31 Days of Halloween - Day 17: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 17: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (Movie #428)

I have maybe 7 or 8 Christmas themed horror movies in my collection of well over 500+ horror movies. But somehow two of them turned up in the 31 random generated shuffles. That being said this movie is just barely a Christmas horror film. It's about of a Christmas Horror movie as Jaws The Revenge.

It seems to me that Silent Night, Deadly Night started off strong but got bad fast by part 2. Then when they dropped the killer Santa story started to improve greatly. I think the best film in the franchise is actually Part 5 but I forgot how enjoyably weird this one is.

The film benefits strongly by being written and directed by Brian Yuzna (Society) and starring Clint Howard.

The film is definitely a mixed bag. When it's weird and full of Yuzna-isms it is a really fun ride. However anything else is boring and drags. That being said when I first saw this movie I didn't think anything of it but I really enjoyed myself the second time around. Yuzna's insect obsession and bizarre body mutation sequences really work on making things gross and uncomfortable and keep the story moving.

That being said, I'm gonna go ahead and repeat… Part 5: The Toy Maker is the under appreciated highlight of the franchise.

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.