My dear readers, there is perhaps a subconscious prejudice that guides my observations in such a fashion but it seems as though many an individual finds this wintry time of year to be full of promise and hope and all that. What with the burgeoning new year and the generally upbeat attitude of the holiday season, it feels a time when most assume that little can go wrong. I must say, though, as far as my own experience goes, this frigid spot on the calendar is one in which I’ve seen a fair amount of misfortune. Why, one of my earliest memories of Christmastime is of a snow so unrelenting in its descent that our house was consumed and the doors leading outside were suddenly stubborn about performing their regular duties. It was several weeks before we were able to make our way to freedom and unfortunately our provisions did not extend through the entirety of our underground tenure. The only patch of good fortune in the whole episode is that we happened to have houseguests and when it came time to furnish the empty dining table, the difficult decisions were a shade less dramatic than they would have been if we had been home alone.

Ricky (Bill Moseley) knows a thing or two about rotten luck at Christmas. First, his brother Billy decides to ring in the holiday by donning a Santa suit and butchering anyone unlucky enough to cross his path. Then, the following Christmas, Ricky does what so many younger siblings have done in times past and imitates his elder brother, engaging in a massacre of his very own before being shot in the head. Doctors were able to reconstruct his brain but had a bit more difficulty with his skull, and so poor Ricky is forced to carry on with his grey matter visible for all to see.

Luckily for Ricky, all that trauma landed him in a comatose condition and has thus been spared the embarrassing ordeal of wobbling about with his brains on display. And since he isn’t particularly concerned with his surroundings, an enterprising doctor (Richard Beymer) sees an opportunity for some research and development. It seems Laura (Samantha Scully), a blind patient of his, has developed a psychic connection with Ricky and the formerly busy young sociopath is funneling flashbacks from the previous films whenever the two are connected. Somehow, their rather special bond manages to jostle Ricky out of his extensive slumber, sending him off on a significantly less verbal killing spree than his previous outing.

It is difficult to say exactly what dedicated viewers of the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise expect from this eclectic set of films but one might think that they’re hoping for a growing body count set against a sort of jolly holiday background. Ordinarily, ignoring the very bedrock of a franchise three films into the series is a cause for some concern. But of course, the savvy creative forces behind this venture knew what they were doing when they hired Monte Hellman, director of such counterculture favorites as The Shooting (1966) and Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). Mr. Hellman is not the first subversive artist to be attracted to the coveted Christmas slasher sequel sub-genre and his approach is much the same as his approach to westerns and road movies. Perhaps the tale of a man with a see-through skull hacking his way around town isn’t the holiday fright that invested fans had hoped for but it is, nevertheless, a testament to the artistic freedom embodied by this and so many other Yuletide horror postscripts.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! runs 90 minutes and is rated R.