Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 (1990)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A woman puts herself on fire and jumps from the roof of a building and the next day a reporter (Neith Hunter) tries to figure out why. The woman begins to investigate the neighborhood and soon meets a store owner who might be hiding a few secrets about the dead woman as well as a secret cult. Those wanting to see a killer Santa Claus are going to be disappointed because the fat man doesn't make an appearance here except for a brief clip from the previous movie. Director Yunza put his name on two film series from the 80s with this one and of course the much better RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3. This film here isn't awful but there's simply nothing here we haven't seen before and in the end the thing is just too weak to be entertaining. The screenplay makes a fatal mistake in letting the viewers be a lot smarter than our female lead. Pretty much we have this woman getting in over her head and the viewer must sit back and watch her do one dumb thing after another. The problem with this is that she does the dumbest things possible and yet she keeps doing them over and over. A long running plot device has her eating a "berry", which of course turns out to be something from the cult. After eating this thing she eventually begins to see various bugs running around and starts to puke them up as well. It gets rather annoying because as a reporter you'd expect her to have a brain but she continues to do one dumb thing after another. The screenplay also features some fairly weak dialogue and various situations that simply go no where and this includes all the stuff dealing with the boyfriend who doesn't treat the reporter good enough. Those wanting nudity will get a little. Those wanting violence will get a little but not much. There's some minor gore but not enough to keep those wanting all the red stuff entertained. The film contains a lot of bug stuff so those creeped out by the critters running around will probably find this stuff effective. You also have a large creature that seems to have been inspired by the monster in William Castle's THE TINGLER. Hunter isn't too bad in the film as she at least keeps you interested in the character. The rest of the supporting cast are decent at best and this includes Clint Howard playing the typical psycho you'd expect him to be playing outside of his brother's films. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 4 stays away from the controversy of the previous film and I can respect the filmmakers for trying to do something new with the series but in the end it's just something we've seen countless times before. If you're going to do a movie about a woman getting involved with witches then you need to try something fresher than what's here.