Day 11. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

This is more like it.

I laughed out loud during Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

more than once, and I'm quite certain that was a desired response. Following the dreary initial film, this sequel is every bit as soul-sick, but it's self-aware. It knows how to flaunt its illness with pride.

This movie is remarkable in one way that won't possibly escape anyone who sees it. Almost its entire first half is recycled footage from the previous movie. Remember when the recap in Friday the 13th Part 2 lasted for ten minutes? Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2's lasts for forty!

Billy, the killer from the first film, had an infant brother in the back of his car when his parents were hijacked and slashed by a robber dressed as old St. Nick. Now that brother, Ricky (Eric Freeman, in what would still be regarded as the performance of his lifetime if he hadn't disappeared completely) is grown and manic. He recounts to a psychiatrist all of the events that transpired in part one--events that he could not possibly have known, and from the same camera angles, too.

This "highlight" reel supplants any need to see the original Silent Night, Deadly Night, and put me in mind of an idea I had when Jack Reacher opened. It would be maddening to audiences if the characters in that Tom Cruise film went to a cinema playing Top Gun, and the entirety of that movie played out, extending Jack Reacher's running time to four hours. The makers of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 were ahead of me, because in the last half of the film, Ricky goes on a movie date to see the first Silent Night, Deadly Night. 

I don't understand this at all. 

And that's okay. Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 should inspire as an example of making the most of a bad situation. The filmmakers were asked to re-edit the first film and pass it off as a sequel. I'm unsure how that could be expected to fool anyone, but to their credit director Lee Harry and his co-writer Joseph H. Earle have crafted a brand new, and thoroughly deranged last half. 

The film's "Garbage Day" scene became an Internet meme several years back due to Freeman's mega-acting, and the madness doesn't begin and end there. Campiness is not my preferred aesthetic (always play your jokes as drama), but it does a lot to palate the spiritual ugliness on display. Unlike his brother Billy, Ricky isn't simply set off by "Christmas triggers." He starts as a vigilante, avenging an attempted rape, and impaling a mobster with an umbrella, before he moves to firing at neighbours who step on their porches to investigate why he's firing at other neighbours. Freeman laughs maniacally after every kill. According to IMDb, he raises and lowers his eyebrows a total of 130 times in this film. It's a performance designed to keep Nicolas Cage, in his more adventurous phases, up at night, questioning the disappeared enigma known as Eric Freeman. 

Even though the next sequel is directed by arthouse auteur Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop), I've had my fill of the Silent Night, Deadly Night series now. There are other Christmas movies to cover--movies that are classics, animations, come from foreign lands, or involve Muppets. When you can't leave a series on a high note, leave on a very bizarre one.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 and The Meaning of Christmas

It has absolutely no idea. Why would you ask?

Tomorrow: The Muppet Christmas Carol