Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker

You know, as I was watching The Toy Maker it came to me that I think the problem with the movie isn’t its quality as much as its alignment with the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise. The first two films are built simply to shock and repulse while the third and forth go in directions that pull away from the formula of a maniac in a Santa costume (Bill Moseley is a walking catatonic killer with a bowl protecting his brain, only his name, Rick, having really any connection to the other two films) doing in folks on Christmas Eve. Part 5 has no connection to any of the previous films (Part 4 has very little to do with the others as well) and shouldn’t technically be called a Silent Night, Deadly Night film at all. It seems to use the moniker merely as a means to cash in on the notoriety, nothing else. For that reason, I think going into this fifth film many SNDN fans will be sorely underwhelmed and disappointed. As for me, I rather like this moderately entertaining little movie, although it is no great shakes. 

**½

Mickey Rooney may be the film’s main curiosity and it is one of those scene-devouring types of performances where he poses as a jolly old man to the mothers and kiddies then turns foul and nasty once enough of the Jack gets him good and liquored up. If Pino acts up (like entering Sarah’s home without their knowledge as to get his jollies or trying to force a mechanical killer larvae into the arms of Derek, hoping the kid bites the big one through one big bite from the worm; more on Sarah and Derek in a moment), it sends Rooney’s Joe Petto into a rage. Seeing Rooney in a rage, if I were the director I would have held my breath for the moment in fear that he’d be clutching his chest about to keel over.

A play on Pinocchio—the twist is obvious nowadays—The Toy Maker, considered Part 5 of the SNDN franchise, has a weird “son” of a rather easily enraged toy designer and salesman (his store not doing so well because “new age toys” are what the kids want) infatuated with the mother of a young boy he is jealous of.  Pino Petto (Brian Bremer) tries to give the kid “dangerous toys” as to get rid of little Derek (William Thorne) so *he* can have mommy Sarah (Jane Higginson) all to *himself*. It always backfires. An enigmatic stranger, Noah (Tracy Fraim), hangs around the Quinns’ home; there’s a definite reason why, too. Along with Pino’s secret, SNDN 5 has one more twist up its sleeve, that regarding the reason Noah is so interested in Derek.

This movie has several scenes that are very familiar to us horror fans who have seen our share of slashers and thrillers and gialli. There’s the parking garage scene where Sarah is leaving from her office job (at Live, the company that released this movie on video, nice plug director Kitrosser) and believes someone’s watching her, racing to the car, losing the key, chased by a man, which ends quite interestingly. There’s the babysitter waiting till the child she’s watching goes to sleep so she can fool around with her jerk boyfriend. There’s the kid who swears, takes a gift from the garbage meant for Derek, opens it finding a pair of roller skates that are rigged mechanically to speed uncontrollably towards doom. The film even has the traumatized kid rendered mute after seeing a toy wrap its arms around his father’s head causing daddy to fall on a fireplace poker. Oh, and the guy in the tidy whities who has trouble getting the babysitter’s bra unloosened is named Buck.

I personally have a serious problem with Rooney’s involvement with this franchise after his harsh comments towards the first film. Here he shows up in a Santa outfit to drop off toys to Derek’s house that wind up slaughtering babysitter and her beau, Buck, “sacks” Derek, and is later established by Noah to Sarah as having a criminal past involving using weaponized toys to harm children because his pregnant wife was killed in a car accident (a putrid excuse for his character to slip into psychosis, in my mind). His dressing like Santa does somewhat allow The Toymaker access to the SNDN title, and the script providing (however flimsy) a reason for Rooney’s mania might be enough for some fans of the first two or three films (mainly the first film) to embrace this “sequel” as well. Rooney trashing the first film, only to show up (money does funny things, doesn't it?) in the fifth with the title "Silent Night, Deadly Night", deserves to be trashed as well. Despite that, he's in the film longer than you might think, and at least we get to see him engaged in a fight with his *son* which results in Pino taking a fall down a flight of basement steps. It is kind of sad that Rooney's career had sunk so low he'd even agree to star in a fifth SNDN film, even though he hated the first film.

I gotta be honest, though, in saying I’m not sure anything particularly noteworthy besides Rooney’s involvement will be lasting once this film is over. No stylish flourishes stand out; there’s not a lot of suspense; the violence is at times gory but the graphic violence derives from toys firing bullets and pellets at humans and the really vicious wheeled-toy, two spinning saws, as it goes towards a victim, isn’t shown doing any visceral damage. The cast is decent, Higginson doing the “concerned mommy” bit, her former flame, Fraim, convincing as a determined ex-Army soldier hoping to rekindle their former romance and make amends for leaving her (while also hoping to be a part of his son’s life), while Bremer is perfectly weird and creepy as the faux son Rooney tried to substitute for the one he never had. 

Some may consider the toys the stars, how they shoot to kill, with Pino going berserk at the end after a screwdriver is embedded in his skull maybe another oddball highlight. Pino dry-humping Sarah, telling her how he wants her to love him, is certainly one of the more perverse moments of the film. There’s even a scene where Sarah gazes down at Pino’s crotch trying to adjust to the idea that she’s looking at a mechanized young man created from the dedication and genius of Petto, badly wanting a son he’d use his skills to make one. There’s really not enough of this warped subject matter overall that will probably appeal to the kind of audience yearning for darker themes like a maniac in a Santa suit hurling axes at half-naked babysitters or a dysfunctional psycho shooting people in suburbia just for kicks. I would recommend it if just because it goes in a unique direction and doesn’t abide by the typical slasher genre rules associated with the first two films (although the third film does sort of operate as a slasher). I think there’s worse ways to waste 85 minutes…