30th Anniversary Silent Night, Deadly Night Retrospective: Part 3
John Squires
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After filming wrapped, Brian Yuzna felt bad about how Initiation turned out, and he had by that in point in time realized that straying away from the Christmas theme of the series wasn’t the best idea. Though he never expected to get a chance to do another sequel, he nevertheless began brainstorming an idea for a horror movie about an evil toy maker – an idea that came in handy when Richard Gladstein approached him about returning to direct Silent Night, Deadly Night 5.
Initiation had made enough money on home video to warrant a sequel, and it was during a visit from Gladstein to the set of a Yuzna-produced film called Guyver (which marked the directorial debut of Screaming Mad George) that the plans for Part 5 were set into motion. Yuzna pitched Gladstein on his idea of making the movie about an evil toy maker, who uses toys to do his dirty deeds, and Gladstein was all for it. Only problem was, Yuzna didn’t want to return to the director’s chair, a combination of being too busy at the time and just not being interested in directing the film.
The script supervisor on the set of Guyver was Martin Kitrosser, whose name is likely to ring a bell for hardcore Friday the 13th fans. Kitrosser was the script supervisor on Friday the 13th and its first sequel, and it was he who wrote parts 3 and 5 of the Friday franchise. Yuzna was incredibly impressed with Kitrosser, and how good he was at his job, and he saw Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 as the perfect opportunity to help out a friend, and get Kitrosser started as a director.
Originally titled Toy Boy, Yuzna and Kitrosser penned the screenplay together, with Kitrosser in charge of directorial duties. Amending his mistakes from Initiation, Yuzna fully embraced the idea of Christmas-themed horror for the sequel that became known as The Toy Maker, redeeming himself by co-writing a standalone story that was directly linked to the holiday, rather than one that merely took place in December.
In the brilliant opening moments of the film, a young child witnesses his step-father’s brutal demise, after opening a Christmas gift that attacks him and latches itself onto his face. From there, we meet drunken toy shop owner Joe Petto (get it?) and his strange son Pino (GET IT?!), and it soon becomes evident that one of them is responsible for the booby-trapped toy. With an amateur sleuth beginning to unravel the mystery, all parties involved ultimately collide in one of the most gloriously bizarre finales in horror history – but more on that in a minute.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 is the man chosen for the role of Joe Petto: none other than Mickey Rooney. While it’s strange enough that such a big name star agreed to appear in the low-budget fifth installment of a horror franchise, the casting decision becomes a whole lot more interesting when you take a look at Rooney’s thoughts about the original Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Just a handful of years before signing on to star in The Toy Maker, Rooney – who has played Santa Claus on more than a couple occasions throughout his career – blasted Silent Night, Deadly Night for its depiction of a killer Santa, quoted as saying that “the scum who made that movie should be run out of town.” How he ended up being involved in one of the sequels is something we may never know, though I can only assume it was a situation where money talked. Everyone’s got a price, as they say.
While Bill Moseley is the highlight of Better Watch Out and the gross-out effects are the highlight of Initiation, it’s the killer toys that make this Christmas tale a real joy to watch. Though Yuzna told me he wasn’t happy with the way the toys turned out, as they weren’t half as cool or elaborate as he had imagined when he came up with the idea, the scenes of toys wreaking havoc in this one are nevertheless the personification of holiday horror entertainment.
In one particularly gruesome scene, a toy larvae jumps into a man’s mouth and exits out of one of his eye sockets, and in another a sex scene goes horribly wrong when a cavalcade of army men, dinosaurs and robots interrupt the romantic proceedings. Another humorous sequence shows a young boy riding around on rocket-powered roller-skates, which propel him into an oncoming car. He survives the ordeal, presumably because killing off kids is quite taboo – even in the world of horror films!
But the most memorable toy of all is of course Pino himself, who we find out at the end of the film is a walking, talking Ken doll – created by Joe Petto after his wife and unborn child died in a car accident. The handiwork of Screaming Mad George, Pino’s toy body is revealed in the shocking finale of the film, wherein he disrobes and proceeds to sexually assault Sarah, the woman whose husband was killed at the start of the film. We also find out during the finale that it was Pino who rigged up the deadly toys, and the toy boy ultimately meets his end thanks to a few strikes with an axe and a well-placed stomp of the head.
It’s bizarre and unique scenes like these that make The Toy Maker one of the most fun horror sequels of all time, and the film is quite frankly the embodiment of everything that’s great about the fusion of horror and the most joyful holiday of them all. Much like Halloween 3, The Toy Maker is a film that likely would’ve benefited from not being connected to the franchise it was connected to, a sentiment that Brian Yuzna himself agrees with. Because horror fans had long given up on the series, after the trainwreck that was Part 2, few have bothered over the years to give it the chance it most definitely deserves.
November 7th of 1991 saw the home video release of Silent Night, Deadly Night 5. Though the ending of the film suggests that some of the dolls in Joe Petto’s lair may be as alive as Pino, The Toy Maker ended up being the final installment in the controversial and highly troubled series.
“I guess I’m the guy who killed the franchise,” jokes Yuzna.
RETROSPECTIVE WRAPS UP ON NEXT PAGE!