Right off the bat, it is evident that this film is meant to be the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise's version of The Exorcist II. Only, instead of tapping into a shaman from a bygone era, our blind, psychic protaganess is being used to tap into Ricky- the killer from SNDN 2; younger brother of the killer from the first film- whom is now comatose, with his brain exposed, but contained in a jar.It seems that Laura (our aforementioned protaganess) has unwittingly awakened Ricky, from his vegetative state, by probing into his mind with her psychic abilities. Now, he's out to hunt her down...and he will kill anyone and everyone who gets in his way.It's a pretty average film over all, but at least there's a decent story to it. Certainly better than the second one, but still nothing compared to the original.5 out of 10

I don't know what I was expecting from this, but I knew I wanted to see it for a simple reason: Monte Hellman is the director. You don't often get someone to helm a made-for-video sequel to a schlocky horror flick about a guy who gets triggered as an adult to kill lots of people around Christmas for... reasons I don't need to go into here that made such existential genre films like Ride in the Whirlwind, The Shooting, Two-Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter.It's a curious choice, and I have to wonder if Hellman went for it for reasons other than money (his previous film, Iguana, barely got a release in the US, and before that he hadn't directed in ten years), but rather to have the odd kind of challenge of getting something done very quickly that would certainly be seen by *some* people, regardless of format. Maybe I was expecting that Hellman would put a crazy twist on the slasher genre, and in a way I did get that. Sort of, kind of, maybe by the end it's all so damn crazy that it's less inspired crazy and more trying too hard.Certainly his premise has promise, leaning at first to seeming like a Nightmare on Elm Street movie: a girl, Laura (Samantha Scully), is having dreams/nightmares in a facility (the opening is perhaps the best part of the movie, or one of them), but it's soon revealed she's actually trying to be connected via, uh, unconventional Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer) to 'Ricky', the killer from previous entries (or a previous one, I still haven't seen the second of these movies), who is in a coma. She's allowed to leave since, you know, it's Christmas so it's time to go with her brother (Eric DaRae) and his girlfriend (Laura Haring) to their grandmother's house... but lo and behold, somehow he wakes up, maybe from her connecting to his visions (the whole "Is he seeing what's inside me like I'm seeing what's inside him" comes up), and it becomes more like a Halloween movie as he is a) seemingly indestructible, and b) is basically a walking corpse.One curious thing of course to note is the cast of people from David Lynch projects - seeing Leo Johnson from Twin Peaks with a hair-do out of the band Whitesnake is unreal, but it's also nice to see an early Haring performance (of Mulholland Drive), though I actually forgot Beymer, aside from being Tony in West Side Story, was Benjamin Horne on Twin Peaks too until I looked it up - and in the first act I thought that Hellman was going for a Lynchian sort of set up. Probably not intentional, but certainly the connections with the sub-conscious, dreams, nightmares, the inner landscape of the mind as a f***ed up minefield of terrors, it made for a set up that I was initially engaged in, and Hellman as a director has a pacing that is set apart from the usual hacks and journeymen doing these horror sequels, much less direct to video.He takes his time, doesn't always use music where you expect, and whether it's due to him being disgusted by what's usually done in these movies or wanting to change it up, there's not as much blood (when Granny gets it - oh, is that a spoiler, nope, come on, you see it coming a mile away, folks - he cuts away to an outside shot of her house), and so there's an uncanny sense of suspense at times. Yet the key word here is 'at times', since Hellman is also seeming to be so set apart from other horror movies of the time that he trips himself up: much of the mid-section of this is dull, as there is only a slim narrative that's actually going on with Ricky already ahead of Laura and Chris and Jerri (plus the doctor and one of those "logical" cops that doesn't get this doctor's higher theories about Ricky - again, a knock-off of Halloween), and Christmas is only used sparingly, as if we have to be reminded of it at the very end as 'Oh, right, yeah, it's Christmas, you actually made it to the end, here's Bill Moseley again to finish off with a WTF moment).But the thing that keeps me from finding this to a full on guilty pleasure as opposed to something that is decent but only has its moments is Scully's acting. For some reason she's made to be blind as a, I guess, way to make her seem stronger in the film, that she has to rise up to fight Ricky with, uh, some post-death guidance from her grandma. None of that really matters though since she's not terribly convincing, either talking in a monotone or screaming her head off. I think that ultimately this is the best possible Silent Night, Deadly Night III we could've asked for, and I'm glad Hellman tried out something extremely different for him. The results were just hit or miss (this includes a rather self-conscious reference, done twice as if there's a friggin' marathon on it TV, of The Terror, which Hellman did uncredited work on). 5.5/10

Silent Night, Deadly Night III (1989) 1/2 (out of 4) When I put the DVD into my player and hit play I was thinking that I had never seen this thing but within minutes of the movie playing it dawned on me that I had watched this once when it first came out. As the film went along the awfulness that was in front of my eyes made me realize that my poor mind had simply tried to forget having ever seen this awful film. Ricky Caldwell (Bill Moseley), the killer Santa from the previous film, has been in a coma for six years when a nutty doctor decides to use a blind woman (Samantha Scully) to try and connect with him. She goes home for the holidays but sadly Ricky wakes up and goes on a killing spree while trying to find her. This series is without question one of the weirdest in horror history as the original film came to be one of the most controversial ever made. The second is considered by many to be one of the worst ever made but thankfully it's so incredibly stupid that you can't help but laugh and have fun with it. This third film comes from cult director Hellman who previously made films like THE SHOOTING, RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND and CHINA 9 LIBERTY 37. Some consider him a genius but I've always found his films to be rather slow, boring and incredibly overrated. It was shocking to read several sources that said the director felt this was his best work and if he really does think that then he must really have a low opinion of his other films. This slasher is just downright horrid on all levels. The screenplay is a joke. The acting embarrassing. The special effects rather silly. There's really not a single good thing to be found here and the only reason I don't give this a BOMB rating is because of some extremely stupid scenes that actually made me laugh. I'm really not sure what Hellman was thinking but apparently the original screenplay was something completely different but he changed things up and added all sorts of strangeness. Some of his new stuff includes the doctor and a cop (Robert Culp) driving around discussing various aspects of life. This stuff doesn't work for a couple reasons. One is that the dialogue is simply poorly written and boring. The dialogue is meant to be deep and make you think but the only thing you'll want to do is sleep. Another problem is that stuff like this really takes away from the "other" story trying to be told and that's the slasher stuff. All the actors pretty much sleep through their roles but I can't say I blame them too much. Even the usually reliable Culp doesn't seem a bit interested in anything going on. What's even stranger is that Hellman uses footage from the first film and none of this is really needed because the killer here wasn't the one witnessing much of the footage that is used here and meant to be his "dream" or vision. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III is bad on all levels and it's really a poor way to end the series. The next two installments were just cashing in on the popular title so why Hellman decided to go this route is anyone's guess but the final film is a complete disaster.

I doubt loads of people watched out for yet another santa sequel after Part 2, known as one of the worst slasher movies ever - not bad in a subgenre where there's tight competition. So why bother doing another unwanted entry in the Ricky story? Or bother watching it? Well, personally I thought that with Richard Beymer from Twin Peaks as a mad scientist and Bill Moseley (who's had sort of a comeback lately but was probably working for free food when this movie was made) as reanimated Ricky it could only be so bad. Well, right now it's almost Christmas, so can I be blamed for wishing for a cinematic miracle? Back to reality: Beymer doesn't do anything with his clichéd character, and Moseley tries to keep a straight face wearing that fun glass head top (supposed to keep his reconstructed brain from falling out!), just looking evil and hardly uttering a word. He's rather slow and fragile than dangerous-looking, yet the bad supporting cast (including Laura Herring in an undemanding 'girlfriend-for-the-breasts-shot" role) are in panic. The blind girl doesn't act as tough she's blind, but as though she's über-stoned. Her bad 80s-haircut victim of a brother behaves absurdly, not even caring when someone he's supposed to love gets killed. There's boring flashbacks galore (and that after SNDN2 was trashed for its use of flashbacks, though they don't take up half of the movie here) and the murders are mostly tame or off-screen; so this isn't even of interest to undemanding gorehounds. Silent Night Deadly Night 3 - better watch out and rent a better movie!