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Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2
[Anchor Bay]
1987; color
Directed by Lee Harry
Starring: Eric Freeman, James Newman, Elizabeth Kaitan & Jean Miller
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Seeing as the door was left wide open for a sequel at the end of the original, it should come as a surprise to no one that Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 followed two years later. (And, as tradition almost always holds, it should also come as no surprise that this movie actually makes the original look… well, not good, but better by comparison.) This time the action centers on Ricky, Billy's younger brother, who is apparently equally as crazed and bloodthirsty when the right buttons get pushed. The first half of the movie is essentially told in flashback via an institutionalized Ricky being interviewed by a shrink, starting with the tale of his brother's woe, which we conveniently see in the form of at least a half-hour of footage from the first movie (i.e., all the killing scenes). We also learn that the orphanage was shut down after the incident with his brother and Ricky was placed in a foster home where there was a relative guarantee of no X-Mas celebration—the home of The Rosenbergs. (They never actually say they're Jewish, it's just implied by the name.) Ricky begins to have a normal life but one day when he's a young teenager wandering around the park, he spies a couple having a picnic. When the guy puts the moves on the girl and she refuses, he slaps her around, which causes Ricky to have flashbacks of his parents' death—nevermind that it's Billy's memory from the first movie. (Ricky was an infant when his folks were killed.) Anyhow, that leads to Ricky running the guy over with his own jeep. But instead of also killing the girl, as Billy would have done, she says thank you and he lets her live. Soon after we see adult Ricky, at age 18, out on his own with his first girlfriend. He's head over heels in love and everything seems to be going swell until one fateful day when he and his girl go to the movies. First off all, there's an obnoxious guy in the back ruining their date with heckling and buffoonery; then he finds out the story in the movie is about a killer Santa. You can pretty much see the switch in his head flip to "kill". (And although it's not really shown, it's implied he then kills—or at least beats the crap out of—the heckler.) The next day he and his girlfriend are walking down the street when they're confronted by her ex-boyfriend, who's working on his car. After he proves himself to be a dick by insulting both Ricky and the girl, Ricky takes his revenge by attaching a battery charger to his tongue. This freaks out the girl, who ends up with a car antenna for a noose. Just as he finishes her off, a cop conveniently pulls up and tries to arrest him, which results in a bullet in the cop's forehead and Ricky wandering the street mowing down random citizens. We assume he was then caught, and that's how he ended up in the mental facility. As the interview switches back to present day, which just so happens to be Christmas Eve, the reel of tape runs out on the recorder and we see a very dead doctor lying on the desk along with an open door, implying Ricky has escaped the facility. (Which, of course, he has). Soon enough, Ricky's got a Santa suit on and is leaving a trail of bodies in his wake as he makes his way toward the home of the now-retired Mother Superior. After a ridiculous chase in the house, where a healthy and agile Ricky has trouble catching up with the wheelchair-bound nun, he finally finishes the job his brother started and kills her. After the friendly nun from the first movie finds the Mother's body and the cops close in, Ricky tries to kill the nun and the cop, and ends up shot multiple times. Which I guess left the door open for Silent Night Deadly Night 3… and 4… and 5…
—the Kommandant
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