Well let the Xmas special continue! Here we are at the highly anticipated sequel “Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2” It’s been many years since Billy was gunned down on that fateful Christmas day. We are now inside a mental hospital to see the effect of all that’s happened to Billy’s little brother Ricky.

Ricky is obviously more messed up than his brother, we are taken in-to his madness and on paper it’s a sequel that should work, but for some reason it just doesn’t hold up at all to the original, not even close.

The first half of the film is a LONG recap of the events of the first film, Ricky tells us what his brother was up-to (like we didn’t know!) I’m not against a recap in a film, sometimes it helps. BUT a 45 minute long recap is just out of order, it’s not as if he tells us anything we don’t know, there’s no big revelation or it being told from his point of view.

Yes it is told to us by Ricky but he basically tells the entire story of the first film in that 45 minutes and you’re left wondering if this film is just going to continue like that. Luckily it isn’t and we start to hear how all of this has affected Ricky and why he is where he is.

 

The problem is after a while you start to wish he’d go back to telling the story of his brother, the acting is truly awful and you get the feeling the team lost their way in the middle of the film, the scene that got me was when we’re shown a flashback of Ricky and his then girlfriend in a movie theater watching a film about a killer Santa, it’s only the first film they’re watching and he doesn’t seem to be weirded out at all by seeing his dead brother on screen.

It definitely doesn’t do the first film justice at all, if anything it tarnishes it, which is a true shame. Eric Freeman who plays Ricky is a terrible actor and the supporting cast aren’t any better at all. It’s no surprise Eric isn’t in the acting business anymore.

The brutality of the first film is completely lost in this sequel and it’s a sequel I try not to watch if possible. If you don’t believe me then watch it for yourself and see.

Miscellaneous facts about the film:

The producers of Silent Night, Deadly Night wanted director Lee Harry to re-cut the first film and insert just one or two new scenes with Eric Freeman playing a mental patient, to make the story in the original film appear to be nothing more than the ravings of an asylum inmate. But screenwriters Lee Harry, Joseph H. Earle, Dennis Patterson, and Lawrence Applebaum, wrote short vignettes involving the patient’s youth, as he killed several people, and eventually it became this sequel. But there was not enough material for a full length film, so numerous flashback sequences were used to extend the running time. When the film still ran short, a lengthy closing-credits sequence (nearly ten minutes in length, showing the full cast and crew of this film and its predecessor) was added to pad-out the film’s running time even further.

This was filmed in 10 days.

According to James Newman and Lee Harry, the choice of who to play Ricky Caldwell came down to Eric Freeman and another actor. The other actor has more experience and was a better actor overall, but they liked Eric’s looks better so they chose him for the role.

The film was rejected for a UK video release in 1987 by the BBFC after the distributor refused to make cuts to a double murder scene and shots of topless women being killed.

The scene where Ricky yells “Garbage Day!” before shooting a man holding up a trashcan dead became a famous Internet catchphrase and countless videos of the clip and the clip crudely edited can be found on Youtube.

Cinematographer Harvey Genkins stepped in to play the Salvation Army Santa after the actor that had originally been hired for the role failed to show up for filming.

Co-screenwriter Joseph H. Earle provides the dubbed voice of the Salvation Army Santa that Ricky gets his Santa suit from.
Raz

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Raz

I have an obsession with all things Horror and it's an honour to share my passion with you all!