Dear Silent Night, Deadly Night, Part 2,
Most people don’t understand what I see in you, but sometimes love is inexplicable. Even though I only met you a few years ago, you instantly got hold of my heart and have never let go. It’s hard to explain why that is exactly, but I just want to tell you why I think you’re so great.
First of all, I love your star, Ricky Caldwell, played with unparalleled gusto by Eric Freeman. The icy stare, the crazy eyebrows that raise and lower with each word spoken, the intense line delivery. It just makes me happy. Then there are the younger versions, first from the original: Max Broadhead and Alex Burton, and then Brian Michael Henley, who plays Ricky when newly adopted, and Darrel Guibeau, who is clearly in his twenties, playing the 15-year-old killer Santa to be.
Right from the first moments in the psychiatric institution, I knew Ricky was special. And then the interview starts. When Dr. Bloom (James Newman) begins setting up that reel-to-reel tape recorder, I get mad Mindhunter vibes if Mindhunter had about a tenth of the budget and a studio mandate to use as much footage from other movies as possible.
I think the amount of footage actually used from the original Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) tends to be exaggerated by your haters. It’s really only like 20 percent of the movie. Besides, who doesn’t love a good highlight reel? It’s pretty much the best kills from the first movie without the most mean-spirited elements. For me, that’s a win: all the gory fun without feeling like I need to take a shower afterward. But maybe that’s just me. While I’m at it, I know that Ricky telling his big brother Billy’s (Robert Brian Wilson) story doesn’t make a lot of sense. There is no way he could possibly know most of the details, including a dream sequence, but for whatever reason, I’m cool with it.
And those kills! Sure, half of them come from the first movie, but who doesn’t want to see the antler impalement and the sled beheading again? They rule and are among the great kills in the history of the classic slasher era! Then, when you get to add your own? One word: magic. Starting with that trauma flashback-induced jeep kill by 15-year-old Ricky. Maybe murder was a little extreme, but he did take a really bad dude out of the picture. The way he runs that jeep over him back and forth and back and forth. That’s great stuff.
Later, now in his twenties, Ricky witnesses a man beating up another man outside the restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Clearly, Ricky has been working out to be able to stab that red and white umbrella clean through a person. Then the umbrella opens after being stabbed through him, and it begins to rain as he drops to the ground. Seriously, what’s not to like? At this point, I feel like Ricky could have been the original Dexter Morgan, only killing bad people in extraordinarily creative ways. But then he goes off the rails from Harry’s code.
Which brings me to the tone of the whole movie. It is not an overly serious or dour affair but a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of the slasher nearly ten years before Scream. That’s right, I went there. Yeah, I know, I know, you’re not as good a movie as that, but that doesn’t mean you’re not incredibly entertaining. There’s a touch of Roadrunner and Coyote or Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd running through your veins, and I think that’s brilliant.
For example, the scene in the movie theater. Ricky’s new girlfriend, Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan), takes him to a movie that just so happens to be about a guy who dresses up as Santa and kills people. It also happens to be more footage from the first Silent Night, Deadly Night, which opens up a whole new metanarrative can of worms. Like, does Ricky realize it is his own life and a depiction of the night his parents died being projected on the screen? Well, whatever. I find it’s better not to overthink the details of this one. Anyway, who hasn’t wanted to throttle the guy at the back of the theater that WON’T SHUT UP!? Sorry, got a little excited there. But that leaning back and forth and whispering to the friend, played by director Lee Harry, until Ricky is revealed, is great comedic timing.
Speaking of comedy, is it just me, or does Dr. Bloom, an experienced psychologist, divulge way too much personal information to a known psychopath?
Then there’s your most memorable sequence. Turns out that Jennifer has an ex-boyfriend, Chip (Ken Weichert), who at one point ruined her best sweater. Well, it seems that Ricky is the jealous type and, like a lot of guys in movies like this, will resort to mass murder before going to therapy. I gotta say, Chip’s death is a great one, involving a battery charger, a set of jumper cables, and some pretty fantastic physical effects, including sparks, electrical arcs, and exploding eyeballs. Good stuff. But then Ricky’s jealousy gets taken out on Jennifer, and he strangles her with the antenna from Chip’s car. A very sad end to a nice little love story. I guess the meet-cute of Jennifer hitting Ricky with her car while he was on his motorcycle should have tipped us off that things wouldn’t end well for them.
But then, a meme is born. That’s right, it’s Garbage Day. Just a poor guy setting out his trash cans like a good citizen, and he gets shot by a maniac with crazy eyebrows and a top-notch sweater game. Now, I can imagine the critics walking out of this movie writing their reviews in their minds, “Garbage Day, indeed,” they would say. Well, who would have thought that years later “Garbage Day” would become the most memorable line of the entire franchise (along with “naughty” of course) and one of the iconic moments in all of slasher cinema. That’s right, cinema—cue the Martin Scorsese palms in the air meme.
The scene doesn’t even end there. After that, Ricky shoots a driver behind the wheel of his car, which then goes onto two wheels, flips over, and explodes. When Ricky is finished telling his story, he just casually walks out of the room at the institution, past a dead Dr. Bloom who has been strangled by a reel of his own tape, head on the table, and purple tongue sticking out. Again—pure cinema.
It should be noted that, except for the footage from the first movie, none of this has really been Christmas-themed. Sure, the interview and escape take place on Christmas Eve, but there are no decorations or holiday music, and none of Ricky’s murderous antics have any kind of festive quality. Well, that’s all about to change.
After escaping, Ricky steals a Santa suit from a Salvation Army bellringer and heads out into the Christmas light illuminated night to get his revenge on Mother Superior, now played by Jean Miller. Apparently, she has developed a skin disease for no apparent reason other than disguising the fact that she was played by Lilyan Chauvin in all the footage shown from the first SNDN. I also love that her address is 666, which I am doubtful is a house number a nun would willingly choose, but I suppose you take what you can get. The Grinch in me is delighted that Ricky takes an axe to that damn wind-up Santa on the curb outside the house.
The stalking and murder of Mother Superior is fantastic and, once again, makes absolutely no sense. Once again I say, I don’t care! It’s worth the moment where the police and a young nun come home to check on her, and her head falls off, bloodless, I must add, with a gentle nudge to her shoulder. So, yes, taken to the logical conclusion, Ricky would have had to cut off her head with the axe, let both her head and body bleed out, clean it all up down to the smallest speck (which would involve scouring the walls and shampooing the carpet), and balance her severed head back on her body while hiding as the police arrive. Whatever, dude, just go with it.
Also, there’s your ending. Ricky gets shot by the police and crashes through the second-story window. (Which also leaves one to wonder how Mother Superior, now confined to a wheelchair, got around in a two-story house on her own. Oh well. Details, schmetails.) The end, right? Well, not so much. The eyes, the smile. Again, doesn’t make sense, but it is fantastic. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that 1987 was the height of the slasher resurgence, and the supernatural angle was all the rage.
The original film came out right at the end of the first slasher cycle and frankly had a pretty heavy hand in its demise. But on the same day that the first film came out, November 9, 1984, another movie was released that set off the next phase of slashers, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. After that, killing a killer was only the beginning. All kinds of supposedly dead slashers started coming back from the dead—Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, even the killer from Slumber Party Massacre came back as a leather-clad guitar hero. Yes, Ricky would return as well in Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out (1989) with a glass dome over his exposed brain. It was an amazing time.
So let the haters hate and the naysayers, er, naysay. I think you’re the best. It’s just not the Christmas season without you. With every year that passes and each rewatch, I just find more to love. And I believe I am not alone. There are dozens of us, dozens I say! that feel the same way. And even if I’m wrong, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Part 2, you will always have me holding you near and dear to my heart.
Yours ever,
An eternally devoted fan.
This article is presented by Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Produced by Bloody Disgusting, the grizzly update to the most controversial horror film ever made stars Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends) and Ruby Modine (Happy Death Day), directed by Mike P. Nelson (V/H/S 85). Exclusively in theaters December 12, 2025.