Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

This movie feels more like a sequel to Rosemary's Baby. For whatever reason they called it a Silent Night, Deadly Night sequel, and had it set at Christmas time. Just like Pt. 3, it's Christmas in L.A., so now snow on the ground.

Clint Howard's character is named Ricky, which has to be more than just a coincidence. But I can't see how this Ricky can be tied to the Ricky in Pt.2 and 3.

Screaming Mad George still has the cochroach puppets left over from Nightmare On Elm Street 4.

It's good to see Reggie Banister in a movie not directed by Don Coscorelli.

At least for this entry in this seasonal horror series things are taken in an awfully wild new direction. Gone is the tastelessness and dark humour of the first movie, the camp quality of the silly second movie, and the surreal nature of the third. For entry # 4, screenwriter Woody Keith and director Brian Yuzna go for utter strangeness - as well as the gross-out - in their story. An ambitious, stubborn wannabe reporter, Kim (pretty Neith Hunter) determines that she'll solve the mystery of a young woman's bizarre suicide - which may have involved spontaneous human combustion, treating her boyfriend Hank (Tommy Hinkley) like crap in the process. And therein lies one of the problems with "Initiation": its protagonist is so surly, with such a big chip on her shoulder, that she's very hard to follow as a main character, and while attractive, Hunter isn't much of an actress, so it's up to the story and supporting characters to keep things interesting. Among all the trappings are a barrage of insects, maggots, and the ghoulishly fun "surrealistic" makeup effects of the great Screaming Mad George, who'd done such memorable work on "Society", Yuzna's directing debut. To top it all off, the supporting cast includes one of the big screen's all time great creators of oddness and creepiness, Mr. Clint Howard, who's a hoot every time he pops up on screen. In something of a nod to past entries, he plays a man named Ricky. The amusing selection of actors also includes Allyce Beasley of 'Moonlighting' fame as Kim's friend Janice, lovely Bond girl Maud Adams as the alluring and enigmatic Fima, Ben Slack, the psychiatrist in "Society", as Hank's prejudiced dad, Yuzna's own son Conan as Hank's kid brother Lonnie, and "Phantasm" series star Reggie Bannister in a highly entertaining turn as Kim and Hank's boss at the newspaper. Things get off to a pretty good start with those stylized opening credits, and Richard Band's music is another plus. What's truly ridiculous is how the makers of these movies seem always obliged to include any sort of archive footage, as scenes from SNDN 3, "Better Watch Out" play out on a TV screen. Also, the story here has little to do with the holiday; it merely happens to take place at Christmastime. It's entertainingly bonkers stuff, that admittedly one could view as being anti-feminist. But if all of this still intrigues the potential viewer, and they're happy to not see a single killer Santa in sight, they might want to check this out. Six out of 10.

A female reporter investigates the death of a woman who, on fire, leapt off of a building to her death. Her investigation leads her to discover the existence of a strange cult dedicated Egyptian god Isis--and the cult wants her as its new queen. While the plot is virtually unrelated to the first 3 films, SNDN4 is a surprisingly effective gross-out thriller. There are a few scares and gruesome moments here and there and the visual effects are terrific and, as we've come to expect from Screaming mad George, different. Both The script and acting are unimaginative but it's good horror fun from the Yuzna team that we've all come to love and it makes a great holiday family......err, horror film. My rating for "Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation"-8/10.

This film is totally insane...and by totally insane, I mean that is totally insane to imagine that someone watched any of the previous three Silent Night, Deadly Night films...before dreaming up this lesbian cult bio-horror as an appropriate sequel.

In fact, the only logical explanation is that this was a completely separate project, that was already written- and possibly even partially filmed already- when Yuzna had it appropriated by the SNDN franchise...after which he shot a few extra scenes, as to sell the Ricky connection (which is weak as f*ck, at best- and doesn't make sense at all, if you think about it).

You could easily go through and watch this entire film without a) realizing it takes place on or around Christmas, and b) that the mental patient that is subservient to the lesbian cult is supposed to be Ricky.

It was likely a pre-existing film called Initiation, that they added to the SNDN franchise, because after the second and third films were flops- they figured Yuzna could somehow revive it from it's death throes, by sketchily attempting to tie it into the ongoing storyline, after the fact.

With that being said, it's actually a pretty good little film. It starts off with an anti-Vertigo vibe, but then turns more into a Rosemary's Baby sort of thing. And it has a feminist angle woven throughout. But all this is secondary to it being only remotely connected (and forced, at that) to the original franchise- whose name it bears.

Worth a watch if you are into lesbian cults, bio-horror, or Clint Howard.

5.5 out of 10.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 (1990)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A woman puts herself on fire and jumps from the roof of a building and the next day a reporter (Neith Hunter) tries to figure out why. The woman begins to investigate the neighborhood and soon meets a store owner who might be hiding a few secrets about the dead woman as well as a secret cult. Those wanting to see a killer Santa Claus are going to be disappointed because the fat man doesn't make an appearance here except for a brief clip from the previous movie. Director Yunza put his name on two film series from the 80s with this one and of course the much better RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3. This film here isn't awful but there's simply nothing here we haven't seen before and in the end the thing is just too weak to be entertaining. The screenplay makes a fatal mistake in letting the viewers be a lot smarter than our female lead. Pretty much we have this woman getting in over her head and the viewer must sit back and watch her do one dumb thing after another. The problem with this is that she does the dumbest things possible and yet she keeps doing them over and over. A long running plot device has her eating a "berry", which of course turns out to be something from the cult. After eating this thing she eventually begins to see various bugs running around and starts to puke them up as well. It gets rather annoying because as a reporter you'd expect her to have a brain but she continues to do one dumb thing after another. The screenplay also features some fairly weak dialogue and various situations that simply go no where and this includes all the stuff dealing with the boyfriend who doesn't treat the reporter good enough. Those wanting nudity will get a little. Those wanting violence will get a little but not much. There's some minor gore but not enough to keep those wanting all the red stuff entertained. The film contains a lot of bug stuff so those creeped out by the critters running around will probably find this stuff effective. You also have a large creature that seems to have been inspired by the monster in William Castle's THE TINGLER. Hunter isn't too bad in the film as she at least keeps you interested in the character. The rest of the supporting cast are decent at best and this includes Clint Howard playing the typical psycho you'd expect him to be playing outside of his brother's films. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 4 stays away from the controversy of the previous film and I can respect the filmmakers for trying to do something new with the series but in the end it's just something we've seen countless times before. If you're going to do a movie about a woman getting involved with witches then you need to try something fresher than what's here.