Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker

As the opening frames of the last “Deadly Night” roll by, it appears to be the holiday season, based on the Christmas lights on the tree. A happy couple walks by, but forget about them, because I guess we’re not sticking with them.

Instead, the camera paaans over to show us a nice suburban house, with a young boy in the upstairs window.

Inside, the boy stares out the window.

He hears a doorbell ring, and goes to his mom’s room. But mom and dad are “busy,” so the boy doesn’t interrupt.

The boy goes down to the front door, and opens it up. There’s a present on the front step that says, “Derek.” And also, “Don’t open ‘til Christmas!”

Not only does Derek leave the front door open, he goes right ahead and starts opening up the present. Suddenly, someone grabs him from behind!

It’s dad. Or I guess it’s dad. Whether it’s dad or not, “Dad” admonishes Derek for being up so late. And opening the front door late at night. He sends Derek to bed.

Derek goes upstairs but juuust as he is about to head to his room, he turns and looks down at the living room.

Dad closes and locks the front door, and looks at the gift. All the wrapping paper is off it, but the box inside all the paper is still closed. Dad debates what to do, when suddenly the box moves.

So Dad opens it. There’s a red plastic ball inside. Dad looks at it for a second, then turns on the light to take a closer look. He sits down in a chair, and presses the button on the top of it. It starts playing “Jingle Bells.”

Dad is amused by this.

A small Santa head pops out of the top of the ball. It’s smiling. Then the head turns around, and the Santa head on the opposite side appears, and it looks very, very angry. Its mouth opens, and there are sparks inside.

Rubber arms shoot out of the side of the toy and wrap around Dad’s head, and the toy latches itself onto Dad’s face. Dad struggles to get the toy off. In slow motion. To increase the movie’s running time.

Eventually, Dad knocks over the fireplace implements and impales himself on the poker. Through the eye.

The ball retracts its face and arms and rolls away.

The kid gets to watch every second. Mom just shows up after dad is dead. She screams, “Tom!”

And we get some credits. And I have to mention this: Mickey Rooney, our main villain, has a character name of Joe Petto.

That’s so painfully on the nose I could cry. Just a little bit. Like, four tears and a sniffle.

The credits end, and we get a burn-in: Two Weeks Later.

Mom lies on the bed, sleeping, sympathy cards by her side. She hears a grunt in her sleep, and wakes up. Derek is asleep next to her.

Outside, a random Creepy Dude drives by the house.

Inside the house, we get a look at the kid’s toy shelf. The evil toy is still up there, in ball form. Which is about forty-six kinds of messed up. You would think they would have turned the ball over to the cops.

Or at least smashed it.

But no, it’s up there. On the shelf. Out of the reach of Derek. So I guess THAT’S good.

Mom makes Derek breakfast, and brings it out to him at his little table where he’s watching violent cartoons. Rambo, no less. Despite the fact that his dad is dead.

Mom tells the kid she made it just the way he likes it, and put it on the plate with nothing touching. The kid responds by grabbing the eggs with his bare hands and squishing them.

Mom gets mad, then apologizes, then says she has to go into the office later, and asks if the kid wants to come. He smiles and nods his head yes.

There’s a knock at the door, despite the previously established doorbell. Who’s there? Why, it’s mom’s friend, and her friend’s son.

And who’s her friend? Why, it appears to be Kim, from part 4. So that’s probably NOT her kid, since this is supposed to be a year later. Maybe it’s Lonnie?

At any rate, Kim is just there so that Mom can spout some exposition. According to Mom, Derek hasn’t spoken since the accident, which the doctors say is “normal” after a “traumatic incident.”

The kid won’t go into his room anymore, either. Probably because there’s a KILLER BALL there.

Mom thinks that maybe if she buys Derek a toy, he’ll snap out of it, so she’s going to take him over to Petto’s later.

You caught the joke from the credits, right? Joe Petto? The toy maker? Yeah. This movie was made in 1991. Unless “Joe” is actually Japanese, and he makes Nintendos, I’m going to guess that Derek isn’t interested.

The other kid, who I’m going to go ahead and call Lonnie until someone tells me different, says that Petto’s doesn’t have anything good in it.

On the TV screen, a commercial appears. The toy being advertised is the Killer Santa Ball. Only it isn’t called that. It’s just the “regular” version, with 100% less death, I’m guessing.

Well, okay. Knowing how dangerous most kid’s toys can be, we’ll say it has 77% less death. But still.

Derek starts to panic, and gets up from his little table. Mom wants to know what’s the matter.

Mom uses this as a chance to make a Lifetime speech about how it’s okay to be angry and scared, but that mommy will protect him and everything will be all right.

Meanwhile, outside, the Creepy Dude in the car looks at the house and drives away.

Mom takes Derek to Petto’s, which really does look pretty terrible. It’s like one aisle, it’s lit in a fabulous shade of beige, and frankly, I’m not sure how clean the place is.

Mom and Derek walk in, and someone jumps out of… I don’t know. There wasn’t any place for him to hide, so maybe he was behind the door. At any rate, the dude jumps out wearing a creepy mask.

Joe comes out of the back room and tells the masked guy, Pino, to knock it off.

Pino. Really? As in Pinocchio? Really? If the kid turns out to be any form of cyborg, I am going to print a copy of the script, roll it up, and locate everyone who worked on this film and whap them in the nose with it. This is NOT OKAY. You are not allowed to have two major characters whose names are puns.

Pino is sent to the back. Joe comments on how Pino is always making those masks. Uh-huh. Yeah. He’s a cyborg.

Joe asks how Mom (she has a name! Sara!) is doing. Then he asks how Derek is doing. Sara says he’s “not so good,” so Joe pulls a quarter out of Derek’s nose. Yeah.

In the back room, Pino wanders around, unsure of what to do with himself. Then he opens a trapdoor in the floor and heads down.

Out in the store, Joe shows off various lame toys that require “imagination.” Derek doesn’t seem to be interested.

Creepy Dude comes in the front door and watches Joe show Derek various toys.

Suddenly, Pino appears with a boxed toy, and says, “Here, I want you to have this.” The toy is called Larry the Larvae, and it appears to be a re-purposed worm from part 4, but with crazy eyes glued on to make it look more toy-like.

Joe asks where Pino got the gift. Pino really, really wants to give it to Derek. Pino notes that Joe made the toy.

Sara and Derek leave, having decided that maybe a terrible toy is not a great idea.

Joe lets them out, then turns on Pino. He blames Pino for the fact that no one comes to the store anymore. I won’t say that Joe is chewing the scenery, but on a scale of, say, 1 to 10, he’s probably at a 17 or so.

Pino keeps backing away from Joe until he bumps into Creepy Dude, who I guess is doing some last-minute Christmas shopping. Pino drops the Larry box, and the Creepy Dude picks it up.

Creepy Dude wants to pay for his toys. Joe says that Creepy Dude has been in the store a lot, buying a lot of toys lately.

I’m going to assume everyone’s made the logical leap that Creepy Dude is the “Good Guy Who is Buying Toys In Order to Bring the Evil Toy Maker Down.”

Joe tries to ask questions about whether or not Creepy Dude was in The Service, or if he’s playing Santa Claus (man, in these movies? I hope not) and the guy says he just wants to pay for his stuff and go.

Larry the Larvae is part of his toy stack.

Creepy Dude goes to pay with his credit card, and when he does so, he drops a newspaper clipping on the floor.

The newspaper clipping is the “Dad Died at Christmas” story. Joe finds it.

At a hotel, Creepy Dude starts taking toys apart when there’s a knock at the door. The manager of his hotel is there, saying that Creepy Dude’s check bounced, and Creepy Dude needs to get out of there.

Creepy Dude says it must be some kind of mistake. He just got out of the service, and there’s plenty of money left in the account. He’s told to get out. CD offers cash. The guy says he likes cash.

CD says he gets paid tomorrow, so the manager says he leaves tonight.

CD asks if the manager has a kid. He does. CD says that he’ll give the manager a toy, in lieu of payment, if the guy will let him stay until tomorrow. The manager agrees, and CD gives the guy Larry the Larvae.

Which, of course, will be the killer toy, making this investigation drag out, and making the movie longer.

CD tells the manager not to open the gift until Christmas.

The manager takes the gift home to his kid. Or rather, he tries, only the box falls off the car seat and Larry escapes. Manager picks it up, and clicks the button to turn it on. Only he can’t turn it off.

He figures the toy is broken and throws it in the back seat.

The toy climbs up the back of the seat and squeaks. The manager turns to look at it, and it jumps into his mouth.

Bad driving ensues. Eventually, the guy dies, and Larry pulls both of the guy’s eyeballs back into his skull, and then pops a head out the man’s eye hole.

The car hits a bump, flips over, crashes, and bursts into flame.

Creepy Dude breaks into Petto’s.

He creeps though the entire store, then goes in the back office. He checks the desk for incriminating paperwork. He finds a picture of Pino and Joe. It has a label of 1970 on the back.

Pino looks pretty much the same. Great. Pino IS some kind of robot. I am not pleased.

Petto comes downstairs from the upstairs apartment. Creepy Dude hides under the stairs.

Petto goes to the filing cabinet, pulls out some booze, and has a shot. Then he goes back upstairs.

Wow. I bet the screenwriters spent seconds and seconds looking for a logical reason for Petto to come downstairs.

Creepy Dude goes over to the trapdoor, opens it up, and starts climbing down. “Someone” grabs him, CD struggles, and yells out, “Let go!” He pulls free and makes his escape.

Pino pokes his head up from the trapdoor in the floor.

The next day, Sara calls to Derek. He’s in the living room of their house, holding a really, really large Walkman. Which is why he couldn’t hear Sara.

She doesn’t want him to be “late for Santa.”

Sara and Derek walk outside, and there’s another unmarked gift. Despite the fact that it’s not “from” anyone, mom is pleased to see the gift. She figures it’s from Kim.

Yep. That other girl, who looked like Kim? Was Kim. Who is now caring for Hank’s younger brother, Lonnie. How did that adoption process work, exactly?

“Okay, Kim, you say you were dating Hank for a month when Hank vanished, his parents were killed, and his parents’ house burned to the ground. You admit that you kidnapped Lonnie, in an attempt to have him sacrificed by a cult of some sort, but you changed your mind at the last moment and opted to free Lonnie and burn the ringleader of the cult to death instead. Sure. He’s all yours.”

Crazy.

At any rate, Sara and Derek head to a store, where a kindly little elf puts up a sign that says Santa will be back in 15 minutes.

“Santa” heads in the back, and talks to another Santa. Santa II is… Ricky. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I’m sorry. Ricky is dead. Way dead. He was being eaten by giant sentient worm-creatures.

If there’s someone out there who wants to explain to me why it is that this movie is attempting to have some kind of bizarre continuity with the last one, please contact me. I’d really appreciate it.

But while I’m interrupting the narrative flow, I’d like to note that Kim probably didn’t get Derek a Christmas gift, either. Because she’s Jewish. Which I guess Sara forgot.

At any rate, Ricky. Yeah. He makes a lewd comment about the girl playing the part of the elf.

Creepy Dude asks Ricky if Ricky has seen the boss. (And yes, his name really is Ricky.) He wants to ask about his check.

CD peeks out at the crowd, and sees that Derek is coming up in line. CD asks Ricky if he can take Ricky’s shift. Ricky’s fine with it.

Over at Derek’s house, Pino picks up a key hidden between two bricks. The brick on the bottom says, “Pino ’75.” He opens up the cellar and lets himself in.

Inside the house, Pino wanders around. He checks his hair in a Christmas tree bulb.

Back in the land of Santa, Creepy Dude prepares to Santa is up. Some little girl gets on his lap and says she wants clothes, clothes, and more clothes. And various other things.

The Elf takes a picture.

Derek goes to sit on Santa’s lap. Derek doesn’t want to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas. Mom says she’s going to take Derek home. Creepy Dude tries to keep Derek on his lap. Sara pulls him away after a minute.

Pino looks at Sara’s wedding photo.

Sara and Derek head home.

Creepy Dude sees them drive away.

At Derek’s house, Pino lies on Derek’s bed and looks at his stuffed animals. After a minute, he gets up and crosses the room. He sees the Ball O’ Death, but doesn’t pick it up.

Sara and Derek are driving home.

Pino wanders into Sara’s bedroom.

Sara and Derek drive by a neighborhood watch sign. Tee-hee, filmmakers.

Pino smells Sara’s perfume.

Sara and Derek arrive home, and go into the house.

Pino is playing with Sara’s lacey underthings, which are in her closet.

Derek gets his giant Walkman and heads upstairs.

Sara keeps on unloading the car when Kim walks up. Kim says she saw someone moving around inside the house a few minutes ago.

Sarah races in, yelling to Derek. She finds him lying on the floor, listening to his Walkman.

Pino pops out of the closet and runs away. Sara calls out, “Pino!”

Sara goes to Petto’s, and confronts Joe, who says Pino would “never do anything like that.” Of course, he’s currently horking down a bottle of booze. So he’s probably not convinced that Sara is really there.

Joe says he thinks he can explain what happened. Petto used to own Sara’s house. He and Pino lived there for “many years.” Sara asks what happened, and Petto says his business was going downhill, the bank foreclosed, and they had to move into the store. Petto claims that Pino kept saying he wanted to go back to the house.

Sara says she feels sorry for Petto, but that it doesn’t give Pino the right to break into her house.

Petto promises it will never happen again.

Sara opts not to call the police. Sara is a fool.

Petto goes to confront Pino, but Pino is holding the trapdoor in the floor shut. Pino tells Petto to leave him alone.

Petto says, “You’ll have to come up sometime, Pino. And when you do, I’ll be waitin’ for ya!”

Which, in addition to being a cliché, is also a bizarre thing for a dad to say to his kid.

Though of course we all know that Pino is a cyborg. Which means that Pino can pretty much wait around down there until Petto is dead. Shouldn’t be too long, what with the old age. And the drinking.

Sara brings Derek’s “Don’t Open Until Christmas!” gift to him. She tells him to go ahead and open it. He says he doesn’t want to open it.

Kudos to the kid for learning a lesson. Truly, this is a rare thing in horror movies.

Sara leaves Derek alone while she goes to answer the door. Kim is there. Sara thanks Kim for the mysterious Christmas present, and Kim says she didn’t give it to Derek. She does NOT mention that she’s Jewish.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Derek looks at the scary, scary gift, and tries to figure out how to get rid of it. He tries to throw it out the window, but the window doesn’t open wide enough.

Downstairs, Sara laments that she can’t get her family’s life back in order. Kim says life doesn’t work that way. She can’t believe some of the things she’s been through. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Derek, meanwhile, takes the gift outside and sticks it on top of the trash can.

Outside, Lonnie grabs the gift out of the trash (garbage picker!) and opens it up. Roller blades! Lonnie starts taking off his shoes, immediately.

Back at Petto’s, Petto screams at Pino. Then he moves from verbal to physical abuse. Pino fights back, and knocks Petto over. Petto breaks a bottle over Pino’s head.

There’s some more tussling, and Petto accidentally knocks Pino into the trapdoor and down the stairs. Pino lies on the floor, looking all dead and such. Petto cries out, “What have I done?”

You killed your cyborg, dude. May as well go ahead and rebuild him for the big twist ending.

Back at Derek’s house, Lonnie has his stolen roller blades on. They fit perfectly, even though Derek is at least two, and probably more like four, years younger than him.

A teenage guy and girl come walking up the sidewalk, and the guy throws some verbal abuse at Lonnie. Lonnie responds by making an obscene gesture and skating away. Abuser-boy’s girlfriend takes this as a good reason to make out with Abuser-boy.

Kim leaves Sara’s house, telling Sara that tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and things are only going to get better.

Uh… Kim is JEWISH. And also non-religious.

Upstairs, Derek is sitting on the bed. Although you can’t see it, you can hear a movie playing on the TV. What movie?

Go ahead and guess. Go ahead. “Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4.”

Really.

What part? The bit where Ricky says, “Santa Claus killer.”

What does this mean?

I’m afraid to unpack it.

First, I’m going to point out that Sara turns off the TV without looking to see what Derek is watching. Which is unfortunate, because if she did, she’d see her friend Kim on the TV screen.

Which would take this whole movie is a totally different and somewhat awesome direction.

Okay, let’s try to break this all down:

In part 5, Derek watches part of part 4. The part of part 4 he’s watching features a character watching Part 3.

And two of the three people on the screen have appeared in part 4 with the exact same name, which implies they are the same people. Both Ricky and Kim are in part 5.

Which also means that Derek just got done watching his mom’s best friend Kim have happy fun time with Lonnie’s brother.

I know that I made a David Lynch joke in my write-up of part 2, but I am now, officially, convinced that Lynch owns copies of all five of these movies and that he watches them over, and over, and over, trying to think of ways to out-“Silent Night, Deadly Night,” the “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” series.

And if you don’t believe me, consider this: The girlfriend character in part 3? Totally one of the stars of Mulholland Dr.

As which character?

The girlfriend who ends up dead.

Yeah.

Anyway, back to our show.

Sara tells Derek that she wants Derek to sleep in his own room tonight.

She takes him to his room and tells him that she wants him to go right to sleep. I wasn’t aware you could order children to do that.

As she leaves the room, she turns off the light and says, “I’ll be right here if you need me, honey.”

You know, the last time she probably said that, she wasn’t. She was under dad, taking one for the team. Which is how Derek ended up opening the front door, and seeing dad die in the first place.

Outside, the guy and girl make out, and Lonnie comes around the corner on his garbage-picked roller blades.

The girl screams, “Look out!” and shoves the guy away from her. They both fall on the ground as Lonnie skates between them. This makes them angry.

Lonnie laughs, and suddenly small rockets fire up on his skates and send him whizzing down the street.

Inside Derek’s room, the Ball O’ Death falls off the shelf, lands on the floor, and activates.

Derek gets out of bed and grabs a bat. He smashes the Ball O’ Death.

Outside, Lonnie screams and yells as the skates zip him around, finally landing him in the path of an oncoming car.

One scene later, Lonnie is in the hospital. Kim is there. Lonnie is beat up, but he’s going to be fine.

Sara shows up, and says it’s a terrible accident. Kim presents her with the Skates ‘O Death, complete with blackened wiring.

Sara asks, “What’s this?” And Kim replies, “You tell me.”

At Derek’s house, the doorbell rings. It’s Creepy Dude. He says he wants to be Derek’s friend. He presents Derek with a present, and says it’s a very special toy, for a very special boy.

The paper actually has the name Derek printed all over it.

The babysitter appears at the door, and slams the door shut. Creepy Dude says he wants to come in and use the phone. The babysitter says no. The babysitter is the second-smartest person in this movie.

Of course, she tells Creepy Dude where Sara works, so she loses some points for that.

Sara, meanwhile, is in the parking garage alone. Late at night. She hears something, and tries to get into her car. She drops her keys.

Creepy Dude appears, and calls out to her. She runs. He catches her. Then he kisses her. Hard.

Did. Not. See. That. Coming.

Back at Derek’s house, the babysitter is reading Pinocchio to Derek. No, I am NOT kidding.

Derek goes to sleep. The babysitter sneaks out of the room, which is, by the way, Sara’s room.

She goes to Derek’s room. Someone grabs her. It’s Abuser-boy. Ah. Thanks to poor directing, I have just now realized that the babysitter is the girl who was with Abuser-boy earlier.

The babysitter tells Abuser-boy that Sara is going to be home soon, and he asks what they’re waiting for. And he jumps onto Derek’s bed. The babysitter joins him. About a minute later, the boy is down to his underpants.

In the parking garage, Creepy Dude says he doesn’t have the right tool to get into Sara’s car. So he can break her window or give her a ride home.

She says she’ll take the ride.

Creepy Dude asks why she ran from him. She says, “I couldn’t believe it was you.” She tells him that things have been pretty crazy lately.

It seems he left six years ago. Creepy Dude asks if Derek is his son. CD left when Sara was pregnant. Oh, thank all that is good, we finally get a name. Creepy Dude is named Noah.

Noah’s backstory is this: He knocked up Sara and left for the army. Sara wanted to finish college, and thought that Noah wasn’t ready to settle down. So I guess she married Tom. Which leaves a lot of questions still unanswered, but Noah does the whole, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you!” thing, and the next thing you know, Noah and Sara and making Derek a little brother in the back of his vehicle.

Never mind that her husband has been dead less than a month.

Meanwhile, back at Derek’s house, the babysitter and Abuser-boy continue to fool around. They’re pretty noisy about it. Derek, awakened by the ruckus, covers his ears and prays for the sweet release of death.

And then? Santa walks in the front door of Derek’s house.

Santa is played by Joe.

And yeah, he really is wearing a Santa costume.

“Santa” sees that the babysitter and abuser-boy are busy, so he puts a bunch of toys on the floor in the doorway and leaves.

The babysitter, a few minutes later, sees all the toys and asks where they came from. Abuser-boy said they were there before. She says she doesn’t remember seeing them.

Then the toys start to move.

First, a plastic hand crawls up on the bed and starts fondling Abuser-boy’s keister. Then it moves to the girl.

She moves it back to him.

At that moment, Derek walks into the doorway, giving him a nice view as the toys make their deadly move.

Counting the movie he was watching on TV, this will be the third instance of carnality coupled with deadly force he’s seen in the last four weeks. Good times.

The hand grabs Abuser-boy by the neck and starts choking him. Meanwhile, a rubber snake wraps itself around the babysitter’s hands, locking the babysitter to her boyfriend. Screaming and choking ensues.

On the floor, a vehicle with spinning blades starts spinning its blades. It cuts the boy’s foot.

And then things proceed like so: The girl falls on one side of the bed, and an army tank and various army men shoot at her a lot, filling her wish bloody holes.

On the other side of the bed, the boy lies on the floor while the thing with the blades sprouts some spikes, which then ram into the boy.

In the midst of all this, Petto grabs Derek in his Santa sack.

Back in Noah’s car, Noah and Sara have finished their business, and now Noah asks Sara what she knows about Joe Petto. She tells him he’s a nice man.

Noah tells Sara that Joe was arrested for booby-trapping toys a few years ago. Some kids were hurt, and one of them died. Noah suspects that Joe went crazy when his wife died in the car accident. She was pregnant at the time.

Noah says he bought a bunch of toys and checked them out, but he couldn’t find any problems. Sara says she wants to go home.

Noah and Sara go to Sara’s house. Noah asks what he should tell Derek. Sara says to tell him the truth.

Then the slashed and bloody babysitter slams herself up against the window. The babysitter tells Sara and Noah that Joe took Derek.

At that moment, a superhero toy comes flying out of the house. It hits a trash can and explode.

Despite the fact that the house is probably now the most dangerous place in America, Noah says they need to go inside and call the police.

Sara jumps into Noah’s vehicle and drives away. She’s going to save her son.

Kim runs up and asks what happened. Noah tells her to “send the police,” and Kim yells out, “Send them where?!”

You know, that WOULD be valuable information at this point, wouldn’t it?

Also, what’s Noah going to do? RUN to the toy store?

Sara pulls up to Petto’s place, and slams on the door. She screams that Petto had better not hurt Derek. Then she runs around to the back of the building.

She takes the stairs to the upper apartment, and finds the door open and unlocked. She walks in.

She walks through the house, totally unarmed, which seems like a really bad idea.

There’s a pot boiling on the stove in the kitchen. And there’s a large toy train running in the living room.

Noah runs up to his vehicle. I guess the toy store is pretty close. Noah picks the lock and goes into the store.

Sara keeps on looking around upstairs.

Noah goes right to the trapdoor, and heads into the basement. It’s dark. And appears to be empty.

Sara spots a picture of herself and Derek on the wall. A knife has been stuck through Derek’s head. And “blood” has been added, for effect.

Noah descends to the cellar. He’s attacked by a toy plane, which fires at him. He fights back with a teddy bear, knocking the plane into a wall, where it explodes.

Sara finds a door that’s open a crack, tries to go inside, and a head falls on her. No, sorry, it’s made of Styrofoam. Or it’s a mask. One of the two.

Noah wanders around the cellar until he finds a door. He opens it. Joe shoots him with a water gun.

Noah panics, and falls backward into some boxes, which bury him.

Sara grabs the bloody knife out of the wall, and goes downstairs. She heads into the cellar, calling for Noah, who she LEFT BEHIND. Why is she calling to him, exactly?

No matter. She’s headed down.

She doesn’t see Noah, because he’s under a pile of boxes under the stairs.

She sees the light on under the same door Noah just tried, and she heads in.

There’s a bunch o’ mannequin-looking parts down there. And some big old Santa sacks hanging from the ceiling. And a lot of toys, in the midst of being tampered with.

Sara goes to pull a mask off of one of the mannequins, and it’s not a mannequin. It’s Petto’s dead body.

Then Petto, still in a Santa suit, steps out of the shadows. He says, “I knew you’d come. Pretty. Mommy.”

Sara says, “Who are you?”

And Petto takes off his face. He’s actually a cyborg. Or rather, he’s Pino. I know. It’s a shock.

Pino puts his Pino face back on.

Pino locks the door, and picks up the knife Sara dropped. Sara accuses Pino of killing Joe, and he says he had to do it, because Joe broke him. Apparently, Joe always broke him, and Pino wanted to stay fixed this time.

Sara asks where Derek is. Pino is too busy doing a whole monologue about how he could never be a real son to Petto. He also tears off all his clothing so Sara can see his hideous plastic body.

Pino figured that Derek had to die. That way Pino could be Sara’s son. Pino was the one sending all the deadly toys to Derek.

Sara grabs a screwdriver and jams it into Pino’s head.

This does some damage, but it doesn’t kill Pino.

Pino says he’s going to be Sara’s son. Not Derek.

Pino starts stabbing all the Santa sacks hanging from the ceiling. Despite the fact that Pino was the one who kidnapped Derek, he keeps stabbing the wrong sacks.

Noah calls to Sara. Sara calls to Noah.

Pino keeps on sack-stabbing. Sara says Derek doesn’t need to die. Pino can come live with her.

Pino disagrees, and keeps on sack-stabbing. Through cunning and ridiculous logic, Derek blocks Pino from stabbing him, then jumps out of the sack he was trapped in and grabs onto Pino’s back.

Noah gets an axe from somewhere and breaks into the room.

Sara pulls Noah off of Pino’s back, and Noah chops off one of Pino’s arms. Pino takes Noah’s axe.

Noah punches Pino in the face.

Pino tosses Noah around the room, then picks up a hammer . He’s about to give Noah a firm thrashing, when Sara comes up behind him and cuts him in half with the axe.

Pino drags himself over to Joe’s dead body. And then expires.

Noah tells Derek, “You’re safe now, Derek, I’m going to take care of you.” Derek asks who Noah is. Sara says she’ll explain it at home.

Suddenly, Pino grabs Sara’s leg. So she stomps his head into various component bits.

Derek takes her hand and says, “Don’t be afraid. It’s only a toy, mommy.”

I’m sorry, is this the same Derek who smashed the Ball O’ Doom into bits with a baseball bat? Yeah. Thought so.

Oh, wait, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be all happy that Derek is talking again, right? Sure. I’ll get right on that.

Sara says, “That’s right, it’s only a toy.”

Sure. One of many which tried to kill you. But, you know, don’t worry about that.

The trio leaves the room. Derek comes back in, looks at the floor, and says, “Just a toy.” One last time. In case you missed it.

The door closes, and the camera pans up on a nearby mannequin. It’s eyes glow with blue lightning, and it laughs.

And David Lynch’s very favorite movie series comes to an end.

Can I be a little sad that it didn’t close out with the doll yelling either “Naughty! Or “Punish!”

I think I can be.

Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4

Before we begin, I have to bring up “Halloween.”

If you don’t know the history of the “Halloween” movies, the quick-and-dirty version is they did part I, and part II, and then tried to keep the “Halloween” title going by introducing a whole new villain in Part III.

Only everyone rebelled.

This did NOT prevent the folks who made “Silent Night, Deadly Night” (or rather, the folks who had the rights) from trying the exact same thing. Only they figured they’d wait until Part IV to pull the old switcheroo.

So if you wanted to know what happened to Billy, or Ricky, or Sister Margaret, or Sister Mary, or anyone else who was not dead at the end of one of the last three movies… I’ve got nothing for you. Check the Internet, maybe someone cobbled together some fan fiction.

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea. Stick Billy and Ricky in brain-hats, and let them run amuck. “Two brothers. One Christmas. No survivors.”

Coming soon to a fan site near you.

At any rate, as we fire up the projector for part IV, we’ve got a homeless guy walking down the street, pushing a shopping cart. He finds some fast-food tinfoil in the gutter and cracks it open, hoping for a burger.

The burger is there, but it’s bug-infested. Naturally, the homeless guy complains there’s no cheese.

(No, I’m not kidding. He really does.)

He starts to eat.

He hears a scream, and looks at the roof of a nearby building. There’s a woman up there. She bursts into flame and jumps, or is pushed, off the roof.

She hits the ground, and the homeless guy goes over to look at her. She’s still on fire. He tries to touch her, and his hand ends up with a bunch of black grit on it.

The homeless man hears sirens, and ducks back into a nearby alley.

The credits roll by, sometimes literally, and then we see a Motel sign. And a TV with the sound off, where a reporter appears to be talking about the flaming death lady.

But since we’re at a hotel, the two people on the bed aren’t paying attention to the TV. Well, okay, the lady changes her mind and starts watching the TV, but the guy changes the channel to adult programming.

He admonishes the woman for “working during lunch.”

A fairly short time later, the guy and gal walk down the street. She asks what’s going on tonight, and he says he remembers something about no strings attached. He asks if she really wants to meet his parents, and she says yes.

They walk on, and the gal talks about doing a story about “that woman who burned.”

They walk into the building labeled L.A. Eye. Only the Eye is the Eye symbol. I could crack jokes, but why bother?

The girl, once again, insists she wants to do a story on the burned woman. She wants the guy to get one of the higher-ups to give her a chance. He’s clearly uncomfortable with the situation, and goes to talk to one of the other guys, who asks if he had “Chicken A La Kim” for lunch.

So at least our heroine appears to have a name: Kim.

The Boss, Eli, walks out, and Kim says that the flaming woman would make a great story. Eli sort of agrees, and all his yes-men start yes-ing.

Eli puts Kim’s lunch buddy on the job. Eli wants to use the “spontaneous combustion” of the woman as an opener to a larger story about unexplained phenomena.

Kim is displeased. Eli finally notices her, remembers that she works in classifieds, and asks her to make fresh coffee. Another woman on the staff says, “Boys will be boys.”

She asks how things are going with Hank. Kim says she doesn’t know, then asks Janice, her buddy, why they need men anyway.

Janice gives her a copy of a typescript talking about the “suicide.” Kim says, “I’m gonna do it anyway,” and heads to the scene of the burning.

She spots a gumball machine that puts out nuts, and inserts a quarter. It doesn’t give her any nuts. A butcher walks out of his building. He’s covered in blood, so you know he’s a butcher. Oh, and also he speaks completely unaccented English, but still speaks with broken English.

It appears the actor was so offended by the broken English stereotype that he opted to not fake an accent.

He tells Kim that he saw and heard everything, and that once the burning was done, “Nothing left. Waist down.”

Kim asks how she got up there, and he tells her that she could have gotten up from any apartment in the building.

Kim locates the chalk outline, and sure enough, all the scorch marks are on the lower half of the body.

Kim looks goes in the nearest door. It’s a bookstore. She bumps into the homeless guy, who proceeds to follow Kim around. He looks at the fingers he used to touch the burning woman the night before, and touches Kim in the bottom area using those fingers.

Kim is not pleased.

The bookstore owner tells the homeless guy, Ricky, to go away.

Ricky steps about five steps away.

Kim asks the bookstore lady for a book on spontaneous combustion. The bookstore owner, Fima, asks if it’s about the burning woman, and says she owns the bookstore.

Finally, Ricky wanders away. Kim confirms with Fima that you can get to the roof from any apartment. Fima also offers Kim some kind of snack. And she tries to give her a book called “Initiation of the Virgin Goddess.”

Kim says she can’t accept the gift.

So instead, Fima asks Kim to come to their picnic tomorrow, and gives Kim the address. And the “Initiation” book, which will be her “invitation.” And a kiss on the cheek.

Kim has Fima take her to a roof access point, while Fima’s worker looks at some creepy portrait of a lady, which is hanging on the wall.

Kim is just about to head up to the roof, when she realizes that Fima has vanished.

She goes up anyway, and stands on the roof precipice while looking down at the sidewalk. This makes her ill.

Ricky, as it turns out, is also on the roof. He hears a screechy noise in one of the pipes on the roof, and reaches in. He pulls out… some kind of naked worm/caterpillar thing. Did I mention Ricky is covered in ants?

And Kim appears to be covered in ants as well?

As Ricky pulls the icky creature out of the pipe, Kim notices all the ants and starts brushing them off herself.

That night, Kim goes to wash the dishes in her sink and discovers that it’s filled with roaches. She sprays them.

She’s making pasta. The phone rings, and the machine picks it up. It’s Hank, who wants to know why Kim hasn’t called. Apparently, Hank’s mom cooked a big dinner.

This is sort of sad, really. Kim has found a guy who actually wants to introduce her to his parents, and she doesn’t even bother to meet them because Hank didn’t want a little PDA in the office. Kim will probably die alone.

At any rate, she starts flipping through the “Initiation” book and finds a page labeled “The Spiral: Symbol of Womans Power.” No, there is not an apostrophe.

She looks at the spiral, and then at her pasta, which is, yes, in a spiral. She sees another cockroach, flips out, and destroys her dinner. Hank calls again, and she says she’s coming.

She meets Hank’s mom, who offers her a little snack, saying they’re an old family recipe.

Everyone wishes everyone else a Merry Christmas. Dad sits on his chair, drinking beer.

Hank goes to sit with Kim. Kim gets up and goes to sit by some other little kid. Named Lonnie. Lonnie asks if Kim’s tree is up yet. Kim’s Jewish. Dad’s kind of racist. It’s all in good fun.

Finally, Kim and Hank head outside, and Hank tries to explain that he and Kim are from a different world than his parents. Kim says that Hank didn’t help her out when Eli gave Hank the woman-on-fire story. Hank points out that Eli is the boss.

Having solved nothing, Hank kisses Kim and asks her to go back to his place. They keep on kissing. He puts her hand up her skirt.

And then… You know what, I’m just going to transcribe what Kim says, and let the ladies in the audience decide if Kim is standing up for herself and being a powerful woman-type person, or if she’s just kind of a spoiled brat: “Get off of me! What is wrong with you? Why are you always jumping on top of me? You’re like a dog in heat. … I’m just as good as you, you know. You, and Eli, and Jeff. And I’m sick of it. I’m going to do what I want whether you like it or not. And I’m going to do the story I wanna do.”

Hank points out that an attitude like that might cost Kim her job. Kim drops some f-bombs about the job. And Hank.

Then she gets in her car and drives away.

(Two quick points on the “spoiled child” debate. Kim has only been working for the “Eye” for a month. Which means she’s known Hank about that long. Okay, weigh in.)

Kim goes back to her bug-infested apartment, and cleans bug goo off the “Initiation” book. She cracks it open again to a section labeled, “The Fire of Lilith.”

She looks at the ground and spots a cockroach roughly the size of her head. She tries to kill it with a broom handle.

Then her pasta starts moving. Icky.

She runs to the toilet to do some puking, while the MASSIVE cockroach hangs out on her wall. There’s a little cockroach in the toilet after the puking. Whether it was in her mouth is up for discussion.

Kim closes the bathroom door, and the world’s largest cockroach jams a leg under it. And we fade out.

The next morning, Kim wakes up because there’s a knocking at her door. She has a really icky stain on her shirt, which I’m guessing no one wants to think about.

Kim goes to the door. It’s Janice. Kim opens the door. Janice asks what’s wrong. She says she tried Kim’s phone, but it was out. And sure enough, it’s lying on the floor, off the hook.

Kim goes to clean up her apartment a bit. Kim says it “must have been something I ate.” Janice asks if Kim wants a ride to work, and Kim says no thanks, she’s “working on something.”

Janice says that Eli was displeased that Kim didn’t show up for work yesterday afternoon.

Kim drives to the picnic, but leaves her Initiation book in the car. Fima greets her, and takes her to meet the rest of the coven. Uh, I mean, nice ladies.

Kim meets Katherine, who looks like everyone’s Grandma. And Jane, who looks like everyone’s attractive black female friend.

Kim brings up the suicide again. Katherine says she never heard a thing. Kim asks what might have caused “it,” “it” meaning a woman to burst into flames from the neck down and went tumbling off a building.

Jane says, “She wasn’t strong enough.” But Katherine quickly says they didn’t know the flaming woman.

Kim tells Fima that there’s picture of a woman with flames from the waist down in the “Initiation” book. I’m really tired of typing that word now.

The ladies inform Kim that Lilith was Adam’s first wife. She wouldn’t let Adam lay on top of her, and eventually left him. She’s, “The spirit of all that crawls.”

Kim takes this all in without calling anyone crazy, and then sees a cockroach crawling across her hand. She freaks. Then she’s embarrassed.

She tells the other ladies she’ll probably lose her job because she’s working on this story without authorization. She says she’s okay with it, because she’s ready for a change. Did I mention she’s been working there a month?

Yeah.

Everyone toasts Kim while creepy music plays. Jane and Katherine go for a walk, but Kim thinks she’s had too much to drink.

She lies down on the blanket, and Fima says, “I’m glad you came. She kisses Kim, who falls asleep for a moment. Then Fima goes to talk to the other ladies.

Kim wakes up, and sees the tree branches above her. She reaches for the branches. And suddenly, there’s Hank, who tells Kim they need to go. Eli is unhappy.

Hank takes Kim to see Eli, and tells Eli that she was out on an interview. Eli says they have a way of doing things here. “Assignments come from my desk.” Hank tells Eli that Kim has already finished her work for the whole week, and that he thinks Kim would be invaluable on the spontaneous combustion case.

Okay, let’s get this straight:

Hank and Kim meet. They start a spontaneous affair that goes on for a month, which Kim insists has no strings attached. Once she says she wants to meet his parents, he sets it up. THAT DAY.

After Kim gets mad at Hank for not sticking up for her, he smoothes over the fact that Kim vanished from her workplace for 24 hours straight without calling, while working on something she had no right to work on.

Kim’s response? Walk away from Hank. And when he catches up to her, she asks how he found her. Hank says he asked Janice.

Kim goes to Janice, and asks how Janice knew where she was. Janice says that Kim told her, though Kim doesn’t remember telling her.

Kim and Hank head to the death site, and Hank says he’ll take the pictures, and she’ll handle the text, and she can have the first byline. Kim never once says thank you.

She does point out where the mystery woman jumped from. Hank and Kim go to the roof. Hank finds Ricky’s shelter and says someone is living on the roof. Kim doesn’t say anything.

Hank says he’s sorry, and asks Kim for another chance. She says yes. There’s kissing and hugging.

Kim FINALLY thanks Hank for helping with Eli.

Hank says he’s going back to the office. Kim wants to stay on the roof for a while, and see what she can find.

The camera pulls back, and Kim is standing in the center of that woman power swirl again. Huh.

Kim comes down off the roof, and knocks on Fima’s apartment door. Fima invites her in, and offers her tea.

Kim tells Fima that she got the job that she wanted, and Fima tells Kim that you have to be careful what you wish for, since you just might get it. Fima then does a short monologue that appears to be based on the power of positive thinking.

Next, Fima serves up the tea. She puts in herb into Kim’s tea, which Kim drinks and declares “bitter.” Fima says she’ll get used to it.

Kim says she’s feeling a little nauseous, and Fima says that’ll pass.

Fima decides to prattle on, about how Kim reminds Fima of her daughter, Lily. (Lilith, folks. I’m just helping you out.) Fima says she stayed with her husband, Bill, for too long. Lily, it turns out, left school and ran away with her boyfriend.

Fima then realized that it was all Bill’s fault.

Fima starts asking super-personal questions about Kim and Hank, and Kim, who isn’t looking too good, tries to put her tea on the table and spills it. Fima berates Kim like she’s about three years old, and makes Kim clean up.

Fima then presents Kim with a wooden bowl of those snacks Kim at before. I guess they’re important, so here’s a description: They look like cockroaches, but less smooth, and they have no legs.

Kim kind of lies on the couch, Fima sticks something in her hand, and Kim looks at it. It’s a cockroach. Kim eats it anyway. Then she has to lie down, because her tummy hurts.

She has a bunch of flashbacks to earlier in the movie, because, sadly, she can’t flash back to the other “Silent Night, Deadly Night” movies.

When she wakes up, Jane is there, telling her it’s “completely normal,” despite the fact that some Asian woman is there who we’ve never seen, and most of the lights are off, and the rest of the coven is pulling off her clothing.

And drawing stuff on Kim with ashes. Including that swirl thing.

Then Ricky is called into the room. He has the giant worm o’ doom, which he puts on Kim’s belly. They cover Kim with a thin blanket.

Ricky holds a rat over Kim, and Fima cuts it with a knife while someone says, “Enter.”

Kim starts screaming.

And now we get to see Kim’s belly again. The giant worm is clearly inside, wiggling around, while Kim just freaks right on out. As well she should.

Katherine stands over Kim and says, “Make your fear real. Get it out.”

Kim, in turn, pukes up a giant cockroach.

Ricky cuts the cockroach in half, and squeezes cockroach goo on Kim’s face. I don’t want to talk about the symbology at all. AT ALL.

Kim wakes up. She was asleep in Fima’s apartment. She’s still fully dressed, but her face is a teeny bit slimy. Kim picks up her bag and prepares to go.

And there’s Katherine. And Jane. And Fima. They tell Kim she fell asleep. And that she has to finish.

Kim asks what they want from her, and Fima says, “I want my daughter back.”

Kim runs. Fima tells the other ladies to get Ricky.

Kim goes back to her apartment, where I’m sure no one will ever look for her. Hank is there, pants off, in bed. He asks where she’s been. He asks what’s going on, and if Kim is okay.

I’m going to relay the things Kim does now, and let you try to make sense of them. First, she tells Hank she wants her key back, so she goes into his pants and tries to pull a key off his key ring. When he asks what’s wrong, she screams that she “needs some room.”

Then she tears up a newspaper and crams it in her toilet, so that the toilet clogs and overflows. At which point she runs to the medicine cabinet and grabs a random pill bottle. She tries to chug all the pills, and Hank tries to stop her.

She fights back.

Kim punches the mirror, which breaks. Kim goes to regular old crying, and Hank tells her it’s going to be all right.

Hank takes Kim back to the bed and tells her to go ahead and cry. She does. After a minute, she calms down. And says, “Hank, is that you? What are you doing here?”

Hank asks what happened. Kim says, “You were sleeping.” She says he looked like a little boy. She says she wishes he hadn’t woken up, and pulls off her sweater.

Things start to get spicy. Kim tells Hank to close his eyes. And be still.

In the bathroom, the toilet is still overflowing. And there’s a ton o’ cockroaches in the sink.

Ricky comes into the apartment, watches for a minute while Kim has her way with Hank, and then goes over and turns on the TV. “Silent Night, Deadly Night III,” is on. It’s the scene where the girl is sitting on Santa’s lap, asking for a Barbie doll.

Interestingly, the TV is on channel 4 (the number of this movie) while Ricky (the name of the character in 1, 2, and 3) is watching part III of this series. I’m sure everyone felt very clever about this moment.

Hank struggles to push Kim off of him. He finally manages it, which makes Kim distressed. He demands to know who Ricky is, and Ricky gets his first line in a while, “Santa Claus killer.” He seems very happy about this.

I think it would have been 78 % more awesome if he had said, “Naughty!” instead.

Hank demands that Ricky leave.

Ricky tells Kim they have to leave, and Hank hits Ricky with a lamp. Ricky wants to know why Hank did that.

Ricky says Kim needs to come with him. Hank starts beating Ricky with a broom.

Ricky bites Hank’s bare ankle, and starts beating Hank. Then he goes and gets a tiny, tiny steak knife. He stabs the bathroom door, which is where Kim has gone to hide.

Kim is standing near the door, so Ricky jams the knife under the slot between the door and floor, stabbing Kim in the foot.

He stabs the door a couple more times, then spots Hank. Hank is headed towards the counter, probably looking for a knife.

Ricky runs over and stabs Hank in the chest a few times. Really lightly. As in, the knife goes in about an inch, which has to hurt just a whole lot, and then he pulls it out.

Hank tells Ricky to leave Kim alone, and Ricky asks if Hank owns her.

(Okay, you know what? I’ll give this movie its due. It has nothing to do with the rest of the series, and nothing to do with Christmas, as near as I can tell. And also, every part where the women sit around being all talky-talky is pretty dull, too. But the violence in this flick is dis-turb-ing.)

The phone rings, and the answering machine picks it up after one ring. Janice starts to leave a message.

Kim dives out of the bathroom, grabs the phone, and tells Janice to call the police.

Ricky, meanwhile, tries to run for the bed, trips, and drops his knife. He gets up and dives towards Kim and the phone. She jumps off the bed, he gives chase, and he catches her and binds her hands and mouth with tape.

Hank drags himself to the knife and attacks Ricky. Ricky lets go of Kim to defend himself, and she runs back to her bedroom and tries to hide under the bed, with the phone.

Ricky and Hank tussle. The knife is dropped. The knife is picked up. Kim watches from under the bed as Ricky kills Hank just a whole lot. Hank falls to the floor, dead, and blood pours out of his mouth.

Ricky looks under the bed, smiles, and says, “Come on out, now.”

Someone calls to Kim from the hallway. It’s Janice, who I guess doesn’t know what “call the police,” means.

Janice walks into the apartment, looking frazzled. Ricky is standing there with the knife, also looking frazzled. Of course, Ricky is played by Clint Howard, who always kind of looks that way.

Janice takes the knife from Ricky and says, “Are you crazy?” All things being equal, that seems kind of obvious. She should probably qualify her statement in some way, or perhaps ask a more specific question.

Janice walks into Kim’s bedroom, while Ricky goes right on looking perplexed.

Kim comes out from under the bed, and Janice cuts the bonds around Kim’s hands and mouth.

Kim says, “He killed Hank.” Ricky says, “I had to! He hit me first!”

(I think I’ve said this at least once before in this write-up, but it bears repeating: Yes, he REALLY said that.)

Janice has Kim sit down on the bed. One would think that at this point she would be screaming, or crying, or hysterical, or trying to run away from Janice, who is clearly on the side of the witches, or whatever they are, but she does none of these things.

Janice tells Kim that Kim needs to go back with Ricky. Kim has to “finish.” Janice says she’ll clean up.

Ricky and Kim leave, and Janice starts making the bed. Uh, Janice? You might want to take a look at the dead body on the floor first.

Ricky takes Kim back to “the building,” and sticks her in the meat locker in the butcher’s store.

Kim knocks twice and says, “Let me out!” But then opts to revert to crying amongst the frozen meat.

Later, someone snaps on a flashlight and points it at her face. She’s given something to drink from a wooden bowl.

All the witches are there, plus a couple of bonus witches. Ricky is there as well. He appears to be naked, and wearing a mask that makes him look like Pinocchio after a lengthy session of half-truths.

Janice says, “I told you everything was going to be okay.”

A couple of the ladies say things that are either creepy or nonsensical, and Ricky adds, “Why do we have to do it in here?” He then walks over to Kim, and… let’s just say Kim does a lot of screaming. A LOT of screaming. Well-earned screaming.

(I should note that Ricky is both hairy, and sweaty, and the other ladies are fondling him.)

The screen goes black.

Kim’s still in the meat locker, asleep on the floor. Which has a carpet on it. And a chair.

She wakes up, rolls over, and wraps a thing blanket-type thing around her like a dress.

She crawls across the floor, looking at a chair. And then she loses control of her arms, and hands. They start contorting. She runs to a nearby wall, and sits against it, while a thick goo gushes out of her woman-parts.

Or so it’s implied.

Her legs fuse together, and start rolling back towards her, like that worm from earlier.

Kim screams for a bit.

She flashes back to the giant worm, and the giant cockroach, and when she wakes up again her dress is gone and she’s covered in goo, but her hands and legs are normal again.

She drags herself across the floor, and sees a man who might or might not be Hank hanging in the meat locker, looking pretty dead.

Oh, and one of those worms is crawling up a side of meat.

The film fades to black. And we’re up on the roof with that swirl symbol.

The next morning, the butcher comes into the meat locker and finds Kim in all her unclothed glory. He says a bunch of stuff in whatever language he’s supposed to speak. Some lady comes in and gives Kim some clothing.

The butcher informs Kim that she has been initiated. And that she should go, now.

Inside the bookstore, we find the creepy painting, Katherine, Fima, and Ricky.

Kim walks in fully clothed. Fima says, “Lily!”

Kim says, “The woman who jumped.”

Fima says, “She was my daughter. She was too weak. But now you’ve come to take her place.”

Kim sits down, and asks what they did to her.

Katherine and Fima tell Kim that she’s one of them, now.

Kim thinks she’s been hallucinating.

They explain that, no, she formed these things from the magic inside her.

But she’s not done, yet. Kim has to “nurture” her power – and they want Hank’s brother, Lonnie.

Kim brings a detective to her apartment, and he tells her there’s no evidence that anything happened there. She tries to show him the stabbed door, and the shattered mirror, but everything is in perfect condition.

The detective asks if Kim is in therapy. She says no, and he asks if she needs a recommendation.

Kim goes to her office Christmas party, and asks Eli if Hank is there. Eli tells her, “Hank’s out of town on assignment, you knew that.”

She talks to Janice who tells her that she looks wonderful, and also welcome to the family. And, oh, “You have to bring us the boy.”

Kim runs from the office party, knocking drinks out of people’s hands as she does so.

Outside, she sees Ricky, and tries to get away from him. But Ricky just keeps on tailing her, being all Ricky-ish.

Kim ducks into a room a maid just left open, and latches the safety chain. Ricky first knocks, then runs away.

Kim looks over at the TV screen, which is on. Fima’s face is on the screen, telling her that she has no choice – she must bring the boy. Apparently, Kim must “feed her fears,” or they will feed on her.

Kim’s hands start freaking out again. She runs to the bathroom, and turns on the shower. Her feet are bursting into flame.

Ricky breaks into the room, and says, “Do what she said, and it’ll stop.”

Kim agrees, and the flames vanish instantly.

At Hank’s family’s Christmas party, Lonnie gets videotaped not being grateful enough for his gift. His mom says there might be something else under the tree for him.

Kim and Ricky pull up in a van. Kim wants to go in alone, but Ricky wants to “back her up.” Kim says no, and goes to the front door. Ricky follows anyway.

Kim rings the doorbell. Lonnie wonders if it’s Hank. Mom says it isn’t Hank, which makes you wonder about mom. Lonnie goes to the front door anyway.

Kim tells Lonnie that Hank is in the van, and Lonnie runs over and gets in the van. Even though there’s nothing that suggests Hank can be found in the van, Kim tells Lonnie that Hank will be “back” in a minute and Lonnie doesn’t run away.

Meanwhile, Ricky goes to the front door. Mom opens it, and Ricky bursts in bearing tape, and goes to wrap it around her mouth.

They step out of the shot, and Dad finally gets out of his chair to find out what’s happening. He confronts Ricky, and tries to hit Ricky with a video camera. This makes Ricky mad, so he and Dad tussle, until Ricky shoves Dad into the Christmas tree and starts choking Dad with Christmas lights.

A Christmas light pops, and the Christmas tree bursts into flame.

Lonnie tries to escape from the van, but he somehow can’t get out. Ricky jumps in, and they drive away.

In the next shot, Lonnie is yelling out, “Nooo!” and let me go, and such things.

All the women and Ricky and Lonnie are on top of the roof where everything began. Lonnie is being held down.

Katherine and Fima hand Kim a knife, and tell Kim that she has to kill Lonnie.

Worms start crawling out of a nearby pipe.

Katherine says, “Kill the man. Become a whole woman.”

Fima informs Kim that this is, “The final step.”

Kim hesitates, and Fima demands know why Kim always defies her.

Fima helps Kim to raise the knife, the knife plunges down, and Kim rams it into Fima’s gut.

Lonnie runs.

Kim runs.

The other ladies help Fima stand up. Fima yanks the knife out of her belly and advances towards Kim.

Ricky stands in front of Kim and tells Fima not to hurt Kim. So Fima stabs him. He falls. The worms start to move in on him.

Kim starts screaming and writhing. Fima says, “Didn’t I warn you?” She tells Kim she’s going to burn.

Kim insists that, a) she isn’t like Fima, and b) Fima only cares about her daughter, not about Kim.

Kim’s fingers start getting all freaky and twisty again. And they start on fire. Kim jams her twisty flame-y fingers through Fima, and Fima bursts into flames. And jumps off the roof.

Kim looks at all the other women gathered around her, and walks away. She gets Lonnie from his hiding place and says, “It’s all over now.”

Except, of course, for Ricky, who is still being devoured by worms on another part of the roof.

And, of course, the huge mass of flaming Fima on the sidewalk.

And, of course, all the women currently watching Fima burn on the sidewalk.

But other than that? Totally all over.

Silent Night Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!

You know what? I’m going to go ahead and give Part II its due: It took a dangling thread left over from Part I and yanked it, hard.

It asked, and answered, the questions: So, will Ricky go completely nuts now? And will Mother Superior ever get what’s coming to her?

The answer to both questions was, of course, a resounding yes.

But what’s the motivation for Part III? Ricky most likely isn’t dead, since he was all smirky at the part of Part II, but do we really care what happens to the guy? Of course not. He’s going to prison, or he’s going to die, and either way, the dude’s story is complete in and of itself.

Let’s consider the better-liked and more well-remembered slasher movies.

“Halloween” – Michael Myers is trying to wipe out his family members. Because he keeps getting thwarted, he keeps coming back. It makes sense.

“Friday the 13th” – Jason keeps returning to avenge his mom. People come to Crystal Lake, he kills them. Really, if people left him alone, he’d probably be pretty easy to avoid. So there’s a spark of logic there. (Sometimes, anyway.)

“Nightmare on Elm Street” – Again, Freddy keeps coming back because there are people living and dreaming on Elm Street. Wipe out either of those two factors, and you’re good to go. Logic!

But after “Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II?” There are no lingering questions. There are no living victims. The story is over.

Except that it isn’t. Because here we go again.

You want a tip-off that your movie isn’t going to be very good? When they arrange the text like so:

Silent Night
Deadly Night
Better Watch Out III

Really. That’s the title card. So I guess the title is “Silent Night Deadly Night Better Watch Out III.”

Good work, clowns. Good work.

As the credits roll, the screen fades up on a lovely girl wearing a cross around her neck, dressed in some kind of dark color while lying on an all-white background. She’s breathing. She hears some kind of voice whispering to her, so she wakes up.

Her all-white bed is in an all-white room. She gets up off the bed slowly and looks around. Slowly. While this one note just keeps on playing on a keyboard somewhere.

She turns around, and there’ s a sleeping dude lying in a hospital bed. He’s got a glass helmet over the top of his head, so you can see his brain. Yes, Virginia, there is a brain-hat.

For some reason, this doesn’t bother her.

Then the guy holds up a scalpel, the girl screams, and runs away. She finds a white door in the white room, and tries to open it. No luck. She tries another door. No luck. She tries a third. That one opens.

She runs down a white hallway while brain-hat runs after her. Did I mention his face is kind of messed up, too? No? It kind of is.

The girl turns a corner, and brain-hat is there. He grabs her arm and slices down her wrist.

She pulls away and runs again. For some reason, her arm does not appear to be bleeding. Continuity guy must have had a sick day. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

The girl comes to another door. Locked. Yet another door. She goes through that one, and there’s brain-hat guy again. He seems to be whispering, “Laura,” so I’ll go ahead and start calling her that.

At any rate, now brain-hat guy is covered in blood. And so is his room.

Laura runs out the door again, and looks down a long hallway. And there’s Santa Claus. Laura yells out, “Help me!” But Santa scampers away. So she follows him.

She turns yet another corner, and there’s Santa, sitting in his Santa-chair. Surrounded by various Christmas-y things.

Laura sits in his lap, and tells him she wants a Barbie doll. And a bicycle. And roller skates. And ballet shoes. And a Mickey Mouse watch.

Santa brandishes a knife, and Laura wakes up, screaming.

A doctor runs up, hugs her, and starts to comfort her. He tells her she was just dreaming. And to lie down. I can’t tell is Laura if traumatized or just kind of a dope.

Laura says she dreamed she could see. And she dreamed about Christmas, noting that it is obviously because, “Tonight is Christmas Eve.” Oh, and she dreamed about Santa Claus.

Doctor Newberry presses for more details, but she wants to stick with her, “I dreamed about Santa Claus” story. The doctor asks if she’ll try again, and she says, “Anything for you, Doctor Newberry.”

The movie then shows us a little brainwave machine with the names “Laura” and “Ricky” written on pieces of tape next to the screen. Oh, boy! Ricky is the guy in the brain-hat! For real!

You know what this means, don’t know? The studio worked with a bunch of writers – three are credited – and the best they could come up with was a brain-hat, and a psychic blind girl.

Doctor Newberry talks to his tape recorder, and tells it that he thinks Laura “made contact.”

And so help me, they pull out footage from Part I again. Billy is seven, he’s in the car, he wakes up, he sees Santa in the road. Santa comes to talk to his dad.

The nurse calls for the doctor. Laura just woke up. She asks if she can go to the bathroom. The nurse is directed to take her.

Newberry talks to the tape recorder some more. He ponders whether or not Laura is messing with him. Or if perhaps Laura doesn’t realize that she’s making contact with “the coma victim.” That would be Ricky, I guess.

He goes on to say that he can’t help feel she’s holding something back.

They put Laura back on the bed for just one more try. This time, the doctor says, he wants her to really relax and empty her mind of everything. All the thoughts and all the clutter.

He keeps on encouraging her. Why? Because dialogue is cheap and easy to shoot, that’s why.

And there’s that footage again! Santa shoots at the car, the car crashes, mom gets dragged out of the car, mom’s shirt gets torn off and her throat gets cut.

Oh, did I mention that the “memories” cut between mom and Billy, over in the ditch? Man, that Ricky sure has an amazing memory.

Laura wakes up screaming.

The doctor looks over at Ricky. And his chart. Which reads, no kidding: Diagnosis: Coma.

And Ricky? That little brain-hat thing he had in Laura’s dream? He’s REALLY GOT A BRAIN-HAT. It wasn’t just a dream.

Which I guess I’m going to have to describe better, so you can grasp how absurd it is. Picture a clear glass bowl. Now, stick a brain into it. Upside down. Now, turn it over and strap it to your head. And put some brain juice in there, so it can slosh around a bit.

That’s what Ricky is wearing.

The doctor interrogates Laura a bit about her “dream.” The only thing she can tell him is that it involved a Scary Santa. How does she know it’s Santa? No idea. She’s BLIND. As far as we know, she’s never seen Santa. So how would she know what he looks like?

Laura wants to know what time it is, since her brother is picking her up. Then there’s a bunch of exposition, so that Laura can say out loud that she’s going to visit her Grandmother’s house for Christmas, and where that house is, and how her grandmother has a lot of oranges.

You know, so Ricky will have no trouble finding her after he wakes up.

Laura tells the doctor that she doesn’t think she wants to do this any more.

The doctor tries to use reverse psychology on Laura. I’d go into detail, but since all these movies end on Christmas, I don’t think it’s going to be relevant.

Laura leaves. The doctor and the nurse converse about whether or not Laura will come back. The doctor is convinced that she will. The doctor is probably going to die of a sucking chest wound.

The doctor walks over to Ricky, doing a whole long monologue. He looks closely at Ricky, but is so distracted by the brain-hat that he doesn’t notice a tear coming out of Ricky’s eye.

Laura goes to the front desk of the hospital and asks the nurse to tell her when a red jeep appears outside. The nurse says she’s very busy. I guess she just hates blind people.

Laura goes and sits down. Some nice people with a baby help her.

Eventually, the baby people leave. Laura takes this opportunity to break down her cane. And also to brood a bit. Because brooding doesn’t really cost that much money. It’s kind of a one-take thing. As is the long shot of the nurse talking on the phone while no sound plays.

Eventually, Laura decides to get back up and go talk to the nurse again. The nurse doesn’t answer. Also, the waiting room appears to be empty now.

Dream sequence?

Laura walks around the back of the desk, and then we see a shot of the nurse with her throat cut. Followed by a shot of Laura rubbing blood on her face and screaming.

Yeah, it’s a dream sequence.

Laura is awakened by her brother. He walks her outside, while telling her that he’s bringing a date for the weekend. A stewardess. Laura doesn’t think this is a wise move, but she gets into her brother’s car anyway.

They share a dirty joke and drive away.

In the hospital, a dude dressed up as Santa wanders about, delivering gifts. He goes to Ricky’s room, and offers Ricky a drink in jest. Ricky and his brain-hat twitches. Then we get a fuzzy-cam shot of Santa.

And then, stalker-cam. Santa is going to get it.

Laura talks to her therapist. We learn that her parents died in a plane crash. And that sometimes she “sees” things. They give an explanation, and I may as well put it down her: Laura’s grandmother thinks that all thoughts are just part of one big thought. And that sometimes, two people think about the same little thought, that’s part of the big thought.

The therapist thinks this is true, citing how his dog whines when he’s going to go away, even before he starts packing.

At any rate, the doctor thinks that Laura has a pool of anger inside her that she has to let go.

Laura, in turn, says she doesn’t want to see the future, or the past, or anything. She just wants to be normal.

Her doctor turns around and says that no one is normal. Of course, when he turns around, he’s Ricky.

Back at the hospital, “Santa” is dead, and Ricky is walking away.

The mean nurse sees someone, says, “Can I help you?” and then Ricky picks up a scalpel and we see blood fly across the desk.

Back with Laura, her brother is picking up his girlfriend, Jerri. Her brother is named Chris, by the way. Laura is mean to Jerri. Jerri, in turn, isn’t all that nice to Laura. But Laura started it.

Back at the hospital, Ricky wanders out of the hospital. With his brain-hat. And no one stops him, or even says, “Hey! What’s up with that dude’s head? Is that a brain-hat?”

In Chris’s car, Laura tells Chris how to get to Grandma’s house. Ricky can “hear” Laura, so he starts wandering in the direction Laura and company are going.

Laura appears to fall asleep, and… flashback to movie one! “Santa” approaches the orphanage, the cop shoots Santa, Santa dies.

Laura wakes up and yells, “Ricky!”

Later that night, Ricky, still in a hospital down and brain-hat, thumbs a ride from a dude in a very beat-up van.

Ricky gets into the van, and the driver shows Ricky his RED sweater.

A couple of shots later, the driver is dead by the side of the road, and stripped to his underthings, and Ricky is driving away in the guy’s van.

Laura “wakes up,” and Jerri gives her some carbonated water to drink.

As a gas station, the gas station dude is watching a movie, and getting a phone call. He wants his lady-friend to talk dirty to him.

Outside, the bell sounds. Customer! The pump-jockey puts on a Santa hat and goes out to pump some gas.

Inside, the chick on the phone figures that the pump-jockey is listening, even if he’s not saying anything, and starts talking dirty anyway.

And then we’re at Grandma’s house, and Grandma seems to be a very alert and alive older lady. She’s cooking up a serious feast. She bastes the turkey, eating up more screen time.

Chris, Laura, and Jerri stop at a gas station. Laura and Jerri go across the street to get snacks. Or something. I’m not really sure what they’re doing there.

Chris goes to make a phone call. Good thing they don’t need gas, because the pump-jockey probably isn’t coming out.

Grandma says, “Phone’s going to ring.” And then the phone rings.

Chris is on the phone. They’re going to be there in an hour. Chris is directed to pick up a couple of sticks of butter.

Inside the gas station, the pump-jockey’s head is sitting on his desk.

There’s someone at the door at Grandma’s house. It’s Ricky. He’s wearing a knit hat to cover his brain-hat.

At the hospital, cops and reporters do what they do. The head cop talks to doctor Newberry about Ricky, the “Santa Killer,” who has been in a coma for six years.

As they walk and talk, the nurse says, “She sees what he sees!” In case the audience missed that.

The head cop says that he was at the shootout where they put a bunch of holes in Ricky. Newberry says that Ricky’s brain was reconstructed. They brought back some of his basic motor functions so his heart and lungs could keep working.

The doctor also jump-started Ricky’s memory.

At Grandma’s house, Grandma feeds Ricky a plate of food. Ricky looks at Grandma. Grandma says, “There, there. You don’t have to thank me.”

Back with Newberry and cop, the doctor says they’re trying to figure out a way to talk to people in comas.

The cop stops Newberry and shows him the footage the security camera caught. It shows Ricky walking up to the nurse at the front desk, and saying, “Laaauraaaa.” The cop rewinds and shows it again.

Newberry tells the cop about Laura. Newberry thinks Laura touched Ricky’s soul.

The nurse asks the pertinent question: If Laura sees what Ricky sees, does Ricky see what Laura sees?

Uh, nurse? Laura doesn’t SEE anything. She’s blind.

The cop wants information about Laura now. The doctor says he doesn’t know where Laura is, which means he wasn’t paying attention AT ALL when Laura was talking earlier. At the very least, you’d think he could put together, “Brother, Grandma.” Maybe give the cop a lead. But no.

At Grandma’s house, Ricky gets up from his chair and goes to look at a picture of Laura.

Grandma goes to the Christmas tree and says she’s going to see if Santa left a gift for Ricky. Turns out, Santa did. And it’s RED.

Outside the house, we get to hear Grandma scream.

In Chris’s car, Jerri and Chris sing, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

You know, I’m kind of pining for “Warm Side of the Door.”

The group arrives at Grandma’s house, and Laura walks in while Jerri and Chris get the bags. Inside the house, Laura calls to Grandma, who doesn’t answer. She wanders around the house, looking for Grandma.

Chris and Jerri come inside the house. Laura tells them Grandma isn’t here. Chris remembers that he was supposed to get some butter.

He speculates that maybe Grandma went to the neighbor’s house. Unless (hee, hee, hee) the boogeyman got Grandma. Jerri says Chris will take care of them.

Laura notes that a chair is out of place.

Jerri and Chris go to take stuff upstairs.

Laura, sitting by herself in the chair, says, “Granny?” She “sees” Grandma, and reaches out to Grandma. In her mind. Or something. I have no idea what’s going on with that, really.

Chris and Jerri come downstairs. Chris says he’s going to check out the food situation, and tells Jerri to go check out the bath.

Chris goes to look at all the food on the stove.

Jerri goes upstairs and runs a bath.

Laura says, “Happy hour.” And she gets down some glasses and pours some booze.

In the bathroom, Jerri puts up her hair, removes some clothing, and looks out the window.

Outside, stalker-cam looks at Grandma’s house.

Chris and Jerri take a bath together, which is kind of a bizarre thing to do in your Grandma’s house. There’s fooling around. Punish!

The Cop and Newberry drive somewhere-or-other. Ah. Newberry finally remembered about Christmas and Grandma. The Cop calls the station and asks about people with oranges.

Back at Grandma’s house, Chris and Jerri go for a walk. While Laura watches a movie where some dude’s eyes get plucked out. And then the guy falls to his death.

Outside, Jerri and Chris walk. Chris sneaks away, then tries to scare Jerri. It’s pretty lame.

Chris and Jerri start knocking on doors at different nearby houses, where the seasonal orange pickers live.

Laura keeps on watching her movie.

Chris and Jerri continue looking around for Grandma, but they’re having no luck. Everyone appears to be gone.

The Cop and the Newberry talk car phones. There’s some other banter as well. This movie loves itself some time-killers.

Back at the house, Laura changes her shirt while her brother sits in her room. Ick. They talk about how Laura needs to be nicer to Jerri. And how Laura is all jumpy.

Laura is really starting to wonder about Granny. Chris says to give Granny another 15 minutes. Granny won’t mind if they warm up dinner.

Jerri comes in from outside and says that Chris’s car is missing.

Jerri and Chris go outside and start calling out to Granny.

Laura stays inside the house and walks around, looking apprehensive.

She walks to the window, and there’s Ricky! On the other side of the window! Laura screams, and goes to lock the door, only the door opens and Chris and Jerri walk in.

Chris and Jerri found the car in the orange grove, completely trashed. Laura wants to leave. Chris doesn’t want to go, because Granny might need help. Jerri says they should call the cops.

Laura goes to the phone and dials 0. She says it’s dead. Chris goes to try it. It doesn’t work.
Jerri checks the phone cord, which is severed.

Laura goes to the mantle and discovers that her picture is missing. Which is a bizarre thing to check when you’re afraid for your life, but okay.

Newberry and The Cop arrive at the gas station, where they examine the dead pump-jockey. The Cop’s phone rings, and he answers it.

While the cop talks on the phone, Newberry talks to himself. “Can you hear me, Ricky? Did you find her yet? Is your soul still searching? I should have left you alone. I’m sorry. I should have let you sleep.”

The Cop tells Newberry that “fifteen minutes up the road there’s a farm.”

Which is great, except Chris told Grandma they were an HOUR away before. Continuity-man’s sick day strikes again.

Laura, at Grandma’s house says, “It’s him.” She goes on the say that he was a little boy, and then “something happened.” I’m not even going to attempt to break that down into its tiny illogical components.

Meanwhile, Jerri is standing by the door. A hand punches through and grabs her.

Chris runs over to Jerri, and tries to pull the arm off Jerri. He can’t do it. So he gets a knife and jams it through Ricky’s arm.

Ricky lets go. Of course, now he has a knife, which makes the gang winners and losers.

Jerri falls to the floor, clutching her neck.

Laura remains REALLY calm, and says, “If we stay here, he’ll kill us all.”

In the cop car, Newberry asks what they’re going to do when they find Ricky.

The Cop says it’s “difficult to tell.” He admits there’s a possibility that they’ll kill Ricky.

This is a really, really calm discussion. Also, the cop isn’t wearing a seat belt. And the doctor doesn’t even qualify as a crackpot, thanks to little conversational nuggets about how, “Ricky isn’t a killer. He’s a way to stop people from killing. Like snake venom is a way to cure the bite.”

The Cop decides to take the snake conversation to its logical conclusion and pull the car over to take a widdle. He wanders over to the woods to wee, and Newberry steals his car and drives away.

This displeases The Cop.

At Granny’s house, Laura and Jerri are waiting downstairs for Chris. He takes forever to do so, because dialogue between scared girls is considered a good time-filler. Finally, Chris appears, carrying Grandpa’s old gun. Chris says that the shells are “a hundred years old,” and hopes they’re still good.

Laura, Jerri and Chris troop out of the house. Chris is in front, carrying the gun. Ricky drops out of a tree and grabs Chris. Ricky wrestles the gun away from Chris and starts choking him. Then he moves to stabbing.

Chris tells the girls to run back to the house. They do, despite the fact that the gun is pretty close and they could probably grab it and shoot Ricky much faster than they could get a blind girl back to Grandma’s former dwelling place.

Amusingly, Ricky’s knit cap has fallen off, so you can see his brain-hat again.

Newberry pulls up in the cop car. Ricky is still sitting on Chris’s chest, bloody knife in hand.

Newberry gets out of the car and says, “Hello, Ricky.” Ricky stands up. Newberry introduces himself, and plays his tape of Laura’s scream. Which is followed by Newberry’s conversation with Laura.

Ricky walks slowly towards Newberry, reaching for the tape recorder. Then Ricky stabs Newberry to death with pretty much no warning.

It’s official. Newberry is too stupid to live.

Ricky turns back to the house and says, “Laaaauuuurrraaaa.”

Jerri and Laura shove the piano up against the door with Ricky’s fist-holes in it. Laura is sad: Chris was all she had.

Jerri says they can’t just wait around for Ricky to come and get them.

And that’s when Ricky jumps through one of the other doors, which is made up of about 80% glass, 10% balsa wood. 10% actual wood. Maybe.

Laura and Jerri run upstairs. Laura tells Jerri that her grandmother has another gun. An army pistol. It’s under one of the beds. Jerri goes to look for it. Alone.

She looks under one of the beds, and someone pulls her under it.

And there you have it. Proof that Ricky is insane. Instead of just finding Jerri and stabbing her a lot, he hid under a bed. To, like, have the element of surprise in his favor.

Laura hears Jerri cry out and goes wandering through the house. Calling out Jerri’s name. Never mind that the house isn’t all the big, and Ricky can easily hear her.

Laura sits down on a bed. Jerri is also on the bed, covered in her own blood.

Laura says, “I can feel you here.” And finds Jerri’s dead body.

Ricky, who is standing in the room, says, “Laaaaaauuuuura.”

Laura walks over to him (why?) and touches his face (why!?) and seems okay with the whole thing until she touches his brain-hat. Which, I must admit, is sort of freaky.

Laura screams, runs away, and locks herself in the bathroom.

Ricky sort of wanders over to the bathroom and starts pounding on the door. Laura sneaks out the other door in the bathroom and heads downstairs.

Ricky breaks down door number one, and walks out bathroom door number two.

(Insert your own number 1 and number 2 jokes here.)

Laura gets downstairs, and heads into the basement. Even though she’s blind, she turns on the lights to the basement stairs.

In the basement, she sneaks around, quietly, until she puts her hand on a rat. Then she screams, totally blowing her cover. I swear, the girl isn’t even trying.

Upstairs, Ricky hears Laura’s scream.

Back in the basement, Laura’s dead Granny’s voice starts speaking to her. Granny tells Laura that Laura has a power – a gift – and that Laura must learn how to use it.

Granny tells Laura to use her power to do good for people. And also to use her mind like a lens to gather the light.

Laura thinks she can sense her Granny in the basement, and goes looking for her. And calling her name. She finds her. Granny appears to be hanging from a rafter, but it’s tough to tell.

Laura freaks and falls over backwards, landing in a pile of boxes. She finds what I guess is a dowel rod, and uses it to smash a light bulb.

Ricky is coming down the stairs. Laura says, “Now we’re even.” Sure, except she can’t see all the smashed glass that’s on the floor. Plus, there’s light pouring through the doorway. Visibility will not be an issue.

Perhaps to prove that Laura is not much of an enemy, Ricky jams his knife into a wooden post before attacking her with his bare hands.

Then he slowly walks over to Laura, and they grapple. She tries to hit him with the dowel, only there’s an old bed frame in the way that she can’t see, so she hits that instead.

Ricky grabs her, takes the dowel away, and snaps it over his knee. To prove a point, I guess.

Ricky knocks Laura to the ground and is just about to get his strangle on when Chris appears at the door. He yells out, “Hey, Bubblehead! Is it live, or is it Memorex?”

Despite the fact that Chris is holding the ancient gun, Ricky doesn’t bother to use Laura as a human shield. Instead, he just gets up and starts shuffling towards Chris.

Laura, on the floor, discovers that her dowel rod has now been turned into a sharp, stabby-type object.

Chris shoots Ricky in the chest, and Ricky falls to the ground.

Man, I wanna see Chris shoot the brain-hat so bad. Did I ever mention the brain-hat has, like, a little box with blinking lights on it. And what looks like an antenna?

Ricky walks up the Chris and chokes Chris with the shotgun. Chris falls over.

Laura, still on the floor, says, “I’m over here Ricky. Come and play.” Then she points the stake in a vaguely upwards direction.

Despite the fact that there’s a whole lot of light flooding in from the doorway, which makes the stake pretty danged visible, Ricky decides to make it easy on Laura. He leans down to attack her, and falls on the stake, impaling himself.

The cops arrive at the ranch, having picked up The Cop on the way.

Laura crawls across the basement floor, looking for Chris.

The Cop finds Newberry, lying on the ground dying. He says, “Give me a call sometime, Doc.” Newberry says, “Lieutenant. Don’t be stupid.”

Then Newberry dies. Huzzah!

Laura finds Chris, who appears to be dead. But we’ve seen that trick before.

The Cop finds Laura and Chris in the basement.

A short while later, an ambulance worker wheels an almost-dead guy out to the ambulance. He says that, “With a little luck we can save this guy.”

Laura is sitting in The Cop’s car. He asks Laura if she’s all right, and she says she’ll be fine.

The Cop gets into the car, and says, “I don’t know how you did it. But I guess there’s a lot of things I don’t know.” No, really. He says that.

Laura smiles to herself, and says, “Merry Christmas.”

The Cop and Laura drive away.

The movie cross-fades to a shot of Ricky, standing there with his brain-hat. Wearing a tux. He says, “And a Happy New Year.”

Granted, this brings an element of closure to the “Silent Night” trilogy, since all three movies have ended with a shot of Ricky being freaky. But at the same time, it’s really, really, really ridiculous.

And while I’m at it, Ricky never once said, “Naughty!” or “Punish!” I feel let down.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

It’s strange, really. The “Silent Night, Deadly Night” series seems to have a real thing for looking like something that should appear on Lifetime.

In the last movie, it seemed like all the horror, up until Billy completely lost it, could have eventually played out as a drama. Granted, it would have been pretty soap-opera-y, but I suspect that the Lifetime channel has made worse.

And this time around, as the movie opens, we get red credits against a black background, while with a soft piano underscore. If I were sitting in a theater watching it, I would probably wonder, for the first thirty seconds, if I had wandered into the wrong film.

But no, the credits cut into a shot of some dude’s shoes, and there’s the title: “Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.” Which I guess is going to answer all the burning questions left over from part 1. Like, what happened to Ricky? And… uh…

Um…

Well, here’s one. Why is it that the two surviving kids ended up in an orphanage together? Why not the foster care system? For that matter, how is it that they had zero surviving relatives to take them in? How did they not get adopted? I mean, sheesh, it wasn’t like the kids were hideously mangled or disease-ridden, or something. They were two cute kids with possible mild emotional trauma.

Someone would have snapped them up in a heartbeat, given the chance.

But anyway. Ricky. What did happen to the little so-and-so who said, “Naughty!” at the end of numero uno?

Well, I guess he wears jeans. And smokes. Because that’s all the camera tells us for like a minute, as it slooowly pans up the guy’s legs. Oh wait, we made it to his face. He has one.

Then we cut over to a door, and a black guy in, like, all-white clothing walks in, carrying a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Ricky (or rather, the guy I guess we’re assuming is Ricky) drops his cigarette and stubs it out on the floor, while Black Guy in White Clothes plugs the reel-to-reel in.

Ricky lights another cigarette.

The credits list the writer’s names. Four people to write the story. Two people to write the screenplay.

Wow. Just wow.

And now, in contrast to the black guy in all-white clothing, a white guy in a black suit walks in, and loads a tape onto the reel-to-reel. And sets up a microphone. They’re hiding his face.

Until they don’t. He’s very normal-looking. He tells the black guy he can leave now. Then adds, “Now!”

Black suit says, “My name is Dr. Bloom. You can call me Henry.” Or he can call him Doc.

Oh, let’s call him Doc. Why not? It’s fun!

Ricky (yep, its him) resorts to obscenity, to which Doc replies, “Your time is running out, son. I’m your last chance.”

Ricky does some raging, and the black guy comes back in. “I told you to get out!” says Doc.

Ricky sort of grimace-smiles at this.

Black Guy shakes his finger at Ricky, then exits.

Doc tells Ricky to sit down. Then lays out a whole, “You’ll talk, I’ll listen” spiel, noting that Doc is not the first psychiatrist Ricky has seen.

And then, boom, a burn-in: DATE: DEC. 24.

Doc has a burning question: “Who killed your parents?”

Ricky says, “Santa Claus.”

And then, flashback to the first movie! Ricky notes that he was only a baby, and Billy was seven.

I was going to ask the obvious question, which is, “Uh, Ricky, you were a baby when all this happened, how do you remember it?” Only Ricky explains that Billy told him later.

Uh. No. Billy couldn’t remember it, either. They made that super-clear in Part 1. But we’ll just pretend that didn’t happen. Why not?

I’d describe the flashback in detail, but if you really want to know, go back to the last chapter and re-read all the bits about the car stopping for “Santa,” and how that ends with dad shot in the head, mom with her shirt ripped open and throat slit, Billy in a ditch, and Ricky screaming in the back of the car. They replay ALL of that, with only minor cuts to speed up the process a bit.

Ricky concludes the flashback with, “He left us out there to die.”

Which, come to think of it, does answer one of the questions left open by the first movie. Though it doesn’t answer the question of where “Santa” went, or whether he was ever caught. I’m guessing not, since Doc is asking about it.

Doc says, “That was a long time ago. How could you possibly remember all that?”

Ricky says, “Because I was there.” He adds that he doesn’t like Doc’s attitude.

Doc looks at his watch. Ricky asks if he’s wasting the Doc’s valuable time.

Doc asks Ricky to tell him about the orphanage. Ricky says he hated the place. Uh. That’s not really my recollection. Ricky seemed pretty happy with things, up to and including the death of the first Santa. He didn’t really snap until he saw his own brother get shot.

And point of order: Ricky just said, in voiceover, that Billy told him what happened later, in reference to the death of his parents. But then, like five minutes after that, he says that he remembered it, “Because he was there.”

Also, we’re ten minutes and two flashbacks in. This is going to be a slog. Sorry.

Right. So. The flashback. This is the, “Billy tries to put up his violent picture,” scene, followed by Billy being sent to his room.” Okay, and then, here’s the exact line I was thinking of – Superior says, “Simply because something unfortunate happened to his parents, WHICH HE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT, is no reason to allow him to unwind.”

Twelve minutes in, folks. Twelve minutes in and this movie has already contradicted itself twice.

The flashback continues. Margaret tells Billy to come outside and play, even though Mother Superior said to go to his room. Billy hears copulation noises in the hallway, and goes to investigate.

He looks through the keyhole and… I swear… sees a totally different couple than we saw in the first movie. Then he flashes back to his mom, Superior shows up, the belt comes out, and Billy runs away.

(I looked it up. It was a different couple. Okay, now, really, people. Just what is the deal here? The director probably had, what, like seventeen minutes to shoot all the new footage? And he blew it shooting a NEW naked scene, when there was already one in the LAST movie?

I realize there’s probably something wrong with everyone who made this movie, but the director has got to have more issues than Time Magazine if he wanted to see live naked people that badly.)

Moments later, Superior confronts Billy, as per the first movie. Then she spanks him with that other dude’s belt, as per the first movie.

We finally come out of the flashback as Ricky says, “She. Was. Naughty.”

To accept that Ricky knows all this, we have to believe that Billy sat his brother down and told him the whole story, moment by moment. Oh, the fun talks they must have had.

Anyway, back in the present, Doc and Ricky kill some screen time with verbal sparring, and Ricky points out that Doc is shrink number thirteen. Doc says that’s his lucky number.

These are the jokes, people. Again, my apologies.

Doc asks if Ricky dreams. Ricky says, “I don’t sleep. But Billy had dreams. Bad dreams.”

So we cut back to Billy having his nightmare in part 1, wherein he flashes back to “that fateful night.”

Everyone catch that? A flashback WITHIN a flashback? Just making sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

Billy wakes up, Superior catches him, and ties Billy to the bed. This makes Margaret sad.

Then we flash a little forward to Superior trying to get Billy on Santa’s lap, followed by Billy decking Santa, and hiding, and Superior finding him.

Ricky says, “No one heard him screaming. But I did.”

The Doc’s first tape runs out. Doc changes the tape. Trust me, it’s not riveting. Ricky even notes, “New tape.” In case we missed every agonizing moment of the tape change.

Doc tells Ricky, “Let’s jump ahead.”

So they do. To ANOTHER flashback. The bit where Billy puts on the Santa suit for the first time. And scares the wee-wee out of the little girl on his lap.

And then, to the bit where Andy-the-stockboy takes the cute girl in the back while Billy watches.

And the shopkeeper and that other chick sing the Christmas song no one has ever heard, while Billy heads to the stockroom to kill Andy and that other girl. I know she has a name, but I refuse to look it up.

Flashback-within-flashback. Billy yells, “Naughty,” and chokes Andy to death. Cute girl freaks, Billy kills her too.

The shopkeeper heads to the stockroom, and gets the hammer to the head.

What’s-her-face, in the store, heads to the stockroom, and sees the dead people. Tries to escape, the door is locked. Tries to call the operator, Billy cuts the phone cord with an axe.

Billy stalks her, she knocks boxes on him, he puts an arrow through her.

Present day! Ricky says, “But it wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t be.” Ricky blames Superior for what Billy did.

Flashback! Babysitter fools around with boyfriend, then goes to let the cat in. Wearing her shorts. Billy jams the antlers through her.

The boyfriend comes upstairs to investigate, there’s tussling, Billy throws him out the window.

(Man, I apologize for all this repetition. I’m trying to shorten it up at least.)

(Also, it’s funny. The boyfriend tries to use the phone, and he gets the operator, and asks for the police, and the operator tells him to dial 911. I swear I have NO memory of that happening in the original footage. Regardless, what kind of idiot doesn’t realize you should dial 911 when you need the police?)

Present day! Doc says that not everyone that got killed deserved to die. Ricky disagrees.

Flashback! To the two useless cops who almost shoot the dad dressed as Santa. Ricky notes, in voiceover, that, “Daddy almost got his present early. But Billy was miles away.”

So we cut to the bit where Billy hides in a ditch while the cops drive by. And then the bit where the bullies steal the sleds. And Billy cuts one of the bully’s heads off.

Ricky says that, “Billy hated bullies.” Sure, dude. Which is WHY HE ONLY KILLS ONE OF THEM.

Anyway, more Flashback! The cop talks to Margaret, and they try to figure out the “pattern” that will allow them to figure out Billy’s next move.

Present day! More verbal sparring between Ricky and Doc. Doc says, “You don’t scare me.” Ricky says, “Not yet.”

Flashback! Not-Billy, dressed as Santa goes walking towards the orphanage, and gets shot three times in the back while Ricky looks on.

In the Present Day!, Ricky reacts every time his name is called in the past.

The Doc says that Billy wasn’t the one killed. Ricky says it was The Janitor. Um, movie? NO IT WASN’T! It was Father O’Brian!

Four people to write the story, six people to write the screenplay, half of the last movie is being recycled and no one could pull out a videotape and check a name?

I feel so cold. It’s like the movie doesn’t care at all about me.

Flashback! Superior is all, “No one is coming in who doesn’t belong here,” while the cop heads outside in search of Billy, the Killer Santa.

He goes down into that freaky shed with the basement, then comes out and gets the axe in the thorax. While Billy yells “Punish.”

Billy cuts the head off the snowman outside. Just so you know he’s evil.

Superior has the kids get ready to sing Deck the Halls. Andrew lets Billy in, Superior tells all the kids there is no Santa Claus, Billy yells out, “Naughty!” a few times, and gets shot in the back.

Billy does his, “You’re safe now,” speech, and the camera pans up to Ricky. Aaaand? “Naughty!”

Only he’s dubbed by the modern Ricky.

Present Day! Ricky adds, “Very naughty.”

Doc says they closed the orphanage after that. Ricky says kindly sister Mary found Ricky a new family. The Rosenbergs. Who didn’t get involved with Christmas.

Mary tells them about his background, but they don’t do Christmas. For obvious reasons.

And now we’re watching Ricky and his new mom, as they walk down the street. Mom stops to talk to someone, and Ricky sees a couple of nuns. He starts to freak out, and tries to get his mom’s attention. He finally does, just as the nuns turn a corner and vanish.

And then, there they are again! They walk into a store, someone sticks a red cloth on the window, and Ricky has a flashback and goes catatonic looking at it. Mom realizes something is wrong and…

Mom and Dad talk to a nun about what happened to Ricky in front of the store. They want information they clearly don’t have. Sister Mary insists that Ricky will be fine once he has a stable family environment.

And bless Mom and Dad’s heart – they want to try and care for the kid.

Time jumps forward, and Ricky is now five years older, and his dad has died, leaving mom a widow. Strangely, he refers to his adoptive father as his “step-dad.” Uh… no. Foster father, adoptive father, something like that, maybe.

Someone needs to tell Ricky that unless his mom came back to life, and got remarried, the guy under the gravestone is not a “step” anything.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s the trauma. Ricky says he took it pretty hard. And that he felt like running away.

In the present day! Ricky says he never told anyone this before. He used to walk the back roads a lot.

So now we get to watch young Ricky as he rambles along a complete lack of path next to some fields in spring. Seriously.

He comes across a guy and a girl having a picnic. Really unattractive people. Being flirtatious. The guy makes a more serious pass. She says no. Then comes the shirt ripping. And the slapping.

And the knee to the man-bits.

In the bushes, Ricky says, “Naughty!”

The guy goes to get a beer from the back of his jeep.

He steps around the front of his jeep, and the horn beeps. Ricky is behind the wheel.

Ricky starts the jeep, and runs over the guy. Then backs up, and runs over him again. He does this a couple of times.

Ricky gets out of the jeep, and there’s a girl, standing twenty or thirty feet away. She says, “Thank you.” And walks away.

Then young Ricky walks away.

And we’re in the present day! Doc writes down, “Red Car” in his notes. He looks up, and he doesn’t see Ricky. Ricky appears from the right-hand side of the screen and asks if he’s going too fast for the doctor.

Ricky asks if Doc ever had kids. The doctor says no. And also that his wife has been dead for a while.

Ricky says, “Too bad.” Then he asks how Doc met his wife. Doc says in college.

Ricky says that his “old lady” couldn’t afford to send him to college. So he got a job. Washing dishes, and taking out the trash.

In yet ANOTHER flashback, Ricky, who is now eighteen, hears a noise in the alley. So he goes to check it out.

In the alley, one really terrible actor beats up another really terrible actor for the crime of lowering the quality of this movie ever further. Which is saying something.

Well, okay, actually it’s because one of the dudes owes the other dude money. I have no idea why. I doubt it matters.

Once the punchee finishes administering a beating to the fellow being punched, he wipes off his face with a red handkerchief. Ricky sees this, and goes into anger mode.

Is everyone picking up on how the color red sets Ricky off? Because if not, I’m just gonna go ahead and tell you. Keep that kid away from barns, folks, or he’ll go ahead and kill everything in sight.

Four times. Once for each wall of the barn.

Other things to avoid include bullfights. And probably Pizza Hut, just to be on the safe side.

Ricky stops the guy, who asks Ricky what he’s looking at. He tells Ricky he’s, “Really asking for it,” and Ricky throws him into a pile of debris. Ricky picks the guy up by the collar, and the dude punches Ricky in the face a bunch of times.

This has no effect.

Ricky reaches into a nearby trash can, and pulls out an umbrella with a tear or five in it. He says, “Naughty,” then jams the umbrella through the guy. To complete the humiliation, Ricky then activates the umbrella, which opens.

Ricky drops the guy on the ground, and goes back to work.

It starts to rain about a second later, and the rain and blood cascade off the still-open umbrella.

Present day! Doc says both of these incidents aren’t in his notes. He’s covered in sweat, so he pulls out a handkerchief and dabs his forehead. Then, slightly panicked, he looks closely at his handkerchief. There’s a red B on it, which lucky for him is facing away from Ricky.

Ricky asks Doc if Doc thought he was going to let them get away with it. Ricky thinks too many people get away with things like that. Ricky concludes, “You’re really starting to get to me Doc. You’re getting real close.”

Doc says, “Then tell me about Jennifer.”

Ricky reacts badly to this.

Doc asks Ricky if Ricky knows why Ricky is there. Then he produces a picture of Jennifer. Ricky says Jennifer is the only thing he ever cared about.

Flashback! Ricky is on a motorcycle, and Jennifer accidentally bumps the back tire of it with her car, and knocks him over. Because she’s cute, Ricky forgives her, instead of looking for something red, so he has a reason to stab her through the heart with a dirty soup spoon.

He says he never wanted to lose her, while onscreen he and Jennifer go for a really, really, really long motorcycle ride.

And then have unclothed fooling-around time. This also takes a while. At least the music is kind of pretty and tinkly. I wonder why no one ever released the scores for these movies? They aren’t bad.

Ricky confesses that it was his first time. And that he thought it was Jennifer’s.

Later, they’re at a movie. Or at least a movie trailer, as the soundtrack is blaring: “Chaos! The motion picture you’ve been waiting for!” And a bunch of other hyperbole.

In the back row, some annoying dude wearing a RED shirt is complaining that the movie hasn’t started yet. Then the movie starts, and the RED shirt guy wearing the RED shirt of REDNESS starts singing along with the theme song. Which has no words.

Ricky turns to look at him. The RED shirt guy asks if Ricky has a problem.

Ricky tries to focus on the movie. With his angry face on. Jennifer tells Ricky that she really likes him, because he’s different. Ricky and Jennifer go to kiss, and the RED shirt guy makes a rude remark.

Ricky asks Jennifer what the movie is about. She tells him it’s great – it’s got a guy who dresses up like Santa Claus and kills people.

Then the movie uses footage from the first movie. Again. It’s the part where the dude in the Santa suit kills the guy at the gas station. This movie just folded over on itself like a cinematic mobius strip. David Lynch probably watches this movie and cries, because he realizes he will never manage to get QUITE THAT META.

Ricky, meanwhile, says, “Punish,” and gets out of his seat. Jennifer seems vaguely bothered by Ricky walking off. But not all that concerned.

Some blonde dude with the worst dye job in history sticks his hands over Jennifer’s eyes, and says, “Guess who?” There is angry banter. Clearly, he’s her ex. His name is Chip. Chip reminds Jennifer that she pledged eternal love in the backseat of his car.

Jennifer reminds Chip that he stood her up, cheated on her, and ruined her best sweater. I know the sweater thing sounds like a joke in the post-Clinton era, but I swear to you, that line is really in the movie.

Jennifer says she would rather die than go out with Chip again. Chip says, “What are you trying to say?”

RED shirt says, “This movie is so bogus.” And goes on to list the various crimes the horror movie they’re currently watching has already committed. Strangely, he’s talking like the movie is basically over, even though about three minutes have passed.

He turns to his friend, who has been replaced by Ricky. Ricky says, “Shh. Naughty.” Then the movie cuts over to Jennifer and Chip, and then back to the moviegoer. Who you can’t really see, because he’s concealed by the seats of the theater. Except for his leg, which is kicking in the air, while the dude makes noises that sound like grunting and/or moaning. Then his legs vanish.

Jennifer looks over and notices a girl who appears to be looking at Chip. That’s Roxanne, Chip’s date. Chip says she’s only temporary, until Jennifer comes back to him. Jennifer brushes him off again, and Chip leaves with Roxanne.

Ricky finally comes back and sits down next to Jennifer. She says they should go. He replies, “No. I’m beginning to like this picture.”

Never mind that there’s at least one dead body lying in the back of the theater.

Some other day, Jennifer and Ricky go for a walk, and bump into Chip who is working on his (are you ready for this?) RED car. I know! RED! Who could have seen that coming?

Chip asks Jennifer if Jennifer misses him. Ricky finally says, “That’s enough!” Chip replies, “That’s what she said…” He also refers to his car as RED. You may recall I said the screenwriter of the first “Silent Night” was something of a dark genius? This movie was written by his cranial trauma-ed cousin.

Ricky grabs Chip by the throat and starts choking him. Then he grabs a nearby car battery charger and attaches it to Chip’s mouth. And turns it on. Chips eyes explode.

Jennifer wants to know what is “wrong” with Ricky. She’s kind of upset about the whole thing. But I have to say, if I were in her shoes, I would think about running right now.

While Jennifer yells at him, Ricky flashes back to Superior saying, “Punishment is good. Punishment is absolute.” For those of you who just got here, he’s flashing back to something that happened to his brother.

Ricky yells out, “Punish.” Jennifer yells out, “Uh-oh,” and runs. Well, she tries to run, anyway. Ricky grabs the antenna off of Chip’s car and strangles her with it before she gets very far.

Ricky looks up, and there’s a cop, gun in hand, who tells Ricky to freeze. The cop has his gun pointed at Ricky, and he keeps walking closer and closer to Ricky until the gun is right in Ricky’s face.

This cop pulled really consistent D-minuses at the police academy, methinks.

Ricky grabs the gun, twists it into the cop’s face, and the gun goes off, leaving a really neat little bullet hole in the cop’s head. Ricky takes the gun and chuckles.

Then he gets all kinds of serious looking and starts walking down the street. A random neighbor runs out of his house, and Ricky shoots him. Another neighbor is taking his garbage cans out to the curb. Ricky looks at him, all insane-like, says, “Garbage day!” and shoots the man through his own trash can.

Ricky keeps on walking and chuckling.

A little girl on a tricycle, wearing a RED ribbon bumps into Ricky. She says, “Excuse me, Mister.”

Ricky says, “That’s okay,” and lets her go by.

A RED car comes up the street. Ricky shoots it three times, it runs into some street debris, rolls all the way over, and explodes into a massive fireball.

Ricky just keeps on walking up the street. Sometimes he laughs like a crazy person. Which, clearly, is the point.

Eventually, he comes to a police “blockade” that consists of two cars and three cops. They tell him to drop his weapon.

Ricky puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. The gun is empty. I should mention that all the cops yell out to him, “Don’t do it! Don’t be a fool!”

And we’re finally back in the “present” day, with Ricky and the Doc. Ricky laments that he had no more bullets, and that he was young and stupid. Never mind that he’s pretty much the same age now.

Ricky goes on. “And it’s a shame they stopped me before I did what I really had to do… But hey. That’s life.”

Ricky puts out a cigarette on the picture of Jennifer.

“Sorry things worked out this way, Henry. You only wanted to help. I appreciate the effort, though.”

And Doc? Yeah, he’s lying on the table, being all dead. Ricky choked the guy to death with some of the reel-to-reel tape. Meanwhile, the tape machine is still running, with another tape in it.

Ricky concludes, “But between you and me, Doc? I know who’s to blame.”

Ricky walks off-camera, and we can hear a door open, and someone yelling, “He’s loose!” And a bunch of chaos and things being smashed.

On the table, the tape runs out.

But wait! Time has passed. A hand reaches down to turn off the recorder, and a cop tells Sister Mary, “We’ve got a problem sister. He walked out of here six hours ago, and it’s Christmas Eve.”

She reminds him that the orphanage is closed. And Superior had a stroke. She’s retired and lives alone.

The cop admits that Ricky would have to find her, first.

Somewhere out in the city, we hear the sounds of someone single various Christmas songs. And we pan over to Ricky, dressed up in a Santa suit. He dials a pay phone. Someone picks up.

Ricky says, “Merry Christmas. Santa’s back!”

And we cut over to what I guess is Mother Superior, who is still dressed up in her nun’s habit, even though she’s retired. Oh, and also, her face is all mottled by some sort of hideous disease that causes what look like massive bruised lumps to appear on her skin. Or maybe they’re trying to hide the fact that it’s a different actress.

Either way, she hangs up the phone, shaking her head.

Then she wheels her wheelchair over to the TV. The Christmas parade is on. She calls it shameful and sacrilegious. You know, I wonder where they are? Because outside, there’s no snow, and kids are running around in very light coats.

A little wind-up Santa wanders down the sidewalk, and “someone” hits it with an axe.

Inside her house, Superior gets ready to make herself a drink.

Then, BAM, axe through part of the door. Ricky peaks through, and undoes the chain on the door. Then he kicks the door open, even though he could have unlocked it.

Superior is upstairs. Ricky is downstairs.

Ricky calls out, “Mother Superior. I’ve got a present for you!” while going up the stairs.

Ricky tries to get in Superior’s door, while Superior fights back using her wheelchair and some furniture.

Superior runs into another room, locking the door behind her.

Ricky breaks down her the door to the living room, and looks around.

On the TV, the announcer says, “Hey kids! Here comes Santa Claus! He’s gonna find who’s been naughty… or nice!”

Ricky smashes the TV with his axe.

Superior tries to wheel away while Ricky sort of saunters after her. He’s honestly going so slowly I don’t think it counts as stalking.

Superior reaches the top of the stairs, and she’s trying to get out of her wheelchair and into one of those chairs that takes people up and down the stairs, but she knows she’s not going to make it in time, so she just throws herself down the stairs.

Ricky juuust misses hitting her with his axe, and says, “I’m really mad, now.”

Superior drags herself up into a wheelchair on the bottom floor and makes a wheel for it.

Ricky laughs maniacally.

Superior goes into the kitchen and gets herself a big knife. Then she goes LOOKING for Ricky. She tells him, “I am not afraid of you. You’re weak. Just like your brother. Just like your brother, you must be punished!”

Ricky appears in the doorway and says Superior is looking well. Superior replies, “I am your Mother Superior. I raised you from a child! I order you to put that weapon down, and take your punishment!”

Ricky says, “No more punishment.”

Superior: “You are being very, very naughty!”

Ricky: “Naughty this!”

The axe comes up. The axe comes down.

Cop cars appear outside Superior’s house. Cops run into the house. As does Sister Mary.

Mary calls out to Superior, who is sitting at the dining room table, looking kind of waxy. Mary touches Superior, and Superior’s head falls off. Mary freaks out and falls over.

Ricky is standing in the doorway. He yells out something. It sounds like, “Moo!” But that can’t be right.

A couple of cops shoot him, and he flies out the glass-and-wood doors dramatically.

He lies on the ground, sort of dead-like.

The cop bends down to Mary, who is lying on the floor. He says, “He’s gone, sister.” Mary turns her head, and sees Superior’s head lying on the floor.

Mary screams.

Outside, Ricky smiles.

And then a Santa hand comes stabbing towards us, which would be impressive if this movie was in 3D. But it’s not.

Silent Night, Deadly Night

The start of “Silent Night, Deadly Night” informs me that I’m watching the most complete and uncut version ever released. And that some of the “elements” of the film might not look too good.

So if this write-up is less pleasing than usual, you’ll have to excuse me. It’s probably because there’s too much film grain.

As the story begins, an animated wreath pushes up towards the screen and a little kid’s voice sings a Christmas song that no one has ever heard of. Over the wreath are the words Silent Night, and then BOOM, a splash of animated blood, and the bottom words appear: Deadly Night.

And then: Credits! And loud, clangy music. I almost doubt this music was composed, so much as rendered by a dude with things that go “Clang.”

Oh, wait, we have actual music. And also, we are informed that this movie was written by one guy, based on a story by another guy. That’s right, it took two people to write this movie. I hope you appreciate how hard they both worked.

Finally, the credits end, and a burn-in tells us it’s “Christmas Eve, 1971.”

A car is driving along the highway somewhere near some mountains. There’s also a cow in the foreground. Good job, set dressing guy.

Inside the car, there’s a mom and a dad and a little boy. And a baby, in mom’s lap, because in 1971 no one cared about car seats. The baby boom was not that far away in everyone’s memory, and people knew they could make more kids quickly and cheaply, so they thought, “Why protect this one?”

The family is listening to yet ANOTHER Christmas song no one has ever heard of. Do the people who made this movie not realize that most classic Christmas songs are in the public domain?

The little boy asks what time it is. Then he asks when Santa Claus is coming. Then he asks if he can stay up and see Santa. His mom tells him it’s naughty to stay up past his bedtime.

Seriously, yo. This is why I’ve sort of come to dislike the idea of Santa during the holiday season. The Fat Man just exists to keep little kids from being trouble. Whatever happened to using actual discipline?

Mom then tells the boy, “Santa Claus is going to bring you a big surprise tonight.” Given the subject matter, this is either the most ham-fisted screenwriting ever, or pure poetry.

The car rolls along. And the radio plays more Christmas music you’ve never, ever, heard.

Finally, the car pulls into a driveway – for the Utah Mental Facility.

Inside the hospital, a doctor tells the Father: “I had your father brought to the recreation room. Right this way.” This is going to be awesome.

In the rec room, Grandpa is sitting in a rocking chair, staring at nothing. The family tries to talk to him, but he’s clearly pretty catatonic. The little boy wants to know why they came, if Grandpa can’t hear them.

The doctor tells the family that Grandpa’s updated records are in the doctor’s office. So the family leaves Except for the little boy. He’s told to stay with grandpa.

As a parent, I can’t say I like tantrums, but if this kid wanted to throw one now, I think he would be well within his rights as a human being.

Mom says, “Don’t worry, Grandpa’s not going to hurt you.” Ha-ha!

The family leaves, and grandpa looks over at the boy. And wakes up. And starts monologueing about Santa Claus. How he only brings presents to good girl and boys. “All the naughty ones… he punishes.”

Grandpa asks the boy if he’s been good all year. The boy shakes his head no, despite the fact that he’s, like, four. I mean, not that four-year-olds are perfect, but seriously, it’s not like he founded an international crime ring.

Or maybe he did. No way to be sure.

Grandpa presses on in light of the fact that his grandson is naughty. “You see Santa Claus tonight, you better run boy. You better run for your life.” And then, maniacal laughter.

Until the parents show up. Then he’s back to being Catatonic Grandpa. The family leaves, with the little boy saying, “I’ll be good from now on, I promise.”

Back in the car, now it’s nighttime, and the boy wants to know if his mom was ever naughty. The boy’s name is Billy, by the way.

Mom says yes, and Billy says that Grandpa said that Santa Claus was going to punish him, and now he doesn’t want Santa Claus to come to the house. I’ll give it up for the parents on this one – they actually believe Billy is telling the truth about what Grandpa said.

Grandpa is my hero, by the way. Dude sits around all the time, people feeding him, wiping up his toileting errors… and then, every once in a while, he gets to scar a kid for life. The man is a stone genius. He’s like the Andy Kaufman of evil Grandpas.

Mom calls Grandpa a crazy old fool, and Billy notes that mom has been naughty, and that Santa is going to punish her. Kid turned on mom pretty quick.

Meanwhile, in a local gas station, a man dressed as Santa buys some smokes. Then pulls a gun, kills the manager of the gas station, and takes the money: thirty-one dollars. Santa is displeased at this offering.

Santa gets in his big red car and drives away.

Back in the family vehicle, mom and dad converse about the fact that they have a ways to go while Billy sleeps in the back.

They look up, and see that “Santa’s” car has broken down in the road. Billy wakes up and demands that they drive on and don’t stop.

But dad stops. Bad call, dad.

“Santa” comes up to the window, and Dad asks if Santa needs any help. Santa pulls a gun. Dad cranks up the car and tries to drive away in reverse. Santa shoots dad in the head, and the car falls into a ditch.

The baby is screaming.

Billy gets out of the car and runs for the opposite ditch. So he gets to watch while mom is dragged out of the car. Santa yanks mom’s shirt open, and she hits him. So he cuts her throat.

Santa gets up and tries to locate the kid. We get some shots of the screaming baby, the dead dad, and the dead mom… but we never do find out what happens to “Santa,” because the scene fades over to:

“December, 1974.” At the Saint Mary’s Home for Orphaned Children. Which, oddly, has a Santa out front. You would think the Catholic Church would be more into the Baby Jesus story.

Probably a lot of issues in this movie could be avoided if people focused more on that aspect of things. Alas.

Inside the building, Billy is at school, and being taught by a nun. The nun asks him to put his picture of Santa up on the bulletin board, only he’s done something bad on his drawing, and must show it to Mother Superior.

So he takes the picture to Superior, who shows it to the audience – it features a Santa with a bunch of knives in him, and a reindeer with his head chopped off. All things being equal, expressing his own trauma through art is probably not a bad thing for Billy.

Superior disagrees, and sends Billy to his room. Then Superior and the teacher debate for a while on how to handle Billy. Superior decides to deal with him personally. Since this movie didn’t debut on The Hallmark Channel, I doubt this is going to go well. At all.

Later, the teacher decides to go against Superior’s wishes, and she tells Billy to come outside and play. Billy agrees, after being somewhat reluctant. He puts on his hat and coat, and goes into the hallway, where he hears… uh… grunting noises. I think you see where this headed.

(Also, as aside: The teacher told Billy to come out and help build a snowman. A snowman that was, one shot ago, already completed. Perhaps she just wanted to taunt Billy with all the fun they had while he was inside?)

Anyway, Billy seeks out the source of the grunting. He peeks through a keyhole, and some dude and some girl we’ve never seen are having some… uh… adult time.

Billy starts to flash back to what happened to his mom.

Moments later, Superior shows up, throws Billy out of the way of the door, throws the door open, grabs the dude’s belt off his own pants and begins beating the two teenagers too stupid to realize that if you’re going to do that in a house run by nuns, you REALLY need to keep quiet.

Outside, Billy helps a couple of kids fill a bucket with snow, when out comes Superior, still toting the belt. Which is hilarious.

Superior asks to talk to Billy, and asks him if he understood what the people upstairs were doing. He says he didn’t understand it. Superior says that’s good, because, “What they were doing was something very, very naughty.”

She goes on to note that, “When you do something naughty, we are always caught. And then we are punished.” She goes on about punishment for a while.

Then she tells Billy he’s naughty for leaving his room. So one scene later, she gives the kid the belt and sends him to bed.

Later that night, Billy has horrible nightmares, which allows the producers to reuse the killer Santa footage from earlier in the film. He wakes up and runs screaming from his bed.

Superior catches him in the hallway, and ties him to the bed. None of the kids who share his room untie him.

The next morning, all the kids in the orphanage are playing with their Christmas gifts. Superior wanders through and says, “I see nothing but greed where there should be gratitude.”

This is the SADDEST CHRISTMAS STORY EVER.

Billy comes down the stairs with his teacher-nun, and Superior asks Billy if he’s ready to behave properly. He says yes. She tells him to go find his present.

Superior and Teacher-Nun (who finally got a name – Sister Margaret) confer. Superior is proud of her discipline methods, and thinks Billy is ready for the final test – sitting on Santa Claus’s lap.

At this point, Mother Superior could eat a baby, and she would not appear to be any more evil than she already is.

Later that day, Superior drags Billy from another room, and forces him to sit on Santa’s lap, stating that he will say thank you to Santa. Billy hops off Santa’s lap and punches him right in the face.

Santa sits up, blood flowing from his nose, and asks what’s wrong with Billy.

Billy runs to another room, and sits in a corner, pleading that he didn’t mean to be naughty.

From off-screen, Mother Superior says, “Williaaam,” and Billy looks up in terror, and… freeze frame.

And… burn-in: “Spring, 1984. Ten Years Later.”

Because really, we’re watching a third-rate horror movie. Clearly basic math eludes us.

Incidentally, anyone want to tell me what happened to Billy’s baby brother? Did he freeze to death, or what?

Right. So. 1984. Sister Margaret is in a little shop-store place. The kind that vanished when Wal-Mart went national. She’s begging the shopkeeper to give Billy a job, but the shopkeeper says he only has one opening, and it’s not for a boy, it’s for a man.

(I’m going to take a pause here, and let you work out the obvious joke. Okay? Okay.)

Sister Margaret is obviously supposed to have aged ten years, but I guess they couldn’t afford the makeup for it, so they just drew some lines on her head with eyebrow pencil, and blended them pretty poorly.

At any rate, she decides to introduce Billy to the shopkeeper, even if the shopkeeper doesn’t have an opening, and the shopkeeper turns around. Everyone ready for the big reveal? Billy is RIPPED. I don’t know if he lifts weights to push naughty thoughts away, or what, but the guy got buff.

The shopkeeper gives him the job.

And then? Then? I swear to you, we get a musical montage of Billy working hard, while a super-happy song plays: “The Warm Side of the Door.”

In the midst of all the time passage, Christmas comes, and with it, a Christmas banner with a picture of Santa on it. Billy looks at it, and it appears like he’s going to poo in his pants and throw up at the same time.

Finally, the montage ends. Billy looks at a lovely lassy who works at the store, then goes into the stockroom, where he’s confronted by some dude who doesn’t even get a name. I guess he runs the stockroom, since he was sitting at the stockroom desk during his scenes in the montage.

I shall call him Stockboy.

Anyway, Stockboy hassles Billy because he wants to know why Billy is always staring off into space lately. I guess this is where horror movies differ from dramas, because in a drama, Billy would hint at a difficult past, then later overcome it while crying.

Instead, I’m guessing he’s going to kill this dude a lot, later in the movie.

And speaking of later in the movie, Billy leaves the stock room and goes out into the store. A Santa is there, which leads to yet another flashback to “That Night.”

Billy freaks out and backs away, running into a shelf and falling over. The cute girl he was looking at before comes over and asks if Billy is all right. He says sure.

He goes back to the stockroom, where he has a surprisingly long daydream about him and the cute girl being… uh… naughty. It culminates in Santa’s hand coming out of nowhere with a knife and stabbing him in the back.

Billy wakes up in his own bed, shouting, “No! No! No! I want to be good.” He flashes back to the time he hid in a corner after punching Santa.

I think if you took all the flashbacks and dream sequences out of this movie, it would be about twenty minutes shorter.

The next day, the shopkeeper announces that it’s Christmas Eve, and he can’t wait for Christmas to be over.

But no, here comes some lady we’ve never seen before, stating that there’s a teeny problem. The store Santa broke his ankle. Looks like shopkeeper-man will have to play Santa.

In the back, Stockboy tells Billy that if Billy ever vanishes again, he’s going straight to the shopkeeper. And here comes the shopkeeper, who asks how Billy is doing, and then sets the rest of the plot in motion.

Guess who gets to be Santa? Here’s a hint: It’s the guy who has so far learned that both Santa and the touch of a lady lead to pain at best, and death at worst.

Aw, followed by yeah. Billy is suiting up.

Moments later, Billy is in the Santa suit, and the shopkeeper is telling Billy not to scare the kids. This is going to get bad real fast.

Out in the store, Billy contends with a squirming girl. Finally, he tells her, “I don’t bring toys to naughty children.” He goes on. “That’s right. Stop it. Or I’ll have to punish you.”

Honestly, now, who doesn’t want to see a mall Santa go nuts on a bothersome kid?

The kid calms down. Because she knows what’s good for her. When her encounter with Santa is over, she runs to her mom.

In the stockroom, Stockboy, who finally gives us a name (Andy) gets a phone call. He tells the person on the other end of the line that Billy doesn’t work there any more – he’s playing Santa Claus.

On the other end of the line, Margaret, who really does have a terrible makeup job, hangs up the phone. She knows trouble is a-brewing.

Later that evening, the shopkeeper locks up the store. It’s seven o’clock, and time to get drunk. Really. That’s the plan.

Everyone who works in the shop starts drinking, including Billy, who for some reason doesn’t shed the Santa suit the very moment his shift is over. The shopkeeper says, “Stick with me kid, and pretty soon, you’ll think you are Santa Claus.” Then he proceeds to get Billy liquored up.

(Man, the screenwriter is some kind of dark genius, huh?)

The cute girl smiles at Billy. Her fate is sealed.

Oh hey, we finally got the see the outside sign. This is a toy store. Called Ira’s toys.

Moments later, the cute girl sneaks off with Andy.

And even later, the shopkeeper finds Billy, who’s kind of drunk, and asks him what he’s thinking about. Billy says his parents. Awkward.

The shopkeeper, after realizing what Billy is talking about, barrels ahead anyway. “You remember what Santa Claus does on Christmas Eve, don’t ya?”

Billy does, in fact, remember.

The shopkeeper babbles some more, concluding with, “Go get ‘em!”

Down the aisle, Andy convinces the cute girl to go into the stockroom with him. Which Billy sees.

Inside the stockroom, Andy tells Tammy (hey, she finally has a name!) that he’s got something for her. That he’s wanted to give her for a long time.

The entendre is thick in the air.

Back in the store, the shopkeeper and that other lady is sing one of the many Christmas songs that I’ve never heard in my life. Seriously, did they invite the songwriter over to teach it to them just for this scene? That seems like a lot of work.

As they continue singing, Billy wanders into the stockroom. Tammy is telling Andy to, “Stop it.”

Andy is putting the moves on Tammy. In a not-nice way. Tammy slaps him. Andy tears her shirt open. Billy has a flashback to his mom.

And dad. Well, most of whole Santa killing his family thing. As I said, they reuse a lot of footage in this movie.

Here it is, folks. The moment Billy snaps. And yells, “Naughty!” And chokes Andy to death with a string of Christmas lights.

While Tammy looks on. That isn’t really the kind of thing that helps you get the girl.

Tammy yells that Billy is crazy. Then she slaps him. Tammy makes a lot of poor decisions.

Billy grabs something sharp from a nearby shelf and cuts Tammy’s tummy. Tammy dies.

The shopkeeper, who heard a noise, goes to the stockroom to investigate. He’s really drunk. The clock behind him says it’s almost seven. Which means no one was paying attention to continuity, or he’s been drinking 12 hours straight.

Billy comes around the corner, and kills the shopkeeper with a hammer.

Out in the store, that other lady who is standing around to increase the body count, wanders drunkenly to the back of the store and into the stockroom, where she sees the shopkeeper with the “claw” portion of the claw hammer buried in his head.

She runs for the front door, but finds it locked. So she runs to the phone, and dials. Too late. Billy takes an axe off the wall and cuts the phone cord. The lady runs.

Stalking occurs. While Billy recites the opening lines to “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

Billy prepares to axe the lady in the head, only she pushes a bunch of boxes on him and runs, taking the axe with her. She runs to the front door, and gets ready to smash the glass. Billy takes a bow and arrow (from a toy shop, remember?) and shoots her through the back.

She dies.

Billy takes the axe, and unlocks the door… and heads out.

Moments later, Margaret shows up, and sees the dead bodies.

Elsewhere, carolers sing yet another not-classic Christmas song.

Inside a nearby house, and teenage boy and girl are… oh come on. You know. On a pool table.

A little girl calls from upstairs that she wants to see Santa Claus. The teenage girl convinces her she needs to go back to bed right now, because Santa doesn’t visit naughty children, and the little girl is being very naughty right now.

Oh, the jokes I won’t bother to make.

The little girl goes back to bed.

The teenage boy and girl go back to what they were doing. Moments later, the girl says she has to go upstairs, because she heard the cat, and the cat needs to come in. I thought it was a metaphor at first, but no, it appears there really is a cat.

So the girl puts on her shorts(!) (seriously, there’s snow all over the ground outside!) and heads upstairs to deal with the cat.

The boy says, “I’m gonna kill her.”

Seriously. Screenwriter. Dark genius.

The girl goes to the front door, opens it wide, and calls to the cat. Did I mention all she’s wearing is shorts? I hope the girl got stunt pay.

The cat finally shows up. Then Billy shows up.

The girl slams the door. Billy breaks through it with the axe. The girl runs, then turns around to see where Billy is. He throws the axe and misses, then runs after the girl and tackles her.

There is tussling.

Finally, Billy spots a deer head on the wall. So he lifts the girl up and pushes the horns through her. Bodily. And the deer head doesn’t fall off the wall, so she’s just hanging there.

Downstairs, the boy is playing pool. Having heard, you know, none of the extensive screaming and tussling. He puts on his shirt, and heads upstairs.

He finds the destroyed door. And keeps calling to the girl. Who finally gets a name: Denise. Too late.

Finally, he locates her, right after saying, “If this is some kind of joke, I’m going to kill her.”

Billy jumps him, and they battle. The boy gets ahold of a fire poker, and clocks Billy with it. Then he goes for the phone. Billy stands up, pulls the phone cord out of the wall, and chokes the boy with it.

Then he beats the boy for a while. And, finally, throws Billy the guy out the second-story window.

As Billy heads towards the door, the little girl spots him, and calls out, “Santa Claus.”

Billy asks, “Have you been good? Or have you been naughty?”

She says she’s been good. Billy asks if she’s sure. While pulling a knife out of his belt.

She nods yes, so Billy gives her the knife. Which is all covered in blood.

Do I smell a sequel? Man, I hope so!

Billy walks out the door while the little girl calls out to her babysitter.

Elsewhere, two cops are on the hunt for, “Santa Claus.” They’re joking about it, until they see a dude climbing through a window dressed as Santa.

They race into the house, and up the stairs… but it’s just some little girl’s dad, dressed up as Santa for the holidays. Tee-hee.

Out on a deserted stretch of road, Billy hides in a ditch while some cops drive by with their sirens on.

Somewhere in the woods, two boys prepare to sled. One of them gets paranoid and says he thinks someone is watching them.

Suddenly, two more dudes pop out of the woods. Tension is in the air.

The new dudes beat up the sledding dudes, and steal their sleds. Seriously, now, the movie is just wasting time.

One dude sleds. Then calls down to the other dude to sled.

Are we, like, building tension here? Is that the plan? Because I have no attachment to these people.

As dude number two comes down the slope, Billy jumps out of the woods, yells out, “Naughty!” and cuts off the second dude’s head.

Dude number one stands around and screams. For some reason, Billy does not race down the slope and attack him.

And now, it’s morning. Margaret is sleeping on a bench at the police station. She asks some guy, who I guess is a cop, if there’s any news. He tells her it’s all bad.

Three more murders. Huh. Billy really didn’t kill that other kid. That makes no sense.

The cop says Billy is nuts, but not stupid, and that they should be able to predict his next move. Margaret freaks out, because she thinks what Billy is doing is following some kind of logic.

Anyone want to hazard a guess where Billy is going? Could it be: The Orphanage? It is!

Though I have no idea why Margaret thought Billy’s killing had a “logic” to it. So far, he’s killed a bunch of people in a toy shop, two random kids from a random house, and one bully, but not another.

If anyone wants to guess what the logic is in that, be my guest.

At the orphanage, Superior, in bad old age makeup, tells everyone they need to write a thank you letter to Santa, even though all the kids there are WAY too old to believe in him, and also, seriously? Santa? An at orphanage run by nuns? Can someone please, please explain that one to me?

In the office, a little girl is playing with the phone, because her doll is “making a call.” She sets the phone down, but doesn’t hang it up, which means that Margaret can’t call the orphanage to tell them what’s going on.

Margaret and the cop tell all the cops to head to the orphanage, then head to the orphanage themselves.

All officers are told to shoot to kill, if necessary.

Outside, here comes “Santa,” across the near-complete lack of snow. And lots of green grass.

One of the kids looks up, then more. Yay, Santa!

A cop zips up to the orphanage, and spots “Santa.” He freaks out, draws a gun, and puts a few shots in Santa’s back.

Santa falls to the ground. Dead.

A nun comes out, and tells everyone to go back inside. One of them doesn’t move. The nun calls out: “Ricky! Come away from there!”

Everyone remember who Ricky is? At all? Of course not. Ricky is the name of Billy’s brother, who’s been MIA since we last saw him all crying and being a baby, in every sense of the word.

The cop approaches the dead Santa who, naturally, isn’t Billy, or the movie would already be over.

Apparently some guy named Father O’Brian got cacked. Because he didn’t answer the cop who told him to stop. Because he was deaf. That must make finding out what kids want for Christmas a real bear.

An ambulance takes Father O’Brian away, and the cop tells Superior that he’s there to help. She counters that all the cop has done is harm.

(Did I mention this is NOT the cop driving around with Margaret? He’s not. Sorry for the confusion, but none of these people have names.)

(The cop driving with Margaret is still on his way. With Margaret.)

The non-Margaret cop goes outside to look around for Billy.

Inside, Superior decides to take everyone’s mind off the fact that they just saw a man killed in cold blood by having them sing Christmas songs. She has Ricky get her pitch pipe, and goes out of her way to be all, “He’s a good kid, not like his brother,” so the audience can maybe make the connection I made for you earlier. You’re welcome, by the way.

The opt to sing “Deck the Halls.” No way! An actual Christmas song? They couldn’t sing “On the Warm Side of the Door?”

Come to think of it, why is Ricky so happy? He JUST saw a guy take three bullets to the torso area.

Outside, the Santa-killing cop slinks around the outside of the building, looking for the person he was actually supposed to kill.

He spots a shed outside, the creepy music comes up, and Our Hero the Cop walks over to ye olde shed. Suddenly, the door springs open. It isn’t a shed at all. It’s like a little shack, with a massive basement-type thing under it. I have no idea what it could be used for. I suppose it’s a good place to store preserves. Or dead bodies.

The cop wanders around for a bit down there, and finds nothing. He unzips his coat, and heads back up the stairs to the outside. He steps to the door, Billy yells out, “Punish!” and buries the axe in the cop’s belly.

Inside, the kids are now singing another actual Christmas song. Crazy.

Outside, Billy cuts the head off the snowman with his axe. Because he’s evil now, you see. I mean, who else would do a thing like that?

Billy walks up to the front door of the orphanage, and one of the kids springs up to let “Santa” in. Superior tries to stop him, but she’s in a wheelchair now, which makes it hard for her to go springing after the kid.

The kid lets Billy in, and all the kids are like, “Yay! Santa!”

Superior has no idea what to do. She tells the kids to come to her, and then says, “There is no Santa Claus. There is no Santa Claus!” Supes should have tried that, like, a decade ago. She might have prevented her upcoming axe to the face.

Billy says, “Naughty,” a couple of times, the axe comes up, and there’s the sound of gunfire. The other cop, the one with Margaret, shoots Billy in the back.

Billy dies, grabbing at Superior as he falls.

Margaret stands over Billy as he dies. The kids are all well and truly freaked out. Since they already saw Santa shot once, it’s probably not because of that. Maybe it’s because they just learned Santa isn’t real?

Billy’s final words as he croaks are, “You’re safe now. Santa Claus is gone.”

On the soundtrack, the composer is playing one of those old, out-of-tune pianos you always hear in old silent movies. Interesting choice, there, composer-man.

Billy dies. Margaret looks sad. Margaret is also wearing a wedding band. Not your best work, continuity-person.

The camera pans up from Billy to Ricky. And Ricky says, “Naughty.” And the soundtrack goes nuts. In case you didn’t get that this was like a final sting.

And hey! Credits! And we get to hear one of those Christmas songs that no one has ever heard before, and will never hear again.

Is it wrong that I really want to own the soundtrack now?

Diary of the Dead

The thing to keep in mind as this movie begins is that it is not a sequel to “Night of the Living Dead.” Depending on how you look at it, this is a reboot of the franchise. Or, like, a side-quel, which starts at the same time “Night” does – which is to say, in the opening moments of the zombie apocalypse.

Of course, to pretend they happen at the same time, you have to assume everyone in the original “Night” just kind of forgot their cell phone. And that the farmer didn’t have cable. And that they just had one really small TV.

Honestly, though, I can’t say that anything that happens in “Diary” contradicts what happens in “Night.” So, there you go.

“Diary of the Dead” exists in sort of a strange limbo of filmmaking. It’s meant to be a documentary of sorts, detailing the zombie uprising, and as such we get voiceover, and camera twitches, and various other things.

For example, the opening footage has some narration over it. It’s touted as footage that a news cameraman uploaded. He was the one that shot the footage.

The actual footage shown shows some cops, and an ambulance, outside a dwelling. Inside, a dad murdered his wife and sixteen-year-old son, and then put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

A newswoman starts stating these facts, while the corpses are rolled towards the ambulance in the background.

But then the cameraman interrupts the newslady, in order to film what’s going on. To wit, the dead woman sits up and bites one of the ambulance workers. And then, the sixteen-year-old also gets up, and one of the cops shoots him in the head.

There’s some more action, but it’s not all that important. Because now we’re into the narration, which says that the narrator (who’s a female, by the by) and her companions (who we haven’t seen yet) have been downloading video from various online sources, and also took their own film they’ve been shooting, and they cut it all together to make the documentary we’re about to see:

“The Death of Death.”

That’s a pretty amusing in-joke right there. If you’re not aware, Romero has used that title in at least two places. Once when he started writing a zombie novel in sections, and selling it on the Internet. And he also made a comic book with that title.

And now, the film-within-a-film presents “The Death of Death.” Which our narrator notes sometimes has music, in order to scare us.

Now we’re into the footage that the narrator and pals shot, along with a burn-in that says October 24th, 11:00 PM.

We’re in the woods somewhere, and a woman in a white dress is running. She stops for a second, looks behind her, and a mummy steps out of the woods.

The woman screams, then stumbles, and the mummy catches her, and someone yells, “Cut.” I guess we have to assume this is the director.

The director complains that the “mummy,” who’s obviously a student actor, that corpses can’t walk fast. The “mummy” retorts that is the girl is going fast, he has to go fast.

The director, whose name is Jason, says that if the mummy catches the girl, the movie is over.

And then… then it’s just a whole discussion about this being a student film, and about getting credits for college, and about how the drunken professor promises that everyone will get five credits for making the film.

And then some random dude standing off in the woods says that “there’s something on the news” they should all hear.

So we cut, and go over to where everyone is listening to the news, and we learn that five, no wait, six corpses have gotten up and attacked people.

The mummy says he’s not waiting around to find out if this is a hoax or not – he’s headed back to his place. Another dude says that the mummy’s place is huge. That guy is named Eliot. I think he was the guy who said everyone needed to listen to the news.

There’s also a makeup artist named Tony. Just so you can have a name to cling to. Cling hard. I’m still not sure who two thirds of these people are.

The mummy says everyone is free to join him. One blonde chick who has no name as of yet opts to go with him.

The crew packs up and heads to the dorm, because “Deb” is there. Whoever that is.

And now we’re in a long point-of-view shot in the women’s dorm. I think Jason is still holding the camera, but I have no idea.

There’s no one there, except for one dude who’s stealing a small TV. Which he’s completely honest about.

Jason goes to Deb’s room. Deb is there, and she’s upset because she keeps calling home and no one is answering.

Ah – Deb is our narrator. Thanks subtitles.

And now we’re in a Winnebago. Mary’s Winnebago. No clue who Mary is. And they’re driving along to somewhere-or-other.

Ah. Mary is the driver. That clears THAT up.

Okay, now they do a run-down of all the names. Is it worth mentioning they’re all in the University of Pittsburgh? And that they’re all trying to get home? Sure. So there you go. That’s the plan.

So, yeah, names and identifying characteristic. Trust me, there’s not much to hang onto.

Mary: Owns the Winnebago we’re all in. Brunette.

Deb: Narrator. Brunette.

Tony: Makeup artist. Really short hair.

Eliot: Wears geeky glasses.

Gordo: With Tracy. Longer hair.

Tracy: Blonde. Actress.

Professor: He’s the professor. And he’s drunk all the time.

Some dude goes driving by at about 120 miles an hour.

And then they stop the Winnebago, because there’s a crashed and flaming car in the road. Actually, there are two crashed and flaming cars, and Mary doesn’t think she’ll be able to get by them.

The group sees a state trooper, and it takes them a minute to realize that he’s walking kind of funny. And it takes them until he gets to the window and tries to grab Mary to realize he’s the walking dead.

Mary freaks out, people swear, and Mary hits reverse and drives away from the state trooper.

Then she goes forward again, plowing into the state trooper and various other dead people as she drives along.

Some time passes, and it’s 3 AM. Mary freaks out about the fact that she hit three people, and might have killed them, because she’s not quite on board with the whole dead-returning-to-life thing.

The crew gets out of the Winnebago, all of them watching Mary, who is sitting out in the middle of a field not doing much of anything. At least until she shoots herself in the head.

Everyone gets all freaked out by this, wondering if anyone even knew she had a gun.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that Tony is also not on board with the walking dead thing. He thinks the news is right – that nothing is really happening, and that everything will calm down soon.

And then Deb says, “She’s still alive.”

So the gang goes to a hospital, which is empty. They’re carrying Mary, and trying to find a doctor. Or the ER. Or probably anyone who knows what to do with a woman who shot herself in the head unsuccessfully.

Some of them find a police radio, which they listen to for a while. They hear people panicking, and gunfire, and it finally starts to sink in that, hey, there are dead people out there walking around and biting people.

The crew wanders around the hospital some more, searching for anyone who can and/or will help them.

Finally, they spot a person moving behind a curtain, and call to him.

Only him’s dead. And him’s also just finished eating someone, so he’s all covered in people juices.

Someone yells to use the gun.

Gordo has the gun. He shoots the zombie a few times, and then someone tells him to shoot the zombie in the head. He does. It’s effective.

A former nurse gets up. She’s a zombie, too. Gordo tries to shoot her, but the gun is jammed. He tries to fix it.

Meanwhile, Deb finds a pair of those electro-shock panels, fires them up, and sticks them on both sides of the zombie nurse’s head. The nurse burns, and her eyes melt and pop out of her head. She falls.

Then she gets back up again, and Gordo shoots her in the head.

Mary makes a groaning noise, and the group once again decides they should try to find her a doctor. A live one.

In the corner, the battery light keeps showing in the corner. Which is the kind of thing that would never show up on actual camera footage. But let’s move on.

Jason says he needs to plug in and recharge, and the rest of the group says that he should leave the camera. Jason refuses, noting that the camera “is the whole thing.”

So the rest of the group leaves. Jason stays, and plugs in. And as he pans around, talking to himself, and looking at the dead people on the floor, he points the camera at Mary.

This means the rest of the group went to get help for Mary, who is currently sitting in a wheelchair, as far away from the rest of the group as possible. This is not a well thought out plan.

Jason apologizes to Mary, stating that he’s sorry if anything he or Tony said caused her to shoot herself in the head.

At that moment, Mary wakes up.

Elsewhere, there are screams and gunfire.

Jason calls out.

He looks out the door, and in the hallway… is Deb. Who found another camera. So Deb turns her camera on, and Jason has his camera on, and they go back and forth, cutting between their footage, as Deb tries to explain to Jason what it’s like to have a camera shoved in your face while people are dying around you.

Jason finally gets Deb to tell him that she was attacked, and that Gordo shot the dead guy in the head.

Deb screams to demonstrate how she screamed in the other room, then screams for real, as one of the nearby “dead” patients gets up.

Gordo appears and shoots the guy in the head, then notes that he’s shot three men and a woman in the last half-hour.

The professor points out how easily it came to Gordo. And then goes on. “I remember the war. In wartime, killing comes easily.”

Did I mention the professor sounds British? I really want to know which war he’s talking about.

Mary dies. Then starts becoming undead, which involves a lot of wheezing, and maybe her eyeballs rolling back in her head, or maybe she develops a film over her eyes. I have no idea.

Gordo isn’t mentally capable of shooting her, so the professor gently takes the gun from Gordo and shoots Mary in the noggin.

Then the professor gives the gun to Tony, noting that it’s “too easy to use.”

The gang walks out into the hallway, where they’re confronted by some more dead patients.

One of them has an I.V. pole attached to him. So Eliot grabs it, and stabs the zombie through the chest with his own I.V. pole. While he does this, he loudly points out that clearly the zombie is dead, since Eliot can just keep ramming an I.V. pole through the guy’s chest with no effect.

Oh, and did I mention that Gordo got bit in all this? He did. He says that, “It hurts.”

Eliot knocks the zombie over and jams the I.V. pole through its head.

Deb realizes that she’s still holding a video camera, and she hands it off to the Professor with a, “Take this, it’s too easy to use.”

And now, a bunch of stock footage, with statements about how everyone with a video camera or a blog is talking about what’s going on.

The next morning, they bury Mary. Gordo is dead. Then he comes back, and Tracy shoots him right in the noggin.

Deb wants to get on the road, like, right now, so she can get to her family.

And then, more stock footage, coupled with narration about how they managed to avoid the crowds and looting by staying on country roads.

But now the bad news – the Winnebago has died. Tracy thinks she can fix it, which is supposed to be funny, I suppose.

At any rate, they plan on pushing the Winnie into a nearby barn and repairing it, when an Amish guy comes towards them, grunting. But he’s not a zombie – he’s just deaf. He tells them this using a little slate he carries around.

They inform him they want to use his barn to fix the Winnie, and he writes for them to hurry – then points behind them, where a small group of zombies has gathered and is coming towards them.

The Amish fellow runs back into the barn, grabs a stick of dynamite, and heaves it at the zombies, who blow up real good.

The Amish guy writes that his name is Samuel.

Later, Tracy fixes the Winnie.

Meanwhile, Eliot plays the footage from the video camera they found in the hospital. It’s a little girl’s birthday party. A clown arrives. The girl freaks a little bit. The father grabs the clown’s nose, and yells, “Honk, honk!” And then, the zombie clown bites him in the neck.

Putting George Romero at three for three zombie clowns in the last three “Dead” movies.

Suddenly, there’s pounding on the barn walls. The zombies have arrived.

Samuel tells everyone there’s a back door. They head down to the bottom of the barn… and discover that the back door is open.

Samuel slams it shut, then grabs a scythe.

Tony shoots a zombie in the head. Then another one.

Upstairs, Tracy almost has the Winnie fixed. Suddenly, a zombie grabs her arm. Samuel slams his scythe through the zombie and drags it out from under the vehicle, and Tony shoots it in the head.

Deb gets into the Winnie, and fires it up.

Samuel and Tony open the barn doors.

Everyone starts getting into the Winnie, only Samuel gets grabbed by a zombie. And bitten. Samuel, knowing that his time is short, jams the blade of his scythe through his own head, and subsequently, the zombie’s head.

Never make fun of the Amish, folks. They will MESS YOU UP.

Deb pulls out, ramming zombies along the way.

And then… more random footage, and narration.

The gang stops for supplies, and they’re trying to figure out how to gas up the Winnie and get food, when a random black guy with an M-16 comes out and tells Tony to drop his gun.

Tony does, and a couple more fellows of color come out, both heavily armed.

There’s gunfire nearby, and everyone gets into the Winnie to go… wherever the black dudes tell them to go.

The gang is taken to a large warehouse, where all the people of color in the town are holed up with a lot of supplies. They tell Deb they can have some gas to get where they’re going.

Jason asks if he can get online, and he’s told to go ahead. He uploads his footage to… ready?… MySpace. Where he gets 72,000 hits in eight minutes.

Deb shows up, asking what’s going on, and Deb and Jason argue about whether or not the footage is important. Deb states, once again, that she wants to get back to her family, and Jason tells Deb that the media and/or the government is covering up what’s happening, and making it sound like everyone is going to be fine.

Jason has the most amazing laptop ever. He has yet to run out of power, and he’s cutting together a movie at lightning speed, and getting it uploaded, and… I don’t even know. Let’s just go with, “He seems to be working implausibly fast,” and leave it at that.

Deb brings the argument to a close, and gets ready to walk off, when her cell phone vibrates. It’s a message from her little brother – her family was camping, and now they’re heading home.

It was sent the night before.

Deb figures this means her family is going to beat her home, but I’m thinking it’s more likely they’ll get eaten while driving along the road. So going home is probably futile at this point. Perhaps they should throw in with the local militia? They seem to have a good thing going…

Deb goes to get some gas for the Winnie.

Jason’s computer buzzes, and some dude comes up on webcam. Ridley. He’s the guy who went, “Oh, hey, there are reports of zombie attacks. I’m going back to my house/fortress.” The other chick is there with him.

Ridley says he’s having a great time.

In the warehouse, Deb talks to Tony – something is going on.

One of the militia fills us in – one of the “soldiers” had a bad heart, and died. Only no one knows where he went.

And we’re back with Jason, who wanders through the warehouse, camera on. I think we see where this is going.

He sees something, starts to panic, then realizes he’s looking at himself in a mirror.

Tony appears suddenly, and tells Jason there’s a dead guy walking around, and they need to go.

Back at the Winnie, they check the vehicle for zombies. Nope, none there.

The head militia guy tells everyone to freeze and shut up.

Jason and Tony find the rest of the group, just as the militia spots the dead guy. They shoot him in the head.

Whoops – that wasn’t the dead guy.

The dead guy grabs Tony, who moves out of the dead guy’s grasp, and starts backing up.

One person yells out to shoot the dead guy, only the dead guy is standing near gas. So Tony grabs a jar of acid and shatters it on the dead guy’s head.

Over the course of a minute, the acid eats into the dead guy’s head, and then his brain, and then the dead guy dies.

A woman pumps some gas into the Winnie. The Head Guy tells her to stop, as they aren’t going very far. He also tells Deb that they aren’t getting any supplies – no guns, no food.

Deb says they won’t leave until they get some. Otherwise, Head Guy will have to kill them.

Head Guy gives them more gas, and food, and guns. What a pushover.

Everyone loads up. The professor decides he doesn’t want a gun, and takes a bow and arrows instead, noting that they seem “friendlier” than the guns.

Dude. When dealing with zombies, the word “friendly” should not apply.

As they’re leaving, Head Guy tells Debbie that he thinks Debbie is a lot like him.

As they drive, Tracy uses her cell phone to pull up a video from Tokyo on YouTube. A nice lady notes, “Don’t bury dead. First shoot in head.”

Then Tracy’s cell phone signal gives out. Eliot turns on the TV, and there’s no signal there either.

The end is nigh, folks. Or nigh-er, anyway.

And now, more stock-looking footage, and statements about how the mainstream was gone. You know, in case you missed it.

Back with the gang, hey, they finally made it to Deb’s house!

Deb says she’s going to go in the house, even though her family isn’t there. She tells everyone else to head out.

They opt, instead, to come in with her.

Deb opens the front door with the key, and then says she can’t remember the code for the house alarm. It’s either 102 or 201.

I’m sorry, I thought she lived here? Were her parents in the habit of installing alarm systems while she was away at school, or is she just kind of stupid?

Probably the latter.

Regardless, she punches in the wrong code, and the alarm goes off.

Eliot figures he can shut it off if he goes to the breaker box. Deb tells him it’s in the garage.

Deb goes through the house to the garage, opens the door, and sees that her family’s stuff is in the garage – they are, or were, home.

Deb starts calling for her parents, and then Tony notices something, which he points out to Deb – the passenger-side window has a hole smashed in it.

Did I mention the professor is wandering around this whole time carrying his bow and arrows? Because he totally is. I’m sure this will be important soon.

Deb tries to calmly figure out what the hole in the passenger-side window would mean. She determines that, you know, that’s her mom’s blood on the passenger-side window.

Tony figures out that Deb is about a second away from freaking right out, and he plays some bizarre psychological game with Deb, where they’re going into the house, but they’re NOT looking for her parents. They’re looking for her old doll. Whose name is Michael, Deb says. Like the archangel.

They go into the house, and Deb does some narration about how she debated whether to leave this part in the film. Oookay.

Deb wanders through the house, and her zombie brother, who looks to be in his early teens, jumps on her back and tries to eat her. The professor shoots an arrow through the brother’s head, which pins the zombie brother to the wall.

I guess he hit a stud. Or they have exceptionally strong drywall holding him up.

Deb runs out of the house. Then she runs back into the house, and finds her mom. Who is eating her dad. In, like, a zombie way.

Mom starts walking towards Deb, and the professor shoots mom through the head with an arrow.

Then he notes they should leave. This is because he’s got a doctorate, so he’s all smart.

Deb does some more narrating. It’s kind of dull. Let’s skip it.

In the Winnie, Jason sets the camera down for almost a full minute to comfort Deb. Then he gives up.

Deb asks the professor where he learned to shoot a bow and arrow. He replies, “Eaton. Archery squad. Targets, of course.”

I guess that’s a good thing. Better than it being a “The Most Dangerous Game” situation.

There’s some more banter and character-building stuff which, quite frankly, isn’t interesting enough to document. And then – headlights!

It’s the National Guard. Eliot pulls over, a member of the National Guard steps in, and asks them where they got all their stuff. They say they got it from friends.

The leader of the Guard says, “Can we be friends?”

Then he tells Jason to turn off the camera.

When the camera comes back on, the gang has been stripped of all their food, and the National Guard folks are driving away.

The “documentary” then cuts over to a group of people we’ve never seen before. Some kind of SWAT team kind of thing. They encounter some old people in what appears to be an apartment building. Then they go into an apartment, and one of them gets bitten.

They blow the zombie’s head off.

Then they kill two more zombies.

Then they get mad at the two old people, who were clearly hiding the living dead in their house. “They were family!” pleads the old man. Then they shoot him.

In the heart. So they can wake up dead. Oh, and they do the same to the old woman.

Then the dude who got bit in the neck blows his own head off.

This is followed by some commentary by Deb and Jason.

Moments later, Eliot pulls the Winnie up to Ridley’s place. The front fence is open, and the front door is unlocked.

This makes everyone nervous.

They go into the house anyway.

I guess the good news is, some of them are armed.

The better news is, there are security cameras everywhere, which gives an alternate source of black-and-white footage, instead of showing us just the stuff Jason is shooting.

They wander into the library, and the professor discovers the bookshelf, which has a bunch of first editions on it.

Suddenly, the bookshelf flies open – it’s a door to a panic room, and Ripley is behind it. Dressed in his mummy costume from the start of the film.

Yeah, that’s not creepy. At all.

They ask Ridley where his parents are, and he says out back. They ask why he left the door open, and he said it was an accident, and adds that he’s stupid.

Ridley has clearly lost his mind.

Ridley tells everyone to go do, like, whatever it is they want to do. Get some food. Drink some hooch. Take a bath.

Someone asks him why he was in the panic room, and he says that he was testing the generator.

Finally he asks where everyone’s stuff is, and they basically say they haven’t got any. Except bags of dirty clothes.

All right, let’s pause for a second.

Here are the problems with this movie:

1. There’s kind of no plot. The goals in the movie, so far, have been: Get to Deb’s house. Which led to her learning her parents were dead. So then they, 2. Go to this other house, where I’m sure we’re about to learn that everyone is dead.

As plots go, it’s sort of boring.

Added to that, we’re watching a film “made” by a bunch of student filmmakers, so they restate stuff we already know, narrate things that don’t need to be narrated, and in general, kill the suspense of going from scene to scene by intercutting news reports and the like.

If that’s what Romero was going for, it’s sort of brilliant. And the man can still put together creatively creepy stuff.

But somewhere between making “Night,” and making this movie, he went from telling a great story that happened to be layered with societal commentary, to telling a societal commentary that occasionally gives us a really interesting way to dispatch a zombie.

This whole, “All we have is dirty clothing,” line sort of lays out this problem for us. We don’t care. Dirty clothing doesn’t tell us about the characters, doesn’t really up the suspense, and doesn’t really crackle, as far as jokes go.

But whatever. Let’s wrap this up.

Jason tells Tony to take the camera. Tony, of course, resists taking the camera, because people arguing about whether or not shooting “this kind” of movie is pretty much the main focus of discussion, and it’s been nearly three minutes since someone got on Jason’s case for filming everything.

Tony follows Ridley around with the camera. Ridley babbles about his dad shooting a rabbit.

Deb enters the room, and asks where their blonde friend is, who had like three lines in the movie so far, so who really cares?

“She’s out back, with my family, and the staff,” says Ridley.

I’m going to guess they’re not out there playing a round of croquet.

Deb asks why they don’t just go see her, and Ridley says that’s a bad idea.

I know I mentioned this before, y’all, but Ridley is still wearing his mummy costume. Just keep that in mind.

Ridley explains that his dad was the first to die. Dad ate mom. Dad and mom ate the help. The help bit blondie on the face. So Ridley buried them all in the backyard.

Ridley then takes Deb and Tony to the backyard. Deb thinks this might be a bad idea, while Tony says he has to see. Way to, like, use your scruples and stuff, dude.

Ridley takes them to a big glassed-wall structure. He flips in the lights.

It’s the poolhouse. All the dead people are walking around on the bottom of the pool.

Ridley wanders off. Or runs off. I have no idea, as it happens off-camera.

Tony notes that Ridley had blood on his arm, and we get an insert shot of his arm, and sure enough, there’s blood.

Tony wonders if Ridley got bitten.

Cut to the security footage, with Ridley stumbling into the house and falling over, dead. And Eliot getting ready to take a bath. And Ridley’s undead self waking up and heading out to eat him some people.

Outside in the Winnie, Tracy throws bags on the ground, and asks Jason for help, only Jason says that he’s shooting.

And here comes Ridley, who Jason actually notes, out loud, is dead.

Ridley attacks Tracy, and Jason doesn’t do anything to help. I suppose we could argue that this is supposed to demonstrate the power of the video camera, and how it gets ahold of us, but really, all I can think is that I really hope Ridley eats Jason a lot.

Tracy calls to Jason for help, and Jason tells Tracy to run. Tracy runs. Ridley shambles after her.

Jason yells out, “See! I told you dead things move slow!” You know, from the start of the movie, when he was complaining that Ridley was walking too fast? Also, I’m sure this Romero commenting on the so-called fast zombie controversy.

Hey George, remember when your zombies were afraid of fire? No? You might want to look into that.

At any rate, Jason doesn’t lift a finger to help Tracy. Finally, he tries to “distract” Ridley by yelling, “Cut!”

Oh, it gets so much worse.

Tracy knocks Ridley over the head, which appears to re-kill him, and then she says: “Don’t mess with Texas.”

And The Yellow Rose of Texas plays on the soundtrack.

You know what? I take all my criticisms back. This is the greatest takedown of student films ever created.

As the song continues to play, Tracy gets back into the Winnie and drives away.

Deb peeks out the window and sees Tracy take off, and she and Tony debate the merits of hitting the road. Deb is all for the panic room option.

In the bathroom, Eliot blow-dries his hair until Ridley eats him.

Downstairs, Jason, Deb, and Tony do the whole, “Hey, where’s Eliot?” thing, and then the professor shows up with a gun and says he saw Ridley attack Eliot in the bathroom. He saw it on the monitors in the panic room.

The professor grabs a big old sword off the wall.

And the remaining three students argue about whether or not it’s better to survive the zombie apocalypse, or record it. Deb comes down on the survival side. Jason comes down on the recording side.

So Jason takes off, and goes to another room, where he encounters… Ridley.

Ridley bites Jason. As this happens, Deb and the professor and Tony show up. The professor puts a sword through Ridley’s head.

Jason asks Deb to kill him. So Deb shoots him in the head.

Then we cut to footage of the living Jason talking to the camera, about being given the gift of being able to document the events that have gone on.

And now we’re back in the house, with Tony and the professor calling to Deb, who’s sitting around and doing some smoking, and saying she’s going to finish Jason’s movie.

Then it’s the next day, and the professor does a whole thing about how he doesn’t like mornings and mirrors, and how they both terrify old men.

Oookay.

And then we get all the closed-circuit camera footage. Zombies are walking towards the house. Zombies are coming out of the pool. The Eliot zombie is coming out of the bathroom.

Deb tells the professor to close the door of the panic room. He does.

Deb cuts to some footage that Jason downloaded, of two dudes with guns who tied some dead people to trees and had target practice.

As the movie comes to a close, we see a dead woman hanging in the air, tied to a tree by her hair. One of the guys shoots her in the face, so her body drops away just below the mouth line, while the eyes keep looking around.

Deb says, “Are we worth saving? You tell me.”

Annnd… credits! Complete with chick-sung alterna-song.

But the Third One Was Great: FAQ the First

Q: Why don’t you like horror movies?

A: I do like them. I like them a lot. I don’t think I could do this if I didn’t like them, unless there was a lot of money in it.

Q: Then why do you make fun of these movies?

A: I would argue that I don’t make fun of the movies – I’m just noting the logic flaws, missed continuity, bad storytelling choices, and questionable acting.

In a way, I view what I’m putting down here as a “What not to do” checklist. Follow it, and the next time you go to make a horror movie, you’ll avoid some of the pitfalls.

Alternately, when something goes right, I also love to revel in it.

Q: So what’s this FAQ for?

A: I’ve had a few questioned addressed to me directly, and a LOT of Google searches that have come up over and over again. So I thought I’d help my readers out.

Q: What happened to Judy at the end of “Sleepaway Camp?”

A: Judy got a hot curling iron in a place where no curling iron should go in a lady.

Q: Did that kill Judy?

A: Interesting question (you’re going to see that a lot), and the answer is, “Depends on who you ask.”

As far as the film is concerned, probably. But we never see Judy acting all deceased once she’s “dead,” and she’s never carted away in an ambulance, since the movie ends once we learn who the killer is.

However…

After “Camp” 1, 2, and 3 came out, a fourth film was in the works. Parts of it were shot, but the money ran out and the film was never completed. The footage was released only in a special box set put out by Anchor Bay. The story goes that, at the end of the film, we would learn that Judy was the murderer – she was driven mad by her disfigurement by curling iron. Or something equally disturbing.

Of course, eventually, there WAS a fourth camp movie – which ignored 2, 3, and the unfinished 4 totally.

But wait! There’s more! A script also exists for a “fourth” camp movie that follows parts 2 and 3, and at some point there are plans to release a “Camp” movie that follows the storyline of “Return to Sleepaway Camp.”

So, to reiterate – Judy is probably dead, but any one of a number of “Sleepaway” projects could bring her back at any moment.

Q: Who’s the guy in the silver-toed boots/black hat in “Halloween 5?”

A: Depends on who you ask. (See, I told you that you’d see this answer a lot.)

According to the people who starred in “5,” the person had no name, and he entered the “Halloween” mythos with no definite plan of action for how he fit into the story of Michael Myers in the future.

Since part six was written by another person, we have to assume that we’ll never know the so-called “true” story of just who that guy really was.

Or, if you follow the story of part six, Silver Toes is Wynn, Loomis’ friend – the guy who ran the asylum Michael lived in for roughly 15 years.

Q: What’s the deal with the Cult of the Thorn in Halloween 5 and/or 6?

A: As far as part five goes, your guess is as good as anyone’s.

As far as part six goes, the cult wanted to control Michael, so that things could do back to the way they were in the old days, with evil, and child slaughter, and stuff. No, it doesn’t make even a tiny bit of sense.

Q: Is Loomis dead at the end of “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers?”

A: Depends who you ask. (Man, I love that answer.) Oh, and also which cut of the movie you watch.

Assuming we’re talking about the theatrical release, the answer is… uh… there’s no way to tell. Loomis goes back to find Michael, but in the end, we only see Michael’s mask, and we certainly don’t see Loomis being killed by Michael. Though we do get some screeming.

The writer of the movie, in interviews, has said that Loomis is dead. Of course, Loomis was also dead at the end of parts five and two, depending on who you ask. And “H20” ignores all the movies that aren’t part 1 and part 2 – and Loomis is dead for sure in “H20.”

But the mystery deepens, as hardcore fans of the “Halloween” series have also gotten their hands on a “Producer’s Cut” of “Curse,” in which Loomis lives. So there you go.

Q: Why are you so mean to Jennifer Tilly when talking about the “Child’s Play” movies?

A: I don’t have any problems with Tilly. I think she’s a good actress who looks a certain way, and sounds a certain way, and subsequently always ends up in certain kinds of roles.

Tilly, who I’m positive is not an idiot, is well aware of this, and has turned it into a lucrative career. To this I say, good for her.

My “complaint” with Tilly, if it has anything to do with her at all, is how she’s parodied in “Seed of Chucky.” “Seed” has a lot of problems – it’s barely a horror movie at all, for starters. It’s a camp take on dramas, and something of a satire of the Hollywood system. The problem is, it goes for every single painfully obvious joke, from Glen(da) wetting his/her pants, to the whole, tee-hee, Tilly is trying to get a job as the Virgin Mary by sleeping with the director gag.

It’s about as funny as a series of knock-knock jokes.

Q: Seriously, what’s the deal with the “Phantasm” movies? Those recaps made no sense at all.

A: By the creator’s own admission, he’s kind of making it up as he goes along.

In short: The Tall Man is a being from another dimension. He’s come to our world to take corpses, which he shrinks down so they can handle the gravity in his dimension. He also takes the brains out of the corpses, and uses them to operate those killer balls he’s got.

Michael is the first person to discover the evil Tall Man. His brother Jody is killed and captured by The Tall Man, and may or may not be working with him.

Reggie was Jody’s best friend, and he and Michael are on a cross-country journey to stop The Tall Man. Oh, and Reggie sells, or used to sell, ice cream, and carries his uniform with him throughout the whole series.

Over the course of four movies, The Tall Man wipes out various cities to add members to his dwarven army.

There are other details, but if you want to try to make sense of them, you’re on your own.

Q: Why didn’t/don’t you cover “Day of the Dead 2: Contagium”

A: Hoo boy.

Let’s talk about the “Dead” movies for a minute, shall we?

I’m pretty sure someone out there can prove me wrong, but I suspect that “Night of the Living Dead” might have more sequels, remakes, and spinoffs than any other film in history.

To date, the movie has been remade twice. “Dawn” and “Day” have also both been remade, but not, I repeat, NOT as sequels to the original “Night.” The second version of both “Dawn” and “Day” don’t acknowledge the original “Night,” and they also are NOT sequels to either of the “Night” remakes.

In fact, the new “Day” isn’t even a sequel to the new “Dawn.” It stands all by itself.

As for “Day of the Dead 2,” it’s billed as a sequel to “Day of the Dead.” But it isn’t one. It has nothing to do with the original. It has different zombie origins, a different backstory, and uses none of the characters found in “Day of the Dead.”

It’s just a rip-off title meant to make the filmmakers some more money.

But wait! That’s not the first time that happened. The original “Dawn” was re-titled as “Zombi” when the movie went overseas. And someone released a movie called “Zombi 2.” Only here in the states, it was just called “Zombi.”

And then? Oh, man. Then there were sequels to the “Zombi” movie as well – they got up to part five.

But wait! I’m not done yet! You know what happened? It turns out that John Russo, who co-wrote the original “Night,” felt like making his own set of sequels. So produced “Return of the Living Dead,” which is a more-or-less direct sequel to “Night.” That movie was also followed by four sequels that bear the “Return” moniker.

Even Romero got in on the action, bringing the “Dead” movies to a close with “Land,” then re-launching the series with “Diary of the Dead,” which takes place at the start of the zombie uprising. He followed this up with a movie that was originally called “Diary of the Dead 2,” though the name has since been changed.

All told, there are 20 movies that exist because of the original “Night.” That thing made more babies than 12 inches of snow in Wisconsin.

Q: Why haven’t you covered X series yet?

A: Two common answers: 1. I’m getting to it eventually, hold your horses. 2. It’s just way too hard to track down all the parts and pieces.

I mean, there are three “The Stepfather” movies. How many of them are on DVD? One. And there are also a ton of “The Howling” movies, some of which are on DVD, and some of which aren’t.

I may be able to locate them all eventually, but it’s going to take some time.

However, if you have a favorite series, note it in the comments and I’ll try to get to it eventually.

Q: How do you choose which version of a movie to watch, what with all the director’s cuts, producer’s cuts, etc.?

A: Generally, I try to locate the most common cut, unless I think there’s something of value in watching an extended or otherwise “corrected” version of a film.

In most cases, I try to watch the “cannon” version – the movie that people who wrote the part III, IV and V would have had on hand when putting together their final product. This is why, even though the director’s cut of “Army of Darkness” is widely available, I wrote up the original version – because THAT’S the version any subsequent movies will follow.

To some extent, I suspect writing up every version of a movie could drive you insane. “Exorcist II,” for example, at one point had several minutes cut out of it – all of which were restored for the DVD. Trying to track down a cut version, just to see what all wasn’t there, probably wasn’t going to do anyone any favors.

By contrast, I did watch the extended version of “The Exorcist,” because the writer of that movie felt there were some important moments at the end of the film left on the cutting room floor – stuff that was important in “Exorcist III.” Of course, “III” came out before the extended version of “I” ever did.