Silent Night Deadly Night

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Runtime: 85 minutes

Directed by: Charles Sellier

Starring: Robert Brian Wilson, Lilyan Chauvin, Toni Nero, Linnea Quigley

From: Tristar

For Christmas, I decided to recently watch an infamous movie from the 80’s about a young man who dresses up as Santa Claus and goes spree killing during the holiday season. As it’s still December 25 on the West Coast as I write this, it works… at least that’s what I’ll claim. If you want more Christmas-related movies I reviewed you can go to last December as I covered some related to the holiday season.

I saw this movie once before during my teen years. I mean, it was so long ago I saw it on VHS tape via a rental from the mom and pop video store, which closed long ago. I recently found it on YouTube, which even offers up a link to a full video download from Megaupload, if that’s what you want to do.

The story involves Billy, who as a young kid visits his catatonic grandfather in the mental hospital; while the rest of the family is away old gramps talks to him and stresses how Santa punishes naughty boys. The family comes back and they all leave. On the way home they come across a thief in a Santa suit who kills the dad and then attempts to rape and then kills the mom, in front of Billy and his infant brother. Yep, this movie isn’t exactly subtle. So, you then see Billy in an orphanage having to deal with a really mean Mother Superior (Chauvin).

You then see Billy at age 18 as he gets a job… at a toy store during the holiday season. To quote a review from long ago, that aspect is a little goofy given what happened to Billy as a kid. It’s as of something horrible happened to someone as a kid on Valentine’s Day, then as an adult they get a job as a florist. Anyhow, as it nears the holiday season, a co-worker yells at him for allegedly slacking off at this time of year and even calls him a “moon goon”. No, I have no idea what a “moon goon” is either. Through contrivances, Billy ends up having to play Santa Claus at the store, and that’s when he snaps, and goes off on a killing spree on people he sees as being “naughty”, such as those who do bad things to his cute brunette crush Pamela (Nero).

I didn’t remember this from the first time I saw this, but while very entertaining in a trashy way, this movie is rather mean-spirited too. I mean, besides what I said already, you have such things as more than one attempted rape, plenty of nudity, hardly any subtlety at all, Billy having sexual fantasies about Paula which end in him getting killed in his dreams… like I said, mean-spirited. You also get some really cheesy generic 80’s songs, Linnea Quigley showing off her bare breasts (oh wait, this is typical for her), and some memorable kills.

Overall, while this movie is rather ridiculous, and the acting isn’t always the best (to say the least), but it’s a slasher so that’s expected. Despite how cruel it is at times, it’s still a watchable and fun movie to watch, I say. Hopefully that doesn’t make me sound a little strange. After all, back when this was released theatrically this received a HUGE amount of negative publicity. I mean, a lot of people were downright pissed that a movie about a guy dressed up as Santa who kills people was released. The movie didn’t last long on the big screen before Tristar pulled it and no surprise, they never released it on video or DVD and instead other companies did so.

I’ve never seen any of its four (!) sequels. However, if you want a spoiler-filled recap of all five, you can read this FearNet article posted just last night. I’ll mention the four sequels in brief based off of what I know about them. Part 2, about Billy’s infant brother Ricky all grown up, has a lot of footage from the first one edited in, just because… but the new footage includes a scene so ridiculous out of context (or probably in context too) that it’s become an Internet meme. That’s right, the “garbage day” scene. It’s rather graphic but you can still watch the YouTube clip of it here; you get to hear a bad guy say “that’s what she said.” Really. Then you get a few minutes of some incredible cinema. Part 3 involves Ricky returning with what looks like a fish bowl on his head (!) and such things as telekinesis is involved and it just sounds strange. Oh, and genre legend Bill Moseley plays Ricky now. Parts 4 and 5 have nothing to do with the first three. 4 sounds even more strange and deals with bugs, witches, and the Egyptian god Isis. 5 is my favorite in terms of plot alone. I need to see all four sequels, but I need to watch 5 especially to see Mickey Rooney (!) play somebody named “Joe Petto” and has a son named Pino, and yes the names are referring to exactly what you think they are. Why, I have zero idea.

I’ll be back on Thursday night with a post covering the other three Mission Impossible movies, then on the 31st I’ll mention in order my 10 favorite movies released this year that I saw.