Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989)

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

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.

"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.

Vicious Santa Claus killer Ricky Caldell (a strangely subdued portrayal by the usually more manic Bill Moseley) gets reawakened from a six year coma by ruthless unscrupulous physician Dr. Newbury (a respectable performance by Richard Beymer). Of course, Ricky reverts back o his previous murderous ways, escapes from the hospital, and goes after Laura Anderson (a decidedly annoying and less-than-appealing turn by the pretty Samantha Scully), a bitter and remote blind clairvoyant he shares a special psychic connection to. Director Monte Hellman, who in better days graced us with such offbeat and engrossing existential art-house winners as "The Shooting," "Two-Lane Blacktop," and "Cockfighter," here handles this mercenary hired hack assignment with a dismaying lack of style and vigor: the plodding pace, a crippling dearth of tension, mild off-screen deaths, blandly staged murder set pieces, tame gore, faltering attempts at humor (in one especially ridiculous scene Ricky hitches a ride with a motorist despite the fact that he's wearing a white hospital gown and has a plastic Plexiglas bubble on his head covering his visible brain!), clips from both "The Terror" and the first movie, a minimal body count, the dumb sequel set-up non-ending, the potentially compelling, but seriously unexplored psychic theme, and a dismal last third which degenerates into a tepid rehash of "Wait Until Dark" all leave a great deal to be desired. J. Steven Soles' generic shivery score likewise fails to impress. The game cast do their best with the lackluster material: Robert Culp contributes an amusingly kooky turn as sarcastic detective Lt. Connely, Elizabeth Hoffman is endearingly perky as Laura's chipper Grandma, and lovely brunette stunner Laura Harring as the sultry Jerri bares her cute little breasts in a pleasingly gratuitous bathtub nude scene. An extremely insipid and instantly forgettable clinker.

~Spoiler~ While Silent Night, Deadly Night is not a classic, it is a whole lot of fun, as is Part 2. But Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out is one big, boring mess. I was initially excited to see Bill Moseley (Texas Chainsaw 2 and The Devil's Rejects) take over the reins as the film's villain. But as the movie progresses, I just felt bad for him (I doubt he puts this film on his resume). Ricky Caldwell was blown away at the end of the last film. But it seems doctors were able to reconstruct his brain and as a result he wears this ridiculous plastic covering over his melon. I wish words could express how dumb this looks. But all is not a success because poor Ricky is in a coma. So the doctors won't let sleeping maniacs lie and bring in a psychic to try and connect with him. This proves to be a fatal error, as you can imagine. And of course this happens on Christmas Eve. What, they couldn't wait until after the holiday? Talk about tempting fate. Nothing really happens for much of the runtime. For about 30 minutes of the movie, we're treated to archive footage of Silent Night, Deadly Night 1 and Roger Corman's The Terror. While this was funny in the first sequel, it's tedious and boring here. And the biggest problem with the movie is that Moseley never dons the Santa suit! That's kind of the point of the film. He even gets a great opportunity to wear the costume at the beginning of the film. Instead, he wears his inconspicuous hospital gown and his stupid brain hat. The only good thing I can say about the movie is that it features a pre-fame Laura Harring. The cast also includes Robert Culp. It seems Mr. Culp has an affinity for bad Yuletide horror flicks because he was in this and the Goldberg vehicle, Santa's Slay. Avoid both.