed to get 5 million hits on Youtube). Once he's cornered by more cops, Ricky turns the gun on himself but discovers he's out of bullets... Back to the present day, Ricky murders Dr. Bloom, manages to escape the nuthouse and then heads out after "that bitch Superior." The wheelchair bound Mother Superior (Jean Miller) is said to have suffered from a stroke but they've applied some kind of weird burn / scar make-up to her face to try to disguise the fact it's a different actress in the role!

Freeman's ridiculously over-the-top performance (and hilariously overactive eyebrows) have made him something of a cult icon over the years. When no one was able to hunt him down to do a DVD commentary track, fans went on a crusade to locate him and a website was even set up specifically for the cause (http://www.findingfreeman.com/). About a week ago to this day, Freeman finally surfaced, appeared at the New Beverly Cinema for a special screening of the film and did an interview with FearNet. Freeman's only other notable film appearances were in David DeCoteau's bizarre slasher / gore flick MURDER WEAPON (1989; where he was billed as "Damon Charles") and a bit in the comedy Ghost Writer (also 1989). He did not get to reprise the role of Ricky in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III: BETTER WATCH OUT! (1989) and the part was given to Bill Moseley. The cast also includes a young Tim Abell (under the name "Ron Moriarty") as a detective. 

Terrible as this all is, in some strange way I actually prefer watching this sequel to the original film. Not only do you get loads of laughs in the new footage, but it also cuts out the middle man by showing all of the highlights from the first film. Both films have been issued numerous times on DVD by Anchor Bay.

SBIG

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

... aka: Slayride

Directed by:
Charles E. Sellier Jr.

The furor over this typical (though entertaining) slasher flick began with a series of TV spots and print ads featuring a man dressed as Santa Claus brandishing an axe. A parent's group out of Milwaukee began protesting the film, picketed theaters and demanded the ads be removed from the air, the controversy rapidly spread and the film's bad reputation was solidified after it was blasted on an episode of "At the Movies." Gene Siskel referred to it as "sick and sleazy and mean-spirited," called out the distributors as well as the director, producer and writer by name to publicly shame them (claiming their profits were "blood money") and then went on record placing it alongside I Spit on Your Grave as "one of the two most contemptible films I have seen." Interestingly, at least three earlier films had also depicted a killer donning gay apparel; the "And All Through the House" segment of TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) starring Joan Collins, CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980), which fellow Silent Night-hating-critic Leonard Maltin had awarded a 3 star rating to, and the seldom-watched TO ALL A GOODNIGHT (1980), which was the directorial debut of David "Krug" Hess. None of those films received quite the attention or the (over-the-top) chilly reception of SNDN. Regardless, all the hoopla, news coverage and free publicity ensured the film was profitable. It managed to gross more than double its budget in less than two weeks before TriStar finally caved in and yanked the film from theaters. After the firestorm calmed down a bit, it was re-released in 1986 by another company (Aquarius Films) and again raked in lots of money, which set the stage for numerous sequels.

Silent Night is basically your run-of-the-mill Psych 101 slasher flick that follows the familiar "childhood trauma = adult murderous impulses" trajectory. After a visit to a nuthouse to see his creepy grandpa (Will Hare), who snaps out of his faked catatonic state long enough to inform the boy that "Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!," five-year-old Billy witnessed his parents (Tara Buckman, Geoff Hansen) being butchered by a psycho (Charles Dierkop) dressed as Santa. He and his infant brother Ricky are promptly sent off to a Catholic orphanage where things don't improve much. The place is run by the sadistic Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin), a stern advocate of inflicting "punishment" on all the naughty boys and girls with a belt and whose remedy for a child's nightmare involves tying them down to the bed. Still troubled by seeing his parents being murdered, Billy draws bloody pictures and spies on some teenagers having sex, all of which lead to him getting a good beating. The compassionate Sister Margaret (Gilmer McCormick) does what she can to help soften the blow, but she too is pretty much at the mercy of the Alpha Nun.

After turning 18, Billy (hunky Robert Brian Wilson) is finally able to leave Saint Mary's Hellhole and goes to work in a toy store. Still troubled by his repressed childhood trauma and abusive treatment at the hands of Mother Superior over the years, Billy finally snaps when he's forced to don a Santa Claus costume around Christmastime and then catches the attempted rape of his female co-worker / crush Pamela (Toni Nero). He strangles the attacker to death with a string of Christmas lights, guts Pamela with a box cutter, sinks the clawed end of a hammer in his drunk boss' (Britt Leach) head and then shoots another woman with a arrow. After Billy leaves, Sister Margaret stops by for a visit, finds the bodies and then goes to the police, but by that point Billy's already mid-way through a vicious murder spree, which includes impaling a topless teenager (Linnea Quigley, you're wanted on the set!), decapitating sled-stealing bullies on their trip downhill and sending a cop down a flight of stairs after burying an axe in his chest. Billy eventually ends up back at the orphanage wanting revenge on the woman who'd made his life a living hell.

Aside from the novelty of the killer's costume, a couple of memorable murder scenes (most notably Ms. Quigley's) and a Grinch pinch of holiday mean-spiritedness (no less than two different Santa's are gunned down right in front of a bunch of children), this is all rather predictable and routinely written and directed. It's at its best during the opening half hour "build up" portion detailing Billy's tumultuous youth. The visit to the asylum and the family encountering a deranged Santa while traveling across a vacant country road at night are genuinely creepy, and the orphanage scenes are pretty nasty and somewhat harrowing; something the rest of the film fails to live up to. Still, there's enough blood and nudity to satisfy a slasher fans needs and it's reasonably well-made, with above average performances.

This reissue poster omitted the killer Santa angle, yet played up on the controversy surrounding it.

Billy's brother Ricky was the central character in the first two follow-ups; Lee Harry's unintentionally hilarious Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) and Monte Hellman's bland Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (1989). Brian Yuzna's Silent Night Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990), which concerned an all-female cult of bug worshippers, and Martin Kitrosser's Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker (1991), starring Mickey Rooney as a guy who makes killer toys, were completely unrelated to the first three; only sharing the Christmas setting. In 2012, a loose remake of the original (directed by Stephen C. Miller and titled simply Silent Night), was released.

★★1/2

Santa's Slay (2005)

Directed by:
David Steiman

According to "The Book of Claus" there have only been two immaculate conceptions in the history of man. The first and most famous, of course, was God planting his seed in the Virgin Mary, resulting in the birth of Jesus Christ. But did you know that Satan simultaneously impregnated an unsullied lass named Erica, who then gave birth to her own evil son the same day? And that son was named... Santa! Do you now resent your parents for lying to you all these years? Santa is not, in fact, a jolly, generous, hard-working, magical man who spends all year at the North Pole with his elves making sure all good girls and boys will be getting gifts on Christmas morning. He's actually a demon who gets his jollies by slaughtering everyone he comes into contact with. In the days of old, Santa used to spend Christmas on a joyful murderous rampage. That day became known as "The Day of Slayings." But the demon has long been out of commission thanks to him losing a bet to an elderly angel a millennium ago. In the interim, Christianity spread, the myth of a good Santa was devised and the truth was long buried... but the thousand years are now up and Santa's ready to make up for lost time. And that's the premise for which this mean-spirited holiday horror comedy hopes to warp the true meaning of Christmas for our amusement.

Cast in the lead role as the evil, murderous Santa is big guy Bill Goldberg, who's best known as a professional wrestler. Now I don't watch nor do I enjoy professional wrestling, but it hasn't been lost on me that a good number of wrestlers end up starring in horror films for one reason or another. Perhaps it has to do with their intimidating size, but I think for the most part it's because being a pro wrestler actually requires a lot of acting anyway, so why not? Tor Johnson (best known for his Ed Wood film appearances) and masked grappler Santo (star of dozens of genre films in Mexico starting in the late 50s) are early examples of this phenomenon. After them we got Jesse "The Body" Ventura in Predator (1987), "Rowdy" Roddy Piper in John Carpenter's They Live (1988) and the upcoming Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies (2013), Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in The Mummy Returns (2003) and Doom (2005), "Diamond" Dallas Page in The Devil's Rejects (2005) and Snoop Dog's Hood of Horror (2006), Glenn "Kane" Jacobs in See No Evil (2006), Chris Jericho in Albino Farm (2009) and the list goes on. Now I personally don't mind these guys being cast when they can act; sometimes they can and sometimes they can't. Often times, the parts don't even require much acting. This particular role - which basically requires girth, almost constant scowling and little dialogue said through clenched teeth - is actually a pretty good fit for Goldberg and he acquits himself fairly well here.

Things begin with an entire family of rich snobs (played mostly by washed-up former stars) being slaughtered in a variety of ways. Chris Kattan is kicked into a curio cabinet, Rebecca Gayheart is smacked upside the head with a table leg, Fran Drescher gets torched and drown in bowl of eggnog and James Caan gets a turkey leg shoved down his throat. Considering Caan's career has always been pretty strong since The Godfather days (he was just in the family hit Elf (2003) two years before this), it's kind of odd seeing him in an independent B horror flick, but here he is, anyway. The guy must have a sense of humor. The events all take place in the small, wintry village of Hell Township, where Santa runs a cranky old lady off the road with his sled (which is pulled by a huge reindeer... or is that a buffalo?) and uses things like sharpened candy canes and wreaths to make shot work of the cast. He also burns down a strip club after killing nearly everyone inside, slaughters all of the local cops, sticks a Menorah through a Jewish man's neck and does lots of other, shall we say, naughty things. Opposing him are our heroes Nicolas Yuleson (Douglas Smith), a 16-year-old who works at a deli, his spunky co-worker / romantic interest Mary Mackenzie (Emilie de Ravin, who appeared in the Hills Have Eyes remake the following year) and Nicolas's eccentric Grandpa (Robert Culp, who's great here); a reclusive inventor not well liked by the townspeople. Gramps turns out to be a good archangel who's still on Earth to make sure Santa in put out of commission for good, unbeknownst to his grandson.

Stripped down, Santa's Slay is basically just a series of violent comic gags. Some of these don't work at all and you'll be rolling your eyes and groaning at a lot of the one-liners, which are intentionally corny but corny nonetheless. The profanity also seems a little excessive. While I don't mind profanity at all, when nearly everyone's running around saying "Fuck this" and "Fuck that" and you realize the writer thinks this is going to elicit laughs in and of itself, it begins to seem forced and grates on the nerves a bit after awhile. That said, enough genuinely funny moments seep through to overcome the bad. There's plenty of action and bloodshed, the young leads are appealing, the premise is imaginative and amusing and clever directorial touches are sprinkled throughout. My favorite bit by far was a stop-motion animated flashback (which seems inspired by the classic Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer holiday special) to where Santa and the angel face off over a game of curling! Wisely, the running time is just 78 minutes (over 8 minutes of which is credits), so this moves along briskly and doesn't wear out its welcome.

Dave Thomas (playing a hypocritical reverend), Saul Rubinek (deli owner) and Tommy "Tiny" Lister all have small roles, Brett Ratner (who'd previously directed big Hollywood hits like the Rush Hour series and X-Men 3) was one of the many producers and most of the soundtrack consists of rock covers of Christmas classics. It was filmed in Canada on a 4.5 million dollar budget.

Merry Christmas friends! I hope everyone has a wonderful day tomorrow.

★★★