Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

MOVIE #2,236 • SCORE 9/10 • 12.23.24
SERIES: XMAS 2024 — A 3-DAY "SILENT NIGHT" CELEBRATION

The fourth installment (and first unconnected standalone entry) of the SNDN franchise begins with a deranged, possibly homeless Clint Howard who — after picking a half-eaten burger out of the trash and lamenting the fact that there’s “no fucking cheese” — witnesses a lady (who is on fire) fall to her death from the roof of a building. He then pokes at her charred remains for some reason…


I still have one more to go in the original five-film run (the maybe not so bad it’s good, but just bad Mickey Rooney vehicle, The Toy Maker) but I have to say that this might be one of the more underrated horror franchises — it’s certainly fast become a personal favorite of mine at the very least. Initiation is bonkers. So detached from Christmas (that element feels like a complete afterthought) and even the classic slasher template one would expect from a film like this (it’s structured more like a giallo, albeit dressed up as an American B-movie).

Its director is another cultish auteur, Brian Yuzna, who directed the infamous 1989 movie, Society, and worked on Stuart Gordon’s 80s classics, Re-Animator and From Beyond (all films I've yet to get to). Thematically, this is a hot mess but it’s a hot mess that at least seems to have a point: whether it’s about female empowerment or spaghetti or giant bugs or some combination of those elements.

It features the practical effects work of Japanese artist/director Screaming Mad George, who is responsible for said giant bugs…


The gist of the plot: an aspiring journalist named Kim (who can’t get ahead because she’s a WOMAN!) starts to investigate the strange death of the lady from the beginning of the movie and stumbles onto a mysterious quasi-lesbian cult who then isolate her as the chosen one for their nefarious scheme and, through poisoned dates and the help of lackey Clint Howard, begin to possess her mind, eventually kill her boyfriend and force her to kidnap and attempt to murder said bf’s little brother in a ritual killing. There are many wonderful visual flourishes involving optical illusions (she starts seeing faces everywhere and a spiral symbol in pasta) — a lovely little drug-induced montage highlights this imagery…


At one point, Clint Howard interrupts Kim and her bf having sex and puts on a VHS of Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: a pointless bit of meta that is, in a word, genius…


Things come to a head (no pun intended) when Clint Howard — wearing a white dildo nose mask — rapes Kim in a meat locker (the owner of the meat-packing establishment is in on this for some reason). I will spare you from watching this piece of cinematic history but this is what Clint Howard looks like…


One thing you can say about Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (if you wanted!) is that at least Clint Howard, when he rapes a woman in Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation while wearing a dildo nose mask doesn't rape her WITH the dildo nose mask dildo? I digress...

As if getting raped by Clint Howard wearing a dildo nose mask wasn’t bad enough, Kim is then thrown into the aforementioned abduction and ritual killing plot. Clint has second thoughts about all this and he ends up getting killed (and eaten by bugs!) after trying to defend the reluctant Kim…


RIP Clint Howard. Literally the only good man in the world (according to SNDN4 logic).

I kept waiting for the obligatory awkward/forced exposition sequence unpacking this nonsense, and it sorta comes…


Men: can’t live with them unless they are Clint Howard wearing a dildo nose mask? Sure. The thing is… watch how the movie’s climax very closely and tell me that Kim stabbing the cult leader with her magic phallic pretzel finger arm sword is not Yuzna/the film suggesting that the path of the feminist is a fraught and ultimately futile one? Is SNDN4 the ultimate bait-and-switch B-movie? A prescient, menimist statement for incels and their ilk everywhere? A rallying cry? WATCH, I SAY. BEHOLD..


Notice how the body is fully burnt and the body at the onset only charred? Notice how she embraces the boy in the end? Why scholars have not tackled this major achievement in the cinematic arts is beyond me. But also: I guess I just did ;) [read: I have done nothing of the sort FYI]

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Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation is a 1990 American supernatural horror film directed by Brian Yuzna, written by Yuzna, Woody Keith, and Arthur Gorson, and starring Maud Adams, Tommy Hinkley, Allyce Beasley, Clint Howard and Neith Hunter. It focuses on a Los Angeles newspaper reporter who, while investigating the unexplained death of a woman, becomes entangled with a coven of Lilith-worshipping witches who are preparing her for a ritual on Christmas Eve. The fourth installment in the Silent Night, Deadly Night film series, it bears no resemblance to the previous films, as it drops the storyline of the Billy Chapman and Ricky Caldwell characters entirely (despite featuring a killer named Ricky). It was released on November 21, 1990.