Silent Night Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990)

Yours truly has a dumb but very punctual tradition to watch at least one holiday-themed horror movie during the Christmas period. After all these years, however, I'm running out of options and pretty much the only Christmas horror movies that I haven't seen yet are the more obscure sequels in the "Silent Night, Deadly Night" franchise. I couldn't get my filthy claws on part III, so I went straight to Brian Yuzna's fourth installment which has absolutely nothing to do with the original 1984 classic and actually hardly even qualifies as a Christmas movie. Apart from a couple of decorated trees left and right and one lousy strangulation with a cord of colorful lights, this "Initiation" has as much to see with Christmas as "Die Hard" has to see with the 4th of July… So, instead of a slasher with a psychopathic Santa Clause, we have a gooey splatter flick with a coven of female witches aiming to resurrect a demon by the name of Lilith. The over-ambitious Los Angeles journalist Kim is individually – and against the will of her superiors – investigating the bizarre suicide of a girl who jumped from a rooftop whilst on fire. She receives a lot of help from the kind and motherly occult book store owner Fima, but before she properly realizes what's happening, Kim is hallucinating about satanic symbols in her spaghetti and vomiting out cockroaches in her cockroach-infested little apartment. "SN,DN: Initiation" actually feels somewhat as if co- creator and director Brian Yuzna couldn't stuff all his crazy figments in his previous film "Society" and thus especially thought up another senseless plot. This way, he could also prolong his collaboration with the awesome special effects wizard Screaming Mad George and stuff the script – like a Christmas turkey – with perversities, filth and bugs. The film is definitely watchable, but a bit too random and imbecilic. Classy woman and two-time James Bond starlet ("The Man with the Golden Gun", "Octopussy") depicts one of the lead witches and surprisingly enough seems to enjoy herself as well. Cult actor Clint Howard appears as the men-hating witches' marginal errand boy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to look for an actual Christmas horror movie!

Part one was a good 7/10 Part two sucked mostly because half the film was flashback of the first. The actor who played Ricky STUNK. 4/10 Part three was even worse. The only thing it had going for it was a dude with an 80 hairband hairdo. 3/10 Part four, this one in question is THE WORST movie I have ever seen. When Clint Howard is the saving grace of a movie, you know something is wrong. It had NOTHING to do with the first three other than it was around xmas time. I can't even think of another movie that had worse acting, and I watch a lot of movies. The lead actress yelling through the movie was very annoying. Even showing a little flesh didn't gain this movie any points. I really HATED this movie. The ONLY reason I finished it was because I had already invented 30 minutes into it. WORST MOVIE EVER! 1/10 I'm going to watch the final installment, part 5 right now. I hope to God it goes back to the original formula, even though it'll probably suck like 2 and 3.

Reporter Kim(Neith Hunter in an awful performance), tired of working the Classified section and Calender at her male-dominating newspaper, decides to follow the unusual suicide of a young woman whose body was found charred from the waist down. What she walks into is a coven of strange witches led by Fima(Maud Adams)who wishes to use Kim, through various oddball witchcraftian concoctions, to bring back her daughter(..who indeed is the burning suicidal girl who took the plunge from the top of the apartment complex). The witches have this belief that Kim can rid herself of the parasitic males who have "ruled" over her by carrying out the ceremony of "Isis" where she would sacrifice the brother of her lover(..and co-worker)Hank(Tommy Hinkley). Kim is reluctant to do any of the things Fima and her co-horts desire and often faces bizarre hallucinations as big bugs(cock-roaches mainly)and larvaic worms rear their ugly heads everywhere she frequents. The biggest bug she can't rid herself of is ogre-like Ricky(Clint Howard playing his usually disgusting troll who Yuzna embellishes by photographing him with imaginative angles)who is the coven's gopher/soldier doing their bidding so that their ceremonies and such get accomplished. Will Kim be able to escape the clutches of the witches? Or, will she suffer the same fate as Fima's daughter?Your usual Yuzna weirdness. Lots of nasty bugs grown to massive size to give those who dislike them the creeps thanks to Screamin' Mad George's workshop. Hell, even Kim's spaghetti "breathes" at one point! There's a grotesque scene where Kim begins to morph into a worm and really violent scenes where Ricky attacks people such as Kim's boyfriend Hank with a steak knife or like choking Hank's father with Christmas lights. Oh, and Yuzna makes sure to show us why this film is in the series as a fourth film(..other than merely exploiting the title for his own purposes)by showing an excerpt of the previous sequel where the blind girl dreams of being nearly attacked by the killer Santa. The film really is merely an exercise in disgusting effects with a spit of witchcraft thrown in for good measure. One talent Yuzna shows is how to express creepy facial expressions out of rust on doors and through tree branches as they often form faces. Phantasm fans might dig the minor role Reggie Bannister has as Eli, the man in charge of the successful newspaper Kim wishes to become a reporter at.

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.