Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

MOVIE #2,235 • SCORE 8/10 • 12.23.24
SERIES: XMAS 2024 — A 3-DAY "SILENT NIGHT" CELEBRATION

Today begins my brief Holiday Programming departure. Let me walk you through the rest of the year...

DEC 23rd (today): The Silent Night, Deadly Night sequels I haven't seen yet
DEC 24th: Silent Night (2012 v 2023) TWO-for-TUESDAY + Violent Night (2022)
DEC 25th: Silent Night, BLOODY Night 2 (long gap sequel to this), a talking animal kids movie (with the same title as this) + the beginning of a new impromptu mystery focus to finish 2024
DEC 26th: [regular programming]
DEC 27th: [regular programming]
DEC 28th-JAN 1st: said impromptu mystery focus (16 movies and/or TV shows in 5 days!)

That mystery focus might break my brain and/or soul, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about Monte Hellman's Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out.

This film is ridiculous but very fun and Hellman is a fascinating director who is on the list. I also give them credit for continuing the story or what was left of it after the all-time bad movie that is Part 2. The set up here is that Ricky “Garbage Day!” Caldwell actually survived the events of that movie only now he’s being played by horror film legend Bill Moseley and he’s got a TMNT Krang-style brain dome on his head…


Richard Beymer (Twin Peaks’ Ben Horne — the first of several TP/David Lynch connections in this) plays a sus doctor who is experimenting on Ricky with a telepathic blind girl named Laura. Even though Ricky’s in a coma, she can connect with him via dreams? It’s all very stupid and not really important. A drunk hospital Santa awakens/activates Ricky and off we go…


Laura is played by actress Samantha Scully, who has just a handful of credits to her name, but is really good in this. Her character is weirdly bitter and foul-mouthed. Right from the get-go, she isn’t playing your standard victim or meek final girl tasked with rising to the challenge in the end: she’s kind of a bad-ass from the jump. One thing I like to do is find some profound moments in schlock like this, and she offers a nugget when describing her psychic powers…


Her brother is Leo from Twin Peaks (Eric Da Re) who is dating Mulholland Drive’s Rita (Laura Harring). They drive out to visit their grandma who Ricky has already killed. Earlier, he decapitates a gas station attendant who we see watching Roger Corman’s The Terror, a fun Easter egg as Hellman worked as a location director on that picture. This cutback to the detached head in front of the TV is one of several details that make this worth watching…


There’s some fat on the bone, mind you, but I enjoyed this. It has a perfectly dumb ending which keeps the door open for the direct sequel which never came…


Hellman’s next director credit wouldn’t be for another 17 years as part of the anthology horror, Trapped Ashes, which I reviewed earlier this month.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #2,234 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #2,236 ⫸

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Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (stylized onscreen as Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!) is a 1989 American slasher film written and directed by Monte Hellman. A direct-to-video release, the film is the second sequel to the 1984 film Silent Night, Deadly Night and centers around the Christmas-obsessed killer Ricky Caldwell awakening from a coma and stalking a blind teenager with psychic powers, while she travels to her grandmother's house for the Christmas holiday with her brother and his girlfriend. It was the last to follow the storyline set by the previous two films, the next two sequels being standalone entries. It was released on November 17, 1989.