Natal Sangrento 3: Noite do Silêncio

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.

Having been shot and severely wounded in the previous film, the psychotic killer named "Ricky" (Bill Moseley) lies in a comatose state and is being used for scientific research by a man by the name of "Dr. Newbury" (Richard Beymar). To that effect, his main interest consists of using a young woman named "Laura" (Samantha Scully) to attempt to make contact with him using her unique talent in the field of extra sensory perception. Unfortunately, although she does in fact make contact with Ricky, it isn't the positive breakthrough that Dr. Newbury had hoped for as Laura continues to experience nightmares each time she interacts with him. Likewise, Ricky is also affected--and this soon creates problems for all concerned. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this is one of those horror movies which lacked the suspense necessary for a film of this sort. Admittedly, it was slightly better than its immediate predecessor but, even so, that isn't saying much as that particular film was, for the most part, quite dreadful. Be that as it may, I wasn't too impressed with this film either and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

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.

So to me right from the start this movie has a really flat and off putting tone that doesn't remotely have the feel of Silent Night Deadly Night, and it's just pretty much dead boring and not very fun at all. For one thing it takes itself too seriously, unlike the second 'movie' it doesn't even have a slight unintentionally hilarious charm going for it, it's way too po-faced to pull that off. They probably should have gone for laughs but it seems they actually thought that they could play a story with a man shuffling along like a snail in a hospital gown and slippers with his exposed brain in a salad bowl in place of his cranium, completely straight! Who the hell was the genius that decided to give him that look anyway? They never even get him in a Santa suit once, and there was a clear point in the story when he could have easily got one too, after Ricky kills the obnoxious drunk Santa who taunts him into waking up from his coma, but no he just inchworms his way out without anyone noticing and proceeds to hitchhike with his dumb fishbowl brain head, and somebody actually gives him a ride!!! It was a decent effort but with that thing stuck on his head the whole time with its antenna and little blinking light Bill Mosley just looked like a silly Frankenstein-esc zombie from a hokey 50s sci-fi B-movie that was more fun! Mosley had virtually nothing to work with here and that was too bad because everyone who knows about him knows that the guy can play manic crazy better than most in the horror movie business. He was stuck in a role that didn't even let him emote here though and he looks like he's ready to nod off in some shots, and for that reason he was nowhere near as much fun as Eric Freeman's version of the character was. I really found myself hating Samantha Scully's weird artsy performance as Laura, her look and how she spoke was so floaty and pretentious, timid or not she was horrible and I didn't give a hoot what happened to her character. She was such a ham when she was trying to act scared, and the Shining type thing between her and Ricky was stupid and completely unnecessary. It's such a listless little mess of a picture, like how they got to the sweet old granny's house who got bumped off earlier and they wonder where she is for about a minute but they never bother to go and look for her, they go and take romantic baths and watch old horror movies, and nothing interesting happens for a good forty minutes, it's a complete joke, and that little condescending "Happy new year" that tops off all the lousiness at the end from Mosley in a tuxedo was so bizarre, I just thought it was like they were going ha-ha you watched the whole movie you idiot! And how about those scenes with Ricky's doctor and the police detective or whatever he was meant to be, their scenes and ridiculous drawn out conversations about crap really drag an already slow as hell movie to a dead halt. They just talk and talk even though they're meant to be racing to stop a demented mass murderer! It's like they were ad-libbing it all and I couldn't stop focusing on the guy's freakishly protruding chin when he was talking.. If you watch them in order, the films in this series each seem to try and top the one that came before in terms of craziness, but at least all the others had they're good points, this is a boring dud with characters that are annoying and unlikeable, it thoroughly wasted Bill Mosley, the kills are pathetic, there's no goddamn Santa suit!! it's slow as f&@k and the absolute worst in the series, do not bother with it, total jingle balls x 👎

I enjoyed the original Silent Night, Deadly Night. To the dismay of other internet film critics, i also enjoyed Silent Night, Deadly Night part 2. But when i sat down to watch the 3rd installment in the series, even at the age of 15 i knew the end was near.

My Biggest issue with this film has little to do with the low rent acting. It is the blatant disregard for the previous film that irritates me the most.

Ricky has no need for the science fictional fishbowl on his head in this film, other than to draw attention away from the lack of plot, and place all eyes on a sad gimmick. In the end of Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, Ricky is shot three times, yes – But he was never shot in the head – nor did he have his head blown off as another commentator included in his/her IMDb review of the film. There is No Need for the Fishbowl!