Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

If you're a longtime reader of "Sutton at the Movies," then you've probably read a number of reviews where I've discussed just how popular slasher movies were during most of the 1980s. But while only a handful of them are still widely known, there are dozens more that have earned their own followings despite their lack of notoriety.

Among the more obscure is Silent Night, Deadly Night, a Christmastime slasher flick that most people have probably never heard of. But at the time of its theatrical release, its depiction of a serial killer dressed up in a Santa Claus costume made it very controversial. People actually protested screenings of it, believe it or not.

But while Silent Night, Deadly Night is more or less unknown nowadays, would you believe that it actually has four sequels? No kidding. But the truth is that the only one of these sequels that gets any kind of recognition at all is the first of the four. Named simply Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, it is one of the silliest and most downright preposterous movies I've ever seen. It is nearly unbelievable in its stupidity. It's an unequivocally bad movie, but it's almost... endearing? That can't be right, can it?

Roughly ten years have passed since the events of the original movie. And in that time, Ricky Caldwell (Eric Freeman) — the younger brother of the first movie's killer — has been locked up in a mental institution. When we are introduced to him, Ricky is beginning a session with his new psychiatrist, Dr. Bloom (James Newman).

As the session goes along, Ricky speaks at length about the massacre perpetrated by his brother, and the effect it had on him. The whole thing ended up making Ricky just as psychotic too, and by the time he was an adult, he'd racked up a pretty impressive body count of his own. But he still has some unfinished business that needs tending to, as Ricky still has eyes on killing Mother Superior (Jean Miller), the nun whose abuse helped Ricky's brother's insanity grow.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is one of those movies that is so bad that, once it's over, you're not quite sure what it is you've actually seen. You'll recognize that it's a bad movie, most definitely. But the confusing thing is that it's actually kinda charming, in a weird way. It's downright entertaining in its stupidity, entertaining in such a way that it's easy to just sit back and laugh at how silly it is. It's too goofy a movie to hate.

Pretty much everyone who has ever critiqued the movie has pointed out its main flaw: the unbelievably excessive amount of flashbacks it contains. Roughly forty minutes of the movie is comprised of stock footage from the original Silent Night, Deadly Night, if you can believe that. That's nearly half of the movie's total running time! So much footage is used that they actually list practically the entire cast of the original in the sequel's credits. And once that's out of the way, there's still another half an hour of flashbacks that detail Ricky's life between the end of the first movie and the beginning of the sequel. But at least that's all original material, right? Remove all the flashbacks, and you're left with somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen minutes for the movie to actually go anywhere.

What gets me is that only half of the movie is original, yet four people share the "story by" credit. The script is credited to Lee Harry and Joseph H. Earle, from a concept by Harry, Earle, Dennis Patterson, and Lawrence Appelbaum. There's two things that I see wrong with that. One, the movie has no story, so I don't see how someone can be given credit for coming up with one. Secondly, did we really need four guys to come up with half a movie? Did each of them come up with ten minutes of original material, and had it slapped together by Harry and Earle?

And I honestly can't say that I understand why so much of the movie had to be flashbacks to begin with. The flashbacks to Ricky's killing spree could have been handled differently, done in a way that made it feel like a straightforward narrative. But on the other hand, the flashbacks to the first movie make no sense. The Ricky character should be unable to have many of them, as either he'd be too young to remember them or he simply was not there when the events happened.

Some of the flashbacks could be reasonably excused with the explanation that his brother told him about it. I mean, he was a baby when his parents died, so there'd be no way he'd know about the details unless he was told. But in regards to Billy's massacre, he couldn't possibly know everything that happened that night. I doubt the more intimate details would be reported on the evening news, and I sincerely doubt that Billy would have been able to tell him about all that. So how did he know how it all went down?

The most mind-boggling thing about the writing, however, is that there is literally no plot whatsoever. I'm not even joking. A lot of movies have stories that are paper-thin, but Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 has no story at all. There's the recap of the first movie, then Ricky's account of why and how he went crazy, and then the bit where he tries to go kill Mother Superior. That's really all there is to it. There's no real sense of storytelling or narrative or anything like that. There's no beginning, middle, or end. It's just a jumbled-up mess from start to finish. And it's so full of absolutely ludicrous scenes and dialogue that if you're watching the movie and not laughing your head off at just how absurd it all is, you're one messed up person.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the movie boasts some of the cheesiest moments I've seen in any movie from any genre. For example, one victim actually gulps and says "uh oh!" aloud as Ricky moves in for the kill, which is laugh-worthy in and of itself. But it keeps on going beyond that. Ricky impales a victim on an umbrella at one point, a weapon that is both unique and amusing in its implementation. And then there's Mother Superior, who is said to have suffered a stroke between the first movie and its sequel. This must have been one hell of a stroke, because for some reason, it left her looking like that Batman villain "Two-Face." And I'm pretty sure that strokes don't work that way. Is that even remotely possible?

But at the top of the heap of insanity comes from what is the movie's most famous scene. Ricky has gone completely off the deep end, casually strolling down a suburban street and shooting anyone unlucky enough to cross his path. When he encounters a guy taking out his trash, Ricky proclaims that it is "garbage day!" and shoots the man in the chest for no good reason. The moment is so random, so over the top, so out of nowhere, that I actually had to watch it two or three times just to make sure it actually existed and was part of the movie.

But the writing isn't the only thing the movie fails at. The movie looks pretty substandard, too. In the director's seat is co-writer Lee Harry, whose work is serviceable, but could have used a lot of improvement. My main problem with Harry's direction is that you never once get the feeling that it's a Christmas movie. A graphic pops up that tells us that Ricky is meeting with his psychiatrist on December 24th, and he steals a Santa Claus costume from a Salvation Army bell-ringer during the movie's last fifteen minutes. But outside of that, the movie could have been set on Easter for all we know. I understand that the movie had a budget so small that they could barely afford to do anything at all. But couldn't they have cobbled together Christmas decorations from everyone in the cast and crew? Maybe get some locals from the neighborhood to make a few donations? Perhaps it was more the fault of the set designers than of the director, but it just feels lazy.

I guess the last thing left to talk about is the acting, which is pretty forgettable all around. I don't think you'll ever hear anyone talking about how great James Newman and Elizabeth Cayton were in this movie. The only person whose performance really stands out is Eric Freeman. Freeman's performance is so unbelievably over the top that there's no way I can believe he was taking this whole thing seriously. He's obviously having a good time during the movie, delivering each line of his corny dialogue with his best overacted snarl. While you may try tracking down the movie to see where that "garbage day" meme came from, you'll want to stick around for Freeman.

If the original Silent Night, Deadly Night is obscure, then the second one is even more so. Its sole DVD release has been out of print for years, and the only way that most people have even remotely heard of it is through clips of the "garbage day" scene popping up on YouTube. But I would definitely label it as a classic "so bad, it's good" movie. It's entertaining enough, and at the very least, it isn't as mean-spirited as the first movie. It's only half a movie and a pointless one at that, with no legitimate scares and no real reason for existing. But it's just so dumb that I can't bring myself to hate it. I can't justify giving Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 anything higher than one star, but if you enjoy bad movies, track it down any way you can.

Final Rating: *