Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
I was too young to remember the controversy surrounding 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night (the movie that dressed a psychotic ax-wielding murderer in a red and white Santa Suit) when it was released, but I am old enough to to remember the heyday of video rental stores. As a teen in the mid-80s, I spent many Friday nights with my buddy Jeff wandering up and down the aisles of our local rental store in search of movies to rent. There were no cellphones or internet back then, no instant link to millions of online reviews at our fingertips. All a couple of teens had to go on back then was word of mouth, employee recomendations, and, perhaps most importantly of all, the artwork on the front of the rental box. There were many movies Jeff and I discovered and rented, movies like Chopping Mall, Ghoulies, and Return to Horror High, all because of their artwork. 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night, with its iconic photograph of Santa’s arm coming out of a brick chimney while holding an ax, was one of the films we discovered during that time.
The film opens with five-year-old Billy riding in the car, along with his parents and infant brother Ricky, on his way to visit Billy’s catatonic grandfather. When Billy’s parents step away for a moment (leaving Billy alone inside the “Utah Mental Facility”), grandfather briefly awakens from his comatose state and informs Billy that Christmas Eve is the “scariest damn night of the year,” because that’s the night Santa comes to punish children. For many children this might be the most traumatic event of their entire life, but for Billy, it’s only the second most traumatic event of the day. A few hours later during their return trip, a man in a Santa suit pretending to have car trouble flags down the family and, as Billy watches, shoots his father in the head and slits his mother’s throat.
If you’re wondering why Billy’s grandfather woke up from his catatonic state (or was he faking?), why he decided to scare the bejesus out of his grandson, who this murderous Santa is, or who rescued Billy and Ricky from the side of the road, don’t bother. You have entered the realm of the 80s slasher flick, a world where characters and plot points blow into and out of films as freely as the wind. Neither grandpa nor the murderous Santa return to the film — and as for Ricky’s story arc, you’ll have to watch Silent Night, Deadly Night II for that. Let’s just say the ornament didn’t fall too far from the tree.
Billy and Ricky wind up at Saint Mary’s Home for Orphaned Children. Despite the fact that Billy’s parents were murdered on the side of the road by a guy in a Santa suit, Mother Superior can’t imagine why Billy wouldn’t like Christmas, and punishes him with a belt when he turns in Christmas artwork featuring a decapitated reindeer (which, for the record, is way better looking than some of the things I’ve bought on Etsy). If Mother Superior has one lesson for the orphans, it’s that children should be nurtured and loved. Just kidding; her motto is, “those who do bad things need to be punished.”
Once it’s been thoroughly established that the orphanage is a rotten place for kids, we make our third time leap of the film. Now eighteen and “all growed up,” Billy has landed a job at a local toy store through some sort of orphan vocational program established by the nuns. There’s a long montage of Billy working at the toy store, which is really great if you love the 1980s because there are dozens of shots of Billy and his co-workers interacting with loaded toy shelves. Other than going a little haywire each time he sees a picture of Santa, Billy is a model employee.
UNTIL THAT ONE DAY WE ALL KNEW WAS COMING, the day Santa called in sick, Ira needed someone to fill in, and we all know who the rented suit just happened to fit. Finally, almost exactly halfway through the film, Billy snaps. That guy in the warehouse who was a jerk to Billy? HANGED WITH A STRING OF CHRISTMAS LIGHTS! The girl Billy caught having sex in the store’s warehouse? GUTTED LIKE A FISH! EVERYONE WHO DOES WRONG MUST ALL BE PUNISHED! Ira, the guy who gave Billy a job and treated him super nice? CLAW HAMMER TO THE HEAD! Wait, why did Ira get killed? Who cares! Halfway through the film, Silent Night is over and we’ve landed squarely in Deadly Night territory.
The last 45 minutes are reindeer-shit crazy. While Billy hacks his way back toward the orphanage, the local police can’t seem to figure out where he’s headed — despite the fact that since the age of five, the only two places on the planet Billy has ever been are apparently the orphanage and the toy store. If the first half of the film was the slow build up, the last half is the payoff. Billy heads off to the orphanage, dishing out some random seasons greetings along the way.
The extended cut of Silent Night, Deadly Night is only 85 minutes long (that’s with credits), and the theatrical cut (with most of the gore cut out) was only 79 minutes in length. With some tight editing and removal of several scenes that add little to the plot, it would be pretty easy to whittle it down to a solid hour. Neither pacing nor plot are the film’s strong points, and if the killer hadn’t been wearing a Santa Claus suit, I doubt this film would be any more memorable than any other 80s slasher flicks. Fortunately for them, and us, someone had the foresight to set this movie on Christmas eve, and if you don’t think Christmas and horror make a good combination, then I’m guessing you haven’t seen Silent Night, Deadly Night parts two, three, four, or five.
Silent Night, Deadly Night has been released on a special edition Blu-ray that includes both cuts of the film, along with a brief documentary and a commentary track. If that ain’t worth asking Santa for, I don’t know what is.