Critical End!

It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan concludes with a look at Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker. 

Body Count: 4?  Boring!

Best Death Scene: A worm-like toy called, and I swear I’m not making this up, “Larry the Larvae”, crawls into a guys mouth and later explodes out of his eye socket…then his car blows up.  Talk about a rough day…

Looking back now in retrospect, if I knew that the Silent Night, Deadly Night series was going to completely suck, I wouldn’t have told you that the earlier movies sucked.  Just when I thought that I had expierenced the most suckage that I could from the series, I had to go and ruin it by watching parts 3 to 5…and to think that I waited all this time just to buy these last three films on DVD.  There’s a simple reason why they took so long to come out: Because these films should be destroyed.  Yes, when I started this whole mess I never thought that I would side with Mickey Rooney, but now I see how right he was!  The only problem: By the time Part 5 came out, even Mickey Rooney had forgotten how right he was.

Some of you horror nerds may know the name Brian Yuzna as the writer/director of the last two Re-Animator movies.  Remember after you saw the first Re-Animator (he had nothing to do with it) and you had high hopes for all of the sequels?  Well, don’t worry, as he went on to ruin the Silent Night, Deadly Night series as well.  Granted, this series never had the amazingly awesome Jeffrey Combs to keep it slightly afloat (Can you imagine him as a killer Santa?  Somebody write that movie!), in fact, now that I think about it, Yuzna turned Clint Howard into the star of these last two films.  Doesn’t that just say it all?

I think this picture says it all.

But I promised a review, so I’ll attempt to deliver one: Mickey Rooney, despite his hatred of the 1984 original film’s portrayal of a killer Santa Claus, shows up as the killer Santa in this one.  Of course, this isn’t until the last 15 minutes of the film.  By that point the viewer has been forced to sit through some cocktail napkin plot that plays out like a soap opera.  Why won’t little Derek talk?  Who is his real dad?  Why is he the same boy who played little Bill in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey?  Is he supposed to be Bill in this movie too?  Why is Mickey Rooney so fat?  Did they pay him entirely in hoagies?  If so, I wonder how much that many hoagies would cost?  By the time you learn the answers to most of these questions, you no longer care.  Oh, and it turns out that Mickey Rooney wasn’t even the killer Santa…a robot Mickey Rooney was.  How’s that for a twist ending?

So where does this film fall in the entire series?  Flat on it’s fat ol’ bloated Mickey Rooney/Clint Howard dildo wearing face, that’s where.  Granted, this is where the last three films have mostly landed as well, but I really wanted to type the words “Clint Howard” and “dildo” again.  It really brought a lot of traffic to the site when I did it last week.  Anyway, my final thoughts on the Silent Night, Deadly Night series are thus: Watch the second one only…and only if you’re REALLY in need of a Christmas film…and drunk…and blind…and mostly deaf in both ears…you know, come to think of it, you may want to avoid Christmas altogether this year so you don’t accidentally see any of these movies…Clint Howard dildo.

 Rating:
2 out of 10

Series Average:
Rating:
3 out of 10

I really hope that you guys and gals enjoyed this series.  As always, we love your thoughts, requests, and comments on anything we do here at Critical End!  Have a great holiday.

You may recall me teasing Hot Tub Time Machine back in August in yet another Chevy Chase realted post.  Granted, the teaser didn’t have him in it, but the thought of Chevy in an R-rated film was kind of excting.  Now that the full trailer is out (with Chevy in it), I have to admit that the film does look like a lot of fun.  Heck, we even get to see John Cusack on a ski slope in the ’80’s!  Surely they’ll throw a Better Off Dead joke in there some place…

"That's 'Bone'."

For Empire Magazine’s 20th birthday issue, they got a bunch of stars to pose for fancy glamor shots that evoke their most famous films.

Our ol’ pal Christian Bale got to participate and I was thrilled to see that he wasn’t wearing a Hugo Boss batsuit, but instead holding an axe and contemplating a table full of business cards.  Nicely done, Empire.  But for your 50th birthday: Newsies Reunion!

It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here atCritical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan looks at Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4. 

Body Count: 5 (…wha?  Only 5?!)

Best Death Scene: Whatever you do, NEVER beat Clint Howard with a broom.  It’ll make him mad enough to stab you to death with a butter knife.

I’ll be frank: I have no clue what the hell Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 was about.  I had a hard enough time trying to wrap my head around the odd arrangement of the title.  I think it involved bugs…no wait, that’s not right…I think it involved lesbian bugs.  Is that even possible?  What the hell is going on here?  All I remember for sure is that it started off so great…

Want to see this face do a whole lot of things that should be illegal? Rent this movie.

Picture this: We open on a cold, windy December night on some rat infested back street.  The city is quiet, save for a low clicking sound.  As the clicking grows louder, we realize that it’s the broken wheel on a shopping cart being pushed by a bum who hasn’t showered in weeks.  This bum: Clint Howard.  He stops his cart as something shiny catches his eye in the gutter.  Bum Clint Howard bends down and picks up the bug infested remains of a soggy hamburger.  Ever the happy go lucky hobo, he sighs and says to himself, “What?  No cheese?”  Suddenly a scream is heard!  Clint looks up just in time to see a woman jump from a building!  And she’s on fire too!  Freakin’ awesome!  Cut to: opening credits.  Sounds great, right?  Well, that’s about as good as this “movie” ever gets.  Not caring if I give too much away, I think we can safely say that this film is seriously crazy ass insane.  That’s not a good thing.  Ditching the Ricky/killer Santa story line completely, this film attempts to pull a Halloween III and take the franchise in a whole new direction.  The “story” this time has to do a young investigative reporter hot on the trail of a murder in which Bum Clint Howard is the only witness.  This would be okay if she wasn’t the WORST investigative reporter of all time.  Not only does she allow herself to get drugged twice, but at one unintentionally hilarious point in the film, she literally stands on a HUGE clue for an entire scene and never notices it.  Anyway, when she eventually wises up a bit too late, all of the evidence leads her into a second and third act that involves, and I kid you not, lesbian bugs.  Oh, and then the film gets weird: Cockroaches grow huge, Clint Howard watches clips from Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 while a couple has sex in a bed behind him, and the lead reveals she’s Jewish despite the Christmas theme of the film.  Around the time that Howard strapped a dildo to his face while three old women rubbed grease all over his hairy chest, I started to think that maybe somebody had spiked my eggnog.

Alas, that wasn’t the case.  Turns out that Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 is just as strange as it’s title.  What exactly the “initiation” mentioned in the title was, I can’t quite say.  All I do know for sure is that I some how survived it…and I will NOT be doing it again next Christmas.

Rating:
2 out of 10

Next week: Oh God, I have another week of this?!  After watching this film, I never want to see another movie again.  In fact, I now hate movies AND Christmas.  Damn, you Howard.  Sigh…next week the series comes to an end with a story about killer toys.  Oh, and I fully expect them to be killer lesbian toys as well.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT…well, maybe.

While doing press rounds for Avatar it appears that Sigourney Weaver accidentally spilled the beans about a major plot point in the upcoming Ghostbusters 3.  I give you her exact quote:

“I might be in it; I see nothing wrong with being in it, although I don’t think I will have a big part. I think Bill Murray has a little more to do with it – he’s a ghost.”

Wow…really, Ghostbusters 3?  Are you aware that you haven’t even gone into production yet and you’ve succeeded at raping the characters that I loved all through my childhood?  I blame Judd Apatow.

Read the rest of what she said (Including the future of baby Oscar!) here.

Am I the only person excited about a Tron sequel?  Better question: Am I the only person who will pay to see a Tron sequel?  Disney released this teaser poster today which has made me even more excited.

 

Consider yourself teased.

It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan looks at Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

Body Count: 11 (But once again, 3 of those are from clips of the first movie)

Best Death Scene: According to this film, the worst thing you could say to somebody in a coma is, “Who’s your favorite singer?  Perry Coma?”  Chances are they’ll wake up and kill you for telling lame jokes.

Let’s get one thing straight: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, despite it’s awesome gayness, was not a box office hit…or maybe it was, but only because it cost around ten bucks and a six pack of Coors to make.  Whatever the case, the powers that be decided that it was time for the series to return to what made it huge in the first place: home video.  1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! was the first of three direct to video sequels, and the only one not to feature Clint Howard.  For many, that’s all the review you’ll need to read right there.

BOO! Hey, kids! Mickey Rooney here to remind you that I hate these movies! See you in Part 5!

It’s been six years since Ricky went on his Christmas Eve killing spree.  It appears that he suffered some sort of head injury at the end of the last film that would cause a team of doctors to encase his brain in a glass dome.  While this sounds like the coolest thing since Jason got his hockey mask, it’s actually far, far from it.  Due to this, Ricky now stumbles around drooling and acting like Frankenstein’s monster, which, granted, isn’t that far from the way he acted in the last two films, now he just has an excuse.  Oh, and the movie finds every excuse possible to put him in a goofy hat to cover the dome.  This also isn’t as great as it sounds.  Why?  Because for some reason the director (who has the impossibly awesome name “Monte Hellman”), seemed to be under the impression that this was a drama.  The story concerns an annoying blind girl who has some sort of psychic connection with the dome-headed Ricky.  While it takes most crappy horror series a while to get to “the sequel with the hot clairvoyant chick” (see Friday the 13th Part VIII, or Halloween 6 in which said hot chick is Paul Rudd), the Silent Night, Deadly Night series must have known that it was going to fizzle out early and decided to jump the gun.  Anyway, for reasons beyond me, blind chick agrees to spend Christmas with her brother (one of two Twin Peaks stars who appear in the film), and his destined-to-have-a-nude-scene girlfriend.  Everything is going fine until Ricky literally hitchhikes to them (would you pick up a guy in a hospital gown with a glass dome on his head?) in an attempt to “connect” with annoying blind girl.  Oh, and for some reason I Spy‘s Robert Culp is there too, but only to promote some new gadget called a “cell phone”.  It’s all very loony.

While Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 was trashy fun, and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 was a train wreck classic, Better Watch Out! is just bad.  It would appear that the killer Santa that outraged parents in 1984 had finally run it’s course, and as the series moved into the 90’s we all knew that there was only one thing that could save it…

Next week: …KILLER BUGS.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!
 Rating:
3 out of 10

 

Mark Coleran designs crazy futuristic software interfaces for fake movie computers.  here’s an awesome montage of his work.

Coleran Reel 2008.06 HD from Mark Coleran on Vimeo.

It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan looks at Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.

Body Count: 24 (But to be fair, 12 of those are from clips of the first movie)

Best Death Scene: One poor soul is killed simply because it’s garbage day and he’s disposing some trash.  Fellas, let this be a lesson next time the wife/girlfriend wants you to take the garbage out.

Oh, where to start?  I guess I need to get the most important thing about this movie out of the way first: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is my favorite bad movie of all time.  Yes, some people may tell you that you could never get worse than, say, Troll 2, or to a more recent extent, The Room, but for my money, this film has them all beat.  And do you want to know the weirdest part about the whole thing?  More than one third of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is made up of, yeah, you guessed it, clips of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 MINUS most of the gore and nudity.

Following the video success of the first film, producers begin to search for a way to extend its shelf life a bit.  Due mostly to the fact that nobody in Hollywood likes to use their brain (See any Adam Sandler film for further analysis), they collectively decided that the best thing to do would be to hire an editor to re-cut the film, adding two more scenes that would, get this, feature a mental patient telling the story which would have  made the original film appear to be nothing more than the ravings of a lunatic.  Hollywood, this is why you have no friends.

Lucky for us, Director/Editor Lee Harry (and yes, that is his actual screen credit in the movie), and a team of six writers decided that the movie needed a bit more.  Now, when I say a bit more what I really mean is about 30 minutes of new material.  The rest, as I mentioned above, is nothing but clips from the first movie edited for content.  Wow, it took six writers to come up with that?  Maybe this film was some sort of tax write off…whatever the case, the movie comes across like the equivalent of listening to your drunk Uncle Steve attempt to explain the first film.  It’s now several years later and Billy’s little brother, Ricky, is all grown up and in the nut house.  How he got there is the only real mystery in the movie (Spoiler: He killed lots of people), and is revealed mostly through what I have dubbed “eyebrow acting” and in flashbacks that bring the grand total of Ricky actors to a staggering EIGHT people.  My God, that’s a lot of eyebrow acting.  At one point the film really jumps the rails (and Ricky’s eyebrows threaten to jump off his face), when he decides that he needs to flashback to his first date.  The movie then becomes a love story about a killer Santa for a few minutes.  The best part?  They go to see Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 on their first date.  Just when we thought the film had finally stopped showing clips from the first movie, the filmmakers decided that what we really wanted to see was people watching the first film.  God, I love this movie.

Oh, there’s more, but just take my word for it: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is NOT to be missed.  If you’re a lover of bad films, then this will be like the holy grail for you.  I can’t end this review without mentioning the fact that this film features one of my all time favorite lines and scenes from any movie ever.  The clip from this scene is all over YouTube, but it’s worthless unless you actually made it through the rest of the film.  I guess what I’m saying is that you have to work for it…and believe me: It’s worth every second.  Happy Garbage Day, folks!

Rating:
3 out of 10

In three days: Ricky returns for some more yuletide slayings, but due to the head injury he received in the last film, he now wears his brain in a glass dome.  GENIUS.

 

A tidal wave of sharks.  REVIEWED: 2012.  PLUS: The holiday season begins with a Christmas RETRO PICK of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

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Remember Death at a Funeral, that Frank Oz sleeper comedy from two years ago?  While I didn’t think it was an amazing film, I did enjoy it as a fun British farce, which is really all it set out to be.  Well, less than two years later somebody in Hollywood thought, “You know what?  I think we should remake that funny little British film…but with black people.”

Needless to say, this REALLYpisses me off.  Not only is the original film close to still being on the “New Release” wall at Blockbuster, but was there something in it that really screamed “Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock, and Tracy Morgan vehicle!”?

I’ve decided to put the trailer on here, but let me just save you the trouble of watching it:  It’s literally, and I really, really, REALLY want to stress literally, exact scenes from the original film but with Asian jokes, “Daaaaaaaammmnn”‘s, and Tracy Morgan.

 

Hollywood, I officially hate you.

It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan looks at Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Body Count: 13
Best Death Scene: Death by impaling on a stuffed antelope’s horns?  Count me in!

Silent Night, Deadly Night is the cult slasher that was so highly offensive that, get this, C.A.M.M. (that’s Citizens Against Movie Madness in case you were wondering) decided that they needed to boycott its 1984 theatrical release.  Several “concerned” parents felt that the image of Santa with a bloody ax was going too far.  Hell, they even got Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney to join their letter writing campaign to TriStar Pictures (Never mind the fact that Rooney himself would later star in Part 5).  Want to know the kicker?  All of this worked.  That’s right, after two weeks in only a handful of theaters, Silent Night, Deadly Night died a quiet death.  Luckily, it was the early ’80’s and people were enjoying the spoils of a rather new gadget called VCRs.  It was here that the film really took off, quickly selling close to a million copies on VHS and becoming a cult hit.

So was all the uproar really worth it?  Yes, actually.  This movie is pretty damn gory, full of needless nudity, and, truth be told, rather fun.  It opens on Christmas Eve 1971 with 5 year old Billy and his newborn brother Ricky accompanying their parents to visit their crazy old Grandfather.  Crazy old Grandfather warns them that they better run when they see Santa tonight, but do they listen?  No, because he’s crazy and old.  On the way back home the family happens to run into a maniac dressed like Santa who shoots the father and rapes the mom in front of the two kids.  Outraged yet, Mickey Rooney?

Needless to say, Billy grows up hating Santa and working at, of all places, a freakin’ toy store.  It’s also the only toy store that I’ve ever seen with easy access to a huge fire ax (It’s located next to the board games and stuffed animals).  Well, we all know what happens from here.  Through a series of events (mostly told by way of a cheesy ’80’s montage), Billy ends up dressing up as the store Santa.  A sleazy, tight pants, co-worker hitting on Billy’s best gal is all it takes to send Billy into a Christmas Eve/morning killing spree with the above mentioned ax…but not before using a bow and arrow to dispatch one unlucky victim.  Why this toy store sells real bow and arrow sets is beyond me, but who am I to question the practices of Ira’s Toys?

From here until the “shocking” ending things are pretty much your typical ’80’s slasher film with something of a budget.  That is to say that Silent Night, Deadly Night is really no different than any fun, trashy horror film along the lines of the original Friday the 13th.  Yes, it’s garbage, no doubt, but it’s a great time if this is your sort of thing.  I could honestly recommend this for your yearly alcohol fueled Christmas party, if not for the existence of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2…but we’ll get to that next week.  Until then, why not find a copy of Part 1 and check it out this holiday season?  Tell them Mickey Rooney sent you.

Rating:
5 out of 10

Next week: Little baby brother Ricky picks up where Billy left off and delivers one of Logan’s five favorite film lines of all time in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. 

 

Button, button, who’s got the MURDER!  REVIEWED: The Box.  RETRO PICK: Button, Button.  PLUS: Logan faces some touch choices of his own when Ryan presents him with his own series of moral-decision boxes.

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I know you’re all tired of hearing me talk about Chevy Chase, but it was either this or an article about the upcoming Jackass 3D movie…

Clark Griswold is back.  Yes, you read that right.  It seems that both Chevy and Beverly D’Angelo will return to the roles in a upcoming Superbowl commercial for HomeAway.  What the hell is HomeAway?  Who cares!  Read the rest of the details here.

Meanwhile, have you heard they’re making a 3D Jackass movie?  ‘Tis true.