Okay, after the failures of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2, 3 and 4, what kind of hope can you have for a 5th installment? Looking back to other long lasting horror serieseses... es..... es? Uhm, anyway, when you check out other horror franchises, by the 5th the whole thing seems to have fallen apart and lost anything that might have made it even the littlest bit unique to begin with. From the big namers like HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, to the not-so big namers like PUPPET MASTER and WITCHCRAFT, by the 5th installment, all have crumbled, most by the 3rd or 4th... except of course for WITCHCRAFT, which has sucked like a Hoover since day 1... not unlike it's bimbo leading ladies, who've sucked equally as much from the pillow they sit on, placed squarely between my legs... okay, that was a little long winded. It might've just been easier to say, "they sucked just as much... as in 'sucked my dick!'". But, far be it from me to do things the easy way. Though it's a favorite topic of mine, enough about broads going down on me and let's get to the movie.

The whole point I was trying to make in the opening paragraph was that pretty much all "5th" movies are, well, "most heinous" as Bill S. Preston Esq. might put it, but SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 5 breaks this taboo and actually cranks out a sequel that is second only to the original. Producer Brian Yuzna, director of SNDN 4 (you know, the one that had NOTHING to do with X-Mas what-so-ever), brings us this Martin Kitrosser yule time favorite that focuses on an aspect of the holidaze overlooked by the first 4 films: the toys! After all, Christmas is all about the the toys, right? Well, Kitrosser finally tackles this overlooked faction... well, overlooked OUTSIDE of Charles Band's Full Moon movies that is. The yule tide terror begins with a young lad named Derek, who witnesses his parents swapping protein one December evening. Is there an unwritten rule that says there has to be at least one scene of parents penetrating each other in holiday horror movies!? It seems like every flick has at least one scene of a kid walking in on his parents gettin' busy! If not the parents, then the babysitter. Are the people who make these all suffering from some horrible pre-pubescent sexual exposure that they feel the need to express through their movies!? The world is full of weirdos... and I'm conducting the train. After witnessing the disturbing hump action for a little while, Derek finally decides to head downstairs, where he hears a noise at the front door and discovers a package address to him. An early gift from Santa? Or a present better left for the return desk at Wal-Mart?

Daddy comes downstairs, pissed to find little Derek answering the door and taking in strange packages at this late and dangerous hour, and send the boy to bed before he has a chance to find out just what's in the package. Of course he only goes as far as the stairs, which still gives him a good vantage point of the atrocities against the holidaze about to occur. When father opens the box, he finds a red orb inside which, when activated, pops out a cutesy Santa Claus face and looks harmless enough, playing a Christmas carol and baring a big shit eating grin on his lips. But, then the face turns around to reveal a razor-toothed fiend that more Satan than Santa, and four cords whip out from it's spherical figure, wrapping themselves around father's head and causing him to have a spaz and struggle against it's festive grip o' doom. In the struggle the clutz trips over his feet and winds up with a fire poker planted in his eye socket and poking from the back of his head, standing like a gruesome (yet decorative) tree. The ball then recoils it's appendages and Derek is left with a 10lb. bag of mental scars and emotional horrors... that's another thing about Christmas horror movies: they all contain kids being scarred for life by one horrible incident or another. It's like baby Jeezus in the nativity, the candles in the Menorah or my axe in a store Santa's skull, it's uncommon NOT to have it!

Jump ahead to two weeks following the incident, a few days before Christmas, Derek and his mother Sarah are still coping with the loss of the man of the house. Derek's not dealing well with the situation, as he's gone mute and sleeps with his mom at night now... hoping to get a piece of the grieving action huh kid? Well, I know it's sick to try and take advantage of your own mom after her husband's died, but hey, can't blame to kid for tryin... While the boy watches that short-lived and insipid "Rambo" cartoon (sad that FIRST BLOOD should lead to a childrens' merchandising scam) and mom continues to try and get him to talk, a mysterious looking man in a Jimmy (hence why I will call him "Jimmy" for now) watches the house from the street. Could it be this man is responsible for the evil Santa toy, or is there a deeper meaning to his presence? This and other wacky misadventures await you further on... sorry, just trying to liven up the review... Speaking of that sinister Santa ball, it sits innocently on a shelf in Derek's room, likely why he refuses to sleep in his own bed now, and since he can't/won't talk, he can't tell mom exactly why he refuses to step foot in the once happy space. In an attempt to cheer her brat up, Sara takes Derek to the local "quaint little toy store" that every small town has (just ask Bruce Springstein, expert on small towns... you know, because he was born in one... like in that song... yeah). The owner of the shop the kindly, unstable and alcoholic Joe Petto, and if you think it's cheesy that a toy store would be run by a guy named Joe Petto (who'd probably be more at home in PINOCCHIO'S REVENGE), just imagine how much more the idea is cheesified when the character is played by Mickey Rooney! Yes, the biggest box office draw from 1959 to 1960 ("Wow! Spanning two decades!") has been reduced to low budget, Direct-to-Video horror movie sequels, making my life look that much less pathetic.

The senile old horse's ass continues the assault of cheese, taking it to "that's no Goudah" proportions when we're introduced to his son, Pino! I'm not sure if it's funny that the teen's named after a wooden puppet, or that his full name's Pino Petto! These two characters are rather shady, adding to the list of suspects along with the drifter in the Jimmy. Pino seems eager to give Derek odd presents, in addition to his naturally tweaky mannerisms, while Joe is noticeably ashamed of his son and is very verbal on it. Why that makes Joe a suspect I can't figure out, but Mickey Rooney an odd old geezer, so I wouldn't put anything past him. Besides, he's also a boozer, so that would be motivation for any crime! As for that drifter guy, he purchases a bunch of toys from Joe's shop, taking them back to his hotel room and gutting them, for what reason is yet to be seen, but it's possible he IS the one making the toys evil! As more evidence, he pays for his hotel room by giving the owner an electric maggot toy thing named Larry the Larvae to give to his kid. Not only is the thing ugly and does nothing but twitch, but it's also lethal, leaping into the guy's mouth (I was unaware that larvae have the ability to leap) and eating his eyeballs, popping out of the socket to say hi before the guy loses control and the car goes off road, exploding almost instantly! Okay, that means that the title killer is definitely one of the people who had their hands on the evil toy: Joe, Pino or Jimmy... looks like we got a mystery here Scooby, so pack up the hash brownies and the blotters and let's get on the case!

Afterwards, we find Jimmy snooping around the Petto place, checking out blueprints for toys and various files and such, including a photo of Joe and Pino from twenty years ago... and Pino is the exact same age! Jimmy then gets scared shitless by Pino when he tries to check out Pino's basement apartment. Jimmy escapes the secret cellar though, running like a one-legged Nazi in Jerusalem, with Joe none the wiser to what the Hell just transpired. Ah, the amnesiac wonders of fermented plant life. The following day, Derek gets another mysterious package addressed to him and left on his doorstep, only this time he's not so eager to open it, shaking in terror at the sight of it. Sara simply tosses it under the tree without a second thought... kripes, I wonder if she'd be interested in purchasing a bridge, or some beach front property in Kansas. The two then head to the mall so Derek can ride a store Santa's lap. The store Santa also happens to be Jimmy, who has a real interest in Derek... he is dressed as Santa too, so could this mean he IS the antagonist of our little film? When he tries talking to Derek, the kid just squirms around uncomfortably (sitting on ANY grown man's lap would give me the same reaction) and when Sara takes him away, Jimmy Claus throws a fit and gets mildly psychotic... just check out the dude's eyes! Malls will hire ANYBODY to handle kids anymore. All they probably ask for is a name to sign the $12 checks over to. While all this is going on, Pino shows us that he knows a few things about Sara's house.

First off, he knows where there's a secret key to the backdoor, hidden between some bricks on the back patio... which also contains "Pino '76", meaning Pino and Joe apparently built that house and lived there at some point... unless it's just luck that it happens to have Pino's name and he happens to know of the key's existence. This does peev me off just a little though, as I would've expected Sara and her husband to have changed the locks when they moved in. After all, the previous owners could've made a box full of dupe keys, giving them and their fellow cheese worshiping cultists access to the house at anytime... think I'm kidding? I have horror stories I could tell you... stories of cheese cults and unsuspecting homeowners that would make Charles Manson cry! But, I'll save those for another time, as this review needs to be finished before that odd tasting egg nog starts making the walls melt again. If only you could see the colors... Errr, as I was saying, Pino pokes around the house for a while, looking through Sarah's underwear like the freakish creature he is, until who should return but Sara and Derek. His hiding place found, Pino's forced to come out of the closet (I knew there was something about that guy) and run like some kind of colorful metaphor, surprising both mother and son and prompting Sarah to head down to Petto's Toy Shop to bitch out the owner. Joe insists that Pino's been with him all day, but when she threatens to let the cops in on the incident, Joe begs her forgiveness and confirms that, yes, he and Pino did live there years ago and Pino just gets confused and wants to return to his childhood home sometimes. Sarah leaves and Joe promises to chastise his miscreant offspring.

This of course includes beating the kid senseless later on while drunk as a skunk, sending him tumbling headfirst down the stairs descending into his subterranean hideaway. We leave this scene with the idea that Joe might've gone a little far and Pino might've gone just far enough... only at the wrong angle. Man, Mickey Rooney can be scary when he's drunk. Meanwhile, back home Derek tosses the mysterious package discovered earlier in the day into the trash, where it's picked up by a neighbor boy. Opening the discarded gift, the kid finds a pair of roller blades inside that just happen to be his size. While screwing around in his new stolen footwear, the little dingus activates the skates' rocket boosters, and is thrown into the path of a flesh hungry station wagon! Street Pizz Jr. winds up in the hospital as a result and Derek finally busts up that damn Santa ball with a baseball bat. The following day, our pint sized hero gets a visit from Jimmy, who offers him yet another present before being sent away by Derek's babysitter, who tells him to go see Sarah if he has a problem, giving him Sarah's place of business and address. When he confronts Sarah at her job (or at least in the parking garage), she screams and runs, forcing him to chase her down and capturing her. In this heated moment, it looks like the shit's gonna hit the fan as... they embrace and swap spit?!

Yes, all this time Jimmy has been Sarah's long lost boyfriend Noah. Back when they were dating, Noah got Sarah pregnant and she was forced to leave him in favor or a more stable and financially able husband to take care of her and her baby-to-be, hence the guy whose bad balance resulted in his demise in the beginning. Now Noah's back and looking to hook up with Sarah again, eager to take responsibility and help raise his son. To help get back into the relationship thing, Noah's looking for some "for old time's sake" pussy, which Sarah's more than happy to supply. Back at her home, more pussy is being given up, as the babysitter looking after Derek gets it on with her boyfriend and his massive... forehead. Being a horror flick it's no surprise when the humping teens are interrupted by a small army of killer toys, including a tank with live ammo, a disembodied arm and an RC car that looks like something H.R. Giger would've played with as a kid! The owner of these toys? Why, it's the killer Santa kidnapping Derek of course: Joe Petto! That's right gumshoes, looks like Mickey Rooney is the core of the sinister happenings, as usual. Back at the suspiciously barren parking garage, Sarah and Noah have finished their calisthenics session and we finally find out what Noah was up to in Petto's place. Seems that Petto was a toymaker in Noah's hometown when he was a lad. Back then, Joe was picked up for misdeeds, which included booby-trapping the toys he made to injure and kill the kids who received them. His motive? His wife died in a car accident, losing not only her life, but the life of their unborn child, leaving Joe more than a little distraught.

So, Joe figured that if he was to be denied a perfect little family, so should everyone else, mutilating and murdering the kids so nobody would have a perfect family unit either. Hence his motive for sending evil gifts to Derek. He was arrested and jailed, then let out on parole I guess, moving to Sarah's town to start anew apparently. As for why Noah was snooping around and buying so many toys from Petto's place, is because he was taking them apart to make sure there weren't any more killer play things getting out, of which he found none. Being a mother, Sarah has a spaz about the whole things and races home to make sure Derek's okay, finding the babysitter bleeding profusely and borderline corpsed up! Leaving Noah to call for help, Sarah heads to Joe Petto's place to save her son and stop the fiendish Kris Kringle. Noah finds hi way there too, and the couple find more homicidal trinkets and the devious Joe... and dead Joe? Wait, how can Sarah find Joe's body while it's supposed to be kicking Noah's ass? Well, before you soap opera viewers out there start screaming "evil twin!" in between Bon-Bons, hold your wide, spandex clenched asses, because there ain't no "Guiding Light" writers on this here movie! Here's the real twist of the movie folks: Pino's not a real boy... kinda witty twist there eh kiddies? That's right, Pino, like his fairy tale counterpart, isn't human, but a creation of Joe Petto's workshop, that looks, acts and talks like a real boy... well, a real boy on Opiates, but Joe meant well.

Like those big living mannequins in PUPPET MASTER II, Pino is just a big wooden robot thing, with kung-fu grip and interchangeable faces, he's the toy every kid will want this year! You may just be thinking right now, "well Anubis, that's great and very interesting, but, WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THERE BEING TWO JOES?!". Well Mr. Piss-Pot, I'll tell you. Since Pino's got interchangeable faces (as well as a skill for making masks, which was hinted at earlier on), all he had to do was strap a pillow to his stomach and throw a red suit over it, and VIOLA!, now he's Joe gone mad in a Santa outfit. Why exactly he'd want to do this I'm unsure, unless it has something to do with the babysitter being a witness to Derek's kidnapping. After Joe tossed him down the stairs, Pino decided he'd had enough of being daddy's personal Mr. T punchin' buddy and listening to his constant rants of how he's not good enough to be his son, and how kids like Derek are the good son that Joe always wanted. So, Pino popped daddy and donned his face, as I said, probably as a matter of covering up his involvement in the crime. Sure, it's a little complicated for the slow witted, but I'm trying to type slow so you can absorb it a little easier... probably not the best place for a joke, as some of you are no doubt staring at your screens in bewilderment, scratching your chin and mumbling, "type slow?".

Allow me to get this over with for you. Despite his dreams of Sarah being his "mommy" (which would involve a SERIOUSLY overblown Oedipus complex) and Derek being his dead little brother (courtesy of those killer toys), Pino's lifelong aspiration is ended with a fire axe, as the trio of Derek, Sarah and Noah, like a happy little family, kill their enemy and leave him in pieces on the Petto place's basement floor. They live happily ever after and Sarah and Noah have a lot of explaining to do to Derek, especially as to just who the fuck Noah is! Don't feel bad for Pino though, because he wouldn't have been able to stick it to his new mommy anyway, since poppa Joe left out one little detail: anatomical correctness. Yep, poor Pino's got no penis! He's as hung as Barbie's plastic beau Ken: not at all. Damn, no penis, no wonder Pino went crazy! Even with all the verbal, emotional and physical abuse Joe put him through, he probably would've been okay if he'd had a dick to play with on those cold nights in the basement. Whenever I have a hard day, I personally enjoy curling up in bed with my favorite bottle of Johnson & Johnson's baby oil, popping a classic porno into the VCR (usually JUST LESBIANS VOL. 7 or 48 BLACK BOOTIES PART 2) and letting out a LOT of stress. Deny as they might, but all the guys know exactly what I mean... and yes, so do the women. So, a whole lotta pain and tragedy could've been averted, had Joe simply gone through the trouble of creating working genitalia for his pseudo-son. Genitals, the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems.

One thing's for sure, with all the horrid luck Derek's had in this movie, I'd be swearing off commercial holidays if I were him, especially the Christian ones. As for me, I swore off Christianity long ago anyway... shit gives me heartburn. Well, as you can see, I look upon SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 5 as a rare and very exceptional "5th" movie. Far superior to the previous SN,DN sequels, it entertained me about 87% of the time I had my eyes on it... well, "eye" following that horrible "boating accident". The twist with Pino was a genuine surprise and I like being surprised, since very few things actually do surprise me. As for all the basic movie elements, such as soundtrack, acting, special FX and direction, they were all pretty basic, nothing to soak your panties over really. The evil toys were the creation of noted special FX man Screaming Mad George, whose talents span the range of elaborate carnival freak make-up from FREAKED to the special FX of BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, as well as numerous other projects. However, his FX here just didn't seem up to his usual par, which was disappointing, especially when it comes to making evil toys look cool. Should've called the guy who designed the PUPPET MASTER title antagonists.

However, aside from the toys and the twisted shit going on, be sure to check out twisted subhumanoid Clint Howard, who cameos as Ricky, one of Noah's fellow mall Santas! Ah Clint, he just adds to any movie he's in! This is actually his second SILENT NIGHT appearance, as he was a bigger part of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 4: THE INITIATION, where he was also named Ricky... same character or just a coincidence? You can also find more holiday madness with him in his brother Ron's horrendous live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss's "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and also the Hulk Hogan brain tumor SANTA WITH MUSCLES. Ouch, those last two flicks have made me limp like wet asparagus, so I think it's time to finish this review. Basically, if you haven't picked it up from the rest of this overly long winded review, I suggest you watch SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 5: THE TOYMAKER. If you're an optimist, this glass is half full, half empty if you're a pessimist, and if you're like me, you'll just plug your nose, swallow the whole thing down and hope it's not as thick as you fear it may be.

Sequels: This is the last installment of the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT series

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: PUPPET MASTER II or TOURIST TRAP