Now the All Through the House segment of the Tales From the Crypt movie is obviously a massively important landmark in Christmas horror, but 1972 would give us another often overlooked addition to the festive chiller canon.
Released November 17, 1972 was a movie called Silent Night Bloody Night - which sometimes has been seen under the titles of Death House and Night of the Full Dark Moon. Made for less than $300,000, this movie was actually produced by a very young Lloyd Kaufman, who would found cult favourite Troma Productions in the 1980s. It was directed by Theodore Gershuny, who Kaufman had previously worked with on another low budget movie Sugar Cookies, a lesbian thriller which was produced with a young Oliver Stone, who at the time was running a small independent production company with Kaufman! From small acorns and all that!
However Silent Night Bloody Night was something of a different proposition, very firmly in the horror genre, and as we’ll hear, going into some rather dark territory. The plot of the movie is as follows.
In the opening sequence, we learn that on Christmas Eve 1950 a rich old fellow called Wilfred Butler dies in a fire, leaving his lavish Massachusetts mansion to his infant son Jeffrey. Twenty years later just before Christmas, and a lawyer, played by Patrick O’Neale, is sent by the now grown-up Jeff, played to sell the property. A consortium of important local folks in the little town of East Willard, agree to.come together to buy the place for its historical value. But before the deal is struck the lawyer and his girlfriend are brutally murdered by a mystery assailant. Further murders will follow, and the town telephonist Dianne, played by the great Mary Woronov, and Jeffrey, played by James Patterson, join forces to solve the mystery of the bloody slayings.
Often hailed a proto slasher, this movie was little seen on its first theatrical release, but later would find a cult following when it began to be shown on television over the festive period in late night shows just Elvira's Movie Macabre and WWOR-TV's Fright Night.
Now Silent Night Bloody Night is not a perfect movie by any measure, and movie fans coming back to it, particularly those attracted by its place in early slasher history, often find it a bit meandering and unfocused. However in fairness, while it is indeed a movie that lays the groundwork for later slasher movies, Silent Night Bloody Night is more of a horror mystery, with the plot being as much about uncovering the sinister history of the house as it is about the kills. Likewise Mary Woronov’s Dianne is portrayed as a real character rather than the sort of bimbo that we find in abundance in later slasher movies.
And while often there is no disguising its low budget nature, and the direction isn't always highly polished, there are still some effective sequences and the overall mystery is intriguing enough. The film has a very wintry vibe, and rather than going for camp splatter, the story is told in a gritty and down to earth manner, and goes to some rather dark places. In many ways with its bleak realism and dark psychological themes contrasting with the festive setting, the movie very much prefigures the later and much better known Black Christmas. And hence while it might not be the best movie in this advent calendar it certainly deserved its place in Christmas horror history.
I will briefly note that thanks to the film entering the public domain there was a loose remake in 2013, Silent Night Bloody Night: the Homecoming. And in 2015, a highly belated sequel - Silent Night Bloody NIght 2: Revival - that shamelessly recycled a good deal of footage from the original to pad out its running time. However the less said about this pair of no budget straight to DVD affairs the better. Yes, this pair are on the naughty list! But on the upside, around the same time as these two cheap cash-ins oozed out, the original film did get a much needed remaster, allowing us to see this interesting addition to Christmas horror as it was originally shot.
Now the following year we were treated to another Christmas horror movie that is regarded as something of a classic, although its connection to the festive period is often overlooked. Featuring a script by the great Richard Matheson, Legend of Hell House brought his 1971 novel, just called Hell House, to the big screen in 1973. Starring Roddy McDowell, Pamela Franklin, Clive Revill and Gayle Hunnicutt, this was in fact one of the last movies produced by James H Nicholson, the man who had co-founded AIP with Samuel Z. Arkoff.
Revill plays a physicist hired by an extremely rich old man to find proof of life after death. And to earn the highly attractive £100,000, he has a week to investigate the notorious Belasco House, along with a young medium, allegedly the best in her field, Florence Tanner (played by Pamela Franklin) and the only survivor of the last investigation there, another psychic Ben Fisher played by Roddy McDowell. Yes, you did hear that correctly, only survivor - for indeed the Belasco House is not just extremely haunted, but often proves to be fatal to anyone staying within its walls...
Of course, Christmas is the traditional time for ghostly tales, and that was something that Matheson was well aware of, and hence the investigation of the so-called Hell House begins on the 17th of December, with the eerie events reaching their shocking climax on Christmas Eve. However, as the entire film, excluding the opening scene, takes place at the Belasco House, which has been sealed up for years, there’s not really a trace of Christmas to be seen. Indeed giving the house’s dark history, which includes torture, murder and all manner of sexual perversions, it’s perhaps no surprise that the current investigators didn’t bring any tinsel or Christmas trees with them! And there is only the date captions, which announce each passing day of the investigation, to indicate we are in the festive season.
However, as I said, ghost stories have always been closely tied to Christmas, and this cinematic tale certainly fits in nicely with a whole subgenre of ghost stories where folks go to an old isolated house for Christmas. And while there’s no sign of Yuletide visible in the film, the movie has a superbly wintery vibe, with lots of the shots of the titular Hell House wreathed in freezing fog.
The cast give it their all, and the cinematography is both inventing and unsettling. The haunting electronic score by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radio Radiophonic Workshop only adds to the eerie vibes. All in all, Matheson and director John Hough deliver one of the best haunted house stories ever filmed, one that is as chilling as it is thought-provoking. And while there’s no seasonal symbols or December décor on show, Legend of Hell House will certainly bring a chill to your Christmas!
Now it would seem that by the early 1970s, the Yuletide horror film was really hitting its stride. For there would be another helping of festive frights the following year in 1974… And indeed another massive milestone in the history of Christmas horror!
