Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

Plot synopsis:
After being shot down by police at the end of the previous film, the infamous Santa Claus Killer Richard "Ricky" Caldwell has been left comatose for six years, with a transparent dome being affixed to his head by the doctors in order to repair his damaged skull. Wanting to contact Ricky, the eccentric Dr. Newbury begins using a blind clairvoyant girl named Laura Anderson to try reach out to him. One Christmas Eve, after a particularly traumatic session with Newbury, Laura begins to regret her participation in his experiment, but Newbury tries to convince her to keep trying, saying that they can talk more after Laura returns home from visiting her grandmother over the holiday. After Laura is picked up from the hospital by her older brother Chris, a drunk hospital employee dressed as Santa Claus wanders into Ricky's room and begins taunting him, rousing Ricky back to consciousness. Killing the Santa impersonator Ricky escapes from the hospital, taking a letter opener with him after killing a receptionist as well.
Picked up from a session with her psychiatrist, Laura is introduced by her brother to his new girlfriend, a flight attendant named Jerri who Laura takes a dislike to. As the trio head off to Granny's they fail to notice Ricky (who can hear Laura thanks to the mental link formed between them) following them. Acquiring a truck and some fuel after murdering a motorist and a gas station attendant, Ricky makes it to Granny's first; believing Ricky is simply an unfortunate handicapped vagrant Granny tries befriending him, but is killed when Ricky is provoked at the sight of a Christmas gift she offers him. At the hospital the two staff members butchered by Ricky are found by Lieutenant Connely and Newbury who begin trying to track Ricky down, realizing he is drawn towards Laura after surveillance camera footage shows him uttering her name.
Reaching Granny's house, Laura feels something is wrong. Her suspicions are ignored by Chris, who believes Granny may have simply gone off for a walk. When Granny fails to show up and the car is found sabotaged, the group become very worried, with Chris and Jerri deciding to go out and look for Granny. As she sits alone, Laura senses Ricky staring at her through the window and screams, bringing Chris and Jerri back to the house. After discovering the phone is dead and her picture is missing, Laura realizes it must be Ricky who is after her moments before Ricky punches through the door and begins throttling Jerri. She is saved when Chris stabs Ricky in the arm. Elsewhere, when Connely leaves the car to urinate, Newbury drives off, intending to try to reason with or trap Ricky, not wanting his experiment to go to waste by having Connely kill him.
Armed with an old shotgun Chris, Laura, and Jerri go out in search of aid, but are ambushed by Ricky, who stabs Chris in the chest. While Laura and Jerri run back to the house, Newbury finds Ricky. At first Ricky is uninterested in Newbury but is drawn close when Newbury plays a tape of one of his and Laura's sessions. As Ricky reaches out to him, Newbury, believing the tape had some kind of calming effect, grabs Ricky's hand, only to be stabbed in the stomach. At the house Laura and Jerri barricade the door, but Ricky still manages to break in. While looking for a gun Jerri is killed by Ricky, and her body is found seconds later by Laura. Ricky approaches, allowing Laura to touch his face. Enraged when Laura flees in terror after feeling his artificial skullcap, Ricky chases after her. In the basement Laura is encouraged by a vision of Granny, whose body she finds before knocking the light out. Laura is easily knocked aside trying to attack Ricky. As Ricky begins choking her, Laura is saved when Chris appears and shoots Ricky with a shotgun. Unfortunately the shotgun is loaded with blanks and the unharmed Ricky snatches it from Chris and uses it to choke him into unconsciousness. Ricky then moves in to finish off Laura, but she grabs a piece of a broken stick and holds it in front of her at the last second and Ricky impales himself.
Reaching the house with backup, Connely finds the dying Newbury before discovering Laura cradling her brother's body in the house. Driven away by Connely as the body of a survivor (the film does not indicate whether this is Chris or Ricky) is rushed to the hospital by paramedics, Laura wishes the lieutenant a "Merry Christmas" before having a vision of Ricky breaking the fourth wall as he states "... And a Happy New Year".

Tags: paranormal, murder

Review:
In the end of Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, Ricky is shot three times, yes  But he was never shot in the head  nor did he have his head blown off as another commentator included in his/her IMDb review of the film.
i have seen the first two silent night deadly night movies,and this one is the best one.its a very good fright film with a great cast,two from my favorite TV show twin peaks;Richard beymer,and Eric Da Re(Ben Horne and Leo Johnson from twin peaks)also Leonard Mann,Samantha scully, laura harring(muholland drive)and Robert culp(i spy)a Christmas themed movie that focuses on a blind girl,her big brother,his girlfriend and an escaped killer.(from silent night deadly night 2)Robert culp is great as the cell phone obsessed police detective and Richard beymer as the nutty doctor.directed by Monte Hellman who is a protégée of roger corman.they show scenes from the terror with jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff during the movie,Hellman worked on that movie in 1963.the violence is'nt too graphic,and the good cast really works the movie and makes it interesting,this was one of laura harrings first roles before moving on to the black scorpion,and muholland drive.my summary was from one of Forrest j Ackerman's puns for a magazine from the 1960's monster world.ill have to say silent night deadly night 3 is a guilty pleasure favorite.and I'm giving this the highest rating,call me crazy..
You know things aren't going so well, when you start to think that you rather be watching 'Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2' again and this indeed was running through my head during the very plodding part 3.
Gone is the wicked dark humor (well it does try with less than flattering results) and forcefully graphic carnage, replaced with a leadenly talkative script (which does on to meander in many scenes), uninterestedly indifferent performances (does Robert Culp know what the movie's about?) and plenty of flat build-ups that lead to off-screen kills with a spurt of blood.
This straight to video effort (which the next two would follow path) pretty much continues on from 'Part 2', but trying to get away from the randomly standard stalk and slash angle where it adds another idea involving the unusual connection between the comatose Ricky (who survived the head shot with his exposed brain being protected by a Plexiglas cap) and a clairvoyant blind girl Laura, which her doctor was using those physic abilities to get into the mind of Ricky (although unknown to her).
However in doing so she gets nightmarish images she rather no talk about, but through these experiments Ricky actually awakens from the coma and because of that attachment he heads after Laura.Credit for trying some different, but it got completely daft and spineless leading to something routine.
It moves beyond slow, and as a result is dull during times when it should be exciting, like when the killer is getting closer and closer to a victim, but in this movie the killer is so messed up and brain damaged he walks slower than any grandma walking the planet when he's actually a skinny twentysomething year old dude.
Dr.Newbury has saved the life of the hideously injured Ricky Caldwell.The doctor has encased his patient's explosive brain inside a Plexiglas cap,yet he has failed to revive him from his deep coma.In Newbury's attempt to reach the comatose victim's mind,he connects Ricky's brain waves to a gifted clairvoyant,Laura Anderson,who unexpectedly taps into the dark and twisted realm of his haunted dreams.Ghastly things begin to happen and detective Connoly(Robert Culp),must fight to stop the dangerous experiment."Silent Night,Deadly Night 3" is a mediocre horror film at its best.The pace is horrendously slow,the script is terrible and the acting is weak.Still there are some interesting camera angles and the film is suitably interesting.The next sequel was a completely unrelated gorefest from Brian Yuzna,whose unusual visionoften rejected by series fanswas at least a change of pace.6 out of 10..
I consider Silent Night, Deadly Night 1 & 2 to be underwhelming but passable slasher flicks, this third part however is a different creature altogether.So Ricky Caldwell found himself in a coma after the final events of the last film, somehow he's formed a psychic connection with a blind girl and when he predictably awakens and goes on a killing spree she is his target.This time he's mute, no more yelling "Naughty" or "Punish" in fact he's near enough braindead.
This is certainly not Moseleys finest hour.Not on par with the first two, this is a mindless cash grab.The Good:Not a sausageThe Bad:RecastingIncredibly boringThings I Learnt From This Movie:"She'll come back and she'll let me go as deep as I want, she likes it, loves it" The writer was horny when he was writing this film, this above line was not even remotely meant to be sexual..
I doubt loads of people watched out for yet another santa sequel after Part 2, known as one of the worst slasher movies ever - not bad in a subgenre where there's tight competition.
Well, personally I thought that with Richard Beymer from Twin Peaks as a mad scientist and Bill Moseley (who's had sort of a comeback lately but was probably working for free food when this movie was made) as reanimated Ricky it could only be so bad.
He wakes up (or she inadvertently wakes him up) and spends most of the rest of the movie sleepwalking after her and her pin-up model type of brother and his pin-up model type of girlfriend at grandma's house in the country on Christmas Eve.This is barely related to the first two films in this series and completely unrelated to the next two (which could be another point in its favour depending on your point of view) it's sometimes intentionally funny and is the only one in this series that actually has somewhat of a plot to it, but it's almost ruined by a terribly slooowww pacing.
There's a noticeable lack of killer Santa action, and most of the murder scenes happen offscreen, so there's little here for fans of the original film or slasher fans in general.
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..
This time the Santa killer, Ricky Caldwell (Bill Moseley), is awakened from a coma and naturally returns to killing people.
The movie is somewhat notable for being directed by cult director Monte Hellman, who does manage to imbue the film with more quirky weirdness than most '80s slasher sequels.
Rating 4**** stars out 5Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 3 is the true sequel to the original film.
However if your are a fan of Silent Night, Deadly Night movies then watch the first film and move to this one.
Silent Night, Deadly Night III (1989) 1/2 (out of 4) When I put the DVD into my player and hit play I was thinking that I had never seen this thing but within minutes of the movie playing it dawned on me that I had watched this once when it first came out.
Ricky Caldwell (Bill Moseley), the killer Santa from the previous film, has been in a coma for six years when a nutty doctor decides to use a blind woman (Samantha Scully) to try and connect with him.
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III is bad on all levels and it's really a poor way to end the series.
{2001} – incidentally, just this week, her GHOST SON {2005} i.e. Lamberto Bava's remake of his father Mario's SHOCK{1977}, was on Italian TV!) has a major supporting role in this one; the film also features another future notable character actor – Bill Moseley (of THE DEVIL'S REJECTS {2005}) – and two Hollywood veterans in Richard Beymer (who also received a brief lease of life around this time thanks to Lynch's TWIN PEAKS TV-series) and Robert Culp (who, by now, had apparently let his hair go white).The film initially riffs on a theme from John Boorman's EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977) with psychiatrist Beymer making blind psychic Samantha Scully connect to comatose murderer Moseley (from the second entry in the series – ironically, the manifestations she has of Moseley's visions were lifted from the first film, in which the murderer was a totally different character!); needless to say, this works only too well and Moseley is soon off his bed and up to his old tricks at the hospital itself (his first victim being a visiting drunken Santa who sarcastically asks him if Perry Coma{!} was his favorite singer), a gas station and at a cottage in the country (it is amusing to see him hitching a ride in his hospital clothes, with his exposed brain inside a steam oven-type device, resulting in a driver who jokily queries about whether he has had his head transplanted being dumped on the side of the road soon after)!
Scully and her incredibly hirsute (sporting not just long hair but a plentiful chest as well!) brother Eric Da Re, accompanied by his girlfriend Harring, are on their way to their granny's country house for a Christmas reunion and, given that the girl is telepathically connected to the killer, he follows them there (doing off with the old woman after she unwisely tries some BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN {1935}-like hospitality!); in the meantime, Beymer and Culp – on their way there themselves in the latter's car – indulge in pseudo-intellectual conversation that leads nowhere!Predictably, Moseley literally slits Beymer's guts open when the doc attempts to approach him (having deserted Culp when the latter has gone out to take a leak!) and the policeman only arrives on the scene after Moseley had been at long last dispatched by Scully (he unaccountably survives a shotgun blast to the chest) – the former having already done away with both Da Re and Harring; the unbelievably corny ending (with Moseley's ghost wishing us a "Happy New Year" in reply to Scully's "Merry Christmas"!) was apparently merely devised as a means of paving the way for a potential sequel (there were, in fact, 2 more of these in quick succession)!
Ricky (Bill Moseley), from part two (and brother of the killer Santa Claus from part one), awakens from a six-year coma, stalks a blind woman (Samantha Scully) whom he has a psychic link to, and kills anyone who gets in his way.
Though the film does get a little annoying a little later, considering the main character is blind and we have to sit through the slow reactions of her when she doesn't know that Ricky is right next to her or not.Bill Moseley gives a somewhat heart-felt performance in his portrayal of Ricky, and his character wasn't boring at all as one user said he was.Like the original "Silent Night, Deadly Night", it wasn't boring at all but quite interesting both physically and psychologically, yet I heard that the next two sequels "blow".
Pretty blind Laura(Samantha Scully playing her cold and distant making it especially hard to sympathize with her plight) is psychically linked to comatose serial killer Ricky(Bill Moseley, completely devoid of emotion..pretty much a walking robot who seems to explode through doors without even cutting himself and takes very slow steps)thanks to the experiments of Dr. Newbury(Richard Beymer)who was able to reconstruct the man's brain placing a glass dome on his head(..this is to ensure that nothing touches the brain as it is exposed).
Lt Connely(Robert Culp, a much welcome presence to the proceedings)will need the help of Dr. Newbury to find and stop Ricky before his rampage leaves a lot of dead bodies..and is Laura's only hope.Far-fetched premise and incredibly slow killer hinder the peculiar, weird atmosphere of the horror flick.
"Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!" begins as a sexy young blind woman, Laura (Samantha Scully), is having nightmares featuring the previous movies' psycho-Santa killer Ricky Caldwell (now played by genre icon Bill Moseley).
Sort of, kind of, maybe by the end it's all so damn crazy that it's less inspired crazy and more trying too hard.Certainly his premise has promise, leaning at first to seeming like a Nightmare on Elm Street movie: a girl, Laura (Samantha Scully), is having dreams/nightmares in a facility (the opening is perhaps the best part of the movie, or one of them), but it's soon revealed she's actually trying to be connected via, uh, unconventional Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer) to 'Ricky', the killer from previous entries (or a previous one, I still haven't seen the second of these movies), who is in a coma.
but lo and behold, somehow he wakes up, maybe from her connecting to his visions (the whole "Is he seeing what's inside me like I'm seeing what's inside him" comes up), and it becomes more like a Halloween movie as he is a) seemingly indestructible, and b) is basically a walking corpse.One curious thing of course to note is the cast of people from David Lynch projects - seeing Leo Johnson from Twin Peaks with a hair-do out of the band Whitesnake is unreal, but it's also nice to see an early Haring performance (of Mulholland Drive), though I actually forgot Beymer, aside from being Tony in West Side Story, was Benjamin Horne on Twin Peaks too until I looked it up - and in the first act I thought that Hellman was going for a Lynchian sort of set up.
Probably not intentional, but certainly the connections with the sub-conscious, dreams, nightmares, the inner landscape of the mind as a f***ed up minefield of terrors, it made for a set up that I was initially engaged in, and Hellman as a director has a pacing that is set apart from the usual hacks and journeymen doing these horror sequels, much less direct to video.He takes his time, doesn't always use music where you expect, and whether it's due to him being disgusted by what's usually done in these movies or wanting to change it up, there's not as much blood (when Granny gets it - oh, is that a spoiler, nope, come on, you see it coming a mile away, folks - he cuts away to an outside shot of her house), and so there's an uncanny sense of suspense at times.
"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.
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.
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.
But Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out is one big, boring mess.
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.
This third sequel has the Santa Claus Killer Richard "Ricky" Caldwell, a deranged man obsessed with Old St. Nick, awakened from his coma after a blind woman makes a psychic connection with him, who he then stalk for the remainder of the film.
Apparently, Ricky is now at the center of a bizarre experiment in which a young woman named Laura, a blind girl with an inexplicable psychic link to him, explores the recesses of his psychotic mind and re-lives the chapters of his tormented past.After Part 2 squandered over a half-hour of its running time with repeats of scenes from the first Silent Night, one would assume the film-makers knew that the viewers of this installment were up to speed on the origin of this character.
Perry Coma?" Apparently, the psychic link forged by the experiment is a two-way street, and when Laura hits the road with her brother and his girlfriend for Christmas at Grandma's, Ricky hears the directions in his mind and decides to join their holiday festivities.
Anyway, she goes to her Grandmother's with her Brother for Christmas.Ricky escapes from the hospital and follows the girl, killing off several victims on the way.