We’re back with week two of our Christmas extravaganza, and this time we’re diving into the hilariously campy horror sequel, ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.’

After years of resistance, we’re finally giving this fan-requested movie the attention it deserves. Join us as we dissect the recycled footage from the first movie, Ricky’s over-the-top performance, and the film’s unexpected (and often ridiculous) comedic elements. We debate whether this film is so bad it’s good and consider the legacy of this infamous holiday slasher. Tune in for laughs, critical takes, and some surprising revelations about our feelings towards this cult classic. Don’t forget to share your thoughts and recommendations for other holiday horrors!

Episode 468, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we are in week two of our Christmas extravaganza and uh, I thought we would go for week two to go for a sequel number two, and we are doing Silent Night. Deadly Night Two, A movie. I know you have been resisting for years.

Mm-hmm. But fortunately for us, several people have requested over the years, and so I figured we might as well get around to it. And now is the time. Why have you been resisting this for years? Because it’s terrible. I, 

Craig: I mean, we see a lot of terrible stuff. I know, but I’ve seen it before and like, ugh.

Don’t wanna, don’t wanna sit through that again. Don’t again. And I get it. I, you know, it’s, it’s campy and people have fun with it, and I get it. It is campy and fun. I think the thing that irritates me the most, and obviously we’ll talk about this in more depth, but what irritates me the most is you have to sit through the whole first movie first.

And Yeah, and that’s fine. I, I mean, I actually. Enjoy the first movie for what it is, but you put on a new movie and they’re like, oh, okay. All right. They’re, they’re gonna catch us up to what happened in the first movie. And that usually happens in, you know, 10 minutes. Two to three minutes, maybe 10 minutes.

Yeah. If it’s long, maybe 10. Mm-hmm. This, they basically. You just watch the whole first movie again, just narrated by the protagonist of this movie. So, so there’s an, there’s, there’s a voiceover narration, but you’re just watching to be fair, the best parts of the first movie again. So, yeah, I guess you could go a couple of ways.

You could skip part two altogether, or you could just watch part two. Because you’re getting the best of the first movie Anyway. That’s good. That’s a good point. Yeah. Anything that you don’t get from the first movie in that recap, the first half, literally the first half of the second movie is all recap.

Anything that you don’t get from the first movie in that recap isn’t worth seeing anyway. So I mean, I guess at least it has that going for it. 

Todd: I mean, you get the best scenes from the first movie, but I, I don’t know. I kind of watching this again while watching and basically watching the first movie again by watching the sequel, which of which, half of it is the first movie being recapped?

I don’t know. Like it reminded me how much I really enjoyed the first movie, and I remember when we did that years ago, we came into it. Remembering it was a snooze fest, and then when we watched it, we were like, oh my God, this is actually kind of good and entertaining and had some sympathy for the main character, Billy or whatever, you know, who sees the trauma as a kid and then grows up and is traumatized to dress as Santa and then like punish people Because of that, I mean, watching, it reminded me how much I really enjoyed the first movie and I think.

Although these are like the best scenes from the first movie, I think the first movie deserves a full watch fair. You know, it cuts out some of the quieter moments that I think give you some impact and really build up the Billy character to this point where you really sympathize with them. Eh, 

Craig: I think the only thing that you’re really missing out on are the grandpa scenes.

And obviously, yeah, obviously Ricky, the kid in this movie who is Billy’s younger brother who is in the first movie, like, yeah, barely in the opening, the inciting incident when Billy sees his parents murdered and assaulted by. A guy in a Santa Claus suit. Ricky is there, but he’s an infant. Yeah. But he remembers 

Todd: Ricky as an infant, remembers an awful lot, particularly from the perspective of Billy.

But he, but I mean, he was in the car the whole time, but Right. I mean, still gets flashbacks to his mom’s chest being, you know, exposed by Santa Claus by the front of the car. 

Craig: You’re right. Which there’s no way that he could have seen. Even as an infant in the backseat of the car. Well, there is a lot. I know.

I mean, I’m picking nis. What I was getting at was the only, the only thing from the first movie that I missed were the grandpa scenes, but Ricky wouldn’t have been there to see those, so Fair enough. 

Todd: I don’t know. I kind of thought the first movie did a really nice job. I thought the actor who played Billy in the first movie was really.

Pretty good. I liked seeing his breakdown and seeing, and there was some cool stuff, and again, you see it in this too, in the clips, but there’s actually some interesting cinematography and editing going on there. I mean, it was kind of a fun movie. This movie is far camper and silly. When we get to the second half, I would almost say skip the first half and just jump to the second half, the first half, and then you only, you know, have 20 minutes to watch or so, and, and it’s kind of fun.

It’s fun in the way that. A really hilariously goofy over the top campy bad movie is, I couldn’t tell you the 

Craig: last time I saw this. I, I saw it when I was a kid and I’m, I, I apologize for jumping all over the place, but I just keep thinking about other things, like the whole plan for this movie, basically, as I understand it, was to profit off of the name through.

Rental. Yeah, and it worked. Like I read, you know, WA finally watching it again, I was still irritated with the stuff in the beginning and even in the beginning stuff. The main actor is nutty in this, and we’ll talk about that, I’m sure. But I don’t know, in that whole first 45 minutes, there’s maybe. Three or four minutes of stuff that’s worth seeing.

You could probably find a compilation on YouTube, but when it does get to the second half, I was like, oh yeah, this is fun. I mean, it’s, it’s all cramped into like 30 ish minutes. Once you really get going, but once it does get going, it’s fun. It’s, you know, the, the killer is unhinged. It’s just silly violence.

There’s, like you said, campy stuff going on all around. That last part is amusing. I, I, I would never go so far. To say good, but Oh God, no. Amusing in the, it’s so bad. It’s good. But it, it also, and I, I, I really think it is, it feels very self-aware. Yeah. It seems like they know what they’re doing, you know? It doesn’t seem like they’re trying to be serious.

It’s over. It’s intentionally over the top. 

Todd: Well, years later, the actor who played the main character here, and his name is, uh. Eric Freeman, who by the way, I thought that I had seen him in other stuff. He just has a very familiar looking face. He’s bulky as heck. But no, like I looked at his credits and he’s got almost nothing.

Just he looks like the, uh, the boyfriend from Teen Witch. That’s what he looks like to me. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. He’s just got this very, and we’re up in his face a lot. We are in his face a lot. Yeah. He said that this was just a, a simple paycheck for him. He was not in it, it was like 1400 bucks for a handful of days of shooting, and he was getting conflicting messages from.

The director and the two writers. The director is one of the writers. They’re like four people credited with the story. And then two main writers on here. Interestingly enough, the producers originally hired the director who’d never directed anything before, but he was an editor, Lee Harry, to uh, just edit the first movie into a sequel.

Like he was literally gonna do nothing more than just re-edit the first movie. Somehow in some way, you could justify making a sequel out of it. And he is like, come on guys, let’s. Let’s add some more stuff. 

Craig: I read something like they were gonna shoot some sort of wraparound where it was going to turn out that the events of the first movie never really happened.

They were just some delusions in some crazy person’s mind. The ravings of a madman. Right. And we’ve seen 

Todd: that before where people just do 

Craig: that. I don’t know. I can’t think of anything offhand, but I mean, it’s not like it’s a radical idea. Again, I think they were just trying to make money. They just wanted to get something out fast.

To make a buck. Yeah. Yeah. They just wanted to get something out fast. But it evolved into this and I, I think originally. There was a, another edit of this where it was even more, it was more like what you just said. It was mostly just a, a recut, I don’t remember if it didn’t test well or, or the producers didn’t like it or something.

And that’s when he kind of got permission to go in and shoot more of the Ricky stuff. 

Todd: Yeah. They got like 250,000 bucks to go in and shoot some more Ricky stuff beyond just what was inside the, uh, the room with where he, where he is with the doctor. And so he was told by one of the guys to really overact.

And so he’s deliberately and intentionally overacting. He thought the whole time he was basically shooting a comedy and he hadn’t even seen the first movie. He said, my head wasn’t really in this. I had other plans for my acting career at this time. This was definitely just a paycheck. He got 1400 bucks for it, and he just kind of did what he was told and didn’t really know much about the first movie.

He said, if I’d seen the first movie, I think I would’ve played this differently. But no, he’s over the top acting. His eyebrows are like, they have a mind of their own. His eyebrows need agents in this one. I 

Craig: know, but I I, I read that even that was directed. Yeah, it was, you know, they, they told him to be really super exaggerated with his eyebrows, with his face in his delivery, and.

It’s goofy and over the top, but it, I don’t know. It’s funny. I get it. Like if you’re making a joke, I just don’t know if people expected a joke, you know? ’cause the first movie, right? I, I, you can find dark comedy in it, I guess, but it’s really dark. This one, the comedy is more overt and maybe, I don’t know.

Maybe had I known that that was the intention, I would’ve felt a different way about it. But at the time, and even just until today, even just until today, this morning when I got up and watched it at six 30 this morning, it, uh, I was like, I, I think I get it. I, I think I get what they were going for, and I, I don’t know, maybe that’s just, you know, hindsight being 2020 or maybe it’s looking at it through a different.

Cultural lens. I don’t know, but I get why people like it 

Todd: now. Well, I think it kind of devolves into comedy because the way it starts out, it seems selfer and actually does it. It’s so selfer that it is a bit campy. I mean, I, it felt a little like they were going in a pretentious direction in the beginning, and then it went on so hard that I thought maybe they are trying to be funny.

But there were never any hints. It wasn’t like later when it’s just flat out crazy, like the dude’s like walking down the street like Robocop. You know what I mean? Yeah. But in this case. It seems like they’re really going for style. I mean, there’s, there’s the credit sequence. There’s a slow pan up his legs.

He’s sitting smoking. There’s closeups on the cigarette, closeups on his eyes. You know, a door opens, but we don’t see who it is walking in, and then it turns out to be some orderly. Who never says a word and I’m convinced they just didn’t want to pay this guy. You know, the, the, the fees you have to pay a guy to actually give him a line.

’cause I mean, anybody in this situation would’ve set a line at some point, and he goes through this whole bit, not doing it. Sets up a reel to reel tape recorder on the table in this little white room, staring at him, looking over his shoulder, won’t take his eyes off of big eyes, you know, plugs it into the wall.

This was his only job. Was to drop this in the room, plug it into the wall and walk out and he’s, and it takes five minutes, stretches it out for 10 minutes. I know it’s insane. And you do feel like this movie really is trying hard to stretch things out at times. And this is definitely one of those moments.

And so I just wasn’t sure if they were just trying to be stylish or if this was supposed to be as funny as it comes across. ’cause it’s pretty darn funny. And then another doctor walks in the room and another guy, I swear he just looked so fricking familiar to me. But he was, he’s not been really in anything.

The doctor, I don’t know. He wasn’t familiar to me. Oh, the Doctor Bloom. James. Yeah, James Newman is his name. He’s been like a guy in Legally Blonde too. He’s, he was in a, just a couple episodes of some, some things, nothing else. Again, he just, I think he’s just an actor who looks like another actor. But anyway, they 

Craig: kind of, everybody in this movie kind of is just generically eighties.

Todd: Yeah, that’s true. 

Craig: Even the orderly. Has kind of an early, not today, but like an early Samuel L. Jackson kind of looked to him with kind of the big eyes and, 

Todd: oh, that’s a good point actually. 

Craig: And later on, the blonde girlfriend kind of looks like. Every blonde girlfriend from the eighties, like the blonde girlfriend from weird science and yeah.

But at least, at 

Todd: least we’ve seen her in stuff. Yeah. Oh, okay. 

Craig: Well, I don’t, I didn’t remember that either, but everybody’s just kind of generically eighties in including the main guy. But I get what you’re saying where it feels kind of selfer, but I just don’t know. And I haven’t seen, I looked for like documentaries or you know, people talking about this and I.

And, and not for very long, but I didn’t find anything. I just would be interested to know if at, I assume at the time the director initially wanted it to be a comedy, right? I don’t know. 

Todd: Hold on. I was looking at, yeah, I don’t know. They, they, like I said, they gave conflicting. Information to him. One of them told him to kind of play up the comedy.

One of ’em told him to overact, you know, it’s, I guess the writer was in the, the writers were in the room. One of them was the actual director. 

Craig: So yeah, I, it said what I’m, what I’m reading is that Lee Harry has said that the producers wanted a straight slasher, but he wanted to lean in to the dark comedy just because he thought that it was so absurd.

So that’s why he directed everybody to kind of play it big and. I don’t know. I mean, looking at it from that perspective, I think in the past I’ve just tried to look at it as a direct sequel. I’m expecting something along the same lines and it, it takes such a hard veer into the comedy that I think that it just kind of threw me off kilter.

Mm. If you approach it as that, like. So bad. It’s good or intentionally goofy, I think. I think you’ll appreciate you enjoy a lot more. You enjoy. Yeah, you’ll enjoy it a lot more. And I did this time around. 

Todd: Yeah. See, this is why we do this. This is why we visit these movies. Even, even though we have bad feelings about them, sometimes we come back to them with a whole new eyes, don’t we?

So, uh, thank you to those patrons out there who, who asked for it. 

Craig: I’m not giving it a glowing endorsement. It is a bad movie, but. It’s, it’s funny and it’s kind of funny to watch, but that whole thing, like you said, like the, the orderly never taking his eyes off the guy, like it’s so intense. Like it’s ridiculously intense.

Like he’s just staring him down. Mm-hmm. And then Ricky, I mean, he’s just playing like, I don’t know, like James Dean cool. Smoking his cigarettes and his jeans and his. Jean shirt and you know, he’s in an institution or whatever, so he’s kind of in these institutional clothes, but the doctor comes in, the doc’s like, my name is Dr.

Blum. 

Todd: You can 

Craig: call me Henry. Or if you would feel more comfortable, you can just call me Doc. Fuck off doc. And I was like, oh, he’s a badass. 

Todd: Right? 

Craig: Like that’s just, that’s just, oh my God. Okay. I see we’re dealing with a real 

Todd: badass here. 

Craig: Well, they cast him. 

Todd: They ca they were gonna cast another actor that they said was actually more experienced, but they said they liked his look, they liked that he was kind of this big, he’s, he’s a bodybuilder dude.

You know? I mean, he, not bodybuilder like, like Arnold Schwartzenegger, but this guy’s got muscles, you know? He, he looks like a footballer and he is broadcasted, yeah. Yeah. He looks like a football player. And he’s handsome. He is. He looks good. And honestly like, I’d like to see this guy really acting instead of overacting.

I think he might be quite good. Yeah. Yeah. But it, they’re just up in his face the whole time and he’s just got these lines all the time. That just sound over the top. I mean, the dialogue in these sequences Yeah. Is ridiculous. But really we only see them a few times. Yeah. There’s like 30 seconds of each one, and then would jump to a clip from the first movie and a little bit of his narration from it.

And you’re right, it is just like the best bit. 

Craig: Right When he is delivering those lines so intensely, the camera is right in his face. Yeah. Like most of the, like sometimes he’s looking at the camera. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are actually. Okay. So then we get into the, the doctor’s like, I’m your last chance.

Last chance. For what? Like what is happening? I don’t even know. I don’t have no idea. 

Todd: Why is he here? What is going on here? Why is he recording this conversation? Is he doing what’s going 

Craig: on? Doing? I don’t know. It did. Yeah. And Ricky’s like, well I, I’ve talked to all the doctors and I know all the tricks, you know, whatever.

’cause he’s a tough guy. But then the doctor’s like, well first of all, they put on the screen date. December 24th. Why? Who cares? Like that’s significant. Why do you need to put that as like a text on the screen? I think we could figure that out some other time or whatever. But anyway, then he’s like, who killed your parents?

And does Ricky say something like, are you ready for it? Santa Claus. And then he does that more than once and then it’s the flashback to the whole first movie. So if you haven’t seen the first movie and you don’t wanna watch it, just go back and listen to our episode. ’cause I’m sure we go over it in great detail.

In great detail. Yes. That’s what happens. We watch the whole movie for the next 40 minutes with Ricky popping in and out periodically, and there’s actually, there, there is some fun. You know, this guy was an editor and I, I think that he has specialized in movie trailers. He’s done some movie trailers from, for some really big, there’s some cool editing in here.

Even in this, in the flashbacks, they will sometimes. Quickly cut back to Ricky as he’s kind of reliving and retelling the story and it’s really fast kind of stuff, but I actually really, I appreciated that editing 

Todd: stuff. Do you know what I’m talking about? Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Yeah. There were bits where like it would just jump to him or it would flash back and forth to him like he was having this flashback in the moment. Yeah, it was really cool. And he’s, yeah, he’s in the moment, 

Craig: like, he’s kind of like, we know he’s, he’s telling the story, but it’s edited in such a way that it’s almost like, like he’s so in the moment that he’s a part of the story.

Yeah. I, I thought it was cool. 

Todd: Yeah, it was cool. Yeah. I thought that actually like the editing was good. Uh, you know, to make something like this somewhat interesting is gonna be a challenge. And I think, you know, they did the best that they could and it turned out. You know, for those moments anyway, somewhat interesting.

And honestly, if you had not seen the first movie before, you might enjoy this first half. I mean, honestly, think about it. It’s true. If you, they show all the best parts. Yeah. It’s like you said, you, you could skip seeing the first movie, you could just see this whole thing and you could take it all as one movie and, and it would be fine.

I mean, I think, like I said, I think you’d be missing out on a little bit more of the, what makes the first movie kind of fun. But, uh, like you said, you see all the best scenes, all the gore and everything, and it’s clear that they didn’t have as big a budget for this. Second half because a lot of the kills are underwhelming or offscreen.

There’s, there’s just not much for makeup or effects or anything like that until the very end. 

Craig: Yeah. Okay. So we see the whole first movie again, and the first movie ends with Billy, the initial killer getting shot by the police right in front of. His brother. 

Todd: Yep. 

Craig: Now we get into Ricky’s story and we find out that this was, I liked this.

He got put into a good foster home with nice parents. Yeah. That never happens in these movies. No, not usually, but he, he gets put into a nice place with nice parents and it looks like the 

Todd: Wonder Years, there’s like super eight style footage of them, like barbecuing in the back. Stuff. It was kind of cute 

Craig: and there’s 

Todd: never a 

Craig: turn like you expect like at some point he’s with his mom and he sees some nuns on the street and he freaks out and then he sees some like red cloth in a window and he flashes back to his brother getting shot in the Santa suit.

Yeah. It freaks him out. And the mom is concerned and they go back to talk to. The nuns from the convent or whatever that he was adopted from, and I was like, oh, this is where it’s terrible. They’re gonna send him back. No, no. Like they, they’re just real, they’re just really concerned about him and they want to, you know, do everything that they can and they take him back home and yeah, they’re great.

Eventually, you know, his. Foster dad dies and it hits him really hard. And then that’s kind of, yeah, by the 

Todd: way, where he goes five years later and I’m like, okay, this kid is 12. This kid does not look five years older than what we just saw. And then I was, I was reading the trivia and I was like, yeah, like he was even older than adult Ricky.

It’s pretty 

Craig: funny. I had read that too. Well, the Ricky that’s being interviewed in the institution is supposed to be 18. That guy does not look 18 to me. Oh God. No, that’s true. I would say he’s well into his twenties, but at this point when his dad dies, he’s supposed to be 15. And yes, I read that too, that the actor who plays the 15-year-old Ricky is older than the actor that played the 18-year-old Ricky, but I didn’t think he looked 15.

But I didn’t think he looked older than the other guy. 

Todd: He just looked massively older than what the one we had seen before. Sure, sure, sure. It’s funny because now we’re gonna get new information because he says his stepdad died and there’s like have a scene with him and his stepmom there at the grave and his stepmom walks one way and he walks another way for some reason.

I don’t know. And he’s like, I used to like to. To hike in the back woods. I’ve never 

Clip: told anybody this before. Let it out. Here he comes. Yeah.

Todd: And the camera even is like close up on his face. Oh God. The dialogue is so funny. And it’s like he’s got like a, like a wicked smile. 

Craig: Like, ha ha, get ready for this. 

Todd: Oh my gosh. He’s so sinister. He, he’s hiking in the woods. He comes upon a jeep, which is out there and it’s red and there’s a couple picnicking in the grass.

And you know, he looks from the trees and he watches the boyfriend being naughty with her. You know what triggered the first guy? His brother was? Flashing back to his mother being almost raped. And what we got in the first movie were a couple, two or three different scenes of women almost being raped with triggered Ricky to kill them.

I’m sorry to triggered Billy to kill them. It seems like Ricky’s a little more open to different triggers. Sometimes it’s the rape that he was really, really young and probably didn’t even see from inside the car, but nevertheless, oftentimes it’s red. It’s the color red. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: That messes him up. But in this case, it’s just this, this rape.

He’s like, oh, you’re a naughty. 

Craig: These, but these movies, God, I mean, we see the scene, you know when, when his mom is assaulted in in the first movie, and then we see in the first movie, these coworkers are like flirting through this whole party, and then they go back into the stockroom or whatever and the guy attempts to rape her.

Yeah. And that’s what triggers Billy. And then this happens here too. This seems like. A couple like, yeah, they’re out there and the guy basically tries to rape her too. Like 

Todd: everybody is so rapey in these movies. They’re rapey. I think we said that about the previous one too. And this guy’s bizarrely rapey because he likes, tries to rape her.

She’s very upset. He’s then he goes, fuck this, I’m getting a beer, but I’ll be back. And he walks away and she just sits there like she’s gonna wait for him to come back. I mean, right? Yeah. Oh God. It’s just so dumb. Right? 

Craig: So he, right, so he goes back to his, uh, and he, you know, Ricky’s, he’s like, naughty. So the guy goes to his jeep to get a beer, whatever, and.

There’s a camera trick where the guy is standing in front of the Jeep and then he moves or something to reveal Ricky behind the wheel, and then Ricky just runs him over back and forth multiple times. It was hilarious. And then he does it and he gets out and the girl walks up and goes. Thank you and walks away,

Todd: God, the sense of justice here. It’s crazy. Then we get back to the room and he says something to the, I don’t know, there’s some back and forth between him and the doctor. It 

Craig: shows, well, it shows. It shows the doctor like furiously writing in all capital. Huge letters. Red car. Like this is some huge revelation.

I know. It’s, it’s crazy. 

Todd: Anyway, he says something to him, I can’t remember exactly what it was like, what was your home life like? Whatever. And the doctor’s like, oh, it was actually pretty good. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then Ricky goes, my aunt couldn’t afford to send me to college, so I got a job and the next scene and, and this is kind of what it is from here on out, it’s really just scenes.

Mm-hmm. It’s not really. A story, not so much. It’s just, here’s the thing that happened to me then, and this thing happened to me then, and he’s just taken the trash out to an alley. He sees two guys fighting, doesn’t intervene, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t wanna punish anybody until one of them pulls out an insanely large, bright red handkerchief.

And, uh, wipes his face with it and Ricky sees that. And Ricky has the same super strength that Billy had in the previous movie to be able to hold people up really high by the neck Uhhuh. And he does that by 

Craig: one hand, by one arm? Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: By one hand. He takes his other arm, finds an umbrella nearby. And the look on his face when he sees that umbrella.

Bowls it up. I laughed out loud. It was hilarious. This is, it’s just total camp. If you have any question, if this movie’s gonna be campy or not, this scene settles it for you because he shoves the umbrella through this guy’s stomach. And then when the camera pulls out, you see that the umbrella has opened up on the other side and it’s all bloody and tattered.

Yeah. The guy falls. The guy falls forward on the ground. Ricky walks away and we have this long lingering scene of the bloody umbrella and then it starts raining. Oh, that’s funny. I didn’t even know that. And it slowly pushes it on the umbrella again because they’re definitely pushing for time. Yeah. 

Craig: You know, and it’s funny you said.

The, uh, red handkerchief, red does play into it so much, and, and we’re told very early on in that scene when he’s a kid that the color red triggers him and freaks him out. But to be fair, in this scene, the guy that he kills is a bookie who was beating up and threatening to kill another guy in the. Back.

So up to this point he’s only killed a couple people, but they’ve both been bad guys. Yeah. At some point that changes true, but at this point he, you know, I think as delusional and psychotic as it was Billy in the first movie. Had had ingrained in him by Mother Superior that people who are naughty deserve to be punished.

Punishment is good, so like obviously he’s right cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but he was trying to punish people for bad behavior and even his. Notions of what was good and what was bad. Were very skewed by his upbringing, but there’s kind of this moralistic thing to it and, and up until this point, it’s the same.

There’s kind of a moralistic thing to it. It’s not like he’s just going out and killing people at random as he will later. 

Todd: Right. When the movie takes a turn. Yeah. Right. Anyway. No, you’re right. And that’s important to point out. It was such a strong element of the first movie, and it was very consistent through the first movie.

This one, you’re right, it just kind of goes off the rails at some point. But here, he’s still doing that. I, I love this interstitial again, where he is like, Richard, do you know why you’re here? Tell me. No, you tell me. I asked you first. I’m finished talking. Henry, who’s this? And he pulls out a, a photo, A headshot.

A headshot. Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t understand that at all. It’s like the actress’s headshot. 

Craig: Yeah. It’s like signs. Yes. It’s like what is, what is happening? What is this? And, and this. The girl in the movie is not supposed to be an actress or anything. She’s just a normal girl. 

Todd: I think 

Craig: it’s a 

Todd: prop. She brought in 

Craig: I bet.

Anything It was her actual headshot. Oh, it has to be. It was so funny. It’s so 

Todd: funny. It’s been sighed. 

Craig: They have a meet, a meet Cute where she hits him with her car and then laughs. She hits him. He’s on his motorcycle and, and it’s not like they have a, like a, a. Car accident or whatever, like it’s, it’s very low impact.

He’s not even moving and she just kind of bumps him, but he falls over and she hits him with her car and then she gets out and he’s down on the ground and his bicycle’s down and she just starts laughing like, 

Clip: that’s so funny. Poor guy. 

Craig: And then there’s becomes aism, right? Romantic. And this is very typical, like you said, it just feels like a series of vignettes.

I feel like it could have been fleshed out into a full. 85 minutes, you could have done more with this relationship. This was maybe even my favorite part. It was kind of cute. It is just basically a little romance montage where they have their meat, cute and then they ride his motorcycle and then they have sex.

Todd: Yeah, that was a really long, again, stretched out for time all over her body apparently was supposed to be even more involved. That’s interesting. Uhhuh, this actress though, we’ve seen her before. She’s Elizabeth Kitan. She was in the last Friday, the 13th movie we did. She was one of the girls in there.

She’s, you know, she was in a lot of these like silly, silly, made for cable kind of movies like Dr. Alien and Night Wish and several, the Vice Academy comedy. I, I don’t know, I, a lot of these movies I used to watch late at night on USA, she was in. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, she was very, very familiar to me anyway.

But yeah, she’s, she looks good. She’s pretty, she does a fine job. She might be the best actress in this whole thing. I don’t know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they, they have their little meet. Cute. They have their little riding around without helmets on, which always drives me crazy. But that’s the movie thing, I guess.

Sorry, I sound like an old man when I say that. And then they end up in a movie theater. It’s a very tiny movie theater. It looks more like a screening room with six people in it. It looks like. It looks like a porn set. It kind of does. Actually. It probably was, and a whole bunch of really complicated stuff happens here.

Like they’re trying to watch the movie. There are these two guys in the back who are dicking around and being goofy. There’s this older couple in the middle who just look confused and keeps staring ahead. Then he decides to get up. For some reason, and then some other dude pops up behind her all of a sudden says his name is Chip and it’s clearly like an earlier flame and they have a kind of argument and then it cuts back to the back where the goofy dude is, is dicking around with the other guy and they do this funny little camera trick where suddenly the other guy’s replaced with Billy and, I’m sorry, with Ricky?

Ricky, yeah. In like a split second. I don’t know what Ricky did with that other guy. Silently Soundlessly. I don’t either, but suddenly he’s there and then like he kind of pounces on him and we see like a cartoon, like a bug’s buddy cartoon. Yeah, this guy’s leg just flies in the air. And popcorn. Popcorn flying.

Craig: I thought that was really funny. Oh my God. The theater, or at least what they’re showing us. Again, it’s, it’s clearly a set. It’s like, I don’t know, maybe five or six rows of four or five seats of theater seating, but there’s that middle aged couple that you were talking about is sitting in the row or just one or two rows in front of.

Where he’s killing him. And then the girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend are just a couple of rows in front of that. Like, it, it, it is cartoonish. It is funny, but my favorite line in the whole movie is when the boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend is talking to the blonde girl Uhhuh, and he’s like, ah, come on babe.

Come on babe. You know you want me back. 

Clip: Go away. Hey, I’m trying to give you another chance. Great. You stood me up. You cheated on me. You ruined my best sweater, and I would rather die before I go out with you again. 

Todd: You ruined my best sweater.

Craig: Her delivery is perfect. Oh my God. I laughed out loud so hard. It is funny. You’ve ruined my best sweater. I’d rather die than go out with you again. Ugh. Oh my God. 

Todd: So funny. Okay. And in the testament to how, how good this writing is, chip was introduced in that first scene, just so the week of the two of them are walking down the street and he’s in front of his red car, which he also calls out later, Uhhuh.

Anyway, you know, Ricky can see that she’s, he’s an old flame and that enrages him. And Chip is like, Hey baby, don’t you wanna get back with me? All that stuff. And then he says, that’s enough. And then Chip goes, yeah, that’s what she said. When I. Your brain’s out in the backseat of Old Red here. Yeah.

Craig: And 

Todd: then my favorite kill of the whole movie right here. Yeah. It’s fun. Again, out in broad daylight as as often happens right in front of his girlfriend who does nothing for a while. You know, Ricky basically answer pulls one of the. One of the, what do you call it? Cables. Cables off of the cable jumper cables.

Yeah. I guess he’s jumping his car, isn’t he, from some other battery. And he sticks it in his mouth, onto his tongue. And this guy, I, this must have been the most expensive special effect in the whole movie. ’cause they clearly had to make like a fake head or something. Mm-hmm. And yeah, he a very close up, he worked, he cranks up the juice and the guy, you know, starts smoking from inside the mouth and gets burned up.

There’s a little bit of an animation in there too. It’s kind of impressive. I like this bit. And then she runs up behind him and goes. What are you doing? Are you out of your mind? You killed him. I hate you, Ricky. I hate you. 

Craig: And then, then my second favorite line in the movie, he looks at her and says, punish and like grabs the car antenna.

And she goes. Uhoh.

She literally said, uhoh, and turns around and runs away. Oh 

Todd: my God. Uhoh. This is the point where I was like, okay, this is clearly off the rails, because then it looks like she’s, he’s gonna go after her too. But then suddenly a cop appears and it’s, it’s like Andy Griff. Yeah, but he does, 

Craig: he kills her. He strangles her with the antenna.

Todd: Did he strangle her right then and there with the antenna? Okay. You’re right. I think 

Craig: so. Yeah. And then, and then the cop shows up and the cop appears 

Todd: and he is like, oh, you put your, put your gun down. And he comes at him, walks straight up to him. You put your hands up. He gets so close to him that obviously Ricky can just grab the gun, turn it on the cop, and shoot him in the forehead.

So now Ricky has a gun and now Ricky. Is Robocop at this point, I was thinking, where is Santa Claus in this movie? Like, where are we gonna get Ricky as Santa? Oh yeah. But I realized we had Ricky as Robocop and I enjoyed that far more, and that was enough for me. He starts walking deliberately down the street in what must be the quietest neighborhood ever.

As a guy comes running outta the house and goes, Hey, what’s going on here? P shoots him big blood spray up against the wall and he’s 

Craig: laughing maniacally like, ha ling, 

Todd: he’s just so stupid. And then, and a guy comes out putting the garbage down and he goes. Garbage day. 

Craig: He shoots him through the garbage can.

Yeah. Which has become like a huge meme. And oh, that’s, I, that’s when people talk about this movie that if you mention this movie and people know this movie, that’s what they’ll say. Garbage Day Day.

And I guess that was just improvised on the dates. It works. But see at this point, like he’s. He’s totally lost it. Like these people didn’t do anything wrong. But there is a funny part where he’s like, he shot a bunch of people, like there’s bodies everywhere, right? And this little girl bumps into him with her tricycle and she’s like, excuse me.

And he’s like, 

Todd: okay. And she just rides away. And she rides off. Oh my God. And then a car comes at him and he shoots at the car and there’s a little car stuck. A red car? Yeah, a red car. He shoots at the car twice. He hits the driver, which causes the car to go a little off into something else, which flips it over.

And the act of flipping this car over also makes it explode. And again. I’m waiting for more people to run out. I’m waiting for more cops to show up and eventually two cops do show up. They are already blocking the road and they’ve got their guns trained on him, and they’re telling him to put his gun down and then he starts turning the gun on himself and they’re like, no, don’t do it.

It’s not worth it. No, don’t do it. 

Craig: Oh 

Todd: my God. 

Craig: That audio is so funny. Yeah, it was hilarious. I read somewhere that most of this is a DR Oh, gotta be almost every, not, not even just this scene, like the whole movie. It’s gotta be, man, I, I’m, I’m, I’m pretty sure that the interviewer guy, that’s not the actor’s voice.

That’s, yeah. Yeah. It’s, that’s it’s adr. Sometimes it’s really obvious. A lot of Ricky’s dialogue is a DR. To be fair, whoever did the A DR did a good job because I don’t know that I would’ve necessarily have known it. It matches up pretty well. Yeah. Not for a lot of it. Some of it, it’s obvious, but yeah. And this part with the cops, it was Don’t do it.

Oh God. Oh gosh. It was. So funny. Oh man. So funny. But he tries to shoot himself, but the gun’s empty when he tries to shoot himself. Yep. And he’s like, stupid mistake or something. And he’s still talking to Bloom. But then it’s revealed that off camera, he has strangled him with the tape. From the tape recorder.

Yep. I find that unlikely that that tape is not that strong. Good 

Todd: point, actually. Yeah. So 

Craig: then he, so he escapes 

Todd: and we have all new characters suddenly introduced for the last 10 minutes. There’s a detective, of course there’s a detective and there’s a nun there for some reason. And is this supposed to be the younger nun from the first movie?

Craig: I don’t know. I think it’s just somebody from that convent that he. Lived at or whatever, and she tells 

Todd: us exactly what we need to know. He walked 

Clip: out here six hours ago. It’s Christmas Eve, the orphanage is closed, Lieutenant, there’s no reason Mother Superior had a stroke. She’s retired and lives alone. Oh my God.

Todd: So they surmised that he’s going now too. Settle the score with Mother Superior from the first movie, 

Craig: which he is. You know what’s funny talking about this? It’s, it’s like they had an outline. For a script and they just shot the outline. Like I, I, I really feel like all of these things. Yeah. Actually, I really feel like all of these things could have been tied together.

Right. 

Todd: You’re 

Craig: right. And there could have been a cohesive movie, but they just had plot points. They’re like, well, let’s just shoot the plot points. Let’s not, let’s not worry about the connective tissue. Let’s just shoot these different parts. You know, eventually he’s going to get his revenge on Mother Superior, and that’s the part that we’re at now.

Todd: Well, in that way, honestly, I hate to interrupt you, but in that way it really does kind of match the first half of the movie, doesn’t it? ’cause it’s really just clips, plot points from the first film. That’s true. It’s not entirely tonally off. In this way. Sure. This is just, it’s just like these are flash forwards instead of flashbacks.

Craig: So he kills the Salvation Army, Santa for the suit. Offscreen. Offscreen, and gets in the suit. And he calls, he looks in the phone book. I guess he looked up Mother Superior, I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah. And what is up with her face? Yeah. Why does half of her face a big mess? 

Craig: PE people who have had strokes do not turn into lizard people on one half of their face.

I don’t know if they were trying to obscure like that. It was a different actress. Uh, maybe. Maybe I read, oh, oh, there’s something in the trivia that’s not really trivia, it’s just somebody’s opinion. But I thought it was funny. I mean, the part of it is because her address is 6 6 6, which is evil. Yeah. And you know, in the first movie, she’s clearly the villain.

She’s. The bad guy or whatever, and I, maybe it wasn’t in the trivia. I don’t know where I read it, but it’s something like, she’s not a mother superior anymore and she lives at 6, 6, 6, and she doesn’t just have a droopy face, like a stroke victim. She has a demon face. So she’s a demon. 

Todd: Oh, we’re giving this movie far too much credit.

Yeah, far too. 

Craig: But I mean, her face is gross and messed up weird on one side. I don’t know what’s, and Ricky acts as his way in 

Todd: shining style 

Craig: and he’s like, I’ve got a present for you. Yeah, there are. There are about 15 there. Jack Torrance style shots of him acting his way through doors and looking through multiple doors.

Multiple doors, yeah. 

Todd: Again, stretching for time. It’s like, uh, we, we we need to kill five more minutes. Throw another door in front of ’em. Well, how are we gonna shoot that? Shoot it the way you shot the last one. Just like the shining.

Here we go. 

Craig: Yeah. Are you ready for It is a little bit of a chase me. She’s in a wheelchair by the by. So it’s, it’s not a very exciting. Chase? No, it’s 

Todd: not. But, but she’s distracted. He’s distracted. His shadow is, uh, with the door axing up everything in the room. Yeah. She goes for the, the staircase. Right? And, and he comes out like, what’s she gonna do?

Yes. There was like one of those. Seats that take you down the stairs or something. I first, there wasn’t, I didn’t under, 

Craig: but there wasn’t No, there wasn’t 

Todd: no, I, or at least I didn’t see one. If there was, I mean, the first thing I saw when he first came in the house, and we knew this, there was this woman in the house in a wheelchair.

I was like, why is she on the second floor? Right? Why does she 

Craig: live in a house? With a huge staircase. Doesn’t make any sense. 

Todd: Yeah, doesn’t make any sense. But anyway, so she goes to the staircase and I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but, but he, I think, 

Craig: swings the ax at her or something. I don’t know.

But she falls down the stairs. Fortunately, there’s another wheelchair right down there at the bottom that she can climb into. I know. Where did that come from? We must be being led to believe that there’s a chairlift there, that that’s the only explanation. Yes. 

Todd: But he walked up those stairs. He did not push a, pull a wheelchair behind him as he did that.

You know, it’s, it’s just ridiculous. Right. And she took a tumble too. Oh yeah. And he has a very hard time. It takes him an awful lot of time for him to pull his ax. Out of the seat of that wheelchair. 

Craig: Yeah, the fabric seat. He can lift a grown man with one arm. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: But he can’t get that ax. Out of the seat of, it’s too much for ’em, a regular wheelchair.

They, they don’t make ’em like they used to man. Right. So she, she’s able to wheel herself into the kitchen and get a big knife and she wheels herself back into the dining room and she’s like, come out Ricky. And she’s feeling cocky. Oh yeah, she’s tough. She’s a She’s a bad bitch. Yeah, we’re naughty. And now it’s time for your punishment again.

I didn’t get to punish you the first time. Yeah. You’re just like your brother. Yeah. God, I’m not afraid of you. You’re weak. Just like your brother must be. Punish. And he comes out and she’s like, you are being very naughty. And he says, naughty this. And then it cuts away. 

Todd: Oh man. Cuts away. The cops have arrived.

At least, at least the detective got one more scene in here. So he comes in with this nun. And, uh, they see the mother superior sitting there at the table, but she’s not moving. And the nun walks over. I mean, I saw this coming a mile away. But anyway, the nun walks over and it’s like, mother Superior, are you all right?

And she touches her face and her head falls off. She screams, and then Ricky comes up behind with a big axe in the air. And just like his brother, the cop shoots him about a dozen times. And he flies backwards through the French doors outside, lays down on the ground, his eyes are closing and a closeup on him.

The camera slowly pans up his body and he looks dead and he comes, the cop comes down to the nun and Sister Mary who’s on the floor. Are you okay? And she turns to the side and she sees mother superior’s head there and she screams. And then it cuts us out to Ricky, whose eyes open and he smirks. What is he alive?

Craig: The end. Yeah. What? 

Todd: I don’t know. I guess it’s one of those, he was just 

Craig: satisfied. I, 

Todd: one of those horror endings, who cares? Yeah. And apparently the, the credits had to last about 11 minutes or else they couldn’t get this to even an hour and 30. So 

Craig: Yeah, they, I, yeah, I think they ran the full credits for both movies, the first one and the second horror.

They, maybe they re-edited, but they, they credited everybody from the first movie and the second movie also, to add even more time. That’s how desperate they were. And then I think that if I remember correctly, and I may be totally wrong, I didn’t look this up, so you would have to fact check this if you were actually interested, but I think that part three is still somehow connected to this story to 

Todd: somehow, 

Craig: didn’t we do part three?

No, we’ve never done part three. 

Todd: Really? We’ve done four and five. 

Craig: Uhhuh. We’ve done four and five. 

Todd: Do we even do six? Was there a six? 

Craig: I don’t know how many there are, but I, I think, yeah. What we did, the point I was trying to make was, I think that after part three, it just goes into totally different territory.

Like they abandoned the original story. Yeah. 

Todd: It’s just like a, it’s like a franchise. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And some of those later ones are so wacky. Like the toy maker one. Oh my God was so wacky. I really liked it. That’s 

Todd: the one with Mickey Rooney in it. Yeah. Oh. And screaming Mad George had all those effects and they’re crazy weird and, and Ron Howard’s brothers in it.

That was a crazy one. Yes. And the initiation with the ladies in the witches coven was also fun. It 

Craig: was weird. And yeah, those later ones are so weird that they’re. Definitely worth checking out. I will say that I think now I can finally understand why people find pleasure and joy in this one. I think I finally get it.

Yeah. It is campy and it is silly, and it is funny if you approach it through that lens. I do think that you can have a really good time with it. The first half kind of irritated me. It felt kind of like a waste of time. Like, yeah, I’ve seen the first movie, but there again, like I said. There’s even some interesting editing stuff going on there.

I, I use the term interesting, loosely as interesting as it. Can be. Mm. But then the second half of the movie, I don’t know. I, I, I just, it’s bonkers. I feel like I get it. I, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m still, it’s not like I’m a huge fan. It’s not like I would ever, you know, get real enthusiastic in a recommendation of it.

But it is campy. There is fun to be had, and I think that most of the people who listen to us share similar tastes could find enjoyment in it. Just, it’s, it’s silly if you’re looking for the silliness. You could have a good time. 

Todd: I mean, you had me braced for a slog for years. You’ve been saying, God, I don’t want do this one, because it’s mostly just clips from the first movie.

And so, you know, when I was watching, I was like, okay, I mean, yeah, this is what it’s gonna be. But then when I saw the first movie kind of wrapping up about halfway through, I was like, okay, well where’s it gonna go from here? And I was not disappointed at all. Good. I just got funnier and funnier and funnier to the point, like you said, where it was clear that they were not taking this seriously.

And I was on board with it. I rarely. Do I laugh out loud at movies, and there were three moments in this movie where I laughed. I’m sitting by myself watching it on a computer, taking notes, and I freaking laughed out loud

the lines. Oh. And I was just, I, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. I’m glad. But, but like you said. Like we said earlier, if you haven’t seen the first one, just watch this one and you’ll probably find it at least compelling for one reason or another all the way through. If you have seen the first one, just jump to the middle.

Yeah. And watch it from there and save yourself some time. But it’s worth it. I think it’s fun and, and it eventually, it wraps up and come, brings back Christmas. I was afraid it wasn’t gonna do that, but yeah, he becomes Santa Claus at the end and kind of a parallels the first one with his brother and all that and the nuns.

So, uh, that was cool. Yeah, I mean, I recommend it. On those bases. Put it on in the background. At your Christmas party. Oh, on your Christmas party. That’s what we’re gonna say now, huh? It’d be, it’d be fun ambiance. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Well, you know, you’re rolling out cookie dough and punching out gingerbread men. Everybody will.

Cheer when he says garbage day and it’ll be, oh God, 

Craig: festive. It’s so funny. 

Todd: Thank you guys so much for, uh, recommending this movie to us. We’re really happy to get back to it and reappraise it after all these years. If you have any more Christmas movies you’d like us to do, please just drop us a line. You can find us [email protected].

You can click talk to us, you can send us an audio clip and we’d be happy to play those on the air. That’s been fun though, these last few episodes. Or you can just shoot us an email. Sign up for our newsletter. It’s our, it’s also there on the page and if you just respond to the newsletter, you’ll send us a direct message and that’s, that’ll get to us as well.

Just leave a comment there On Facebook, you can be a patron if you so desire five bucks a month gets you all access and you can hear all the complete. Unedited phone calls and what boring stuff is happening in our personal lives before and after the call. All the juicy tidbits that I cut out in the middle just to annoy you guys and make you pay us, you can do that if you, if you really care.

We also record Mini SOS from time to time, and that’s pretty fun. Uh, we have a nice little book club going behind the scenes as well. So, uh, patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. Until next time. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.