Holiday themed horror films are nothing new. While certain days and dates just naturally lend themselves to having a horror film centered on them (Halloween or Friday The 13th, for example), others are not such a natural fit. Take Easter for instance, or St. Patrick’s Day. In the annals of this curious sub genre, this is probably the most ill conceived, jaw-droppingly tasteless slasher film ever made. I’m talking, of course, about the Christmas-set slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night. The film caused a minor firestorm of controversy when released in 1984.

Check this: It’s Christmas Eve, 1971. On the way home from visiting their grandfather in an insane asylum, young Billy’s parents pick up a hitchhiking Santa Claus who also just happens to be a psychotic killer who just knocked over a convenience store and killed the clerk. Funny, that, considering that Billy’s infirm grandfather had just terrified Billy with stories of Santa Claus punishing naughty children. Needless to say, it’s not long before Billy’s dad has a bullet in his head and his mom is lying on the ground, both her blouse and her throat opened up. Billy escapes and watches from the safety of a barren shrub six feet away while his infant brother Ricky bawls his eyes out in the backseat of the family car.

Oddly enough, this experience scars Billy for the rest of his life.

Flash forward three years. It’s Christmas Eve in a Catholic orphanage. Billy’s emotional trouble starts manifesting itself when the children are asked to draw pictures of Santa Claus. Matters aren’t helped when Billy inadvertently spies some older kids (do orphanages still take in 30-year-olds?) doing the nasty and is beaten by the cruel disciplinarian Mother Superior that runs the orphanage. The film then provides one of its most horrible scenes: Mother Superior tries to force a terrified Billy to sit on Santa Claus’ knee, knowing full well his emotional and mental issues. Aside from the distasteful and abusive undercurrent of this scene, I find it hard to believe that it’s so staunchly traditional for Santa Claus to make an appearance in an orphanage. This section of the film ends on a freeze frame of the terrified face of Billy as he awaits more abuse at Mother Superiors hands.

Now that this entire prologue has passed, the film can get on with what it’s really here to do: have Santa Claus chop people up.

It’s ten years later, and Billy is working in the stock room at a toy store. All seems to be fine. Billy even manages to survive the beginning of the Christmas season. However, when the store’s hired Santa Claus breaks his ankle ice-skating on Christmas Eve, Billy is pressed into service as Saint Nick. When he witnesses a lecherous male employee assaulting a kindly female employee in the stock room during a (low rent) company shindig, Billy snaps and his murderous rampage begins. Along the way, there are beheadings, shootings and impalement on deer antlers.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is one of the most hostile bad movies ever. It’s not just bad, it rubs your nose in its badness. It wallows in unpleasantness and seems to get off on depicting terrified and abused children for the majority of its run time, to say nothing of its misogyny and cavalier attitude towards rape. I’m not opposed to the concept itself, I’m opposed to the irresponsible way the filmmakers have brought it to the screen.

If I have to give Silent Night, Deadly Night credit, it’s for the fact that it’s far more ambitious than other exploitation films of it’s ilk. A great deal of effort is made to explain the psychology of its main character. The problem is that they lack the courage of their own convictions. There are at least three psychological motivations provided, none of which are terribly convincing and all of which forget the cardinal rule of slasher horror: that the why is never as scary as the what. We don’t need to know why a character does what he does, as long as it’s scary. Moreover, bending over backwards to explain what the killer does makes him seem more like a pathetic victim of circumstance, someone to be pitied rather than terrified of. Most horror sequels don’t make this mistake until their third or fourth outing. Silent Night manages to play out its concept in less than an hour and a half.

There is also some camera work that is impressive in its conception and execution, as well as a truly forceful performance from Lilyan Chauvin (Mother Superior). There is not, however, enough filmmaking flair or acting ability on display to elevate this film from the subterranean territory it occupies. I don’t think enough exists in the world to accomplish that task.

Silent Night, Deadly Night premiered the same weekend as Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street on three times as many screens. Parent’s groups were up in arms over the film’s marketing campaign, which depicted an axe wielding Santa making his way down a chimney. In response to the controversy surrounding the film, Tri-Star pulled all TV marketing for the film. After two weeks, the film was pulled from theaters, but not before the $750,000 film grossed $2.5 million, a tidy little profit. It went on to become a minor cult hit on video.

Naturally, a sequel was inevitable.

Horror sequels, especially ones to films that didn’t do blockbuster business, tend to be done on the cheap. However, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 sets a new low for cheap. Nearly a third of its 88 minute running time is comprised of footage from the original film. The rest was shot in ten days on a budget of $250,000.

Ricky, having seen his brother gunned down at the end of the original, is now in a mental institution. There’s actually a pretty good credit sequence that establishes Ricky’s character. The scene is free of dialogue and set to some fairly eerie and haunting synth music. Then a psychiatrist comes into to interview Ricky, and Ricky speaks.

And the film uses up its limited supply of filmmaking skill.

Enough cannot be said about the acting, or more precisely overacting of Eric Freeman as Ricky. He does this insane thing with his eyebrows, wiggling them up and down to punctuate every word he speaks. It’s actually quite exhausting to watch him. Nobody can ever accuse Freeman of not giving it his all but in this case, his all was way way way way way waaaaaayyyyyyyy too much.

The entire first hour of Part 2 is spent in a room with Ricky recounting the events of the original film in flashback. That’s right, roughly a third of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2’s already Spartan 88 minute run time is spent recycling footage from the first film. Also, many of the recycled scenes are edited in a way that what little impact they once had is diminished.

Later, Ricky recounts what happened between the time the first film ended and the second one begins, in original flashback footage. These scenes are dull dull dull, as young Ricky grows up with his foster parents and cultivates a taste for killing. ‘80s video scream queen Elizabeth Cayton makes an appearance as Ricky’s short-lived love interest. Of course, she had to go and get angry when Ricky dispatched her old boyfriend with a car battery and some jumper cables; Ricky strangles her with a radio antenna for her troubles. What follows is Ricky’s manically campy rampage, which includes the immortal: “GARBAGE DAY!” as he walks down the street gunning people down.

Probably realizing that the film is almost over, Ricky escapes. How, we never quite find out. This leads to the last section of the film, in which the Mother Superior, now confined to a wheel chair, living alone (despite having a house with an entirely wheelchair inaccessible second floor) and inexplicably suffering from what looks like advanced Syphilis is terrorized by a vengeful Ricky in a hastily staged and logically impossible finale. In a film that is already low rent, the showdown in particular reeks of cost cutting cheapness.

Amazingly enough, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 manages to simultaneously be one of the worst horror sequels ever made, yet still better than the film that spawned it. It’s every bit as bad as its predecessor, but the proceedings this time are just a tad less hostile, and Freeman is so over-the-top that it’s much easier to laugh Part 2 off as camp. It’s not good, but given the right frame of mind, there’s gold in them thar hills.

Video

Evaluating the video quality of Silent Night, Deadly Night is a bit tricky. The film was heavily cut to obtain an R-rating for it’s theatrical release. The cut footage was edited back into the film for its video release, but somewhere along the line, the original negatives for the unrated scenes were lost. This unrated version of Silent Night, Deadly Night was reconstructed using the edited, R-rated print and footage culled from a VHS master. It is jarring to see the cuts between the two different sources, but credit must be given where due. While the difference between the two is very obvious, the unrated footage looks (for the most part) far better than it has any right to, and the R-rated footage looks great. It could’ve been worse, it all could have looked like the VHS footage, or it could’ve been the cut, R-rated version. Kudos to Anchor Bay for making the effort to restore the excised footage.

On the flip side of the disc is Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, which also looks far better than one would expect.

Audio

Nothing to tell, really; the audio tracks are completely serviceable and unspectacular. The track on Silent Night Part 1 is slightly better, with the sound on Part 2 occasionally sounding muffled.

Extras

On side A, we have an audio interview with director Charles E. Sellier, Jr. that runs roughly thirty-five minutes. It’s pretty comprehensive, with Sellier going into detail about the conception, making of, and fallout from the film. A slide show would’ve been a nice accompaniment instead of the blurry static image we’re given to stare at for half an hour, though. Despite the wealth of information, I found it difficult get through this in one sitting.

Next is Santa’s Stocking of Outrage, clippings from newspapers and reviews. It’s funny to see just how exaggerated some of the comments are, everything from this lame little slasher film permanently ruining Christmas to signaling the end of civilization. These articles entertained me, but I wanted more. A pretty engaging short documentary could be made covering the furor over the film’s release.

Lastly is a poster still gallery.

On the second side we have an audio commentary with writer/director Lee Harry, writer Joseph H. Earle and actor James Newman. I hated listening to this. It’s just loaded with smarm and condescension. It’s one thing to make a film that isn’t successful and to earnestly discuss what went wrong; it’s another thing entirely to claim that you intended it to be campy and over-the-top. I call shenanigans. There’s nothing in the way of perspective or insight here, just a lot of laughing at the film itself and revisionist “aren’t-we-clever” back slapping. I couldn’t help but think, “You guys are the ones who are responsible for the fuckin’ film.”

Next, there’s a brief theatrical trailer, which is odd considering the film itself only played for one week at one theatre before hitting home video, but there you go.

The entire set is rounded out with an 8 page booklet that gives a brief rundown of a lot of the material covered in the special features.

Parting Thoughts

I’m not a fan of the Silent Night films, and I can’t help but feel that, given the controversy surrounding the first film, that this release is a bit a missed opportunity. If you’re a fan of the Silent Night films, you probably already own this. I found these movies are tasteless and bad in a depressing, soul-destroying sort of way, so if you were looking to put a macabre spin on your holiday viewing schedule, I’d recommend you look elsewhere.

Black Christmas would be a good place to start.