Regardless, the film in question this week is Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, the sequel to one of the most shameless, crass, and comedically sadistic movies ever made. It's, as I've mentioned before, a masterclass in trashy filmmaking.
However, the sequel is something of a minor classic. And there's really only one reason why: the first half of the film is simply Ricky (the protagonist) recounting the events of the first film to a psychiatrist. This boils down to liberally re-using footage from the first one. Thus, if you have seen the previous film, the first 35 to 40 minutes of the sequel are going to be kind of pointless. The good side to this, however, is that it essentially acts as a "best-of" medley of scenes from the first one. The ridiculous Mother Superior child abuse moments. The kills. The sheer insanity of it all.
In fact, I would say the only real moment missing from the footage is the scene where Billy (Ricky's brother, and the killer from the first film) gives a little girl an Exact-o knife after she claims to have been good all year. I mean, it doesn't make sense that Ricky would have known about that since he wasn't there, but he tells the psychiatrist plenty of things about the events of the first film where nobody but Billy was present, so logic and continuity went out the window the same moment common decency and pride did for the producers.
Once Ricky is done telling the shrink his story (and thus saving the producers a TON of money by only needing to make half a movie) we learn about Ricky's past encounters. Whereas Billy was simply a lunatic who killed "naughty" people on Christmas Eve, Ricky was somewhat of a superhero avenger type. He really only killed people who were harming others; an attempted rapist, a loan shark, and worst of all, a guy who talks in the movie theater. *Shudder.* You know, pure scum.
Oh yeah, and speaking of the movie theater. Guess which movie Ricky and his girlfriend are watching when the rude guy decides to start talking? Silent Night, Deadly Night. What?! Was this ghost-written by Charlie Kaufman? Again, in this dojo, all logic and coherence go out of the window. But you know what? That just contributes to the fascinating weirdness on display.
Another one of the many thing that adds to the overall bizarre nature of the universe in the Silent Night, Deadly Night films is that virtually all of the male characters are rapists. Or at the very least, driven by some strange hyper-sexual urge. I'm not trying to psycho-analyze these characters, but honestly, every single male character is either trying to have sex, trying to rape someone, or motivated by sex. Even Billy's character is implied to be suffering some sort of psycho-sexual issues. I don't know if that is simply the producers attempting to make some kind of point (most likely not) or, since these are very low-budget affairs, the producers are the usual type of grubby, creepy perverts that we think of when we picture porn producers.
Aside from all of that, is the film actually worth watching? Well, it is certainly not as good as the first one (good is relative here). However, it does provide a lot of entertainment value once you get past the clip-show of the first half. I mean, this is the movie that spawned the great "Garbage Day!" meme. I'd say use the first film as a litmus test. If you find yourself laughing hysterically when a deaf guy dressed as Santa is gunned down in front of a whole playground full of orphans, then I guarantee the sequel will be worth it. If you just read that previous sentence and wondered why anybody in their right mind would ever find something so twisted so funny, then you're probably at the wrong site.
For the uninitiated:
No comments:
Post a Comment