Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) review

13. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Directed by: Charles E. Sellier Jr.

Produced by: Ira Richard Barmak, Scott J. Schneid, Dennis Whitehead

Screenplay by: Michael Hickey

Starring: Lilyan Chauvin, Gilmer McCormick, Toni Nero, Robert Brian Wilson

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to kill you. I’ve reviewed Christmas-themed horror movies in the past, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one draped in controversy as much as 1984’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night.” It’s about a man dressed up as Santa Claus who goes on a killing spree on Christmas Eve in Utah; there’s much more to it than that, but this is basically the plot. As you might expect, it was a subject of protest among parents, who felt the advertising campaign would traumatize children, and had a short theatrical run as a result. But regardless, it’s a movie that has its moments of creativity and enjoyably hammy performances, even if at the end of the day, it’s basically your typical dumb slasher flick.

The movie opens in 1971, when 5-year-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) visits his catatonic grandfather (Will Hare) in a mental facility on Christmas Eve. When his parents (Geoff Hansen & Tara Buckman) leave the room, his grandfather awakens and warns Billy about Santa Claus, saying he punishes all naughty behavior. On their way home, a criminal in a Santa suit (Charles Dierkop) shoots the dad and sexually assaults the mom before slashing her throat in an attempted carjacking. Billy (Danny Wagner) and his little brother Ricky (Max Broadhead) end up in Saint Mary’s Orphanage, where the strict Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) doles out cruel discipline for Billy’s troubled behavior, thinking it can be beaten out of him. Cut to the present day, with Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) now 18 and out of the orphanage, earning a job at a toy store with help from the compassionate Sister Margaret (Gilmer McCormick). But on Christmas Eve, he’s made to fill in as the store Santa when the regular calls out; that’s triggering enough, but during the after-hours party, he sees co-worker Andy (Randy Stumpf) trying to rape another co-worker Pamela (Toni Nero). The flashbacks of his parents’ murders send Billy into a full psychotic break, as he goes around killing people with an axe while still wearing the Santa suit.

So in a nutshell, this movie is about a boy with a traumatic Santa Claus psychosis, and initially, it’s really not too bad at portraying it. As I get older, I become gradually more aware of what kind of events and atrocities linger more intimately in kids’ minds, and how it affects them. The scenes with Billy in the orphanage are uncomfortable to watch, but I mean that in a good way; I don’t like scenes of capital punishment in the name of religion, especially towards young children, but there are at least discussions of what specifically to do about his current mental state. It’s just a matter of certain people like Mother Superior being too dead set in their ways to consider more nurturing methods; the way she treats him is awful, but you can tell she thinks she’s helping him.

It's only when it switches to adult Billy—in a weird still-frame transition—that the concept starts to become slightly ridiculous. For one thing, I have a hard time believing that this scared, neurotic little boy grows up to become such a big, burly man. What is his living situation? We see him sleeping in a bed after leaving the orphanage, but does he have his own place? Did his parents leave him a lot of money, or is Sister Margaret helping him out? There’s also just the fact that the performance is sadly not very good, and hearing him constantly yell “Punish” and “Naughty” gets tiresome and hokey. The tone and music in the toy store scenes are also very strange, with a cheesy jazz theme over a montage of standard store happenings; it’s so misplaced, I kind of love it, and the music overall is decent.

But at the same time, when you see that poster of an axe-wielding St. Nick sliding down a chimney, what do you think you’re going to get? Enter the Christmas carnage; Billy mainly uses an axe, but some of the kills have him deploying a bow and arrow, antlers of a stuffed deer head, and even Christmas lights; yes, he strangles Andy with a strand of Christmas lights, you can’t get more into the holiday spirit than that. The most visually memorable is the deer head, which he uses to violently impale Denise (Linnea Quigley), a teenager having sex with her boyfriend Tommy (Leo Geter). The sequence is shot really well, and it’s Linnea Quigley, so of course she’s topless the whole time; God bless her. The kill that had me laughing my ass off is with these two bullies Bob (John Bishop) and Mac (Richard C. Terry) who steal a couple sleds; Billy decapitates Bob while he’s sledding, and we see the headless corpse keep on sledding down the hill with his head tumbling after it. I don’t know, shit like that is just morbidly funny to me. The meanest kill is near the end when Billy beheads a snowman for no apparent reason; that’s just petty.

I don’t have much to say about the remaining characters; I like Sister Margaret, while my favorite supporting player is Billy’s boss Mr. Sims (Britt Leach), who just has great body language and memorable little mannerisms. I’ve never seen such enthusiasm delivered in a line like “It’s over! Time to get shit-faced!” But there’s a lot of stupid stuff going on as well, like these idiotic cops who, while looking for Billy, just barge into a house without warning because they see a Santa climbing in a window, only to see it's a father (Don Shanks) trying to surprise his daughter. Okay, that’s another kind of darkly humorous scene, but then a similar thing happens near the end, and it’s just tired by that point. It’s obvious that after Billy leaves the store, the plot doesn’t know where to go except just have him kill random people, which results in a pace that’s extremely uneven.

It's kind of funny that there was such a fuss over this movie, since the gore wasn’t much beyond what you’d see in a “Friday the 13th” sequel, and the “killer Santa Claus” idea had already been done in “Christmas Evil” and a segment of “Tales from the Crypt” without it being a big deal. It came out the same day as “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and had a better opening weekend before Tri-Star Pictures pulled the plug prematurely. Nevertheless, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” has endured as a cult Christmas classic, spawning two sequels that featured Ricky as the main character, two more sequels that had a completely different story, and a 2012 remake. In my opinion, this doesn’t have the suspense or clever writing of something like “Black Christmas” or “Gremlins,” and it fluctuates between campy and heavy, but in a certain frame of mind—perhaps swimming in eggnog—it can be enjoyable.

My rating: 6.5/10