GL84 Hoping to rest for the holidays, a blind psychic woman and her friends' trip to a family gathering is interrupted by the reanimated killer that was part of her experiments with and tries to stop him before he kills off her friends.This was a truly abysmal and near worthless slasher effort. About the only positive this one has is the finale stalking around the house, which is quite effective here at putting her in danger due to the use of her physical condition causing a lot of fumbling and stumbling around in the dark while trying to avoid the killer who's closing in, through several different floors of the house and down into the basement where the real stalking is used and the best bloodletting is all thrown together. By itself, it's a decent enough sequence but is just trapped all throughout here with the rest of the banal attributes that hold it down. Among the numerous flaws here, nothing is bigger than the utterly lame and unimposing killer, who looks so ridiculous with the coma-device still strapped to his head that he gets quite more laughs than scares by his appearance and really settles into this one quite weakly. It's hardly off to a good start when we find ourselves treating the killer as a joke, and the other flaws only enhance that since this one is just interminably boring and lifeless. There's hardly any action at all within this since the first half tends to run through her experiments at the hospital before finally just getting to the house at the forty-minute mark as the useless side-tangents of the killer's stops along the way and the detectives spouting pointless scientific jargon at each other make up the rest of the running time in the first half. This is naturally spurred on by the criminally-low body-count that never really gives this one a chance to let loose with the splatter that would've helped the running time along here and in the end there's just not enough action to really get this one going at all. The last flaw here is the overall cheap-ness of the film, both in regards to the locations and sets but also the overall quality of the rest of the special effects as the kills are all off-screen, the design is pretty bad and overall this one never really had a chance to do much good for itself.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Nudity and Language.

happyendingrocks 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.

Michael_Elliott 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.

Mr_Ectoplasma "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.