Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

• Stylized onscreen as Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4
• Directed by Brian Yuzna
• November 21, 1990

A Los Angeles newspaper reporter investigates the strange death of a woman and becomes entangled cult preparing a Christmas Eve ritual.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation, the fourth installment in the Silent Night, Deadly Night series, ditches the Santa killer series hallmark for a completely unrelated storyline. My guess is Brian Yuzna, Woody Keith, and Arthur Gorson had a movie they knew very few would watch so they decided to slap the name on of a known commodity on it that they had the rights for/access too. For me the indicator on that is Initiation precedes the series title.

Based on the cult hit Society and a few other things, director Yuzna has his fans. Having watched the mentioned cult movie decades ago and retaining only vague memories, I had some idea of what to expect with Initiation. This tries to mix commentary with horror to varying degrees of success that could have been effective with a slightly better cast.

Casting strikes me as random. Clint Howard as the homeless Ricky Baker, Reggie Phantasm Bannister as Los Angeles Eye editor-in-chief Eli, Allyce Moonlighting Beasley as Janice, and Maud Adams as bookstore owner Fima. Then there is Neith Hunter as aspiring journalist Kim Levitt around whom the story centers.

Kim is dealing with sexism and skepticism at her job so overt that Helen Keller could pick up on it. All that is missing are some butt slaps and someone calling her ‘doll’ or ‘babe’ in the context of the story so it can make its point. She demands of her boss to be allowed to work on a spontaneous combustion story after only being at her low-level for a month which is working in the classifieds. That is an entitlement attitude and not anything else.

I know nothing about Neith Hunter beyond she was clearly cast because of her willingness to get naked on camera. Rather than being straight up frustrated or upset by the things she experiences or even frightened she’s more like whiny. It doesn’t help that some of her character’s actions come off as entitled, but her general performance is one note. She has no range and is as real as a three-dollar bill. I give her credit though for not showing a whiff of discomfort when performing with the bugs and general slime allowing the camera to linger.

Yuzna does well blurring the lines between reality and possible hallucination confusing the viewer on if what they are seeing is real. I like that reality becomes fluid and what even the viewer gets may not be entirely true. Kim finds herself being drawn into a Lilith worshipping cult who are looking to resurrect Fima’s daughter through Kim and crown her queen.

Despite a woman falling from a roof in flames, this tries to be more of an erotic horror/thriller, than a frightening movie. In the 90s there were a ton of horror movies that were really thinly disguised instances of softcore poor. Many descended into tawdry if not downright trashy that probably spawned more than a few strange kinks in adults or the horny kids that watched them once they were adults. Yuzna focuses on sex and overt lesbianism. These elements would have been considered edgy back when this movie came out. A bit too edgy for mainstream audiences but today it’s actually almost passé. But anyway…

It gets very weird in just about everything. There’s a strange scene in this movie where the perpetually creepy brother of Ron Howard sneaks into the Kim’s apartment while she’s boinking her boyfriend (or trying to anyway) where he sits down and turns on the TV to Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

This certainly has something to say. I’m just not sure what all that was. It is clear men are sexist, and women are being held back by that sexism. If that’s it then this movie was certainly ahead of its time in shoving your face in the point it was making like movies today do so casually.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation is poorly directed. This may be direct-to-video but that does not excuse making a TV woman-in-jeopardy movie look Spielbergian in comparison. There’s no excitement or mystery. It is just weird and boring in its weirdness. This brings into question my high opinion of Society. It’s been 30 or 40 years since I’ve seen it and much like the film Gothic I may have a better impression of it in memory than it actually is.

The idea is not bad. It’s what they did with the idea that is bad. It feels like something is about to happen or something is about to get interesting but the film never makes it there. It’s a continuous tease with a finale that just ends. The painful reality is that if it wasn’t connected in name to the Silent Night, Deadly Night films that came before, Initiation would’ve been quickly forgotten. It’s desperate to be social commentary mixed with erotic horror but the lead cannot act in a poorly helmed film so you just do not care.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation doesn’t make it to sexy or frightening or interesting. Less of a snoozefest than Better Watch Out! but not enough to make it watchable. Let it sink into obscurity by not viewing.