An Epimemeology Xmas, Part 2: Garbage Day

by Pat

The Meme:

A roughly twenty-second clip of a man putting out his trash, only for a wild-eyed lunatic (Eric Freeman) to exclaim "Garbage Day!" and shoot him. Freeman then laughs maniacally while attempting to twirl the pistol. 

Where You Might Have Seen It:

The clip was uploaded to the (relatively new) site YouTube in June 2006. Ah, the summer of 2006. What a time that was. America had been swept by Snow Patrol Fever, Taylor Swift's debut album was still four months away, Pluto was still a planet, and Saddam Hussein was still alive. Man, I bet Saddam loved Garbage Day. 

 يوم القمامة! 

Due to the extreme incongruity of the clip, Garbage Day became one of the Old Internet's most beloved weird things to share (read: force upon) unsuspecting friends. 

Though it never reached the mainstream heights of its sibling—the Rickroll—Garbage Day remains a nostalgic favorite for people who were way too online in the mid-to-late aughts. Five Second Films (the viral comedy troupe whose co-founder was also Patient Zero for The Room) even paid homage to it. 

The Message:

Deny, defend, dispose (your trash).

The Source: 

Did you know this baffling clip of a man being shot through a trash can on a sunny day is actually from a Christmas movie? And a fucking terrible one at that?

Yes, my friends. It's time for us to watch the seminal 1987 holiday horror movie Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2. Grab a cup of hot chocolate, spike it with an irresponsible amount of Kahlua, and kick back. The whole movie is HERE, if you're interested. No one is going to stick their neck out to defend this copyright. 

One frame in and we're off to an incredible start. The movie begins with an innocuous title card. Innocuous unless you're a nerd or an attorney, in which case it's hilarious. Thankfully, I am both.

Who would incorporate a whole company just to release this piece of shit? Was it a Producers-style money laundering scheme? The truth is actually a bit more bizarre. 

The original Silent Night, Deadly Night was released in 1984, to universal contempt. Parents protested. Theaters ceased distribution after less than a month. Gene Siskel went on national television and read out the names of every company involved in its production and distribution so that people could complain directly. No wonder Tri-Star built a shell company for the sequel. 

After SNDN became a minor hit on home video, the original producers recruited editor Lee Harry to re-cut the first film. A proto-Snyder Cut situation, if you will. Instead, Harry and executive producer Lawrence Applebaum petitioned to create an entirely new sequel. For reasons lost to history, everyone involved shrugged their shoulders, and Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 was born. 

"But wait!" you cry through a mouthful of scalding hot coffee liqueur and whipped cream. "I haven't seen Part 1! Won't I be lost when I watch Part 2?!" Oh, you miserable, idiotic idiot. That's the beauty of SNDN Part 2. Since this was originally meant to be a recut, the first 40 minutes of this movie is (famously) just recycled footage from Part 1. It's two shitty movies for the price of one! That price? $0. 

We begin with a man in laceless shoes frantically smoking a cigarette. Clearly we're in some kind of insane asylum. The tension is momentarily broken as an orderly brings in a tape recorder. Oh shit, it's getting Mindhunter up in here!

The orderly will not look away from this man we learn is Ricky Caldwell (Eric Freeman). Maybe it's well-deserved caution. Maybe it's paranoia. My own theory is that it's boiling over sexual tension.

"Deck my halls, Ricky."

The tape recorder belongs to Dr. Bloom, the psychologist interviewing Ricky. Dr. Bloom introduces himself and Rocky immediately responds with a hearty "FUCK OFF, DOC!" Ooooh, watch out! We have a real badass over here!

Ricky warns Dr. Bloom that he's wasting his time, because Ricky will never talk about his past. Right after he says this, we begin the flashback sequence that will take up about three-quarters of the movie. Ricky folds quicker than Cherelle Parker talking to a stadium developer. In an instant, he transforms from steel trap to the patron saint of trauma-dumping on a total stranger. Ricky absolutely cannot shut the fuck up from this point forward.  

We also get our first reminder that, oh shit, this is a Christmas movie. As Ricky prepares to whip it out (emotionally), the date appears on screen. 

Ohhhhh myyyy Goddddddd, it's SILENT NIGHT! Perhaps even a DEADLY NIGHT!

The flashback begins with baby Ricky driving along on Christmas Eve with his brother, Billy, and his parents, blonde lady, and Ted Danson's stunt double. 

"Chores! Where everybody knows what you're called!"

The Yuletide takes a turn for the worse when Ricky's parents are murdered in an attempted carjacking/rape by a man dressed as Santa Claus. Just a heads up, there's a shocking amount of sexual violence in this 88-minute "movie," mostly because it's hack-screenwriter shorthand for "irredeemable bastard who must be chopped to bits." Murders in this universe are a dime a dozen, but forcibly pulling a woman's shirt open? That's SNDN's sign of a true psychopath. 

Dr. Bloom hears this story and—speaking for the audience—asks how the hell Ricky could remember a double murder he saw when he was an infant. "Because I was there," Ricky replies, insanely. The fuck? That's not even close to how that works! The Soviet Union dissolved on my first Christmas and I don't remember shit about that. 

Like I said, the first forty minutes of this movie are just a condensed version of the first Silent Night, Deadly Night. For time and sanity's sake, I've condensed it even further, to a density of highlights previously thought impossible.

Ricky and his impressively mulleted older brother Billy were scooped up after their parents were butchered and sent to the St. Tabitha Home for Abusable Orphans. Ricky faded into the background, while Billy spent his days doing typical '80s orphan things: drawing Santa-based murder with crayons, getting the belt from Mother Superior, watching a random couple fucking (then getting the belt from Mother Superior), and dreaming about Santa (then getting the shit kicked out of him by Mother Superior). Things came to a head when Mother Superior forced Billy to sit on Santa's lap during a party and Billy knocked the crap out of him. This insolence presumably earned Billy the belt.

Doubling—or perhaps even tripling—down, Mother Superior arranged for now eighteen year-old Billy to work at a toy store as a mall Santa. This forcible immersion into the identity of his parents' killer helped Billy develop radical empathy, allowing him to fully recover and live a normal, law-abiding life. 

Just kidding. Billy puts on the suit and immediately goes on a killing spree. Dressed as Santa, Billy murders (in order): a rapist (strangled with Christmas lights), a rape victim (stabbed), his boss at the toy store (axe to the head), a drunk lady wearing a pill box hat (bow and arrow), a gratuitously topless woman (impaled on mounted deer antlers), an innocent himbo (tossed out a window), two sled bullies (decapitated while sledding), and a podunk cop (axe to the gut), all before being gunned down (in front of Ricky) by a police detective that we've literally never seen until that final shootout. Oh, and somewhat related: while all this was happening, Ricky watched Podunk Cop gun down a different Santa Claus (Old Man Kelsey, the janitor).

Throughout the flashback, Ricky recounts stuff he couldn't possibly know. Stuff like how the cops almost shot a random guy surprising his daughter by dressing as Santa, or how those sled bullies stole those sleds. Dr. Bloom comes dangerously close to pointing out the flimsiness of this framing device, causing Ricky to respond "Maybe we're just jerking off here then!" Now that I think about it, a lot of the dialogue between Dr. Bloom and Ricky sounds ripped from a gay porn script. Some examples:

Dr. Bloom: Let it out.

Rick: Here it comes! 

Ricky: Jingle these balls

Dr. Bloom: Gladly

Rick: Am I going too fast for you, doc?

I only made one of those up.

After Billy's death, Ricky left the orphanage and went to live with a nice Jewish couple, the Rosenbergs. No danger of Christmas here. December 25th is just another cold winter day to enjoy some kugel. Altz iz gut, until Ricky sees some nuns and has a nervous breakdown. This is compounded when Ricky's stepdad dies when Ricky's only... fifteen?

Pictured: Age fifteen in 1987

After the funeral, Ricky takes a walk on some backroads and ponders death. While doing this, he sees another attempted rape in a field. Jesus Christ, was this movie written by George R. R. Martin and produced by HBO? Anyway, Ricky kills the man by repeatedly running him over with a bright red jeep (foreshadowing!). The woman then thanks Ricky and walks away. It's deeply strange. 

Three years later, Ricky is taking a break from his dishwasher job, when he sees the world's most theatrical loan shark beating up a guy in an alley.

"I can break your legs, or you can drive me to my audition for La Boheme."

The loan shark takes out a comically large red handkerchief (are you seeing it yet?!) to wipe the Ass Beating sweat from his brow. Triggered, Ricky impales him with an umbrella.

These murders are all well and good, but according to Dr. Bloom's increasingly nervous responses (he dabs his brow with a handkerchief with red embroidery! Oh no!), no one ever connected them to Ricky. So why is Ricky in the asylum? 

It all started when Ricky met the girl of his dreams, Jennifer, after she seductively hit him with her car. Ricky and Jennifer fall deep into whatever this movie approximates as love. They spend their days riding Ricky's motorcycle, having sex while standing but moving as little as possible, and quietly seething about loud idiots in movie theaters.

"Ricky, is it supposed to be this soft?"

Tragically for Ricky, the movie Jennifer took him to is about... a guy who dresses as Santa to kill people. What poor taste! This affects Ricky, who excuses himself. While Ricky works some stuff out in the theater bathroom, Jen is approached by ex-flame Chip. During Chip and Jennifer's psychosexual mind games, Ricky chokes two loud idiots to death in a packed theater.

[insert Christmas-themed gay porn joke #3]

Later, Ricky and Jennifer go for a classic '80s pullover sweater walk. 

Once again, Chip—dressed as the captain of a yacht that's made entirely of cocaine—approaches Jennifer. Did I mention he's working on his RED convertible?! 

Enraged, Ricky puts a jumper cable into Chip's mouth, resulting in a special effect that looks uncomfortably like Michael Jackson performing fellatio on a malfunctioning robot.

Jennifer freaks out (women, right?) and Ricky chokes her to death with a car antenna. He's so homicidal he goes cross-eyed.

A nearby cop who silently watched both these murders unfold over five minutes draws his gun on Ricky. Ricky does a total ninja move, shooting the cop and taking the gun. 

Not so much "ninja" as a "man with functioning hands" move

In for a penny, in for a pound, Ricky goes on a full-blown killing spree. He shoots a guy complaining about all the noise, then laughs maniacally.

We've finally arrived! Our meme appears, and the previous seventy minutes have not provided any helpful context! This is followed up by the worst staged stunt crash in cinema history. Why was that ramp there in the first place?

This is truly the Full Unruh. Did Santa have anything to do with this? By now, the Christmas aspect has been electrocuted, strangled, shot at point-blank range, and exploded.

Faced with a wall of less idiotic cops, Ricky tries to shoot himself, but is out of bullets. 

Should've put an extra magazine on your Christmas list, buddy.

We cut back to the interview room, and discover that Ricky has strangled Dr. Bloom to death with the tape from the recorder. This never would've happened if Dr. Bloom had Voice Notes. Ricky casually walks out of the room and escapes, on what I'll remind you is Christmas Eve. 

Ricky kills a Salvation Army Santa and takes his outfit before calling Mother Superior. Oh shit, remember her?! She's started melting in the years since leaving the orphanage, and is spending Christmas Eve pounding sacramental wine and watching a Christmas parade on TV just to criticize it as blasphemous. She'll die as she lived: a hater. 

Literally bubbling with contempt.

Ricky arrives at Mother Superior's house, but is easily outmaneuvered by this wheelchair-bound, octogenarian stroke victim. She clowns him so hard, she starts talking shit, like how his brother Billy sucked and Ricky must be punished. Ricky responds "Naughty this!" and swings the axe.

As police arrive,  they find Mother Superior calmly sitting at the table. Then her head bloodlessly falls off. Did Ricky have a lightsaber we didn't know about?

Then Ricky tries to rush the cops with the axe, only to be pushed backwards out of a window in a hail of bullets. Not hiding the ball here: it's a shot-for-shot recreation of the end of Halloween. Ricky dies. Except he doesn't. 

Smash cut to credits. 

If I had to summarize Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2, it's an inverse Die Hard. You know how annoying people love pointing out that "Um, actually, Die Hard is a Christmas movie?" We all have that friend. Well, Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 is the opposite. It's nominally a Christmas movie, but has nothing to do with Christmas. For all we know, only one of Ricky's murders even happens in December. The Christmas element is 100% an afterthought. This was a routine slasher movie tacked onto an existing Christmas-based franchise. 

It's also the inverse of Die Hard in the sense that it really, really sucks ass. The writing is lazy, the kills shockingly lame, and the actors largely unfuckable. I'll give points to Eric Harris for absolutely going for it—his performance hacks any sense of restraint or logic apart with an axe—then vanishing from the face of the Earth. I like to think he's at the North Pole, impaling sexually deviant elves with a flagpole. 

Overall, Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 is far less than the sum of its parts. And the best part by a country mile is the "Garbage Day" line reading. I'm glad it broke free of this compost heap and forged its own legacy. 

Happy Holidays everyone! Don't be naughty!