Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!
It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few. Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins. Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night. This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas.
This week Logan looks at Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!
Body Count: 11 (But once again, 3 of those are from clips of the first movie)
Best Death Scene: According to this film, the worst thing you could say to somebody in a coma is, “Who’s your favorite singer? Perry Coma?” Chances are they’ll wake up and kill you for telling lame jokes.
Let’s get one thing straight: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, despite it’s awesome gayness, was not a box office hit…or maybe it was, but only because it cost around ten bucks and a six pack of Coors to make. Whatever the case, the powers that be decided that it was time for the series to return to what made it huge in the first place: home video. 1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! was the first of three direct to video sequels, and the only one not to feature Clint Howard. For many, that’s all the review you’ll need to read right there.
BOO! Hey, kids! Mickey Rooney here to remind you that I hate these movies! See you in Part 5!
It’s been six years since Ricky went on his Christmas Eve killing spree. It appears that he suffered some sort of head injury at the end of the last film that would cause a team of doctors to encase his brain in a glass dome. While this sounds like the coolest thing since Jason got his hockey mask, it’s actually far, far from it. Due to this, Ricky now stumbles around drooling and acting like Frankenstein’s monster, which, granted, isn’t that far from the way he acted in the last two films, now he just has an excuse. Oh, and the movie finds every excuse possible to put him in a goofy hat to cover the dome. This also isn’t as great as it sounds. Why? Because for some reason the director (who has the impossibly awesome name “Monte Hellman”), seemed to be under the impression that this was a drama. The story concerns an annoying blind girl who has some sort of psychic connection with the dome-headed Ricky. While it takes most crappy horror series a while to get to “the sequel with the hot clairvoyant chick” (see Friday the 13th Part VIII, or Halloween 6 in which said hot chick is Paul Rudd), the Silent Night, Deadly Night series must have known that it was going to fizzle out early and decided to jump the gun. Anyway, for reasons beyond me, blind chick agrees to spend Christmas with her brother (one of two Twin Peaks stars who appear in the film), and his destined-to-have-a-nude-scene girlfriend. Everything is going fine until Ricky literally hitchhikes to them (would you pick up a guy in a hospital gown with a glass dome on his head?) in an attempt to “connect” with annoying blind girl. Oh, and for some reason I Spy‘s Robert Culp is there too, but only to promote some new gadget called a “cell phone”. It’s all very loony.
While Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 was trashy fun, and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 was a train wreck classic, Better Watch Out! is just bad. It would appear that the killer Santa that outraged parents in 1984 had finally run it’s course, and as the series moved into the 90’s we all knew that there was only one thing that could save it…
Next week: …KILLER BUGS.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!
Rating: 
3 out of 10
