30th Anniversary Silent Night, Deadly Night Retrospective: Part 3
John Squires
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The first of two sequels to completely abandon the Chapman/Caldwell family storyline that the first three films in the franchise were centered around, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation began production in 1990, with producer Richard Gladstein taking control of the series. Though Gladstein went on to become a two-time Academy Award nominee, for both The Cider House Rules and Finding Neverland, he was at the time very new to the business, and in fact had gotten his start just one year prior – executive producing Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 for LIVE Entertainment.
Gladstein set his sights on continuing the franchise, and it was while brokering a home video deal for Bride of Re-Animator that he found the man to take the helm. Gladstein wasn’t a horror fan, but he was impressed with director Brian Yuzna’s work on Bride, and so he asked Yuzna if he had any interest in directing the fourth installment in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise.
Though Yuzna wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of making a low-budget slasher sequel, and had no interest whatsoever in directing a movie about a killer Santa, he was tempted by the allure of more work, and so he took the job. But only under one condition: “I didn’t want to do the Christmas thing,” Yuzna told us “And so I didn’t.”
Though a script had been written for the film by S.J. Smith, which included the character of Ricky Caldwell, that original screenplay was re-tooled by Yuzna, Gladstein and Bride of Re-Animator writer Woody Keith, who removed any and all connection to the previous films in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise – even the Christmas element was almost entirely excised from the screenplay. What they were left with was a bizarre tale of a cult – a coven of women (plus Clint Howard) who are obsessed with the idea of resurrecting the Egyptian Goddess Isis.
When an aspiring female journalist named Kim begins investigating the apparent suicide of a young woman, she soon finds herself in way over her head – the cult hell-bent on turning her into their new queen. As you might imagine, the titular initiation process isn’t exactly a pleasant one. Kim is subjected to all sorts of torture and torment by her new friends, ending in a rooftop showdown where the cult leader (played by Bond girl Maud Adams) attempts to finish the initiation process with a sacrifice: the murder of Kim’s boyfriend’s little brother.
Focusing less on story and more on strange visuals, wild effects and surreal imagery, Initiation is a whacky movie that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas – aside from the fact that it takes place around Christmastime – and looking back Yuzna regrets many of the choices he made with the film. He describes himself as having a “weird ambition” at the time, and that the various things he was trying to convey with the movie simply didn’t work out as planned.
“I know it’s not a very watchable movie,” he admits, “but it’s one of the most ambitious films I’ve ever made.”
That ambition most definitely shows on the screen, Yuzna’s obsession with mythical figure Lilith, simulacra and stream of consciousness imagery resulting in Initiation being a bit of a clumsy and messy movie, but one that is nevertheless full of memorable moments and some really interesting ideas. From a bizarre sex ritual to the oral birth of a massive squirmy bug, Initiation is absolutely chock full of unique images and wild ideas, which serve to make it a highly entertaining watch – even if those images and ideas are present in the film without any real explanation or exploration.
As Yuzna himself pointed out to me, one of the real highlights of the movie is the effects work of the always impressive Screaming Mad George, who had previously worked on Bride of Re-Animator as well as Predator and A Nightmare on Elm Street: Part 4 – he was the man behind the incredible cockroach death scene in the latter.
George is billed in the opening credits as being the ‘Surrealistic Visual Designer,’ a title that perfectly sums up his work on Initiation and all of the films he worked on throughout his career. Some of the more memorably grotesque effects in the film include a couple sequences of body horror-style skin binding, as well as enough icky creatures to earn the film the alternate title of Bugs – which it was released under in the UK.
Yuzna’s other big regret, aside from the lack of focus on a coherent or engaging story, is that he wishes he had embraced the franchise, and ran with the idea of a killer Santa. Today, he says, the idea of a Christmas horror movie is really appealing to him, but at the time he felt the best thing to do would be to stray as far away from the previous films as possible.
“Sometimes, you’ve just gotta go for it and see what happens,” he reflected. “Sometimes great stuff happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.” He cites the ambitious art film approach to Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 as being one of those ideas that just didn’t work.
LIVE Entertainment released Initiation on home video on November 21st, 1990, approximately seven months after the California shoot was completed. It wouldn’t be long afterwards that Yuzna got the chance to make a proper Silent Night, Deadly Night sequel, when Richard Gladstein once again came knocking in 1991.
RETROSPECTIVE CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE!
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