Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) – The Test of Time
The episode of The Test of Time covering Silent Night, Deadly Night was Written by Andrew Hatfield, Narrated by Niki Minter, Edited by Mike Conway, Produced by John Fallon and Tyler Nichols, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
Wading through the many aspects of a movie to decide if it stands the Test of Time is one of the fun parts of this journey. Often times, we’ve looked at classics that are genuinely seen as good in most aspects and decide if it was good just for its era or if it was able to transcend its place in time and still be a good time today. Last year we looked at Christmas Evil, a movie that still is underseen, but is a true holiday classic. While Black Christmas is probably on the Mount Rushmore of both Slashers AND Christmas Horror and doesn’t require a re-evaluation, what about Silent Night, Deadly Night (watch it HERE)? It was certainly controversial and is very well known for multiple scenes but how good is it? Is it just here for cheap thrills and controversy or has its deeper message of past trauma only become more relevant and insightful nearly 40 years since its stuttered and shortened release? Let’s climb down the chimney and deliver this gift of a movie to find out of it stands the Test of Time.
Plot
In the early 80’s, a producer by the name of Scott J. Schiend had a policy that he would actually take story ideas and even scripts from the general public. A Harvard student by the name of Paul Caimi submitted a short story called He Sees You When You’re Sleeping about a killer Santa Claus. Even though Schiend hated slasher films, he contacted a writer named Michael Hickey to turn the short story into a screenplay and Tri-Star Pictures liked it enough with the slasher boom happening to greenlight financing for a movie to be made with a budget of 750,000. While in production the movie was known as Slay Ride and the other production company was Slayride Productions, slightly less big name than Tri Star. To direct, the producers wanted to make this the Christmastime version of Halloween and so looked for the next John Carpenter to helm the film. While up and comers like Sam Raimi were considered, Tri Star had the final say as the money and TV producer Charles Sellier Jr. was chosen to direct.
Sellier Jr only directed 4 projects, including the under-seen action flick The Annihilators that came out the year after Silent Night, Deadly Night. He was, as previously stated, a massive producer of TV movies and series. One of his biggest, and the one that got him the job, was his Grizzly Adams creation. He also did tons of things in the realm of the western and ended his career with a ton of religious TV movies. Paul Caimi whose story was the inspiration only has credits for this movie and it’s sequel for character credit but the writer of the screenplay, Michael Hickey…. oh, wait… he also only did this screenplay and credited for part 2. Kind of a strange legacy for the two of them but here we are on YouTube discussing their names so good on them.
In front of the camera is filled with a good mixed bag of unknowns and solid character actors. The actor who plays Billy at 18, Robert Brian Wilson, was ashamed of his first role until a 30th anniversary screening that showed him what cult status really was. He only had 15 other roles and almost exclusively on the small screen. Britt Leach is one of the kings of “That Guy” cinema in the 70s and 80s. He started in 1971 with TV shows and would end up in classics like Weird Science, The Last Starfighter, and The Great Outdoors. Charles Dierkop and Will Hare, who play the movie’s early villains, also have showed up in minor roles with classics like Back to the Future, Heaven Can Wait, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting. Then there is Linnea Quigley who is just… Chef’s Kiss. She is horror royalty who is amazing and still works today on a multitude of projects. Finally, playing Mother Superior, is Lilyan Chauvin whose active career was from 1950 all the way to 2011, which is 3 years AFTER her death. She has 152 credits that span movies, TV shows, and even video games. She’s no stranger to horror either with other movies like Pumpkinhead II and Predator 2.
Silent Night, Deadly Night opens with a fun title sequence that tells you exactly what you need to know. It’s a Christmas movie and a horror movie. We see Billy with his parents and younger brother on a trip to visit his grandfather in a hospital of sorts in Utah. The Grandpa is supposed to be catatonic but when the parents leave Billy with him, he scares him with stories of Santa not being good overall but a means to punish the bad kids in ways that are not exactly what you should be telling impressionable children. On the way home, they run into a man who is dressed as Santa and is fresh off a gas station robbery. Unfortunately, he kills the parents and traumatizes the kids. They end up in an orphanage where young Billy is still hurting, unstable, and trying to figure himself out. Mother Superior catches him with violent drawings, catching him watching people have sex, and then punching Santa. His experience does not go well, and he and his brother are not adopted.
Billy turns 18 and gets a job at a toy store as a stock room employee leading up to the holiday season. A Santa impersonator never shows up and Billy’s boss has the idea to dress Billy up as Santa. This does not go well at all and sets off the movie’s main appeal. Billy puts on the costume and first snaps at a kid before killing nearly the entire staff of the store. He then goes on a bit of a spree that involves nobody in particular for any rhyme or reason other than to give us fun horror set pieces. It all culminates in Billy ending up at the orphanage to go after Mother Superior and getting gunned down in front of his brother who utters “Naughty” and the cycle is set to return again. Though this time it plays out in hilarious fashion if you watch part 2.
Sign of the Times
This movie is chock full of “they just don’t make em like they used to” moments from simply, well, signs of the time like a baby not being secured in a car seat and the poor care of an old folk’s home to an actual brick and mortar toy store and the belief that just anyone can play Santa AND you can have your kids just sit on their lap. Also, door to door carolers. Is that still a thing? Anyway, from a film standpoint this is part of the holiday horror craze that took over after Halloween. We did have Black Christmas and a few other ones, but we would get things about New Years like Terror Train and New Years Evil plus Halloween, Friday the 13th (yes I know not a holiday but a superstitious day), and My Bloody Valentine. This is still happening today with Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, and it has become a tradition just as much as the holidays themselves.
The other two things that are very much of their time are the rampant sexual assault seen here-in and the sequel baiting. Typically, when someone is a victim of this particular crime in movies today, it is a vital part of the story and the person either grows from the experience or seeks and gets their revenge. Here though, and in a lot of slasher movies, particularly Italian slashers or Giallos, its just part of the scene. I will say it does make the trauma that Billy and his brother go through a lot tougher but still, it’s just there to add the requisite nudity and horror elements up. Finally, there is the sequel baiting. The last line of this movie where Billy’s younger brother says naughty was expressly written to get a sequel worked on. It worked as there are 5 of these movies and was a very common practice with horror that started in the 70’s and 80’s and continues today with the ever-popular post credits scene.
What Holds Up
There is actually quite a bit that holds up here. The whole opening scene from the credits through young Billy talking with his Grandpa and the car jacking scene are all great set up for the movie. Grandpa becoming non-catatonic briefly to put the fear of Santa into Billy before pretending again is horrifying and the murder of his parents, especially watching Billy see it all after hearing that Santa wasn’t a good guy while his brother is crying in the car is still a tough watch. In fact, just the stuff this poor kid goes through both during that fateful night and at the orphanage is heart breaking and tragic. It goes deeper than just a killer Santa and gives him sad meaning and motivation for his spree.
Silent Night, Deadly Night had about 5 minutes cut out of it that includes some graphic part of the kills but the ones that remain are very classic on-screen deaths. Both Linnea Quigley getting impaled on the antlers and the bully being decapitated while sledding down are all timers. It also has realistic fight scenes because Billy is no Jason and when he kneels down with the girl after killing her sister, we really aren’t sure what he’s going to do and when he does give her the box cutter, its unnerving and unexpected. Billy snapping when he puts on the suit and the cycle repeating at the end are really good too and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the best lines ever that if you ever worked retail in the holidays, you’ve certainly uttered. “It’s over. Time to get shitfaced.”
What Doesn’t Hold Up
The things that don’t hold up here are far from deal breakers. Sure, the acting apart from adult Billy is nothing great but that doesn’t spoil anything. It’s particularly funny that his acting holds up considering how bad the main character is in part 2. The effects aren’t great apart from a couple kills and even those were beefed up in the unrated cut but with poor quality transfer. The score may be good, but the music choice is laughably bad and awkward in multiple scenes. The cops busting in on a family and almost shooting the dad with absolutely no remorse, apology, or shock from the family is bumbling cops from the original last house on the left levels of bad for bads sake.
Those are minor gripes though. The only two real ones to pick with the movie are that it meanders and just isn’t the shocking piece of cinema it was seen as in 1984. The movie starts with real things to say about the nature of Santa and the effect it can have on children as well as what happens to our minds after trauma and it just kind of turns into a generic slasher movie. It’s a fun slasher movie but certainly just follows the formula while not following through with its earlier premise. For all its protests and being pulled from the theater back in its initial release, there also isn’t a lot here that is shocking by today’s standards. Maybe we are just a jaded horror community or the fact that we have things like Human Centipede or A Serbian Film, but this would just come and go in today’s landscape.
Verdict
Silent Night, Deadly Night has its flaws and moments of disappointment but for pure fun holiday slasher cheer, it’s hard to beat. The movie was on pace to beat A Nightmare on Elm Street at the box office when it was playing at the same time but alas, it wasn’t to be. While it has a series of 5 movies to its name, the first one is the only essential viewing, but BOY is it ever essential. It was infamous at the time of its release but after finally getting the love and physical media treatment it deserves, Silent Night, Deadly Night is required viewing and more than stands the Test of Time.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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