Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is a 1987 horror film, and the first of four sequels to 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Plot
Ricky Caldwell, the younger brother of the "Santa Claus Killer", Billy Chapman, is awaiting trial for multiple murders. His court-appointed psychologist, Dr. Bloom, interview him to try and understand his past, leading to Ricky recounting both his brother's and his own murderous past.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The first 40 minutes of the film are just recycled and re-edited footage from the first film. In addition, the way they re-edit the footage creates numerous plotholes, such as a man the police accidentally kill after mistaking him for Billy being turned from a priest into a janitor, and the implication that Mother Superior was insane enough to think that Billy would like working as a store Santa after his parents were killed by a guy dressed as Santa (in the first film Mother Superior just got him a job at a store, and the manager, who was ignorant of his past, made him dress up as Santa after the guy they originally hired to play him showed up too drunk to work).
 * 2) Terrible acting throughout, especially from Eric Freeman. Freeman himself later said that he tried to play Ricky as being much colder, but the director kept telling him to ham it up as much as possible.
 * 3) There's no indication as to why Ricky turns into a serial killer. Whereas Billy witnessed the deaths of his parents and eventually snapped after years of mistreatment at the hands of Mother Superior and his employers, Ricky was too young to remember his parents' death, and after being adopted he lived a comfortable middle-class life for years before he started killing people.
 * 4) Ricky's motives for killing people suddenly go out the window halfway through the new footage. At first he kills people who commit crimes (i.e. a rapist and a loan shark), but eventually, he just starts killing people for the fun of it.
 * 5) The kills (aside from Chip's death) are all bloodless and heavily censored. In fairness, the theatrical version was apparently gorier judging by the trailers, but all the home video releases have major cuts to the kills, and the original footage seems to have been lost.
 * 6) In addition to the actual footage recycling, several scenes are ripped off from the first film, including Ricky committing his first kill after witnessing an attempted rape, as his brother did.
 * 7) At one point, Ricky and his girlfriend go to see a film, which turns out to be the original Silent Night, Deadly Night. How on earth does that even work?!
 * 8) Dr. Bloom decides that it's a good idea to interview a musclebound spree killer unrestrained and in an unlocked room. Not surprisingly, this leads to not only his own death, but that of a bunch of orderlies, a charity collector who Ricky kills for his Santa suit, and Mother Superior.
 * 9) The last three kills, two of whom are major characters, all occur off-screen. In fact, the last death that we actually see on-screen is the infamous "Garbage Day" kill, which happens with around twenty minutes of the movie left to go.
 * 10) They try to hide their recasting of Mother Superior by saying that she suffered a stroke that somehow scarred one half of her face, caused the other half to completely change appearance, and changed her accent from French to American.
 * 11) Silly climax, with Ricky, somehow having major trouble killing a crippled woman in a wheelchair.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Eric Freeman gives such an absurdly over-the-top performance as Ricky that he single-handedly makes the film incredibly fun to watch in spite of its badness.
 * 2) A couple of inventive kills.
 * 3) The new music they put over the recycled scenes is at least an improvement on the extremely obnoxious music from the first film.
 * 4) Some nice self-awareness in the cinema scene, where the loudmouth ridicules a bunch of horror clichés.
 * 5) This led to legendary memetic scene "GARBAGE DAY!". Need we say more?

Film
F872Yvuad0M

Reviews
6hioJe26ih8 KZippQnYRQU