Bad Movie Month #31: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

It's over!

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

Directed by: Mark Hartley
Produced by: Veronica Fury, Brett Ratner
Written by: Mark Hartley
Budget: I can't find any solid information concerning this documentary's budget.

Starring: Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus

Just because it's Bad Movie Month doesn't mean I have to exclusively watch bad movies. It also means I can watch movies about bad movies, and Electric Boogaloo is just that.

Were I to go back and redo my list of movies to watch this month, I would have included more Cannon films. When it comes to B-movie studios, Cannon ranks the highest on that particular ladder, and this documentary explains why in pretty good detail.

The Cannon Group started between Dennis Friedland and Chris Dewey as a production studio which bought and produced the cheapest possible scripts they could find, with their budgets often limited to $300,000 per film. The vast majority of these were English versions of foreign-language softcore porn, with barely-there stories and lots of nudity. But as the 70s marched on the company started to flounder as lack of returns and tax wrangling serious hurt the company's financial strength.

So the two sold the company to a pair of Israeli film buffs, Manahem Golan and Yoran Globus, who essentially created the modern B-movie reputation.

Their business model consisted of buying the absolute cheapest scrips they could find, creating a poster for the as-yet-unfinished movie, and presenting it to potential investors. If the movie was purchased, they would knock it out in a few weeks as cheaply as possible and release it. This led to the creation of posters for a multitude of movies that never actually saw production, and often never left the script  at all; however, it also gave rise to what was essentially a revival of a studio-system studio, where Cannon could control every aspect of the movie in-house.

Several of Cannon's big hits were from the 80s, including Enter the Ninja, Death Wish, Missing in Action, and the first Breakin'. Rather than let the mild successes go to their heads, Golan and Globus continued with their cheap production methods through the 80s, often producing over 40 films a year, which is absolutely insane. Many of these were over-hyped by the studio and seriously underperformed, but Golan had the ability to somehow convince people to continue funding his movies.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view of the company and its practices), by the late 80s an early 90s Cannon's financial juggling caught up with the company and they were investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission to determine whether Cannon misreported their finances. This, combined with a string of financial failures, including Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Captain America, and a failed attempt at a Spider-Man movie, Golan and Globus split and Cannon was gone, in all but name.

Electric Boogaloo is a look at The Cannon Group from people in the movie industry who worked with the two lead studio heads, including actors, writers, producers, and other production crew members. Overall it provides what seems to be a level, fair look at some of the practices, and doesn't shy away from the bad parts.

Sometimes with documentaries concerning people who are still active or alive you see either attempts to tear down the person's reputation or hail them as a champion of some particular vision. Electric Boogaloo doesn't seem to fall into either trap, and instead provides what seems to be a good representation of Globus and Golan as two guys who really like movies, who really wanted to make movies, and who made the best movies they could using their resources. Cannon definitely had some strange beginnings and people in the documentary don't shy away from calling the company out for its early exploitative nature.

But, the movie also doesn't shy away from the impact that Cannon had on the modern film landscape. The action movies we see today (the documentary points to Olympus Has Fallen as one example) are held up as simply Cannon movies with actual production value and care put into the scripts. It's something I hadn't considered before, but the point is presented that Cannon actually shaped the current action scene and movie, which I think has some merit.

One thing I would have liked to see from the documentary is actual interviews with Golan and Globus, but the movie addresses that at the end: the two were approached to appear in the documentary, but both declined...and several months before this movie was released, they produced their own documentary called The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a copy to watch, as I would have loved to compare the two, but such is life.

Again, if I were to do this again I would probably put some more Cannon movies onto the list. The biggest problems would be choosing which ones, and trying to make sure they wouldn't overshadow everything else. Maybe next time I'll just do a Cannon month, because there's certainly enough different movies to choose from.

Should You Watch It?
I think that, as a documentary, Electric Boogaloo accomplishes everything a good documentary should. It goes into the background, the current events, and gives a wide variety of opinions on how and why the subjects ticked. If you're into movies at all and would like to learn a little bit about the company that produced all those Chuck Norris VHSes, give this a shot.

Thanks for reading.

Bad Movie Month #30: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

I'm no expert, but that shoe looks
impractical for dancing.

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1985)

Directed by: Joel Silberg
Produced by: Allen DeBevoise, David Zito
Written by: Charles Parker, Allen DeBevoise (screenplay), Charles Parker, Allen DeBevoise, Gerald Scaife (Story)
Budget: Low

Starring: Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quinones, Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers

When an evil realty developer wants to demolish the community center and replace it with a capitalist temple shopping mall, three proletariat dancers band together to take down filthy bourgeoisie dogs through endless dance numbers.

I might be reading into that a little bit, but you get the idea.

The movie takes place in the 1985, the most 80s year of the 1980s, with all the male belly shirts, big hair, and choreographed street dance routines you could ask for. While Killer Klowns may have been the epitome of the Ugly 80s, Breakin' 2 portrays the glam-80s, where all we wanted to do was dance and get perms. There was probably still the cocaine problem, but it helped us look good in spandex, so it was all good.

The acting throughout is the epitome of phoned-in 80s sequel acting, the sets and costumes would seem exaggerated if that wasn't what people actually wore, and the writing is what you'd expect from a dance movie. It's interesting seeing that dance "films" up to, and including, the most recent Step Up still follow the same beats and plot points.

The Rad
The dancing is the focus of the entire thing, and at least everyone in this movie can dance. And when I say dance, I mean they move. Not only that, but the movie embodies all the classic cheesy 80s tropes: evil realty developer, a group of misfits fighting the man, a dance battle under a graffiti-dappled bridge, and at one point a group of people dance battle with nunchaku and trash-can lid shields. If that's not rad, I don't know what is.

There's a scene where Michael Chambers dances up the wall and on the ceiling, and it's actually really impressive as an effect thanks to its execution. Here's the scene in question, if you're curious. The weirdest part is that this happens in the universe of the movie. Yeah, partway through one of the characters walks in and notices him literally dancing on the ceiling, which means that at least one of the people in this movie can violate the laws of gravity through dance. Why couldn't the entire movie be about that?

The Bogus
The movie speeds through every single dialogue scene to skip to the dancing, which makes it feel like an advertisement for a community center, rather than an actual movie. While the dancing is entertaining to watch, it's pretty much fluff without anything of substance to support it. If you cut out all the dancing, you'd have a movie that lasts maybe twenty minutes. There are also numerous montages of city life, so many that it's probably appropriate to refer to most of this movie as pure filler.

In all honesty, nothing here really happens, despite the fact that there's so much going on. It sounds like a contradiction, but after all the dancing, conversations, and "plot" finishes and the credits roll, you realize there wasn't much to the movie. It's all glitz and filler, and though the dancing may be well done it gets tiring after a little bit.

At the one hour point (gee, notice a trend) the movie grinds to an emotional halt. This is about where the "Storming the city hall meeting" scene takes place, and it feels like it should instead happen at the end. Instead we follow with an assault, hospital dance number with nurses who heal the sick (and resurrect the dead!) through dance...not a joke, this all happens within the movie's universe, and is clearly not supposed to be a musical-style dance scene. No one comments on it, no one mentions it ever again, and it's treated as if it's completely normal.

The Rest
"2: Electric Boogaloo" has become a pop culture monument, indicating a sequel that no one really needed. It's actually the reason I chose to watch this movie, because until I watched it I didn't have much context for it aside from the fact that it was a sequel title. I did some research and it doesn't actually seem that the movie showcases the actual Electric Boogaloo dance much, if at all.

This movie was produced by Cannon Films, the iconic studio behind a huge number of the memorable low-budget releases ranging from the 60s to the 90s. The first Breakin' was actually one of the last financially profitable movies released by Cannon before their distribution deal with MGM fell through. Apparently there were some major contentions between the writers and producers of Breakin' 2, primarily due to the fact that the producers wanted to maintain a G-rated movie and the original writers trying to create a more serious look at inner-city 80s culture. Yeah, seriously.

I want to see a Cabin in the Woods style deconstruction of dance movies, where dancing is a method to unlock some sort of primal underlying hive-instinct in the human mind. Something a little like the music video for LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem, but actually, you know...well done.

Will You Dig It?
Though I found it entertaining, you will have to have a high tolerance for the 80s in order to watch this. It kept me entertained for the most part, but I found my attention wandering whenever the on-screen action slowed down.

However, as a white guy whose signature dance move is "Bend your knees in time to the beat," I had a pretty good time overall.

Bad Movie Month #29: Age of Dinosaurs

Someone skipped arm day.

Age of Dinosaurs (2013)

Directed by: Joseph J. Lawson
Produced by: Paul Bales, David Michael Latt, Michael Meilander, David Rimawi
Written by: Hank Woon, Jr.
Budget: 

Starring: Treat Williams, Ronny Cox, Jillian Rose Reed, Joshua Michael Allen, Max Aria

I swear I didn't know this was an Asylum movie until the first credit popped up.

When a laboratory resurrects dinosaurs and performs genetic experiments on the animals, it's only a matter of time before they get loose and we start following The Lost World story beats.

This is a movie where evil science must push forward to accomplish its goals, no matter how many "setbacks" or "troubles" the processes encounter. As one character says early on, "why start with butterflies and lizards when you can get going with the cool stuff?"

The Good
At certain points the dinosaurs are animatronic and actually look pretty good. The designs are goofy sci-fi schlock, with horns and spikes in random places, but the movements look alright. The unfortunate thing is that the animatronics are only used once or twice after that first scene, but at times they opt instead to use shadows projected on a wall which is at least an artistic choice that seems to have been driven by the realities of their low budget.

Compared to the other Asylum movies I've seen this one feels like its crew put in the most effort. While that isn't saying much considering the general lack of care the company spares for its productions, it stands out, especially when you consider just how dumb Snakes on a Train was. The difference seems most apparent in the quality of the direction, because unlike most others, Age of Dinosaurs actually looks like a movie. The difference is so notable that, with better actors and effects I could see this actually working as a fun B-movie, rather than an attempt to cash in on Jurassic World.

The Bad
It's when the animatronics are replaced by CGI that the dinosaurs start looking like crap. The first shot of the carnotaurus walking around and biting someone's head off looks cheap. The shots of the dinosaur's eyes look really, really cartoony. Of course, this doesn't just apply to the dinosaurs but the environments and setting whenever computers are used to render their holding cells or cloning pods. At one point a bunch of glass shatters towards the screen as a fuzzy mesh. During a chase scene the dinosaur's model is animated faster than it should logically be moving, so it looks like it's sliding along the ground.

One thing that doesn't help the animation is the dinosaur designs themselves. It's fairly obvious that the people who worked on this movie never actually studied dinosaur anatomy, because each one looks like a drawing by someone who thinks dinosaurs are cool without actually knowing what they looked like.

As expected the acting isn't anything to write home about, except for when it's really, really bad. The movie's "kid," Jade, is a stereotypical brat, complete with attached cell phone, college acceptance/rejection subplot, and imitation Jennifer Tilly squeak. The scientists and crew are a group of pretty blonde women who can't seem to forget that they're reading off a script while they aimlessly twiddle with buttons and knobs on a control board. Wheelchair CEO (I can't remember the character's name) does fine as an amoral, big-picture science guy.

The movie outright steals several shots or scenes from the Jurassic Park series, including the classic velociraptor-kitchen scene, even down to the framing. Here is the shot from Age of Dinosaurs. Here is a shot from Jurassic Park. Uh, I mean, surely this movie was a monument of ethical writing and film-making.

During one action scene there's a SWAT team shooting at the big bad dinosaur, and the captions indicate that there should be gunshots...but it looks like they forgot to put in the muzzle flashes and sound effects, because all the actors are doing is shaking their guns and pretending to shoot. Of course, this scene comes immediately before the dinosaur takes down a CGI helicopter, so maybe their budget could only afford either gunshots or helicopters.

I don't know whether Netflix provides its own closed captioning or if it used the movie's native CC tracks, but whoever created it should be embarrassed. There were numerous typos, inaccuracies, and missing words which really shouldn't happen in this day and age.

The Rest
Sometimes I wonder why we can't get a good dinosaur movie. I don't mean that as a joke, despite how silly it might be. The original Jurassic Park is great, but I can't really think of any other high-profile, well-received dinosaur movie. I might just start writing a treatment for Jurassic Continent...

Should You Watch It?
Honestly...this might be worth your time. As the movie goes on it gets goofier and goofier, hitting critical mass around the one hour mark. Special scenes of note include the "No joke!" dinosaur text, the exploding elevator, and a spinosaurus somehow chilling on top of a huge skyscraper. There is enough here that you might be able to overlook some of the Asylum crap.

Extra
The Asylum has had some success recently making original trash like Sharknado, which at least shows they are self-aware enough to understand their place in the current pop culture landscape. With this under their belt I wonder whether the Asylum couldn't make some sort of respectable name of themselves, in the same vein as Troma or Cannon, by abandoning their mockbusters altogether and producing low-budget camp fluff. While 2015 showed no sign that they were going to stop making crap, Sharknado 4 is planned for release sometime in 2016, so if that's successful maybe the studio can continue branching out.

Bad Movie Month #28: Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World

Can someone get this movie a blanket?

Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World (1998)

Directed by: Tom Ellery, Bradley Raymond
Produced by: Leslie Hough
Written by: Allen Estrin, Cindy Marcus, Flip Kobler
Budget: I couldn't find any information about this movie's budget anywhere online.

Starring: Irene Bedard, Billy Zane, Jim Cummings, Donal Gibson, David Ogden Stiers, Linda Hunt, Jean Stapleton, Russell Means, Finola Hughes, Brad Garrett

Some time after the events of the first movie, Pocahontas hears rumors that John Smith has died. When a John Smith replacement arrives, he whisks Pocahontas back across the sea, where everything ends up far happier than it does in reality.

Between 1994 and 2011, Disney produced and released roughly 49 direct-to-video movies. The vast, vast majority of these were sequels to theatrical Disney releases both recent and classic, including Mulan, several Aladdin follow-ups, and a sequel to Bambi where the titular character murders a lodge full of hunters after noticing his mother's head mounted on their wall (that may not have actually happened, I haven't seen it). At best these were accepted and forgotten about, and at worst they were regarded as the trash they were and destined for landfills or given to the least favorite child as a birthday gift.

The first Pocahontas movie was at least a Disney animated classic. This one? Not so much, despite its half-assed attempts to call back to the best parts of the first.

The History
Would you have guessed this movie isn't historically accurate?

The Bad
The animation has taken a serious hit, more so than you might think from a straight to video sequel. Grandmother Willow in particular looks really, really bad...as in bad Photoshop masking bad. The actual motion of the characters is jerky and lacks that fluidity that earned Disney a name in the 90s. When characters speak the animations are over-the-top in a way that reminds me of the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings, where everyone gesticulated wildly. The background characters don't move at all, and at points it looks like the animators forgot to replace their stand-in models. There's an extended sword fight/action scene towards the end, and it's best described as tepid.

The characters have been reduced to their roles, rather than actual characters. Pocahontas is a spunky girl hero, the animals are groan-inducing "comic" relief, and that's pretty much it. This is just emphasized by the awful voice acting from pretty much everyone involved. Bedard obviously has no interest in this, as her Pocahontas sounds like she's on downers throughout the entire thing. Zane plays Rolfe as a goofy, cock-sure diplomat that with some of the most annoying "quips" put to script. The animals make all the necessary chattering noises when appropriate.

Hey, you remember how the songs in the original Pocahontas were woven into the plot and served to describe and elaborate character motivations? How "Colors of the Wind" reinforced the movie's emphasis on nature, how "Just Around the Riverbend" foreshadowed Pocahontas finding some meaning in a cause? Well all that metaphor has been replaced by characters singing about what they see and telling the audience how they feel.

For a movie that's only 72 minutes long, there sure is a lot of filler. Long dance scenes, comedy bits, and animations that feel like they're going on longer than they should just to use up time. It makes the movie feel like it was stretched out from a 44-minute TV special to a full-length movie.

I'm not going to talk much about whether this movie is "problematic" in its portrayal of various cultures and how they interact because I'm not really qualified to speak on that. Suffice to say, it handles it with all the sensitivity and tact that a 90's straight-to-video sequel possesses.

The Rest
I don't know what else I can really say about this. If you've seen one Disney sequel you've pretty much seen them all.

Should You Watch It?
No.

Bad Movie Month #27: Manos: The Hands of Fate

Lavese las manos, por favor.

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

Directed by: Harold P. Warren
Produced by: Harold P. Warren
Written by: Harold P. Warren
Budget: $19,000 (roughly $139,000 in 2015, according to US Department of Labor)

Starring: Harold P. Warren, Diane Mahree, Jackie Neyman, Tom Neyman, John Reynolds

Michael (Warren), his wife Margaret (Mahree), and their daughter, Debbie (Neyman) are on a family vacation in Texas when Michael gets lost on the desert roads. They stumble across a lodge owned by the mysterious Master and his multiple wives, who are some sort of pagan cult that sacrifices people to a hand or something.

Manos: The Hands of Fate is the Casablanca to Plan 9 From Outer Space's Citizen Kane. Released around the same era, with roughly the same quality, the pair of them form a perfect storm of disastrously hilarious camp. This is the result of a movie which started as a bet and was plagued with production issues throughout. After whipping up $19,000 and promising the cast and crew a cut of the profits (because he couldn't pay them a wage), Warren spent a summer creating this cinematic masterpiece.

This is going to be fairly brief, simply because this is a movie I think everyone should watch once. It's pretty much impossible to divide this into good or bad, so let's just start.

The so Manos it's Manos
The first thing you'll notice about the movie is that it starts with a fade-in and several seconds of crackling microphone feedback. The audio quality will stay consistent throughout, with the regular hiss of poor pickup. This is interesting, considering every sound effect and line of dialogue was dubbed back in during post-production. This is particularly noticeable when the words coming from the speakers don't actually sync to the actor's delivery.

The second thing you might notice is that the acting is hilarious, even if you haven't noticed the dubbing issues (I doubt that's the case though). Problems stemming from the size of the sound stage and lighting setup meant that actors had very little space they could move around in. When characters have to run somewhere we see them take a step or two, then fade to a shot of them in the new location. When Michael and Margaret are frantically searching for their daughter they stand outside the front door, stock-still, shouting and waving their flashlight around.

Certain scenes look like they're from a silent-era film. The lighting used during various outside shots created what looks like an unintentional iris shot, and when combined with the lack of color it looks like something spliced in from Birth of a Nation. In addition the lights apparently attracted moths, which are clearly visible flying into and out of the camera's view. There are constant cuts to a couple making out in a car who continuously get told off by police, and nothing ever comes from it. There are multiple different shots of the Master's wives fighting each other, seemingly without any stop. At one point the movie cuts away from the fighting, we have a full length conversation, and it goes back to the wives who are still fighting. This occurs multiple times.

The score is a mix of piano and...clarinet? Whatever it is also sounds like a leftover from the silent film era, so much so that I constantly expected title cards to pop up and tell me what everyone was saying.

Apparently there weren't enough profits to compensate anyone except Neyman and her dog, who received a bicycle and dog food, respectively.

The Rest
For some bizarre reason there was a video game adaptation released in 2012 which featured retro-style graphics and sound design. It got mixed reviews, which is far better than I would have expected. Luckily there hasn't been an attempt at a remake, but I feel like it's only a matter of time before someone who misunderstands why it's entertaining will try and produce it.

Maybe it would work as a stage musical.

Should You Watch It?
Yes. Words can't quite sum up just how off-kilter this movie is.

Bad Movie Month #26: The Toxic Avenger

This won't prepare you.

The Toxic Avenger (1984)

Directed by: Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman
Produced by: Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman, Stuart Strutin
Written by: Lloyd Kaufman, Joe Ritter
Budget: $500,000

Starring: Mitch Cohen, Mark Torgl, Andree Maranda, Pat Ryan, Jr.

In Tromaville, New Jersey (the pollution capital of the world), Melvin Ferd (Torgl) is a tiny little nerd regularly harassed by the thugs who visit the gym where he works. When exposure to toxic waste turns Melvin into a superhuman freak, he uses his abilities to get revenge.

The Toxic Avenger was Troma Entertainment's first big hit after originally producing sex comedies and exploitation films during the 70s. When Lloyd Kaufman had the idea to film a horror movie, this was the result. Watching a Troma movie is an experience; there's something strangely surreal about each production, and The Toxic Avenger is no exception.

This is one of those movies that opens with a "sexy gym" montage, so that should give you a good clue about it already. Straight from the start we get the extremes of all the necessary 80's tropes: sexy gym, big hair, murderous bullies, thug in a headband, girl in a WHAM! shirt, sexploitation scene, and a clear shot of a skull getting crushed under a car tire.

The Good
Though there's not much real "horror" to the movie, the transformation scene where Melvin's skin bubbles and breaks as his hair falls out is actually pretty unnerving. It all looks practical and impresses even compared to today's effects.

And that goes for the gore, too. When someone gets a finger put through their eye or a bloody jaw, it looks good, if a little over the top. There are several moments where people have their skulls cracked, broken, or crushed, and each one looks pretty convincing.

The fight choreography, when there is any, is actually not bad. It's goofy, sure, but you can at least tell what's happening throughout. The stunts are also fairly well done, far better than I would have expected.

The Bad
The worst part about this movie is that there's so little you can really criticize when the entire thing is 100% intentional. Calling the acting bad is redundant, because no one bothered to be anything but camp. To say the writing is bad is to describe every Troma picture's script. It leaves little to say except that you shouldn't bother watching if you aren't prepared for one of the (intentionally) worst movies you'll ever see.

The Rest
Dividing the good and the bad in this one was really difficult, because Troma is in a league of its own. It's definitely the strangest superhero movie I've seen, and not in a bad way.

Gee, there's talk of a remake. Not interested. There are already a lot of sequels, and I think that's plenty of Toxic Avenger for now.

Should You Watch It?
Yes, but I think this is probably something to prepare for, instead of having it sprung on you.

Bad Movie Month #25: Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2

"Naughty this!"

Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Directed by: Lee Harry
Produced by: Lawrence Applebaum
Written by: Le Harry, Joseph H. Earle, Dennis Patterson, Lawrence Applebaum (story), Lee Harry, Joseph H. Earle (screenplay)
Budget: $100,000

Starring: Jean Miller, Eric Freeman, Elizabeth Kaitan, James L. Newman

This movie was first revealed to me through the internet fossil website YTMND, more specifically through the above clip of the infamous "Garbage day!" scene. I have not seen the first one, and otherwise had no idea what this movie was about before I started it.

Several years after Ricky's brother Billy committed a series of grisly Christmas murders, Ricky is being held in a mental hospital until he can be tried for his part in the first movie's killings. But when Ricky escapes, it's his duty to find out who's nice, and who's naughty...and murder the naughty ones.

This is one of those slasher movies that likes to take the exploitative route, with cheap effects, over-the-top violence, and tawdry nudity and sex scenes. The characters all have plenty of one-liners, though Ricky takes the cake by delivering one every other line or so. The characters are all fairly unlikable or undeveloped, and the murders are fairly mundane, rather than elaborate Christmas-themed events.

The So Bad It's Good
There's a number of lines with hilarious delivery. Any time Ricky talks to his shrink he sounds like he's forcing the words out through his teeth, and the words are often met by an equally stilted one-liner from the shrink. It's a really funny case of movie-therapy, because I can't imagine this therapist made that type of remark when he earned his license.

The performances are hilarious. Freeman does his best in coming across as a cold, arrogant psychopath but the way he raises his eyebrows after pretty much every "I'm evil" line is really goofy. Newman as the shrink feels like a combination of Blackadder-era Hugh Laurie and John Cleese, and all that that entails. In the last forty minutes the movie starts to come into its own with the performances and writing, particularly after Freeman is given free reign to go all killer.

The So Bad It's Bad
The movie starts with a series of flashbacks, which aren't so much flashbacks as reused footage from the first Silent Night, Deadly Night with an occasional voice-over. Because I haven't seen the first one this didn't bother me too much, but if all of the flashback stuff is reused footage than I can only imagine how much filler this is for...fans of the first one, if there are any. For real, there's enough reused footage that I would have probably asked for my money back.

No, really, the entire first movie is retold through flashback over the first 45 minutes, with reused footage from all the important plot points played in sequence. It's probably the most filler-full movie I've seen in a while.

This movie has a following as a cult slasher movie, and I partially understand why. Unfortunately, the parts that make it entertaining are separated by long stretches of exposition and information dumping which really make the movie drag when it's not being funny. Other than the humorous stuff, not a lot happens. The biggest issue is that it doesn't feel like a slasher movie as much as it does a movie about a murderer. I realize that's kind of a minor difference, but when you're watching them it matters.

There's a lot of rape in this movie. It's a delicate topic, and I'm not going to go too far into it here, but I counted at least three different attempted rapes within the first hour, with varying outcomes. Just so you know.

The Rest
The final Silent Night, Deadly Night is number 5: The Toy Maker, released in 1991. I wonder when we're going to get the tongue-in-cheek, reference-filled remake. We got a remake of the first one in 2012, which was pretty well received for what it was. Considering Hollywood is looking for anything to remake maybe holiday season 2016 will be deadly.

Should You Watch It?
You might get something out of this if you're a fan of campy holiday slasher movies, but be prepared to deal with some really sufferingly slow parts in-between the laughs. If you really want to see the best parts, skip to the 40 minute mark, as that's when it becomes something memorable.