By Geno McGahee
In 1984, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was released and it caused quite a stir with bored housewives that had nothing better to do. Oh, also Mickey Rooney. He opened his fat mouth too…short fuck. People bitched so much about the film that it was pulled after only a week at the cinemas, but it’d have the last laugh. It made 2.5 million on a 750,000 budget and led to a string of sequels with the most notorious one being the immediate follow up SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2 in 1987.
The film would only get 250,000 for a budget and maybe that’s the problem. Probably not. It had plenty of issues and I can’t blame them on financial constraints. I’ll start the blame with the elephant in the room, Eric Freeman. Freeman plays Ricky, the younger brother of the killer in the first, and is one of the worst actors in film history. In his defense, he did mostly extra work in film and probably thought he’d get that sort of gig in this movie, but they gave him the starring role.
The film starts with just over five minutes of an employee setting up tape recorder as Ricky watches on, smirking occasionally. Well, that’s just the beginning to the incredible amount of filler in this film. Actually, what do you call a movie that is more filler than film? I guess you call it SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2. It uses so much footage from the original that you are basically watching the original. Perhaps, they wanted another shot at the cinemas with the first and just added a wraparound story to get that shot.
Dr. Henry Bloom (James Newman) enters the room to talk to Ricky and he is the 13th psychologist to try to reach him and, remarkably, Ricky blabs away about his brother. He even mentions things that he could not possibly remember considering that he was an infant, but they fill that plot hole by his commentary of “I was there.” Good save. Another moment he brings up that he could not possibly know was when two cops showed up a random house where they see a Santa climbing in through a window only to find out that it was the father of the house. There is NO WAY he would know that. I can accept that his brother filled him in on shit, but a lot of this he’d have no idea. What lazy writing and storytelling.
It’s weird to have an adult man use the term “naughty” when not referring to sex. Ricky says “they were naughty” a few times and it just didn’t set right with me. I felt weird. I felt sexually harassed. I’m going to get together with some housewives and dig up Mickey Rooney and protest this film starting now!
Ricky and the Doctor mention jerking off and then Ricky says that he “knows all the moves.” How many moves are there to jerking off? I freely admit that I’ve not received the 1001 Ways to Jerk Off book in the mail yet, but I would assume him knowing “all the moves” would only be one to three moves. I don’t consider using a Fleshlight jerking off. So toss that out. I guess there are about two ways, the regular way and the stranger where you sit on your hand until it goes numb and it feels like somebody else is doing it. Only two ways. Change my mind.
We continue to watch the original SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT with the occasional narration of Ricky. He should have just told the doctor to walk his fat ass to the video store and rent the movie to avoid this long story he had to tell.
I am not sure why they replaced an actor for this one in one of the final cuts of the original. So, the killer Santa storms in calling everyone and their uncle “naughty” and he gets killed and the younger brother, Ricky, steps forward to say “naughty”, but they didn’t keep the original cut. They kept Mother Superior looking at him, but they brought in another kid actor to say it. Why? They stole the entire movie. Did that first kid throw a fucking fit or refuse to sign a waiver? I kind of get why they did it because they use that actor in some rare new footage in this film, but it was unnecessary. Also, after the kid says “naughty”, it cuts to grow up Ricky saying “very naughty.” Man, I feel naughty watching this film.
Ricky is adopted by the Rosenbergs, but the time bomb is ticking. He shits his pants when he sees nuns and is still deathly afraid of Santa, which I don’t totally get. He wasn’t afraid of his brother. As I said earlier, he could not have remembered the killer Santa that took out his parents. Whatever the case, he is afraid of Santa.
When they ran out of footage to steal from the original, the stuff they created was uninspired and a rip off at times. When Ricky is in his teens, he stumbles upon a guy nearly raping his girlfriend, prompting him to say “naughty” and kill the guy. What I liked about this scene was that the girlfriend thanked Ricky for killing the prick, which should have happened in the first one.
We get back to Ricky at the asylum or prison or wherever he is and he tells Bloom that his mother couldn’t afford college and he “had to get a job!” He didn’t want to work. I wonder if I’m related to him. He goes onto tell a story about his job as a dishwasher or something like that and I have to give this film its first points. He kills a dude with an umbrella while saying “naughty” and the umbrella goes through the guy and opens up. It was a hilarious kill scene. Movie, you are starting to win me over a little.
Ricky says he’s done talking when Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan) is brought up and then he goes on and on and on. All right, the second half of this movie is when this film kicks into high gear. There’s a movie theater scene where Jennifer and Ricky catch a flick and there’s a total asshole that is sitting in the back of the cinema, making noise, and harassing Ricky. It was fucking funny as hell. Jennifer also runs into her old boyfriend, Chip (Ken Weichert). Small world.
The one thing that was weird thing about this movie scene was that they were watching the first film on the big screen. What the hell is that about? I guess I shouldn’t try to make sense of this. I just got to go with it.
I’m going to give this film another point for the death of Chip. Any time somebody’s eyes explode, I’ll give a point, and that leads to the most infamous scenes of the film. Even though Eric Freeman is the worst actor of all time, he pulls it together at the end and gets another 2 points for saying “garbage day” and killing a random dude taking out the trash, while laughing maniacally.
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2 is terrible. There’s no getting around that. BUT, I’ve not seen this film in 20 or so years and I now realize that it might be terrible but fuck, it’s awesome. The first half sucks. You have to get beyond that, but when you get the final half of this thing, it’s the most absurd fun you’ll ever see. The bad acting by Freeman becomes a positive and I found myself laughing over and over again at every scene they put together. At one point, he kills a Salvation Army Santa to get the suit and calls Mother Superior to tell her “Santa’s back.” When it pans down, the Salvation Army Santa has his face pressed against the glass and it’s so funny.
I highly recommend this film. It’s one of a kind. Suffer through the first half and enjoy the second half. So, let’s do the math to get a fair rating here.
First half: 5/10
Second half: 154 million/10
