Natal Sangrento 2 - Retorno Macabro

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.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is hailed as a bit of a cult classic in the slasher genre. It told the story of a young man who snapped and went on a killing spree while wearing a santa costume.

Part 2 tells the story of his brother who is basically doing the same thing but is a tad brighter.

Sadly the first third of the film is heavily flashbacks so it feels like you're watching the first film all over again. When the new material kicks in it's essentially more of the same.

The original film despite it's fame remains to me as a distinctly average feature and this sequel is about on par.

A couple of fairly original deaths, a competent lead playing the manic Ricky Caldwell and the usual tropes and cliches of the sub-genre.

It's astounding that this managed 5 movies total, hopefully they haven't peaked already with this one as I'm part 3 bound shortly.

The Good:

Eric Freeman

Follows on from the first film well enough

The Bad:

FAR too much footage from the first film

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

A nun would have no problem moving into house no.666

Nuns are trained in the art of wheelchair ninjutsu

The church provides a spare wheelchair in case of acts of god

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.

This movie is so awful it's fantastic. It has everything -- a lead actor who moves his eyebrows up and down to convey strong emotion, unnecessary (ludicrously unnecessary) nudity, idiotic death scenes (the best one is when Ricky shoots a car with a handgun and it flips over and explodes). Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, and the script is outstanding. Watch for a provoked Ricky saying, "Punish!!!" and "Garbage Day!"

If you get a chance to see this one, don't miss it. It's one of my favorite movies ever.