IT'S GARBAGE DAY!: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
Rating: **1/2
starring:  Eric Freeman, James Newman, Elizabeth Kaitan

I like to see this frantic follow-up to one of the most notorious slasher films made about Father Christmas as some sort of rite of passage for slasher fans. Like, you cannot simply call yourself a fan of the bodycount sub-genre until you sit through this thick chunk of yuletide horror cheddar. 



The plot follows Ricky Chapman, brother of the deranged killer in the Santa suit who terrorized Christmas one movie ago in Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), currently in an insane asylum for his own brand of misdeeds which we will get to a little later. First, he has to recall a detailed recap of his late brother's descent to madness to a bored-sounding psychiatrist, a task he unusually describe right in the nail even if he's not old enough to remember them or be around these gruesome moments. I mean he's barely a year old and he remembers how his ma and pa got killed off by Sick Nick that one fateful night! Not to mention remember how Billy killed off those store owners even if he's miles away from that area. I'm putting my money on his stepparents being blunt about it but, bleh. Rubber logic at its finest, mates.



So, for forty minutes, we're treated with a shortened and hammily-narrated version of the first film, featuring all of the messy kills and sleaze, chopped into little bits and plastered hastily together until the part where Billy met his demise from a gunning. By then, plot shifts to how Ricky fared after witnessing the death of his older brother; he's later got adopted by a Jewish couple (easy way out of Christmas!) and was fine until one day, after seeing two nuns walks by and suffering a "seizure", he recalls everything. The murder sprees. The nightmare orphanage. Santa being shot down. Everything. Thus, his psyche start breaking away once again. though it didn't flower into murderous psychopathy until much later when his stepdad passes away and he's old enough to have muscles. Muscles he would use to do away people who acts like assholes.



But things got more interesting - or complicated, depending on how you perceive it - when Ricky falls for a random blonde who somehow reciprocates his infatuation. Cheesy love-fest here and saxophone-soaked love scene there, we'll soon get a messy end as this crud doesn't last long. Shit goes down when the gal's butthole ex (who ruined her best sweater!) starts harassing them both, escalating into a murder spree and the now infamous "garbage day" line, before the cops corner him and he tries to commit suicide.



This all leads to the present once more, where we now see the psychiatrist dead from  strangulation and Ricky making his escape. He steals a Santa suit from some guy and is now making his way to end the one who started all of this: that bitch Mother Superior! (Who supposed to have suffered a stroke, thus her horribly warped face, but all I see is someone attempted an acid attack on her...)

While the first film's mean spirited approach to the Killer Santa trope got people cringing for moral upliftment, Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) pokes fun on exploitative narratives by cheesing it up in every angle, borderline parodying it. With it comes a rather lazy plot tackling trauma-centered psychopathy, only it's the late-80s and Freddy Kruger got hold of the audience with tongue-in-cheek humor so, in order for this sequel to survive those later years of corny neon, it's done in the most fun and brainless means possible.

The film is simply stupid, dumb, braindead, all three words meaning the same thing, but I got to say each as separate entities to deeply point out how terrible this movie is production-wise. And yet, I got to say the cheesiness of it all works for most parts, especially when it starts to water down into "so-bad-it's-good" territories. Yeah, it's unevenly paced given its use of flashback narrations and not a single character here acts like a real person, but it's laughable enough to forgive. If you got a shot for the weird and wonderfully terrible, then Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) may be your cup of tea. I would suggest not to take it seriously, as doing so might give your brain cancerous tumorous pus. Just switch off, learn to laugh like Ricky and have a merry, cheesy, deadly Christmas!

Bodycount:
1 male shot in head (flashback)
1 female has neck slit with switchblade (flashback)
1 male strangled with Christmas lights (flashback)
1 female killed with boxcutter (flashback)
1 male gets a hammer claw to the head (flashback)
1 female shot with an arrow shot through her back (flashback)
1 female impaled on deer antlers (flashback)
1 male thrown through a window, falls to his death (flashback)
1 male decapitated with an axe (flashback)

1 male repeatedly shot on the back (flashback)
1 male axed on the chest (flashback)
1 male shot repeatedly (flashback)
1 male dies, cause unknown
1 male repeatedly ran over with a car
1 male impaled with an umbrella
1 male disappears, presumably killed
1 male seen being killed, method unknown
1 male gets a jump-lead to the mouth, electrocuted until eye balls explode
1 female strangled with a car antennae
1 male shot on the head
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 driver immolated in exploding car
1 male strangled with tape
2 males killed off-camera, sounds heard

A number of orderlies were presumably killed off during escape. Screams heard.
1 male killed offscreen
1 female found decapitated

Total: 28+