Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

The first hour of this sequel to the 1984 Man Dressed As Santa Goes On A Rampage film is essentially the same as its predecessor. And I don’t mean that it’s similar; it literally uses footage from the first film to play out the opening hour or so of this sequel in flashbacks. This works in the sense that it was good to have reminders of what had happened in the first in the franchise, but after ten minutes or so, this becomes somewhat baffling. In Silent Night, Deadly Night, Billy is so haunted by the murder of his parents by a man dressed as Santa when he was young that it ends up driving him to a murderous rampage that only ends when he’s shot dead in front of his younger brother at an orphanage run by Nuns (that Billy used to attend, and helped matters not one bit). This film focuses on Billy’s brother Ricky, telling the events of the first film to a psychiatrist in the mental home where he now lives. Eric Freeman’s performance is hilarious as Ricky (presumably deliberately so) and the utter sarcasm with which he delivers almost every line is laugh out loud funny. Fortunately for the film, when Ricky goes on the inevitable killing spree that you spend way too long waiting for, it’s worth it. His murder that takes in the line ‘Garbage Day!’ is now frequently used as a meme, and means that Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, despite being utter tosh for the most part, justifies its existence entirely in its last half hour. 5.2/10