31 Days of Horror: "Silent Night, Deadly Night 2"

by Sean McTiernan

Thus continues our Horror Movie A Day Throughout October project! Our coverage will move from the shoddy to the sublime.

You’ve probably seen parts of this movie. And it’s good that “Silent Night, Deadly Night” got at least some partial recognition. It was inevitable of course, the forces of nature wouldn’t let something like SNDN 2 fade into obscurity. And by forces of nature I’m talking about internet nerds.

Whether it be the top five quotes:

Or indeed, the infamous “Garbage day!” clip:

But I’m making the call now to go further. Those videos genuinely only starch the surface of this movie. In fact, it’s probably fair to say SNDN 2 is the In the Realms of the Unreal of schlocky 80s horror movies, waiting to be discovered afresh by every generation. And leading man Eric Freeman (currently residing in Parts Unknown) is its Henry Darger. (That analogy doesn’t hold up under scrutiny at all, let’s just move on and say we were all glad we got it, alright?)
The original “Silent Night Deadly Night: was pretty gonzo concept to begin with. A child, Billy, witnesses his parents get murdered brutally at the hands of someone dressed like Santa Claus, gets moved to an orphanage, the sisters put all sorts of puritanical rage inside of him and he eventually grows up to murder people while dressed as Santa Claus. Hey: talent imitates, genius steals.

Sadly though, you can’t stroll around in red felt shouting “Naughty!” at people before hacking them to pieces for too long before you attract some negative attention. Near the end of “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” Billy focuses his attention on killing Mother Superior, the nun who was the principal cause of his rage and bloodlust (his parents’ brutal murder was probably also a factor but I really hate nuns so let’s place all the blame squarely on Mother Superior). Just before he can get his revenge, he gets shot. But as he is dying, the camera pans up to reveal, through a music cue that owes little to subtlety, that maybe his brother might continue his work.

This was a pretty good slasher movie. The actual message (which is sort of anti-puritanism if you squint a bit) is pretty condemnable, the action is well shot and grotesque and it caused a storm of controversy. That’ll happen when you re-release a movie on Christmas Eve that features Santa interrupting a couple in flagrante delicto so he can strangle the man with fairy lights. Especially when said movie also features a topless woman impaled on a mounted elk’s horns. This storm of controversy helped the movie turned a profit. So naturally a sequel had to follow.

The studio weren’t willing to spend a lot of money though. In fact, initially they presented director Lee Harry and Joesph Earl with the original footage and demanded they cut a sequel out of it. Having a passing familiar with reason and logic Harry and Earl (both also members of the First Names As Last Names Club) demanded they be allowed to shoot new footage. So, on a shoestring, they managed to build out a copious amount of footage from the first “Silent Night Deadly Night” and some stuff they shot themselves on the cheap. The premise of the sequel is what’d you expect from the end of the first, the little brother grows up and decides to don the fur-lined hat and Get Real On Christmas. The execution (I know, I know) though, is what makes this move something,

The film takes place mostly in an office where Ricky, brother of Billy, is being given a psychiatric evaluation. Luckily for the film makers, Ricky remembers huge chunks of Billy’s life in great detail. Even bits where he was 6 months old or not around. This lets them use 45 minutes of footage from the original movie again, now with Ricky’s stentorian narration (which we’ll get to in a second). I would imagine at the time this would’ve been soul destroying for SNDN fans, to rush to a sequel only to see half of the last movie again. Now though, in a world where not everyone has seen SNDN (I know, unthinkable), the opposite is true. What you get is a lean 45 minute cut of the original, trimmed of any filler and messing around. It’s actually quite artfully cut down, the kills had to be made less gore cause of the higher body count, and I think a lot of slasher movies would benefit from the 45 minute cut.

But this streamlined version of the original is not the only thing this movie brings to the table. Not by a long shot. What the film makers decided to do was take the surprisingly grimy approach of the first SNDN and turn it on its head, making the sequel (well, the 45 minutes of new footage) more akin to an episode of Animaniacs than its predecessor. Well, an episode of Animaniacs where everyone who does pretty much anything gets brutally murdered by a bug-eyed jock shouting the word “punish!” I’m also not sure if Animaniacs featured a man getting an umbrella opened inside him. There’s definitely an episode where someone shoots a car twice and it explodes though. Still I should probably rethink this whole Animaniacs comparison.

Sometimes if someone is terrible in a movie you wonder if they might need a bit more training before they should have ventured on screen. With Eric Freeman, star of SNDN2, you wonder if he’s actually seen a movie before or is aware in any real way of what acting is. I’m not saying he’s bad. That would be missing the point. This is actually where the outsider art Darger comparison above kind of comes into play. It’s not that his performance is terrible, it’s that it’s impossible to identify where he got the idea he should be doing the things he choose to do. He bugs his eyes out. He contorts his voice into a playground-badass growl, even for normal conversations. When trying to be threatening, he sounds like a high sarcastic person. His facial expression is always somewhere between inquisitive, scolded-child and crazy eyes killer. Sometimes he just laughs to himself: a lot. You know every movie where an alien comes to earth, wears human skin and ends up doing that hammy, staring-like-a-confused-dog, act? Well this beats them all and this dude wasn’t even trying.

Eric Freeman even manages to wear sweaters aggressively, something which I still haven’t fully figured out. In fact Eric gives such a compelling and illogical performance that you don’t even notice he doesn’t don the Santa suit till the last 10 minutes of the movie. By then you’re probably under the impression it’s impossible to kick the insanity up a notch. But don’t worry: Eric Freeman got your back, kid.

Eric was never in another major (or minor) movie roll, his wikipedia lists some minor tv credits but he seems to have all but disappeared. This is why SNDN 2 is so important. It’s the lone artifact left by a man whose approach to shlock film acting is both impossible to explain and oddly compelling.

So there you have it, a streamlined slasher and the sole performance of a man possessed. Two great reasons to watch “Silent Night Deadly Night 2.” There’s more here than 60 seconds of a viral video: this is a movie (well, two movies) worth watching in full.

PUNISH!

Sean Mc Tiernan is 21, his favorite rapper is E40 and he wants to assure you he does sometimes go outside. He has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum.You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.