SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III: BETTER WATCH OUT! (USA/1989/MONTE HELLMAN)

Ricky, the Santa Claus killer from the previous installments of Silent Night, Deadly Night, is in a coma after being shot by the police. Laura, a blind girl with premonitory powers, is asked to engage in an experiment that aims to find some form of communication with Ricky (the reason is never fully explained), but finds herself instead plagued by horrific nightmares about Christmas. When Laura takes some time off to visit her grandmother, Ricky is stirred awake by a tipsy orderly dressed as Santa Claus and begins his murderous spree again. When Laura suddenly feels something is amiss during her sojourn at Granny’s, she realises that the experiment may have been more successful than expected.

From the space-age cranial dome that Ricky supposedly requires in his comatose state, to the doctor’s parapsychological nonsense (“her body may be young, but her soul is old”), this dire sequel appears to take a laissez-faire approach to both science and horror, not to mention its overreliance on footage from the previous films to tell its story. Laura’s blindness is barely vital to the story besides supposedly giving credence to her psychic visions, which also seem too selective to be reliable. The film is not without its mildly amusing moments – Ricky hitchhiking with the dome still intact, for example – but it’s otherwise an abysmal experience with some unforgivably poor dialogue. Oddly enough, Lynch fans may recognise two of the film’s stars, Eric Da Re and Laura Harring, from Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive respectively.

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2 (USA/1987/LEE HARRY)

Opening with a promising meditative shot of the protagonist, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 follows the story of Ricky, younger brother of the murderous Billy from the first installment. Having committed a string of murders, Ricky languishes in a mental institute awaiting trial. Speaking with his psychiatrist, he begins to tell his own story, explaining to some extent his motives for carrying on his brother’s dirty work. Despite being a baby at the time, he somehow recalls his parents’ murder at the hands of a man in a Santa outfit, a grisly affair which had been the trigger for Billy. Ricky goes on to lose his new foster parents too, and somehow inherits Billy’s ‘naughty or nice’ murder mechanism, going out on a killing spree to avenge his brother’s death.

It’s a wonder how this sequel managed to cost more than its predecessor, given that it donates considerable time to ‘recapping’ the previous entry. Even more wondrous is how Ricky managed to remember so much of the first film, given that he was in it for all of two seconds. Lead actor Eric Freeman’s performance is marvellously over-the-top, producing some wonderful scenes such as the infamous “Garbage Day!” scene (link posted below). The saddest thing is that the filmmakers – and the actors, natch – clearly thought they were doing a great job with this sequel, given the histrionics of the screenplay. Needless to say, they were sorely mistaken – this sits up there (down there?) with Troll 2 and The Room.

"GARBAGE DAY!"

EEGAH (USA/1962/ARCH HALL SR.)

In this infamously reviled B-movie, 7’1½” actor Richard Kiel, best known internationally for his role as Bond villain Jaws, plays Eegah, a gigantic prehistoric caveman inexplicably living in the desert in 1960s America. A tipsy young lady named Roxy (Marilyn Manning) is apparently the first human to encounter him, and is hard pressed to find anyone who will take her concerns seriously. Eventually, her father Robert concedes and sets out to look for the creature himself. Naturally, Roxy’s sudden vulnerability (her ever-present blue-eyed boyfriend Tom is too vacant to take action) leads to her being kidnapped by Eegah and taken back to his cave, where she meets her father again. The two theorise that Eegah has fallen madly in love with Roxy, and she tries to appease him as far as she can tolerate. When his back is turned, the two escape back to the city, seemingly unaffected by their strange experience. All is well until it is revealed that Eegah followed them, and won’t give up without a fight.

Kiel as Eegah is perhaps the only interesting aspect of the film, and mostly for his bizarre appearance. Insipid Roxy fails to command our attention from the beginning, while Tom, a pale imitation of the teen idols of the time, sickens more than delights with his soppy crooning. And despite his best efforts to convince otherwise, Robert’s theory on how Eegah still survives eons past his prime makes very little sense in the grand scheme of things. An unmitigated mess.