Silent Night, Deadly Night is a bit of an odd duck of a franchise. It starts off relatively straight-forward, then goes completely off the rails in the second installment (a good half of which is comprised of footage from the first film!), before bringing things around somewhat full circle for the third installment, in terms of the central story-line.
After that things go even more haywire with the fourth installment, which seems to decide to turn things into a sort of anthology series (a la Halloween III: Season of the Witch), connected only by the title and the holiday of Christmas itself, albeit just barely. The fifth installment is likewise completely unrelated to the others, insofar as I can remember, but is at least more Christmas-oriented.
Then, in what is ostensibly a remake of the original (but not really), comes 2012's Silent Night, which, remarkably, features one of the more noteworthy casts of the entire franchise, the presence of old-school character actor Mickey Rooney in Part Five notwithstanding. But for a remake, it has precious little to do with the original, perhaps more so than any other remake this side of Prom Night, which likewise keeps the titular event but loses the rest completely.
As such, beyond the first three, it doesn't really matter what order I do this in, so, as with my reviews of the Halloween franchise, I think I'm going to skip around a bit, because I prefer to watch the original closer to Christmas, or occasionally the second one in its place, as watching both back-to-back is sort of redundant. (This might actually be the first time I do just that, or the first time in a long time, at least.)
A lot depends on what's going on at the time- Part One is somewhat humorless, so it's more of a serious slasher for a sober crowd (or just watching by yourself if you really want to meditate on how wrong the holiday can go), while Part Two is perfect party movie fodder, great for making fun of and not taking too seriously, given the wonderfully over-the-top charms of star Eric Freeman, who gives new meaning to so-bad-it's-good.
Part Four is so far removed from anything else in the franchise, it could practically be just called Initiation and not be part of it at all- it barely even registers as a Christmas movie, even. Part Five is more Christmas-y, for sure, but has little to do with the rest of the franchise, if anything.
As such, I'm more inclined to begin with those two, then I'll likely tackle the first three and the remake. So, not a huge change in order, but a necessary one for me to shift things closer to the holiday itself. I might also interject some other stuff in between, such as reviews of some of my other all-time fave Xmas-horror flicks, 1974's Black Christmas and Gremlins. We'll see.
I'll likely also tackle some of my fave New Year's Eve-themed horrors as well, after Christmas. Look for one on the Friday after Xmas, then another before New Year's Day, most likely. I might also do another later in the week, seeing as NYE falls on a Monday- perhaps Bloody New Year or something like that.
It being the holidays, of course, things can be a bit unpredictable, so it's hard to say when what will be posted, but I'll try and keep things relatively regular from here on out. Look for my take on SNDN Part 4: Initiation on Wednesday, and SNDN Part Five: The Toymaker on Friday.
I might sneak in a review of something else over the weekend as well, probably on Sunday, but maybe on Saturday, depending on what's going on at the time. Then my reviews of SNDN will resume on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of next week, before coming to a close either over the weekend or on Monday. Keep in mind all review dates are subject to change, but like I said, I'll try and keep things on point as much as possible.
After the holidays, things will go back to normal in January, with an article on the Best Movies of the Year to happen at some point during that month, most likely, along with some Oscar and possibly even Golden Globe predictions. I might also fold in articles on my fave TV shows and music of 2018 at some point as well.
I'd do that stuff earlier, but I still have a lot of movies to catch up on, so it's better I wait until I've seen a few more things than to do anything prematurely. Also, they haven't even released the Oscar noms yet, so it'd be hard to predict them before I have the info!
Anyway, I love doing the whole end-of-the-year best of lists, so look for that to happen at some point early next year for sure. I think that about wraps things up for now. Thanks so much for making my recent franchise reviews for The Omen and the Halloween series my most-read articles since I started this here blog, and I hope to top myself in the year to come with my takes on other franchises, including the biggest of them all: Friday the 13th.
Stay tuned and by all means, be sure to comment to let me know what you think of all this insanity, lol. See you on Wednesday! 😀🎅😈💀
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