One of the crassest horror sequels ever. It’s a stiff cocktail of old footage from the original film, contempt for the audience and the desperate moves of filmmakers who had a budget of about fifty bucks to follow up the most scandalous slasher film of its time.
And when I mention footage from the the original film, I’m not talking little snippets, either. Nuh-uh. Here, whole scenes from ’84 go on for several minutes. The kills and the nudity and the nasty nun sadism that you loved from the original play all over again here like a Gilligan’s Island rerun. The first forty minutes of this pretty much IS the first movie in condensed form. Even when I was young and stupid and watching this on rented VHS, that confused me.
Now that I’m old and stupid, there’s a perverse part of me that enjoys how brazen it is.
The “story”: You might remember that Billy, the original maniac in a Santa suit, had a younger brother named Ricky and guess what? Ricky’s crazy, too! We first see him in a mental hospital telling his brother’s story. That’s where the flashbacks come in. We see it all. The original murder of their parents by a guy in a Santa suit. The horror of the orphanage afterward. Billy’s eventual holiday murder spree while he’s all decked out as St. Nick.
In the lead role, Eric Freeman gives one of the classic over-acting performances of the 80s. He exercises those eyebrows big-time and does his best evil cartoon villain voice. Freeman brings all the subtlety of a pro wrestling heel. People make fun of it, but I enjoy his performance. This probably wasn’t intentional, but Freeman’s deranged Ricky comes off exactly like a guy who THINKS he’s scary, but anyone can tell that he’s just some jerk-off.
When we finally get to Ricky’s own story, it’s told in yet more flashbacks, but this time it’s all new stuff that shows his body count in the days since he got out of the orphanage. I like the umbrella stabbing, but the jumper-cable-through-the-mouth car battery exploding face murder is the big one here.
It all culminates in a final reckoning with the horrific Mother Superior from the previous film, though played by a different actress. She’s wheelchair bound now and has suffered a stroke since we last saw her. She also has an unexplained severe facial disfigurement that makes her look like Two-Face from Batman comics.
We also need to mention that all of the new stuff looks like it was shot in Southern California in the middle of June. This is the least Christmas-y Christmas movie of all-time, but that’s okay with me. I’m from Texas. I’ve seen more than a few 70-degree Christmases. It’s nice to see my Christmas experience finally represented in a movie.
Thank you, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, thank you.