The only reason I watched ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ (1984) is so I could watch ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2’ (1987). Why would I want to watch a sequel to a pretty standard slasher film? Well, there is one scene from this film, which is an old school, classic viral video. If you don’t know what I am talking about just type the title of this review into YouTube and you will find out what I will mean. You may think it stupid to want to watch a film from a twenty-second clip, but it paid off. This film was everything I wanted it to be and more. The film follows Ricky (Eric Freeman), the younger brother of the killer from the first film. Like his brother, Ricky is mentally scarred from the murder of his parents. This has led him to be housed in a psychiatric ward, and the film is based around him recounting his life and how he ended up there to a psychiatrist.
I want to put one thing out there before we get too far into this, this film is not good. In fact, it is pretty awful. First of all, the first half of this film is basically just scenes from the first film again. And I don’t mean that the scenes in this film are similar to that of the first, I mean we literally watch scenes from the first film again for half of the film. It is very cheap and honestly feels lie a bit of a scam, but I quite enjoyed the first film, and it cuts out the worst bits, so I don’t mind. All the new scenes for the film are pretty shabby on a technical level. There are some really odd shot choices throughout and I’m sure that some of them aren’t even in focus at times (although I was tipsy while watching it so that may very well be self-inflicted focus issues). And then, of course, we have the performances which range from mediocre to shite. One of the shite ones is from Eric Freeman which is a large part of why this film is bad. He is the lead; we follow him throughout the film and his performance is really bad. His inflexions, how he delivers his lines, his evil laugh, his bloody eyebrows, everything is off. He is the easy target, but at least his performance is memorable. Everybody else are so poor that they are pretty much forgettable.
Why then? Why after a whole paragraph of saying why this film is so bad will I still argue that this film is great? Well, it is the perfect level of bad, and it also has a bit of a self-awareness about it. Let’s take the performance of Eric Freeman for example. Yes, it is not good, but he is putting everything into it, and he is so fun to watch. I don’t know whether it was meant to be comical but if it was it is one of the best comical performances in any film. I do genuinely mean that I laughed a ridiculous number of times in this, both when I was meant to and when I probably wasn’t meant to as well. But that is what I am saying. The film has a self-awareness to it which means that it has moments where it clearly isn’t taking itself seriously and is just having fun. A perfect example is a scene where Ricky is at the cinema with his girlfriend, Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan). Can you guess what they are watching? ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’. They are watching the film that they are in a sequel too. They are clearly not caring all that much about taking the film seriously. The deaths in the film are also a ton of fun. There is one where a guy is electrocuted through his mouth which is a lot of fun. But the most fun kill in the film is when an umbrella is put through a guy’s body and then opens up on the other side. Comedy gold. Then of course we have the garbage day scene which is even better with the context of the rest of the film.
Basically, this film is one of those so bad it is good films. And because of this it is obviously not going to be for everyone. Not everyone can put up with crap in films and that is fine. Most crap films I can’t be arsed with either. But this is one of those which is the perfect balance of being competent enough to not be infuriating while being incompetent enough to be comedy gold. I absolutely recommend it and having watched it I take away any recommendation I may have had for the first film. This film makes that one obsolete and is a lot more fun. Or maybe I am just drunk.
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