Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!
November. 09,1989Ricky Caldwell, the notorious 'Killer Santa Claus', awakens from a six-year coma after being kept alive on life-support by a slightly crazed doctor experimenting with ESP and other special abilities. Ricky targets a young, clairvoyant blind woman, named Laura, whom is traveling with her brother Chris, and his girlfriend Jerri to their grandmother's house for Christmas Eve, and Ricky decides to go after her, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake.
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I really liked the first movie it was a fun slasher movie, the second sequel as got to be one of the worst sequel ever made.Not as bad as SD 2 But it was not that far from it!The whole movie was very boring and dull, I could not care less about anyone in this movie, the plot was really rubbish as wellAll the kills scenes were off screen, we only see the aftermath of death scenes in the movie, what is point of that.The acting in this movie was even worse then SDND 2, Which is really shocking, I could believe how bad it was. The ending was just really really silly, still a tiny bit of improvement on number 2
Even though the final frames of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 hinted that there was still life in this series, this third chapter strongly suggests otherwise.Continuing the story of Ricky from Part 2, Silent Night, Deadly Night III opens with our recurring killer in a coma with a clear plastic dome housed over his exposed brain like a cryogenic beanie. Apparently, Ricky is now at the center of a bizarre experiment in which a young woman named Laura, a blind girl with an inexplicable psychic link to him, explores the recesses of his psychotic mind and re-lives the chapters of his tormented past.After Part 2 squandered over a half-hour of its running time with repeats of scenes from the first Silent Night, one would assume the film-makers knew that the viewers of this installment were up to speed on the origin of this character. Not so, apparently, since once again, the run-time here is liberally padded with flashbacks to the original slasher Santa tale. Amazingly, even though they were obviously aware enough of Silent Night, Deadly Night to crib portions of it for this movie, the geniuses behind this outing overlook the most crucial element of the story. Ricky is referred to here as "the Santa Claus killer" who "butchered people with an axe," but Ricky was just a little boy when the first SN, DN took place, and it was actually his older brother Billy who was responsible for those murders That example of the producers' keen attention to detail should give you a good idea of how sensible this outing is as a whole.Once our blind mind-reader gets attuned to Ricky, she begins to experience violent hallucinations and envisions his forthcoming series of brutal murders before they occur. Of course, Ricky awakes from his coma when a drunken lout in a Santa suit wanders into his hospital room to spout priceless one-liners like, "Hey, vegetable, who's your favorite singer? Perry Coma?" Apparently, the psychic link forged by the experiment is a two-way street, and when Laura hits the road with her brother and his girlfriend for Christmas at Grandma's, Ricky hears the directions in his mind and decides to join their holiday festivities. Seeing Eric Da Re from Twin Peaks as Laura's brother is one of the few bits of fun the movie offers, and with his nipple-length curly locks, he looks like he's planning on auditioning to play bass for Whitesnake on the way to Granny's.Ricky doesn't have Laura's carpool connection, so he's forced to hitchhike to the gathering. Despite being dressed in a hospital gown and having the afore-mentioned brain-display bubble atop his head, he doesn't have any trouble getting someone to pick him up, and this short road trip provides an excuse to throw a couple of random victims into the mix. Somehow, Ricky reaches Granny's before the rest of the gang, and when he arrives, she does what any old woman living by herself would do if a mute Frankenstein-esque stranger with metal circuitry poking out beneath his snow cap showed up at her doorstep: she invites him inside and makes him cookies.Since Laura is clearly meant to be our main protagonist, we're probably supposed to care what happens to her, but she's actually a braying shrew and completely unlikeable, so this becomes a dicey proposition. Worse, she sounds as disinterested as we are most of the time, and even a line like "if we don't leave, he'll kill us all" is delivered with all of the emotional intensity of someone asking for a glass of water.Yes, Bill Mosely portrays our plastic-skulled villain, but even Mosely completists will find little of interest here, since all he really does is lurch after his intended victims with a drunken stagger and moan "Laura" occasionally. Although, he does turn up just before the credits in a tuxedo to wish us a Happy New Year, so I guess that's something.The acting here is uniformly lifeless, the plot makes absolutely no sense, and the dialogue is some of the most atrocious you'll ever hear (my favorite line occurs when Chris confronts Ricky during the final showdown, shouting: "Hey, Bubble-Head! Is it live or is it Memorex?"). The series of murders the title implies are bland and uninspired, and so clumsily staged that some of the victims basically just walk into the knife themselves. On every front, Better Watch Out ventures so far beyond "bad" that it would probably be funny if it wasn't so damn boring. These 90 minutes feel like an eternity, and without any decent scares or splatter to dilute the tedium, finishing this film becomes an endurance test.This is one of those rare pieces of cinematic history that I silently loathe myself for owning, and whenever anyone says they hate Christmas, I just assume they feel that way because they've seen this movie.
"Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!" is the third installment in the infamous Christmas-horror film series; this entry focuses on a young blind woman, Laura (Samantha Scully) who seems to have clairvoyant powers. In fact, her doctor has been using her in an attempt to 'channel' the comatose Ricky (Billy Moseley), who was responsible for a string of murders on Christmas Eve some years before. Christmas Eve finally arrives, and Laura goes with her brother, Chris, and his girlfriend, Jerri (Laura Harring) to her grandmother's house in the country. Unfortunately, Ricky awakens from his coma, and targets the three travelers.Anyone familiar with this series knows that these movies are not examples of stellar film-making; the first film, however, has rightfully gained its place in the hall of appreciated cult slasher flicks. The second entry in the series was admittedly a complete disaster, and this third follow-up takes things in a different direction, for better and for worse. In some regards, there are things to appreciate here; the opening dream sequence is a great start to the film, and the aspect of the protagonist's blindness could make for some very scary situations when being stalked by a killer; unfortunately, this opportunity is completely under-utilized. Instead, we get a sort of hokey clairvoyant connection between Laura and Ricky (ala "Halloween 5") that is fairly silly.The acting is decent for a direct-to-video horror flick- in other words, it isn't great by any means, but the performers get the job done. Most interesting are a younger Bill Moseley playing the villain (back in his "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" days), with his brain enclosed in some bizarre plexi-glass case that rests on top of his head, and a very young Laura Harring (notable for her performance in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive") as a snarky girlfriend. Samantha Scully is essentially a no-name, but she is decent in the main role and has the right look for it. My biggest problem with the film, though, was how it lacked surprises. There are dozens of opportunities that are never taken, and because of it, the film seems to drag. There is nothing in the way of scares or tension - we get a little bit of atmosphere when the trio arrive at grandma's house, but that's about it. The psychic element of the characters gets tiring after awhile, and the lack of scares or surprises gives the audience little to nothing to chew on. The lack of a score in some of the more dramatic scenes also makes things almost too awkward; the film could have used something more in terms of music. It's kind of a bummer when you take the premise into account, because it could have been much more than it was.Overall, "Silent Night, Deadly Night III" is a bit of a disappointment. The film has an interesting cast who were, for the most part, just starting their careers, and it has a few inventive dream sequences and a slight use of the Christmastime setting. These few things, however, can't make up for the film's shortcomings: lack of suspense and surprise, very little music, and the shoddy psychic subplot. Maybe worth watching for fans of the series, but it's a mostly uninteresting film on its own. 4/10.
Dr.Newbury has saved the life of the hideously injured Ricky Caldwell.The doctor has encased his patient's explosive brain inside a Plexiglas cap,yet he has failed to revive him from his deep coma.In Newbury's attempt to reach the comatose victim's mind,he connects Ricky's brain waves to a gifted clairvoyant,Laura Anderson,who unexpectedly taps into the dark and twisted realm of his haunted dreams.Ghastly things begin to happen and detective Connoly(Robert Culp),must fight to stop the dangerous experiment."Silent Night,Deadly Night 3" is a mediocre horror film at its best.The pace is horrendously slow,the script is terrible and the acting is weak.Still there are some interesting camera angles and the film is suitably interesting.The next sequel was a completely unrelated gorefest from Brian Yuzna,whose unusual visionoften rejected by series fanswas at least a change of pace.6 out of 10.