Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4
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 atCritical 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 Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4.
Body Count: 5 (…wha? Only 5?!)
Best Death Scene: Whatever you do, NEVER beat Clint Howard with a broom. It’ll make him mad enough to stab you to death with a butter knife.
I’ll be frank: I have no clue what the hell Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 was about. I had a hard enough time trying to wrap my head around the odd arrangement of the title. I think it involved bugs…no wait, that’s not right…I think it involved lesbian bugs. Is that even possible? What the hell is going on here? All I remember for sure is that it started off so great…
Want to see this face do a whole lot of things that should be illegal? Rent this movie.
Picture this: We open on a cold, windy December night on some rat infested back street. The city is quiet, save for a low clicking sound. As the clicking grows louder, we realize that it’s the broken wheel on a shopping cart being pushed by a bum who hasn’t showered in weeks. This bum: Clint Howard. He stops his cart as something shiny catches his eye in the gutter. Bum Clint Howard bends down and picks up the bug infested remains of a soggy hamburger. Ever the happy go lucky hobo, he sighs and says to himself, “What? No cheese?” Suddenly a scream is heard! Clint looks up just in time to see a woman jump from a building! And she’s on fire too! Freakin’ awesome! Cut to: opening credits. Sounds great, right? Well, that’s about as good as this “movie” ever gets. Not caring if I give too much away, I think we can safely say that this film is seriously crazy ass insane. That’s not a good thing. Ditching the Ricky/killer Santa story line completely, this film attempts to pull a Halloween III and take the franchise in a whole new direction. The “story” this time has to do a young investigative reporter hot on the trail of a murder in which Bum Clint Howard is the only witness. This would be okay if she wasn’t the WORST investigative reporter of all time. Not only does she allow herself to get drugged twice, but at one unintentionally hilarious point in the film, she literally stands on a HUGE clue for an entire scene and never notices it. Anyway, when she eventually wises up a bit too late, all of the evidence leads her into a second and third act that involves, and I kid you not, lesbian bugs. Oh, and then the film gets weird: Cockroaches grow huge, Clint Howard watches clips from Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 while a couple has sex in a bed behind him, and the lead reveals she’s Jewish despite the Christmas theme of the film. Around the time that Howard strapped a dildo to his face while three old women rubbed grease all over his hairy chest, I started to think that maybe somebody had spiked my eggnog.
Alas, that wasn’t the case. Turns out that Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 is just as strange as it’s title. What exactly the “initiation” mentioned in the title was, I can’t quite say. All I do know for sure is that I some how survived it…and I will NOT be doing it again next Christmas.
Rating: 
2 out of 10
Next week: Oh God, I have another week of this?! After watching this film, I never want to see another movie again. In fact, I now hate movies AND Christmas. Damn, you Howard. Sigh…next week the series comes to an end with a story about killer toys. Oh, and I fully expect them to be killer lesbian toys as well.
