The path of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part Two from the epitome of bad horror movie sequel cash-ins to the stuff of internet legend is a long and thorny one. After the original film ended its brief, controversial, but nonetheless successful theatrical run- the film grossed back its entire budget the first week and turned a healthy profit the next before being unceremoniously pulled from theaters, after widespread protest- a funny thing happened.
Many of those kids that mothers were worried about being permanently scarred from seeing commercials and posters for the original, in which Santa was depicted as a homicidal psycho- instead of being horrified, were actually desperate to see the film at all costs, to see what all the fuss was about. As such, the film became a huge success on home video, prompting the producer who owned the rights to contemplate doing a sequel... of sorts.
One problem: no one involved with the original would go anywhere near it. Both critics and a cadre of angry mothers had publicly protested the movie, forcing distributor Tri-Star Pictures to pull it prematurely from theaters. The original producers sold off the rights immediately, thinking no one would fare any better than they did, given all the unprecedented controversy.
The director, Charles Sellier Jr., who had himself been too squeamish to shoot any of the original film's copious gore or nudity-filled scenes, had retreated from making theatrical features altogether and threw himself into making more family-friendly, often faith-based material for television to "make amends" for the shame he felt from being pilloried so harshly.
Likewise, none of the actors or writers would go near it, so new producer Lawrence Appelbaum found himself with quite the quandary: how to do a follow-up when no one in the business wanted anything to do with it? Ultimately, he decided to cut his losses and be done with it and commissioned Lee Harry to simply re-edit the original film's footage to give it a "lighter" tone, planning to release the results as a sequel, hoping to dupe the public into seeing a variation of the film and make a quick buck.
After doing his best, Harry was only able to simply condense the film into something around about forty-five minutes, which wasn't even long enough to qualify as a feature-length film. Begging Appelbaum for a little more cash to make a proper sequel and some wrap-around material, the producer begrudgingly coughed up around $100,000 and told Harry to do what he could with it.
Harry and Joseph E. Earle hammered out a script, concocting the story with Appelbaum and Dennis Patterson, and went to work casting the film, taking care to downplay exactly what film they were working on, so as to not scare off potential participants. Indeed, Harry and Earle roundly encouraged those involved to make their performances over-the-top and even comedic, pitching the film more as a black comedy than a straight horror film- hence the broad work from the actors concerned.
However, the filmmakers hit the jackpot when they hired one actor in particular: Eric Freeman. Not familiar with the original film whatsoever, he initially tried to play it straight, but Harry and Earle were having none of that- they wanted it to be a silly as possible, often breaking into peals of laughter at some of the ridiculous dialogue they were coming up with.
Because of the low budget, Freeman and company were often only given a few takes at a time to get a scene right, so there was no opportunity to, say, bring it down a notch. If anything, Harry and Earle wanted quite the opposite, though they would later somewhat deny intending the end result to be as knowingly bad as it was.
Given this laissez-faire attitude, none of the actors expected much from the film, thinking it would likely disappear without a trace afterwards, somewhat understandably. Indeed, it only made around $154,000 at the box office, just barely recouping the amount of money Appelbaum invested in the new footage.
Though it would do decent business on home video, word quickly spread among fans that the film featured a copious amount of footage from the original- an astonishing 25 minutes, in fact- and it was completely dismissed as the obvious cash-in it was by critics and fans alike.
Even when it was released on DVD, it was unceremoniously combined with the original as a double-sided disc, with distributors somewhat wisely thinking that no one in their right mind would pay separately for a film that was almost half-comprised of footage from the previous film.
Ironically, the film's reputation built over the years, primarily because of Freeman's out there performance as Ricky, the not-so-little brother of Billy, the original film's killer; and the out-of-print DVD later became an in-demand collector's item. Go figure. (I'm the proud owner of one myself.)
Then came the internet. As cult movie fans and bad movie aficionados gleefully sang the movie's praises online, the film incredibly began to amass a cult following, thanks in no small part to the various YouTube tributes and memes that began to crop up online. One fan even dutifully created an elaborate faux video-game of the movie, with the player assuming the part of Ricky, Freeman's character, as he went on his Christmas rampage!
Eventually all this hoopla reached the somewhat reclusive Freeman- who had all but dropped out of the business due to a medical situation- and though a little insulted by the perception of his performance being bad, he later embraced the fandom once he realized that a lot of it was genuine. To this day, both he and the original film's star Robert Brian Wilson (aka Billy) - who himself had also belatedly learned about his own film's solid reputation amongst horror fans- dutifully make the rounds of horror conventions, and have even seen their careers somewhat resurrected by all the hoopla, i.e. the in-joke cameo in the 2016 TV-movie A Husband for Christmas. (See above pic.)
While the first half or so of the film was justly criticized for leaning so heavily on the footage from the original, there's no denying it really kicks into second gear for the second half, in which Freeman's character, Ricky, takes front and center, and we see his own story in the newly-shot footage, following him from his orphanage days to adoption by a- wait for it- Jewish family, showing that the nuns learned their lesson the first time around and didn't take a chance moving forward.
After Ricky's stepfather dies, he sinks into depression, then things get worse when, like his brother before him, he stumbles upon a girl being raped in a meadow and takes matters into his own hands, killing the rapist by running him down with his own car. However, in a neat twist, this time around, the girl in question thanks him! (I always felt the madness that ensued in the original could have been avoided had the rape victim from that film done the same instead of freaking out at Billy.)
Here, I suppose it only postpones the inevitable, as Ricky continues on as if nothing had happened, until one fateful night when he spots a loan shark bullying a hapless client and intervenes, beating the crap out of the man and dead-lifting him and stabbing him with an umbrella, which he then opens after impact, in one of the more mental murders ever featured in a slasher movie.
Flash-forward a little and Ricky later meets the sexy Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan, billed here as Cayton) and the two instantly fall for each other. Though Ricky still has a temper- witness his taking care of two cat-callers at the movie theater (which, hilariously, is showing Silent Night, Deadly Night, allowing the filmmakers to sneak in yet more old footage!) - he seems to have mended his ways somewhat in the meantime.
That all changes when he and Jennifer have the misfortune to run into her old boyfriend, Chip (Ken Weichert), who not-so-subtly references their sexual history and dubiously insults the hulking Ricky to boot. Not a good move. Ricky promptly grabs Chip, gets a hold of some nearby handy battery jumper cables and attaches them to Chip's tongue and turns up the battery, electrocuting him and causing his eyes to blow out!
Jennifer is naturally horrified, and as with brother Billy, this time it sends him spiraling, as he kills Jennifer- who has the cutest reaction imaginable, arguably the best one ever to one's imminent doom (she audibly and cartoonishly gulps, then says "Uh-oh" and tries to run, lol)- and subsequently goes on a rampage in the neighborhood, after ably disarming and shooting a cop, then going on a mass shooting spree, culminating in the film's admittedly legendary "Garbage Day!" moment, in which Ricky shoots a hapless resident for simply taking out the trash at the wrong time.
After a failed suicide attempt- the gun was out of bullets- we then dovetail with the present, as Ricky, since committed to a mental institution, takes out his latest psychiatrist- his thirteenth!- and escapes. He then goes after his real intended target- the dreaded Mother Superior (Jean Miller, taking over for Lilyan Chauvin), finally getting his revenge, as well as avenging his late brother in the process.
Shortly thereafter, the cops, pointed in the right direction by Sister Mary (Nadya Wynd), arrive and summarily execute Ricky by massive gun-fire, after Ricky comes at them with an axe. But is he really dead? We would get our answer in the next installment, but the short answer is... yes and no? (You'll see in my review for SNDN 3: You Better Watch Out!)
The end result of SNDN 2 is completely ridiculous, of course, but that over-the-top sensibility is precisely what made it the stuff of bad movie legend. While Freeman has long since revealed he was ordered to go big or go home with the role, there's no denying that his performance is one for the horror history books. Veering wildly between genuinely menacing and laughable (and literally eyebrow-raising while laughing menacingly), it's something to see, to be sure.
Helping immeasurably is the oft-patently silly dialogue, which is filled to the brim with quotable bad exchanges. Here are just a few of my faves:
Ricky, to his doctor: You're good, doc. Real good. But I know all the moves. I could squash you like a bug.
Ricky, as the doctor asks him to divulge some info about his past and the camera zooms in frame-by-frame on his eyes: Here it comes!
Ricky, to Jennifer, at the movies: What did you say this movie was about again?
Jennifer: Oh, it's great. It's about this guy who dresses up like Santa Claus and kills people.
Ricky, incredulously: What??!!!
Ricky, confronting a noisy film-goer and shushing him: Naughty!
Ricky, to his doctor: You tend to get paranoid when everyone around you gets dead.
Ricky, to Chip: That's enough.
Chip: Oh, it speaks.
Ricky: I said, that's enough!
Chip: Listen, bud- that's what she said... when I fucked her brains out in the backseat of old Red here.
Mother Superior: You are being very, very naughty!
Ricky, brandishing axe: Naughty this!
And so on. The film is an undeniable hoot, so if the producer's intention was to make the material more light-hearted, mission definitely accomplished. Despite the darkly-themed material at hand, the film is so goofy for the most part, it's near impossible to take it seriously. It's no wonder it became the stuff of bad movie legend.
I remember renting this for the first time back in the day and being incredibly pissed at the first half, before being reduced to tears of laughter in the second, thanks to Freeman's now-notorious performance. From there on out, it became a go-to Christmas favorite. If I wanted to freak out someone, I put on the original, which is still super-dark, even by slasher movie standards. But if I want to entertain and make 'em laugh, it's SNDN 2 all the way.
Perhaps needless to say, almost no one affiliated with this movie went on to do anything notable, including the writer/director (he has only one more directing credit, Street Soldiers), with a few minor exceptions. Respected character actor Frank Novak, who also hams it up as the Loan Shark, has been in a host of TV shows, including Seinfeld, CSI, NYPD Blue, Charmed, Party of Five and Monk, as well as movies like Sleepwalkers, Carnosaur, Watchers III, Independence Day, Rumor Has It, Necessary Evil and Watchmen.
And if you were a horror/sci-fi fan in the 80's and 90's, you almost certainly know Elizabeth Kaitan, a frequent Scream Queen and oft-nude sex kitten in movies like Silent Madness, Savage Dawn, Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity, Assault of the Killer Bimbos (loved this one as a kid- it's actually kind of a proto-Thelma & Louise, believe it or not!), Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Necromancer, Twins, Dr. Alien, Nightwish, Vice Academy 3-5, Virtual Encounters, South Beach Academy, Petticoat Planet and The Exotic House of Wax. She's a cutie and I was and remain a big fan.
Beyond that, though, it's a no name cast all the way, but then, it's not like the filmmakers had much money to throw around, admittedly. As it stands, it took years for the film to gain any traction as anything other than a punchline: though, astonishingly enough, the series would go on to spawn three more sequels- only one of which was directly connected to the original films, Part Three)- and a loose remake. As with the previous film, it also got a bells-and-whistles Blu-Ray recently, via Scream Factory.
Granted, it's not a particularly good film- not that the filmmakers and stars ever claimed otherwise- but it is a total hoot and well-worth at least one watch, especially for bad movie fans. For the rest of us, it's borderline required holiday movie viewing.
I tend to alternate between this and the original in any given year- to do both would be pretty redundant, for obvious reasons- and, as many times as I've seen it at this point, it never fails to put a smile on my face. Now if we could only get Eric Freeman to appear in another so-bad-it's-good horror movie...
Join me this Friday for my take on the last of the original trilogy of films, and the final one to continue the story from the original, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: You Better Watch Out! 🎅🔪😵💀
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