Of all the entries in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise, SNDN Part Four, aka Initiation or Bugs, is far and away the weirdest. Not only is it basically unrelated to the previous three entries- there is a character named Ricky, but it doesn't seem to be the same one from the previous movies- but it's barely even Christmas oriented, save a few token decorations and a couple of Christmas-themed scenes. (Although one of them is a doozy.)
Initially, the story-line was meant for Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, but the producers decided to stick with the Ricky plot from the second installment instead. After wrapping that up, the producers, Richard N. Gladstein (who would go on to produce several Tarantino movies, including the classic Pulp Fiction) and Arthur Gorson (who went on to produce Guillermo Del Toro's Cronos and a host of rock music videos) decided to go in a different direction with the franchise, producing a stand-alone movie instead of continuing the original story-line.
Basically, the franchise transitioned into an anthology series, much as intended for Halloween in the early 80's, with H3: Season of the Witch, before fans balked and Michael Myers was brought back for good. Indeed, SNDN 4 & 5 both have some plot points in common with that much-maligned entry in the franchise. (The occult-oriented bugs in this one and the psycho toy maker in 5.)
Gladstein and Gorson, along with writer S.J. Smith (Children of the Corn: Revelation) concocted the warped plot, with screenwriter Woody Keith (Dementia) brought on to fashion the resulting script from the trio's bizarre ideas.
To direct, the producers drafted cult favorite Brian Yuzna, with whom Keith had just worked on back-to-back features, Bride of Re-Animator (the fun sequel to the cult classic The Re-Animator) and the underrated Society, which has recently enjoyed a resurgence in popularity, thanks to its release on Blu-Ray in 2015.
In fact, Keith would incorporate some ideas that didn't make the cut for Society into Initiation, making it a bit of a must for fans of that flick, and an ideal double feature any time of the year. Somewhat ironically, though finished in 1989, Society would not see the light of day in the America until 1992, meaning that Initiation was actually released before it, albeit direct-to-video in 1990.
Yuzna is, of course, best-known for his work alongside Stuart Gordon, with whom he served as producer on the aforementioned The Re-Animator, From Beyond (which he also co-wrote) and Dolls, as well as co-writing (with Gordon) the much-beloved family film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which spawned a franchise for Disney.
Yuzna would go on to have a successful career as a writer, director and/or a producer on such fun genre flicks as Warlock, The Guyver, Return of the Living Dead III, Ticks, Necronomicon, The Dentist 1 & 2, Progeny, Faust: Love of the Damned, Dagon, Darkness, Beyond Re-Animator, Rottweiler and Beneath Still Waters. He also would co-write and produce the fifth entry in the SNDN franchise, The Toy Maker.
Warning! Spoilers ahead- for those who haven't seen the film! (Although, to be fair, no synopsis will ever do justice to some of the visuals in this crazy movie, so you should see it anyway.)
The plot revolves around a would-be reporter, Kim Levitt (sexy redhead Neith Hunter) toiling away at a male-dominated newspaper, working in the classified ads department. When a woman seemingly commits suicide, while at the same time bursting into flames, she understandably thinks there's more to the story and pitches herself as the potential writer to her boyfriend, Hank (Tommy Hinkley), who works alongside her at the newspaper, asking him to put in a good word to their boss, Eli (Reggie Bannister).
Alas, Eli ends up giving Hank the assignment much to Kim's chagrin. Upset but determined, she decides to do it anyway, researching the death on her own time. Going to the scene of the crime, she comes upon a used bookstore in the same building that the woman jumped from, where she meets Fima (Maud Adams), the owner, whom she talks to about the death.
Fima points her in the direction of a book that deals with spontaneous combustion, also throwing in a book on feminism and the occult as a bonus, as one does in a horror movie. To make matters worse, Fima also offers her an icky-looking snack, which causes her to hallucinate roaches, one of which is the size of a Mini-Cooper, and barf her guts out. Fun!
Fima also invites Kim to a picnic the next day, which she begrudgingly attends, after a nightmarish visit the night before with Hank's family, during which his father makes nasty anti-Semitic remarks to the Jewish Kim, who, of course, doesn't celebrate Christmas. (I'll give you a moment to appreciate the irony of an ostensibly Christmas-themed movie featuring a Jewish protagonist, lol.)
While there, Hank shows up to apologize for his father's behavior and tells Kim that their boss had a change of heart, seemingly out of nowhere, and decided to let Kim handle the "suicide" story after all, which he will serve as the photographer on alongside her. The two further investigate the rooftop of the building, but find little in the way of clues.
Later on, Kim visits Fima, to apologize for abruptly leaving the picnic earlier. Fima invites her in for some tea and drugs her and some patently bizarre shit goes down while Kim is out of her senses. When she wakes up, she understandably runs for the hills, discovering Hank at her apartment, who does her best to calm her down.
Then the homeless Ricky (Clint Howard) shows up, a lackey of Fima's, demanding that Kim come with him back to her place. She resists and a fight ensues between Hank and Ricky, in which Hank is stabbed to death. Kim calls her friend from work, Janice (Allyce Beasley), who, it turns out, is also on Team Fima, and tells her to go with Ricky while she "takes care of" the situation, aka covers it up.
Kim is tied up and more weirdness ensues, including a scene that wouldn't have been out of place in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, or even A Clockwork Orange (note Ricky's mask). When she wakes up this time, local butcher Jo (Glen Chin) tells her she's been "initiated" and that she should run. She tries to go to the police, but there is no evidence of any foul play at her apartment, and Janice tells the cop that Hank is away working on a story and is fine.
Kim freaks out and takes off, with Ricky in hot pursuit. She ducks into a motel room and is horrified to see her feet start to go up in flames. She douses them in the shower and Ricky bursts in and tells her that if she doesn't complete the "ceremony," she'll die just like the woman did who jumped off the building, who turns out to be Fima's own daughter, Lilith.
The catch is, to complete the ceremony, she has to sacrifice a child: Hank's little brother, Lonnie (Conan Yuzna, Brian's real-life son). She agrees, albeit hesitatingly, and the two go to fetch the poor kid, with Ricky attacking his parents in the process, in the movie's one major Xmas-themed scene, as Ricky strangles Lonnie's parents with Christmas lights and sets the tree on fire in the process, burning the house down as he flees. Merry Christmas, everybody!
Once they arrive back at the rooftop of Fima's building, the ceremony begins, but Kim double-crosses Fima, stabbing her with the knife meant for Lonnie and setting him free. Fima grabs the knife, stabs Ricky for his ineptitude, and a giant larvae bug attacks him, because of course it does.
Kim starts to go up in flames, her hands twisting together like pretzels, but she manages to "stab" Fima with her deformed hands and "transfer" the "curse" to her and Fima dives off the roof, just as her daughter did. She runs to Lonnie and tells him everything will be alright and off the two go, as the other cult members stare in horror. The end. (We'll get a brief bit from Kim and Ricky in the next installment- more on that in my review of SNDN 5: The Toy Maker this Friday.)
Needless to say, SNDN 4: Initiation is bat-shit crazy. Nothing but nothing can prepare you for the insane FX by the aptly-named special effects legend Screaming Mad George, which almost gives the ending of Society a run for its money, with its giant mutant cockroaches, twisting body parts and generally insane mayhem. And did I mention what amounts to an orgy sequence?
The end result is like a nutty combination of Rosemary's Baby (especially the hallucinogenic sequences where Kim is drugged), body-horror era Cronenberg (especially The Fly and Videodrome) and His Girl Friday on meth. Only not as good as any of those. If that doesn't make you want to see it, I'm not sure anything will.
The cast is certainly interesting. First and foremost, we have professional nut-job Clint Howard, brother of Ron, who specializes in off-kilter, left-of-center oddballs. His Ricky character here certainly fits that mold nicely. If you like this, be sure and check him out in the likes of Evilspeak, The Wraith, Freeway, Carnosaur, Ticks, Leprechaun 2, Ice Cream Man, The Dentist 2, Rob Zombie's Halloween (Director's Cut), Blubberella, BloodRayne: The Third Reich, The Lords of Salem, Nobody Gets Out Alive, The Funhouse Massacre and 2017's The Church.
As lead baddie Fima, we have none other than three-time Bond Girl and former model Maud Adams, from The Man with the Golden Gun, A View to a Kill and, most notoriously, as the titular Octopussy. Other notable roles include the original Rollerball, Killer Force (co-starring O.J. Simpson!), Tattoo, Hell Hunters, Jane & The Lost City and Angel III.
The leading lady is the oddly-named Neith Hunter, a sexy redhead who was the first graduate of the famed John Casablancas' model training center, upon which she became an exclusive model for French fashion designer Givenchy in Paris, and later an internationally famous model on runways and in such publications as Vogue and in the famed Victoria's Secret catalog.
She worked with the biggest names in fashion and fashion photography, including Guy Bordin, Helmet Newton, Matthew Rolston, Steven Meisel, Diane Pernet and Herb Ritts. She also became a muse to famed sculptor Robert Graham, with whom she was also romantically linked. After studying acting with Daniel Mann, she relocated to LA and made her debut, appropriately enough, in the Cheech Marin vehicle Born in East L.A.
Roles in cult favorites like Near Dark, Less Than Zero, Fright Night 2 and Carnosaur 2 followed, along with guest spots on shows like Miami Vice and Silk Stalkings and a recurring gig on the soap One Life to Live for several years. Fans of the soft-core Showtime series Red Show Diaries might also recognize her from several episodes of that show as well.
While her acting talents on display here are a bit debatable, Hunter does deserve some credit for going for broke in the often breakneck shifts in tone and disposition the story here requires of her. Honestly, I'm not sure even Meryl Streep herself could have handled the whiplash mood swings in this movie's script- though it certainly would have been fun to see her try!
Still, Hunter proves game for most anything, from tawdry sex scenes and Caligula-esque orgies to being impregnated (?) by a giant bug and barfing up larvae and the like. It's a tour de force of over-the-top acting, to be sure, but Hunter does her best with what she's been given, so I won't be too hard on her. There's something to be said for aiming for the moon, after all. (See also Barbara Crampton in The Re-Animator and Linnea Quigley in Return of Living Dead, among others.)
Rounding out the main cast, as Eli, Kim's sexist boss, is Reggie Bannister, best-known for his turn as Reggie, the former ice cream man-turned-kick-ass-warrior in the much-beloved Phantasm series. He also crops up in Wishmaster, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Mangler Reborn, Last Rites, The Rage, The Quiet Ones, Carnies, Not Another B Movie, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X and Bloody Bloody Bible Camp, which he also produced with his wife, Gigi.
Also cropping up in the film are notable character actors like Tommy Hinkley (Back to the Beach, The Little Vampire) as Kim's ill-fated boyfriend, Hank; Allyce Beasley (TV's Moonlighting, Stuart Little) as Janice, Kim's best friend at work; Glen Chin (Natural Born Killers, 50 First Dates) as Jo the butcher; old-school Hollywood actress Jeanne Bates (1943's The Phantom, Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive) and stunt-woman/martial artist-turned-actress Marjean Holden (Philadelphia Experiment II, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) as Katherine and Jane, two of Fima's cult members; and David Wells (Basic Instinct, TV's Shameless) as the detective.
So, is Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation a good movie? Not really. But it is certainly an interesting one, and I suspect it might have been better-received, much like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, had it not been associated with the franchise.
The special effects are eye-popping and the wacky feminist cult angle is one that could have been ahead-of-its-time and forward-leaning, had it been handled a little better. Indeed, of all the entries in the franchise, this is the one that could possibly benefit the most from a remake, especially in the current climate, what with all the #metoo and #timesup stuff in the air as of late.
I can definitely see an excellent rewrite by a talented female writer raising the bar and coming up with something that rivals what we see here, no problem. Snag a female director and a strong cast and you could have a modern-day classic on our hands.
But, as it stands, the film is entertaining but overall a bit of a miss, thanks to the convoluted plot, which often dips into not making a lick of sense, and some iffy writing and acting along the way. Don't get me wrong: I adore Clint Howard and Reggie Bannister, and they're great, and Maud Adams nicely underplays what could have otherwise been a hammy villain.
But Hunter, though she does what she can, is out of her depth, and her character is often a bit laughable, what with all the sudden mood swings and crazy behavior. Granted, there's a reason for it, but the character twists are just a bit too much for her to handle, to be frank. Most of the rest of the cast isn't much better, with even the veteran actors not given much to work with.
But if you can get past that- and, as a horror fan, I've had to deal with much, much worse- it's actually a fun little movie worth seeing for the out-there special effects alone. Yuzna fans will find a lot to like here as well, from his recurring cast members to themes that echo throughout much of his other work. For those fans, it's an absolute must-see.
For the rest of us, it's a minor entry in the franchise that doesn't really fit in with the rest, but is worth a look if you're a completeist. Just know going in that the Christmas element is minor at best- though we do get one great Xmas-themed bit with Clint Howard- and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the first three movies, save a character named Ricky that I'm pretty sure isn't supposed to be the same one from the first three movies.
Check it out, if you dare, but tread lightly, Silent Night, Deadly fans- it's the odd one out, with a decided emphasis on the "odd" part.
Join me this Friday for my take on the much more Christmas-oriented Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, featuring, of all people, classic Hollywood-era actor Mickey Rooney! 😳
No comments:
Post a Comment