Following the unintentional “Garbage day!” greatness of the first sequel, the killer-Claus franchise continues its slay ride with Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (exclamation point theirs). The most notable thing about it is its trio of future David Lynch players: Mulholland Dr.’s Laura Harring and Twin Peaks’ Richard Beymer and Eric Da Re. It’s more fun to imagine Lynch watching this than to do so yourself. Furthermore, you’re better off watching The Terror, the 1963 Roger Corman mishmash that appears on the tube a couple of times.

Ricky Caldwell, the head case-cum-homicidal Kris Kringle, is played this time by genre fave Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects). Instead of rocking the Santa suit throughout, he’s most often clad in a hospital gown and something like a spaghetti colander over his otherwise exposed brain. That’s because Ricky, shot to shreds by the police at the end of Part 2, has been revived six years later as part of sketchy research that brain scientist Dr. Newbury (Beymer) is conducting among the comatose. Despite his vegetative state, Ricky has acquired psychic abilities, which he uses to link up with Laura (Samantha Scully, Best of the Best), a young woman with no eyesight and a rather sour ’tude.

Vis-à-vis the ESP, Ricky repeatedly gives Laura a graphic heads-up of the murders to befall the supporting characters, yet you’d hardly know it since she and her upturned nose just go about their snooty business and, hey, it’s Christmas Eve, dammit. She and her brother, Chris (Da Re) are going to Grandmother’s house for the holiday, and he’s brought along his new girlfriend, Jerri (Harring), whom Laura immediately dislikes. To be fair, Jerri doesn’t help matters with the icebreaker, “So, tell me, how long have you been handicapped?” (Chris is only slightly less crude when he addresses his sister: “Who said you have to be the world’s champion blind orphan?”) Inevitably, Ricky follows them with intent to harm … but only after Harring’s equally inevitable disrobing.

The Better Watch Out! subtitle could double as a harbinger of the damage done to Monte Hellman’s career. How does one go from a counterculture cult classic (Two-Lane Blacktop) to a cheaper-than-Corman VHS premiere like this? (Don’t answer — we know Warren Oates had a hand.) For having a “name” (in certain circles) behind the camera, Silent Night, Deadly Night III has nothing to show for it; the work he presents is as clod-ridden and humdrum as his not-famous predecessors. At least one would think Hellman would have the good sense to end the film any other way than to plop Moseley into a tux and superimpose an image of him turning to the viewer to offer a smile and five words: “And a Happy New Year.” —Rod Lott

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WWE Studios’ first theatrical picture not to star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, See No Evil casts wrestler Kane as Jacob Goodnight. He’s the strong, silent type — as in simple-minded and mute and fond of torturing sinners, most of whom are teenagers. Four years after surviving a bullet in the brain put there by a cop — whose arm he then severed — Goodnight resides in the hidden hallways of an abandoned hotel.

There, the man society would never understand (partly due to the hole in his head buzzing with live flies) can retreat and be left alone … except for the weekend when eight juvenile delinquents (Transformers’ Rachael Taylor among them) are brought in to spruce it up for a homeless shelter. It’s all part of a community-service program overseen by that cop (Steven Vidler, The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course), now retired from the street beat, yet still without two working limbs up top. Regardless of shared history, Goodnight doesn’t see eye-to-eye with visitors … mostly because his hobby is squeezing out said peepers and showcasing them in jars.

Usually in horror movies, the bad guy’s pool of victims includes one each of all types — y’know, the nerd, the jock, the slut, the black one, etc. — but in See No Evil, they all pretty much fill the “troubled kid” slot. Goodnight is eager to use his knowledge of the hotel’s secret passageways to his advantage: spying on these well-scrubbed JD teens from behind two-way mirrors; popping out of elevators and dumbwaiters like a trapdoor spider; capturing them via hooked chains, which he wields with Olympics-worthy precision.

As slashers go, this one is nastier than most, despite opening titles that scream “made-for-TV.” (It wasn’t.) Kane exudes appropriate menace, no doubt helped by not having to speak. Nihilism spurts and gushes throughout — an uneasy feeling accentuated by the dingy, sweat-stained veneer favored by director Gregory Dark, here graduating to studio fare after a long career in porn (New Wave Hookers), would-be porn (the Animal Instincts trilogy) and may-as-well-be porn (Britney Spears videos).

Stick through the end credits for the stinger of the “deceased” Goodnight (who managed to return in 2014’s slicker, not-quite-sicker See No Evil 2) getting his face pissed on by a lifted-leg dog. Let’s see you try that, Marvel! —Rod Lott

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Our world is divided into two types of people: those who love White Christmas and those who prefer Black Christmas. ’Tis the latter group to which Flick Attack claims lifetime membership and for whom A Christmas Horror Story is made. Gifted by directors Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban and Brett Sullivan — all of whom had a paw in the Ginger Snaps franchise — the Canadian anthology jumps between four interwoven yuletide tales taking place on Christmas Eve, almost entirely in the quaint town of Bailey Downs.

Some curious students break into their high school in order to shoot a documentary about the grisly, ritualistic slayings of two schoolmates the year prior. A down-to-earth family of three drives into the wild to cut down a Christmas tree and, having trespassed on private property, ends up taking home something entirely unintended. A greedy family of four makes a trek to visit a wealthy relative and accidentally unleashes Krampus (Rob Archer, Bulletproof Monk). And finally, Santa Claus (George Buza, Diary of the Dead) switches from sleigh mode to slay mode when his elves succumb to an ill-timed zombie virus.

Serving as a loose wraparound, Star Trek’s William Shatner spins holiday tunes and comments on Bailey Downs’ goings-on as Dangerous Dan, the radio station’s night-shift DJ. While Shatner is present for pure merriment and a healthy sense of humor permeates the entire affair, A Christmas Horror Story is no winking joke, as Harvey, Hoban and Sullivan work hard to stuff this stocking with heaps of the creeps. Moving between its multiple storylines as deftly as Doug Liman’s Go, the film generates goodwill in its energetic depictions of naughty-list acts. A pair of solid scares and a purposely discomforting encounter pop up on the way toward a big twist as surprising as it is disturbing.

You better watch out for it and I’m telling you why: It’s a ton of fun. —Rod Lott

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You can’t argue with a good snake movie, especially one with the balls big enough to kill not one, but two innocent moppets before the opening credits are even set to roll. Producer Harry Novak’s slithering beast of an animal-attack movie, Rattlers, does just that.

In addition, it also has snakes kill a dog and a chicken. One farm boy takes a pair of fangs to the face. A screaming housewife runs through her abode, finding the scaly bastards in every room. Finally, a marble-mouthed herpetologist (Time Walker’s Sam Chew Jr.) and his ethnically mysterious companion stumble upon the snakes’ underground nest where, lucky for them, the reptiles have created tunnels big enough for humans to waltz through upright and freely.

Although the sheer pleasure of seeing a parade of stupid people get bitten becomes muted by a talk-heavy Act 3 and an abbreviated, anticlimactic ending, these Rattlers aren’t for show — they kick ass. Nonetheless, Rattlers marked the first and next-to-last movie for director John McCauley, who followed this up with an even more dangerous project: the Danny Bonaduce vehicle The Deadly Intruder. —Rod Lott

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Based on supposedly “actual accounts” that I do not believe for a second, Deliver Us from Evil casts Eric Bana (Hanna) as NYPD Sgt. Ralph Sarchie, who investigates a string of spooky shit. He and his partner, Butler (Joel McHale of TV’s Community, playing against type in a backwards ball cap and an Alice in Chains T-shirt), are left perplexed at the inhumanity they find, such as at The Bronx Zoo, where a woman quite literally has thrown her kid to the lions.

It gives nothing away to say that the crimes are linked and grow increasingly twisted — like, kitty-on-a-crucifix twisted. It gives nothing away to say that for Sarchie, these unspeakable acts take a real toll on the ol’ home life with the preggo wifey (Olivia Munn, Mortdecai). It gives nothing away — in fact, you expect it — to say that satanic forces are at work. On that note, an unconventional priest (Edgar Ramírez, The Counselor) comes to the aid of Sarchie and Butler.

Remove the ensuing exorcism angle, and Scott Derrickson’s film exudes the feel of other true-crime dramas about Big Apple law enforcement — Serpico, The Super Cops, The French Connection — in a gritty adherence to reality, especially in portraying a police career as fraught with perpetual misery. The deeper the movie dives into demonic territory, however, the more I was reminded of 1990’s The First Power, that forgettable Lou Diamond Phillips vehicle of yore.

Despite Derrickson’s previous experience with scares (Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose), Deliver Us from Evil arrives nearly empty-handed in that department. I say “nearly” because there’s this scene of a roly-poly owl stuffed animal that terrorizes Sarchie’s daughter by doing things it shouldn’t be able to do (read: move). And then there’s the soundtrack, which unloads a lot of tunes by The Doors, a band I can’t stand. In fact, The Doors’ music becomes a bona fide plot point, keeping the Jim Morrison estate awash in royalty payments. To my ears, that’s frightening. —Rod Lott

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