Silent Night, Deadly Night 2

Ricky (Eric Freeman), the brother of the killer in the first film, talks to a psychiatrist (James Newman) about how he became a brutal killer after his brother died, leading back to Mother Superior (Jean Miller).

I can say with confidence that this movie ranks among the worst in the horror genre. I have seen worse, but it is not often. In 2012, I watched roughly 500 films... and "Silent Night, Deadly Night 2" ranks in the top three for being terrible. I would not wish it upon anyone.

The biggest problem is that it spends the entire first half of the film showing clips from the first film. So, you have no reason to watch the first movie if you watch this one. And if you did watch the first one, this film will bore you to tears... maybe even to death. The second half improves, but that does not take very much.

The second biggest problem is Eric Freeman. We could call his performance "unintentionally funny", but that would be too complimentary. He cannot act, he chews the scenery, there is nothing sympathetic or interesting about him. How he was hired remains a mystery, and he can wear it as a badge of honor that he may be the worst "actor" ever to get a paycheck.

This is only a 90-minute movie, and the first 40 minutes are used to fully recap the first film. This leaves less than an hour of new content. So odd.

This picture is nothing more than a dose of mindless fun, with some creative killings (have you ever seen an umbrella impaling before?) and some funny moments of self-reflection (the scene in the movie theater is a standout). Because of the extensive flashbacks in the beginning of the movie, in which footage from the first film is used, those who have seen the original recently will probably hate this; for the rest of us the flashbacks are almost a bonus: essentially you get to see two movies for the price of one. (**)

My review for Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) was a favourable one because I was surprised by how well made it was despite the furore surrounding it on it's release, however the same cannot be said for Part 2 that was made 3 years later.

We're used to seeing sequels where filmmakers spend a few minutes at the start recapping events that have gone before however this one takes that to a whole new level by dedicating a whopping 40 minutes to do just that. There is extensive use of footage from the first movie intended as flashbacks as we meet Ricky, the brother of the original Santa killer Billy, recalling every painstaking moment to his psychiatrist.

Producer Lawrence Applebaum had tried to re-edit the original to create a sequel. Tri-Star had pulled the original from theatres due to a public backlash so he may have thought not a lot of people actually saw the first one so decided to blatantly reuse all the footage for a follow up. Writer and director Lee Harry was brought on board to film new footage to fill the second half and fashion a half baked sequel as a cheap cash in.

If this situation wasn't bad enough we have actor Eric Freeman's strange performance as Ricky whose stoic delivery is often laughable and makes watching this a more bizarre experience than it already is. At least in the second half he gets to go on a killing spree himself by hunting down the Mother Superior from the orphanage in revenge for traumatising him and his brother Billy as children.

It's a threadbare effort that is not very Christmassy but worth checking out for curiosity and the creative kill with an umbrella, something I hadn't seen before. Freeman's larger than life performance is so bad at times he becomes mesmerising to watch.

Unbelievably this went on to spawn 3 direct to video sequels.

The first thing anyone will admit when mentioning this movie is that it is terrible. It is even admitted in the Anchor Bay DVD release that it was mostly edited from the original to extend the video shelf-life of the first film, which was also less than Citizen Kane. The new material is acted with less talent than a grade school play, and those same grade school children could have written the script were it not for the not so child-like subject. The movie is merely an attempt to capitalize on gore, nudity, and controversy. As such, if you haven't seen the original in a while, this is a decent horror film. The slasher genre makes no claims to being Oscar worthy, so don't expect it to be and you'll be fine.If you go into this movie wanting to watch a badly made gore-fest you won't be disappointed. I find the delivery of the line "Garbage Day" makes this film one of my horror favorites despite the fact I rate it 4/10.