So then we are finally here - we have reached perhaps the most famous Christmas horror of them all. Black Christmas may be the most respected and hugely influential but Silent Night, Deadly Night is perhaps the most notorious, and what’s more has spawned a festive horror franchise, notching up four sequels and a remake. And another reboot is alleged on its way.
But where did it all start? Well, with producer Scott J. Schiend who was looking through movie pitches sent in by the public. And on his desk landed a short story called He Sees You When You're Sleeping. The plot concerned a killer dressed as Santa Claus was written by one Paul Caimi, who was a student at Harvard at the time. Schiend liked the idea and drafted Michael Hickey to set about developing a script. The finished screenplay, entitled Slayride, was picked up by Tri-Star Pictures and a budget of $750,000 was agreed.
Now Schiend, who was executive producer, wanted to find “the next John Carpenter” to helm the picture, and indeed Sam Rami was considered for the job. However perhaps hinting that no one here really knew what they were doing, also considered for the job were Albert Magnoli who would find fame directing Purple Rain (1984) and Tango and Cash (1989), and Ken Kwapis who would go on to make Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird (1985), Dunstan Check In (1996) and, much later still, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (2005). So, one out of three there in finding a new John Carpenter I think.
But while Raimi would have been the perfect choice, the suits at Tri-Star had other ideas, and decided the man for the job was Charles E. Sellier Jr. who was best known for creating family favourite 1970s TV series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. No, I don’t get it either.
The movie was filmed in March 1983 in Utah with most of the cast being locals, including leading man Robert Brian Wilson who had no previous acting experience. However, appearing in a small role was future scream queen Linnea Quigley. Apparently director Charles E. Sellier Jr. was uncomfortable shooting the set piece kills and so editor Michael Spence had to step in.
Tri-Star had designer Burt Kleeger create the iconic poster showing an axe-wielding Santa disappearing down a snowy chimney, and the movie, now renamed Silent Night, Deadly Night, was promoted with the tagline “You've made it through Halloween, now try and survive Christmas”. Tri-Star also splashed out on a heavy marketing campaign, including national television spots as the film was released on 9th November 1984.
And evidently all the hype and hoopla paid off, for the movie would do extremely well at the box office, and according to many sources took more than the first Nightmare on Elm Street which had been released on the same day. However this is not entirely true, as Freddy Krueger’s first outing only had a limited release on 9th November, and was only released nationwide the week after. And by then Silent Night, Deadly Night had been pulled from theatres…
For the movie was met with an instant backlash, with protests outside theatres and even Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney condemning the movie in a letter which read -
“How dare they! I'm all for the first amendment but... Don't give me Santa Claus with a gun going to kill someone. The scum who made that movie should be run out of town.”
Critics hated it too, with the most famous reviewers in the land, Siskel and Ebert slamming the movie on national TV, and even going so far as to name and shame the producers on air, and called any profit from the movie “blood money”. Hence in the face of such public wrath, Tri-Star pulled the movie sharpish despite it reportedly taking over two million dollars during its brief run.
But why was Silent Night, Deadly Night so controversial? For, as we have learned in this advent calendar, it was not the first killer Santa movie by a long chalk - one a couple of years earlier in 1980 there had been Christmas Evil and To All a Goodnight, and starting the whole trend off back in 1972, was the All Through the House story in Tales from the Crypt. And there was no backlash against those movies. So what was different about Silent Night, Deadly Night?
Well, often the blame has been laid at the door of the marketing campaign. Burt Kleeger’s poster is highly iconic but you can see why it might terrify children and therefore earn the wrath of parents. However it is thought the real damage was done by the television ads which started running a week before the release. Now Tri-Star were giving this movie a big push and hence had booked blanket coverage meaning that trailers for the movie were going out even in the daytime when all the family were sat watching the Sunday game or Little House on the Prairie. And nothing angers a parent quite like scaring their kids, and especially when you do so by making something magical like Santa frightening.
However I would perhaps argue that it was also the content of the movie that fuelled the fire. For in the film we have not one but two scenes of rape and sexual assault, which both end in murder. And in both a man dressed as Santa Claus is involved in the violence. And this juxtaposition of Santa and sexual violence was unique to Silent Night, Deadly Night, and I suspect a large factor in why reviewers and critics loudly and forcefully took against the film.
But what of the movie itself? Is it as deplorable as the critics of the day claimed? Well, let’s have a plot summary and weigh it up… And as we need to go into detail - warning, spoilers ahoy!
The movie opens in 1971, just before Christmas, where a young boy named Billy, is off with his parents and baby brother Ricky, to visit his grandpa who is in a care home. Grandpa is supposedly catatonic but when alone with Billy, suddenly wakes and warns Billy that Santa punishes the naughty as well as bringing presents. Billy is rightly terrified. But there is worse to come. On the way home their car is hijacked by a man in a Santa outfit who has just robbed a local store. Billy's father is killed, and then his mother is sexually assaulted and then murdered too.
Fast forward a few years, and we catch up with Billy and Ricky who are now in a children's home run by nuns. Sister Margaret is loving and kind, but the Mother Superior, played by Lilyan Chauvin, is strict and harsh, and very ready to punish any naughtiness, either real or perceived. Billy tries to be good, but we see that he has huge issues with seeing any images of Santa.
Fast forward again and Billy is grown up - now played by Robert Brian Wilson - and has a job in a toy store. And all is well, until Christmas and Billy ends up having to step in and replace the store’s Santa. At an after work party, Billy discovers a co-worker molesting a female colleague, and something snaps. He kills the attacker but also slays the victim, as all sex is naughty apparently. After that he goes on random rampage killing various folks he deems naughty, with highlights including Linnea Quigley meeting a pair of antlers, and a sledging bully losing his head. Eventually Billy heads to the children's home in order to punish Mother Superior…
Now what makes Silent Night, Deadly Night interesting is that it attempts to show us the making of a killer. However unfortunately it also wants to be a standard slasher too, and the two approaches just don't quite mesh. The film’s tone is uneven and the plot meanders. While Christmas Evil covered very similar ground surprisingly well, here the psychology seems heavy handed and crass rather than believable, and Billy is too blank a character to either be sympathetic or evil enough to be a convincing slasher villain. And while some of the kills are good fun, the scenes of sexual assault are jarringly unpleasant. Apparently Tri-Star insisted on Charles E. Seiller Jnr. directing as they thought he could bring the polish of a quality drama to the production. But instead what we get feels like a sub-par TV movie, albeit one with nudity and gore sprinkled in.
In fairness Silent Night, Deadly Night is not an entirely terrible film, but is very uneven, and can seem a little long even though it clocks in at just under 90 minutes in its uncut form. Overall, I would say it’s more of an interesting movie rather than a decent one. However it does deserve its place in horror history, if only because it gave us an even more infamous sequel…
Now after the fury over Silent Night, Deadly Night, unsurprisingly movie makers shied away from Christmas horror movies for a while, and it all went quiet in the festive frights front for a while… But not forever!
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