Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

With Eric Freeman’s infamous (much beloved by those who can’t get enough of his smug, sneering pugnacious, antagonistic, profane character; many think he is a riot) histrionics (the doc who interviews him to determine if he’s worth saving from state execution, willing to stay in the same cell with him without security when all signs lead to Freeman’s Ricky violently attacking him sooner or later, is an idiotic nincompoop) and the shitload of footage from the first film give Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 its notoriety.

I think the film is obviously insincere and intentionally/purposely delivered with a heavy hand and lack of restraint. There’s no other reason for that Freeman performance and his character’s antics. Whether shooting/executing random people for the hell of it down a suburban street or chasing a disfigured old nun in a wheelchair with an ax, Freeman never lets up his mugging for the camera and delivering lines as menacing as he can (in trying to convey menace, he instead tickles the funnybone).

When he speaks as if to gain sympathy, those momentary times when he discusses his sad, sad past, it is too funny because of how lacking he is in emotional resonance. When he scowls or gives out those sour expressions (he even goes cross-eyed while strangling Elizabeth Cayton with a car antennae!), and especially when he goes apeshit in suburbia laughing maniacally, a sense of disbelief, along with kicks and giggles result. If you were on that street this particular day, just taking out the trash or about to wash the car, and Ricky caught you in his sights, a bullet had your name on it.

My favorite moment in the entire film—right out of Loony Tunes—has Elizabeth Cayton actually saying “Gulp” when she goes on and on about hating Ricky for killing her rotten-ass former boyfriend, Chip (with blond hair that looked colored to me), causing him to snap. She literally has that look of “Oh, crap!” on her face. It is priceless.

While the violence in the film could be easily seen as repulsively offensive (he does shoot innocent people for no reason whatsoever and laughs aloud about it and causes bolts from jumper cables to electrocute Chip until his sunglasses explode(!)), it is presented as so cartoonish I think many viewers will just drop their heads in their laps and just go with it. Its the mere audacity that ran all through the first film that fuels the violence of this sequel.

In a flashback, Ricky is a “bit younger” (the actor looks the same age and absolutely, positively nothing like Freeman), sees this prick attempt to rape/molest his unwilling girlfriend (he rips open her blouse and is dissuaded against trying anything else when she gives him a nice punch for his trouble), and runs the guy over multiple times with a jeep. My favorite kill—I was just in stitches—is when the sadistic muscle of a bookie (smacking around a guy owing his boss money) is lifted off his feet by Ricky in an alley, an umbrella plunged through him and actually opening! I couldn’t stop laughing; with Freeman’s added stupid expression just made it all the more worthwhile.

The meat and potatoes I know you are dying to read..right? Ricky is pissed that he has to release his past history to yet another quack, this time a rather annoyed, and continuingly/increasingly nervous Dr. Henry Bloom (James Newman; who gets so worked up and tense he starts to sweat), actually admitting murders he committed besides the suburban massacre. He also exhaustively goes over his past (about 75% of the first film) about Billy to the doc, often spewing his venom at the guy who is there to help him. Eventually strangling the doc with audio cassette tape, Ricky somehow escapes and heads directly for the home of crippled, boil-faced Mother Superior so he can get some revenge for his dead brother’s mistreatment and demise.

I did notice that director Lee Tracy loves shooting Freeman from his back, having him turn his sour puss around to send off his odorous look to the doc. I did find it amusing how the doc looks so confident and not the least bit intimidated as if he gave himself a speech, prepping for this new patient, only to, after each additional flashback from the original, looking more and more perturbed, acknowledging to us that Ricky is beyond his psychiatric help.

I can’t really say the director’s totally at fault for this, well, movie, but he’s not helped by his star. Or maybe he is? Freeman’s work here has given the film a lasting reputation; even if the film is considered terrible (and I can’t really dispute this, to tell you the truth), and all the past footage from the previous film included to pad out this doesn’t help matters at all, Freeman’s “Garbage Day!” catchphrase alone keeps Silent Night Deadly Night 2 on the minds of fans of rancid cinema instead of just invisible and forgotten. Sometimes bad performances can actually contribute to a film’s remaining on the lips of horror/slasher fans. If this is the case, Freeman delivers in spades because he should be the cover guy for “I’m going to talk as loud as possible and make mean expressions so I can convince you I’m really bad”.

I admit that I am one of those who just skip through the bits (well, more like chunks) of flashback footage and just get to Eric Freeman and James Newman scenes and the sequences that aren’t part of the original film. I will be watching the first film later in the month and just didn’t see any point in wasting my time watching those very scenes here.

Plus, the whole revenge of Mother Superior falls flat because the actress who portrayed her in the first film (Lilyan Chauvin) isn’t her in the sequel. While I would have loved to see Chauvin get her head taken off with an ax by Freeman, Nadya Wynd wheelchairing herself throughout a house as Freeman evokes his spin-the-mustachio villain laugh while destroying whatever is in his way doesn’t quite have the same impact it could have. I have some definite things to say about Chauvin when I get to the first film, for sure. What a cipher she was.

Elizabeth Kaitan was certainly a sight for sore eyes considering a large part of the film pokes the camera right in Freeman’s face. Ever notice how Freeman loves to use his whole face when expressing himself, especially his eyebrows? I think Lee Harry couldn’t resist a little of The Shining having Freeman take an ax to the door, looking through a hole and demonically forewarning Mother Superior that he was coming for her. It is a good piece of comedy (even if it wasn’t intentional, although I think his whole performance was meant as nutty comedy; the material is there to go haywire performance-wise), and such hamming it up seems to fit the goofy nature of the sick-in-the-head shenanigans caused by Ricky. 

I’m really a sucker for a smile that just lights up the screen; you add that rockin’ figure to her and Kaitan is exactly what is needed at the time she shows up. I laugh my ass off at how the film introduces her: her car bops the back tire of Freeman’s motorcycle and topples over, looking up with a building rage that simmers down once he gives her the once over. It is easy to see why she almost stole his heart; key word is almost. 

Naughty

Gulp.

Garbage Day!!!!!

This film uses the color red, symbolizing Santa because a sicko wearing the costume slit his mother’s throat upon ripping open her shirt--this after killing his father in cold blood--as the device that often presses Ricky’s psychopathic trigger. The sight of nuns also leaves Ricky in an uncomfortable state of mind, propelling him back to the way Billy was treated like crap in the orphanage, so these issues are rich and fertile within the unstable mind of Ricky.

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Freeman emotes

What I have always found interesting is how the haunting score from Michael Armstrong (during the opening of the film and closing credits) clashes with the film it represents. It wraps a melancholy around the film, and opposes the mood that seems prevalent throughout Silent Night, Deadly Night 2. With what the director and his crew were stuck with, budget and lack of desire from producers to allow him/them to make his/their own 88 minute movie instead of 10 days of shooting to get in thirty minutes of original footage to compensate for an hour from the first film, what we get here is a by product of zero incentive and practically no initiative to create anything that might be an addition to-- instead just a cash-in of--Silent Night, Deadly Night. Despite all of this, I remember my brother and sister actually renting the sequel; I had actually watched some of this on VHS, and wasn't the least bit impressed. A few years ago I had rented the Anchor Bay double feature from netflix before it went to OOP because of copyright problems, and the feelings I had as a kid still remained. But over the last couple years, this pile of shit has grown on me due to its dopey badness.