Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker

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. 

silent5This week Logan concludes with a look at Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker. 

Body Count: 4?  Boring!

Best Death Scene: A worm-like toy called, and I swear I’m not making this up, “Larry the Larvae”, crawls into a guys mouth and later explodes out of his eye socket…then his car blows up.  Talk about a rough day…

Looking back now in retrospect, if I knew that the Silent Night, Deadly Night series was going to completely suck, I wouldn’t have told you that the earlier movies sucked.  Just when I thought that I had expierenced the most suckage that I could from the series, I had to go and ruin it by watching parts 3 to 5…and to think that I waited all this time just to buy these last three films on DVD.  There’s a simple reason why they took so long to come out: Because these films should be destroyed.  Yes, when I started this whole mess I never thought that I would side with Mickey Rooney, but now I see how right he was!  The only problem: By the time Part 5 came out, even Mickey Rooney had forgotten how right he was.

Some of you horror nerds may know the name Brian Yuzna as the writer/director of the last two Re-Animator movies.  Remember after you saw the first Re-Animator (he had nothing to do with it) and you had high hopes for all of the sequels?  Well, don’t worry, as he went on to ruin the Silent Night, Deadly Night series as well.  Granted, this series never had the amazingly awesome Jeffrey Combs to keep it slightly afloat (Can you imagine him as a killer Santa?  Somebody write that movie!), in fact, now that I think about it, Yuzna turned Clint Howard into the star of these last two films.  Doesn’t that just say it all?

I think this picture says it all.

I think this picture says it all.

But I promised a review, so I’ll attempt to deliver one: Mickey Rooney, despite his hatred of the 1984 original film’s portrayal of a killer Santa Claus, shows up as the killer Santa in this one.  Of course, this isn’t until the last 15 minutes of the film.  By that point the viewer has been forced to sit through some cocktail napkin plot that plays out like a soap opera.  Why won’t little Derek talk?  Who is his real dad?  Why is he the same boy who played little Bill in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey?  Is he supposed to be Bill in this movie too?  Why is Mickey Rooney so fat?  Did they pay him entirely in hoagies?  If so, I wonder how much that many hoagies would cost?  By the time you learn the answers to most of these questions, you no longer care.  Oh, and it turns out that Mickey Rooney wasn’t even the killer Santa…a robot Mickey Rooney was.  How’s that for a twist ending?

So where does this film fall in the entire series?  Flat on it’s fat ol’ bloated Mickey Rooney/Clint Howard dildo wearing face, that’s where.  Granted, this is where the last three films have mostly landed as well, but I really wanted to type the words “Clint Howard” and “dildo” again.  It really brought a lot of traffic to the site when I did it last week.  Anyway, my final thoughts on the Silent Night, Deadly Night series are thus: Watch the second one only…and only if you’re REALLY in need of a Christmas film…and drunk…and blind…and mostly deaf in both ears…you know, come to think of it, you may want to avoid Christmas altogether this year so you don’t accidentally see any of these movies…Clint Howard dildo.

 Rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
2 out of 10

Series Average:
Rating: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
3 out of 10

I really hope that you guys and gals enjoyed this series.  As always, we love your thoughts, requests, and comments on anything we do here at Critical End!  Have a great holiday.


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