By Geno McGahee
A film like SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT didn’t seem like a film that would have sequels, but there’s quite a few and I’m onto the third entry which is called SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 3: BETTER WATCH OUT. I couldn’t find a budget or box office return for this one. So, it had to be a straight to video release, which isn’t a bad thing. The video stores were booming in 1989 and there was plenty of money to be made, especially with an established title.
If you have seen the first movie, you know that Ricky was an infant and grew up to watch his brother become a killer Santa. He would then become a killer Santa and be shot and supposedly killed in the follow up, but they brought him back and he’s in a coma this time and he has lost all muscle mass. In the second one, the dude obviously hit the gym. In this one, Bill Moseley plays the role and Ricky is in bad shape. His brain is exposed in some fish tank thing that they have on his head.
Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer) has seen too many NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies and wants to find psychics to dream and communicate with the comatose Ricky. Laura (Samantha Scully) is blind with psychic abilities and we get an immediate window into her dreams. Ricky is following her with a scalpel and then she sees a Santa that pulls a knife on her. She screams about ten times in the opening three minutes and the screams are pretty weak, but the rest of her acting isn’t bad.
Laura leaves the program to celebrate Christmas and awaits her brother to pick her up. She sits next to a couple with an infant and the dude is fucked up. He looks like a Howard Stern impersonator and the faces he makes for the kid are weird. I know we all make funny faces to amuse infants, but this guy was weird. It may be the one time that Laura was lucky to be blind.
There is an asshole Santa guy in the hospital that makes a remark about his “candy cane” to a nurse and then enters Ricky’s room and makes some vegetable jokes, including asking him if his favorite singer was Perry Coma. Ricky comes to life and we get our first kill and it was pretty lame. Santa screams “no” a few times and that’s that. Ricky, you have lost your way.
We get the second kill as Ricky snuffs the receptionist and it’s just as uninspired as the first. A scream and some blood thrown on the phone and it’s done. He’s now out and walking the hospital parking lot, but there’s a psychic connection between him and Laura. She starts seeing scenes from the first film and he is hearing her conversation. This film is in crazy town and gets fucking crazier when a guy picks up a hitchhiking Ricky that is wearing a hospital gown and that aquarium on his head. This dude deserved to be murdered for being so stupid, but his death is not on screen like the others.
Laura is heading to her grandma’s house with her brother, Chris (Eric DaRae), and his new girlfriend, Jerri (Laura Harring), and the two ladies are not seeing eye to eye. Laura is being difficult for no apparent reason. It almost seemed like jealousy over her brother and even made some sexual comments that were really uncalled for. It was more uncalled for than any candy cane penis reference.
The death count continues with the gas station clerk that was busy having phone sex. Part of a film is caring about the characters and all these one scene and done characters were meaningless. I felt a little for the gas station clerk and the phone sex girl because I support phone sex, but they should have developed them more. There’s always room for more phone sex in films. Always.
Ricky shows up at the grandmother’s house, but at least he had the courtesy to put on a hat to cover the brain, even though it doesn’t work so well. She accepts him in the home and gives him pie. Considering he is incredibly strange and creepy, the idea of him being so warmly welcomed by the grandmother and the driver that picked him up, it seems unlikely.
I know that Bill Moseley is horror royalty to some, but he is not the right guy for this role. I cannot connect him to the Rickys that came before him. He’s not the garbage day guy…that’s for sure. They should have gotten Eric Freeman to resume the role. In 1988 and 89, he wasn’t doing shit really. I’m sure he would have done the part. It would have made this film make more sense. It’s very hard to connect this one to the first two flicks.
If you’re keeping score, granny gets it…off screen of course. I get that though. You don’t want to off some old bird on screen. When Laura, Chris and Jerri show up, there’s not a huge concern immediately about dear old granny, but Laura has a little bit of a bad feeling.
Chris and Jerri take a bath in Granny’s tub. That has to be weird shit. It would be strange nailing somebody in my grandmother’s house. Especially so for me. My grandmother is dead and never owned a house. I’d have to bang somebody in my Nana’s old age home apartment and that would be really really strange. I don’t know about you, but I can’t screw anyone while looking at a bowl full of ribbon candy. She ate that shit like crazy.
Chris is a hairy fuck. His chest pubes are going to clog the drain for sure. Any of granny’s friends that come over will probably think that granny needs to get a weed whacker for her junk, not realizing that it was her grandson and his ridiculous amount of chest hair. Why didn’t the director step in and say “shave that shit off”? He’s also got that Bon Jovi hair and Canadian tuxedo thing going. And don’t email me saying that the term “Canadian tuxedo” isn’t politically correct. I know it’s not. I don’t want to say it, but it’s all I know. It’s how I was raised. I see full denim and that enters my head. I’ll work on it. I think it’ll be out of my system after another five hundred or so reviews.
Lt. Connely (Robert Culp) teams up with Dr. Newbury to track down Laura and, hopefully, Ricky. The dialogue in the car is pretty bad and that sucks because Culp can deliver if he’s given good shit to work with. In the meantime, Chris’s car is stolen and they still cannot find Granny. They can’t find the gas station phone sex clerk either, but they’re not really looking for him.
Ricky (spoiler) comes out of nowhere to kill Chris. First, he disarms him, tossing a shotgun to the side and then goes to kill him. Chris screams to Laura and Jerri to run. They do. WHY? They could have gotten the gun and blown him away and the nightmare would have been over. They let Chris die.
We get down to a one on one showdown between Ricky and Laura and it’s not good. Granny comes back from the dead to advise Laura about her “powers”. This leads to a basement battle where Chris comes back. He didn’t die and had the terrible line “is it live or is it Memorex?” They could have done so much better than that. I can’t imagine them doing worse…and Chris is killed again by Ricky.
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 3: BETTER WATCH OUT! is terrible. It definitely does not feel like it belongs in the series and doesn’t feel like a Christmas movie. Outside of a few decorations and the dead Santa, this barely qualifies. The acting is wretched, for the most part, and the fun factor that was in the last one is nowhere to be found here. This feels more like a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET or BAD DREAMS knockoff.
It was so bad and to find anything that I enjoyed in this film is tough. I struggled to get through it and there was no payoff. This is as bad as it gets. You can watch it, but you’d better watch out! It’s not good.
