Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

My review was written in September 1989 after watching the film on TWE video cassette.

Direct-to-video sequel to the notorious "Santa Claus" horror series is a competently made but strictly standard fright pic bound to disappoint fans of helmer Monte Hellman.

Widely respected by cineastes, especially in Europe, Hellman has been out of the limelight of late, not getting top drawer assignments as he did back when "Two-Lane Balcktop" became a cult classic. He began his career three decades ago working on horror pics for Roger Coran (a film clip from Corman's "The Terror" is excerpted here as an homage) and now returns full circle.

Film tastefully avoids the objectionable material of its predecessors: there is just a brief setup clip from Part One. Heroine Samantha Scully is a blind girl linked up with the youngster (now grown-up Bill Moseley) responsible for the Santa Claus killings by scientist Richard Beymer. He experimented on Moseley, who's been in a coma for six years since being apprehended and nearly killed; sci-fi element here is mixed with psychic connection phenomena.

Despite this adventurous premise, pic quickly becomes a standard suspenser, as Moseley escapes ade on the rampage, threatening Scully, her brother (Eric Dea Re) and bro's pretty girlfriend (Laura Herring). Climax is out of "Wait Until Dark", with Scully evening up the ods in a darkened basement.

Interesting casting has Scully and Herring the same physical type (both earthy brunettes), and they team up in the final reels to combat the monster. Unfortunately, pic offers little novelty or thematic interest, analogous in underachievement within Hellman's output to Alan J. Pakula's similarly woebegone "Dream Lover".

Tech credits are good, with an eerie droning score by Steven Soles. Carlos Laszlo's script is filled with red herring suspense sequences and dumb dialog.

There is a strange connection between some of the actors/actresses in this film; director David Lynch. How did such a typical slasher/B-movie happen to have 3 individuals who all went to work with the intriguing director David Lynch, on various projects. Eric DaRe from SNDN 3 portrayed shady brute "Leo Johnson" in Lynch's TV series "Twin Peaks". Richard Beymer also ended up in the strange town of "Twin Peaks", having played rich and devious "Benjamin Horne". And then certainly, the lovely and mysterious Laura Harring makes her appearance in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive". Perhaps some of the supernatural entities that exist in Lynch's various works, seeped into the world of reality, and pulled these three actors/actresses into the world of David Lynch at an unforeseen future point in their careers... or, maybe David Lynch is just a really big fan of "Silent Night, Deadly Night 3". You be the judge.

This is a very bad movie - dry, boring, lame, technically inept. The script is very poor. I can't believe Monte Hellman actually directed it - or anyone, for that matter. The ONLY good thing about this film is Robert Culp, who rises far above everything else in his role as the detective. He's great.

Compared to the first two a very slow and boring sequel. With a blind girl as the lead role it was very boring seeing her slowly adjust to the sittuation not realizing the killer was standing next to her. Now to the killer by now the killer is a very slow and frail man, unlike in previous one. The chase scene are hard to watch, your sitting there saying hurry up, or he's just there. It's not a bad movie but I definately enjoyed the first two much more. but do watch it, it's okay.

You know things aren't going so well, when you start to think that you rather be watching 'Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2' again and this indeed was running through my head during the very plodding part 3. Sure it's competently produced and slicker than the first two (way ahead in those stakes), but what a total snooze fest with a bunch of niggling characters. I know the shoddy second film has a bad wrap, but at least it was brainlessly cheesy fun, which this entry completely fumbled. Gone is the wicked dark humor (well it does try with less than flattering results) and forcefully graphic carnage, replaced with a leadenly talkative script (which does on to meander in many scenes), uninterestedly indifferent performances (does Robert Culp know what the movie's about?) and plenty of flat build-ups that lead to off-screen kills with a spurt of blood. Lame!

This straight to video effort (which the next two would follow path) pretty much continues on from 'Part 2', but trying to get away from the randomly standard stalk and slash angle where it adds another idea involving the unusual connection between the comatose Ricky (who survived the head shot with his exposed brain being protected by a Plexiglas cap) and a clairvoyant blind girl Laura, which her doctor was using those physic abilities to get into the mind of Ricky (although unknown to her). However in doing so she gets nightmarish images she rather no talk about, but through these experiments Ricky actually awakens from the coma and because of that attachment he heads after Laura.

Credit for trying some different, but it got completely daft and spineless leading to something routine. At the beginning it started using scenes from the first film in what Laura's character was seeing in her visions and I was thinking… "Here we go again?". Gladly it wasn't the case. The only thing that achieved some sort of energy was the hysterical screaming by Samantha Scully as the stubbornly unlikeable blind heroine, but again that wasn't entirely convincing. Moments within the plot actually reminded me of John Carl Buechler's 'Friday the 13th Part 7: New Blood' (1988). Now that one was better. Popping up as the maniac Ricky is Bill Moseley as his robotic manner goes through it with that plastic bowl on top of his head getting most of the attention. Robert Culp gives a batty performance, while Richard Beymer goes for stiltedly serious temperament. Laura Harring and Eric DaRe also appear. The busily echoing score punches out the electronic cues. The man in the director's chair Monte Hellman ('The Shooting', 'Cockfighter' and 'Two-lane Blacktop') does a stylish, but lethargic job which lacked a sinister bite. Bit of atmosphere in some dreamy parts and camera placement showed some inventiveness, but it triggers no tension, no jolts and no fun.