Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 Goes Where Dreams Go

In 1984, Tri-Star Pictures unleashed a slasher film about a man who is triggered into committing a murder spree on Christmas Eve. Silent Night, Deadly Night is about as delicate as its title and premise make it seem. Taking a reckless psychological look at the way violence imprints itself on children, and how religious austerity incubates it into young adulthood, the film drives a heavy axe into the face of America’s most beloved holiday. Ever the beacon of morality for the rest of the world, righteous citizens all over the country took poverty, racism, homophobia, and environmental collapse in stride to ban a killer santa movie from playing in their town.

The controversy surrounding the film is a Katamari ball of sociological intrigue. Pulling in religious fundamentalism and moral panic surrounding horror films the world over (most notably in the UK with the “video nasties” list), the film faced protests to which Tri-Star relented and ended up pulling the film from further distribution. Despite a tamer second cut, free-speech patriots got their way. Suddenly, the film carried a stank with it akin to that of a mortal sin. It wasn’t just the average red-blooded American who cried foul at this holiday injustice, however. Renowned critics bravely put their foot down against the film, with Gene Siskel going so far as to call out the production company on TV. “The showing of Santa with an axe…is sick and sleazy and mean-spirited,” Siskel said. And once the film was yanked (after out-grossing A Nightmare On Elm Street in its first 10 days), the country was free to carry on under the regime of its famously non-problematic leader, Ronald Reagan.

SIlent Night, Deadly Night spawned four sequels, though only two would be continuations of the initial storyline. Part two follows Ricky Chapman, brother of previous killer Billy Chapman, on a downward spiral of depravity after succumbing to the same trauma as his sibling. This film hinges on the viewer being totally checked out while watching the first one, given that the majority of it is a clip-show. Though once it settles into its own rhythm, the infamous sequel assumes an identity of high quality garbaggio that makes its predecessor look like a work of genuine subtlety. It is mainly remembered for this scene. By this point, the series’ formula was cemented. Guy is set off by a deep-seated hatred of Christmas, dons a Santa suit, kills some folks: meat and potatoes.

In a pleasantly surprising turn of events, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! ups the ante by factoring a blind clairvoyant woman into the equation. Curiously, the film that the first Silent Night, Deadly Night ate at the box-office makes an impression here. It opens with an effectively haunting nightmare sequence which sees Ricky (Bill Moseley) manipulate the space around Laura Anderson. He stalks her around corridors, which are shot in disorienting bright lights. Barring the specifics of the setting, this scene plays much like it would if Laura were being terrorized by Freddy Krueger, who at the time was busy trying to force his spawn into the waking realm.

Directed by American New Wave maverick Monte Hellman, this third sequel observes the institutional nihilism of the originals in a new setting. The primary villain this time is the eccentric Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer), with Ricky taking a backseat as his comatose patient whose blood lust is reignited by a hospital visitor dressed as Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick. The film pits Laura against Ricky after the two make a psychic connection under Dr. Newbury’s care. Following that sequence, we learn that Laura is able to process fragments of Ricky’s memory as her own. These memories include segments of the first film, which are incorporated more thoughtfully than in part two’s clip show extravaganza.

The tethering between Ricky and Laura grants her a second sight. She is able to foresee future events to a horrifying degree, and this makes her an unwitting pawn in Dr. Newbury’s nefarious experiments. Beymer is no stranger to playing scummy characters, as his role as Benjamin Horne in Twin Peaks would soon prove. Here, he gives his role a dignified, Old Hollywood credibility akin to John Carradine. Whenever the camera is on him it’s a treat to see the hammy mad scientist fight with the calm, collected doctor for the same body. Yet for a direct-to-video slasher sequel, the material is executed with empathy. Clairvoyance is meaningful beyond a silly plot point. And Laura’s blindness isn’t merely exploited for shock value. The script and direction center her agency, especially in situations when she has to contend with authority figures. During a therapy session in which Laura’s psychiatrist talks down to her, for example, she takes control of how she is perceived.

There is a defiant spirit at the core of Scully’s performance. This is typical of all final girls, but Laura’s sardonic edge gives her character a level of complexity well before her final encounter with the killer. Moseley, on the other hand, spends the entire film in silence. His steely blue eyes and solemn expression are the stuff of legend among genre fans, and he lets these qualities work wonders—though his goofy, exposed brain apparatus speaks quite loudly as well. The contrast between Laura and Ricky makes their sensitivity to each other a welcome innovation in the dynamic between survivor and killer. Audiences would have already been privy to psychic connections in the slasher sub-genre via Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, which was released the month before. But Hellman makes better use of the concept. Laura’s blindness is portrayed such that she is often caught off guard when her second-sight takes over. Not only does this pay off dramatically, but Hellman uses it to set up impactful kills.

One such kill is transmitted to Laura while in the car with her brother and his girlfriend (played by other Lynch regulars Eric DaRae and Laura Herring). Ricky is riding shotgun with an unsuspecting driver. The scene between them is brief, though full of tension. Hellman approaches this with restraint, only showing the dead driver under a set of headlights as Ricky gets away in his car. The shudder sent through Laura reverberates on screen. She cannot place what is happening, but she knows it has to do with the man from her dreams and his troubled past. Ricky psychically listens in on the plan to drive to Granny’s for Christmas Eve. Before he invades, however, Ricky does what is customary for a slasher villain and butchers the attendant for his clothes. The sequence begins with the man on a booty call. He is barely able to get properly worked up before getting killed by Ricky off-screen. All we see is the attendant walk up to Ricky’s stolen car, and his face quickly drops. The next shot is of an empty room with the telephone left on the counter. The woman on the other end is speaking to no one as the camera slowly pushes inwards.

Morbid and ridiculous as the film is, it’s nonetheless exciting to see a slasher realized under someone like Hellman. His focus on character leaves room for humor and brief moments of intimacy. For a B-pic that’s partly about a dude walking around with his brain marinating outside his skull, the craft is spectacular. Josep M. Civit’s photography is fiendishly vivid, giving the film a slick European touch. And the set design is layered. Each aspect of the production contributes beautifully to the finale at Granny’s house, where Ricky accepts a seat at her table before continuing on his rampage. Briefly, Elizabeth Hoffman gives a warm performance as the believably altruistic matriarch. Bucking trends from the first two films, she isn’t just a target of Ricky’s psycho-sexual repression. Hellman instead pulls off a seemingly impossible feat in bringing the killer’s tragic backstory full-circle.

Having somehow witnessed the violent deaths of his family and been subject to various unstable living situations, Ricky is finally afforded a pleasant holiday meal with a mother figure who accepts him for who he is. As she hands him a present, however, the ugliness rushes to the forefront, and he doesn’t give a second thought at killing her. Again, Hellman shows atypical restraint in not showing the killing. The film is better off for it. The realization that something is amiss at Granny’s hits Laura before she can understand the entirety of what’s going on. Her death infuses their arrival with quiet dread, but it also highlights the tragedy of Ricky’s condition as a monster, which he unambiguously is. Though Hellman leaves room for nuance in this sci-fi Santa-killer flick, it does settle into full slasher mode by the start of the third act.

The ending of Better Watch Out! is a balls-out siege. Hellman throws caution to the wind as he shows the good doctor being killed by his own creation and one last vision from Granny. The latter is exactly what Laura needs to propel herself into action after her brother mistakenly shoots Ricky with blanks. Laura fights Ricky on her own terms: in a dark cellar while doing her best to feel him out with her powers. In the end, she impales him. Not the boisterous kill that wraps up yet another clairvoyant slasher in Friday the 13th Part VII (a personal favorite), but one that suggests the connection between Laura and Ricky is not completely severed. Hellman leaves the final shot up to interpretation. As Laura and her brother walk away from the killings, she tells a police lieutenant, “Merry Christmas.” In a dissolve, Ricky speaks his only line: “and a Happy New Year.” 

The power of Hellman’s work lies partly in his fealty to genre filmmaking. His Westerns, especially, showcase a reverence for classic story mechanics that he later flips to break the mold. This film is no different. Though largely dismissed by critics at the time over its “thin” plot, what Better Watch Out! boasts over many of its contemporaries is a shameless commitment to being its best self. Nothing is done in half-measures. Slashers will always thrive on the bodies of hapless victims. There is no amount of psychoanalyzing that can properly address the nature of evil in these films. Hellman, conversely, treats the viewer to a perspective that challenges the status quo. By exploring the mental link between the final girl and the killer, they are allowed to develop in tandem. Though the Silent Night, Deadly Night series remained a straight-to-video affair, this gem of a sequel engages honestly with its characters and setting in a way that still feels fresh.