Review of Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) by Eddie G — 11 Sep 2009

I've wanted to see this notorious shocker ever since I heard about the storm of controversy that blew up surrounding it from the rather excellent 1987 documentary Hollywood Uncensored starring Peter Fonda. The trailer alone made me think it would be worth checking out. Add to that the fact that it's never been properly released in Britain (the BBFC banned the sequel outright!) and you have a heady brew that can't fail to entice students of the forbidden and the sleazy. So hats off to Anchor Bay for a long overdue uncut release for this grimy little treasure.

In case you didn't know, this is the flick where a young lad sees his parents brutally murdered by a bellowing maniac in a Santee outfit on Christmas Eve, spends the rest of his life in an orphanage run by nuns who make the poor kid's life pretty miserable and winds up working in a toy shop. Then, when Christmas rolls around, the kid naturally has to dress up as Santa Claus to amuse the little tykes. Something snaps inside him and he goes on a blood-soaked killing spree, throttling people with fairy lights, beheading sledders with a big old axe, impaling women on deers' antlers (honestly!) and other fun stuff that's bound to put you off your figgy pudding. That pair of pompous buffoons Siskel and Ebert really went to town condemning this one, and when you consider that Ebert was one of the few (only?) mainstream critics to praise Wes Craven's Last House On the Left on its debut release, that's pretty shocking in itself. But then Krug and company didn't carry out their gruesome atrocities done up as jolly Saint Nick, did they? Within the first twenty-something minutes of Silent Night, Deadly Night I could see why this got all those PTA members and angry mothers baying for the producers' blood. Even to a jaded exploitation buff like me, the sight of a sick freak in a Santa suit shooting the young protagonist's father before stripping his mother (who looks like Emily Symons, incidentally) and slashing her throat is pretty strong stuff. Add to this the fact that the lad's infant brother screams and cries throughout this scene and you have a uniquely uncomfortable combination, designed to upset the family values brigade and censors alike. Bare breasts, check. Blood, check. Profanity, check. Horrible crimes witnessed by the innocent, check. Screaming baby, check. Jeez, it's like a seasonal take on Fight For Your Life! Then there's the stridently anti-religious subplot that runs through the film (the Mother Superior is a chilling screen villain who must be seen to be believed) and the large doses of mean-spirited to-hell-with-it-all cynicism (one of the suspects shot by the bonehead cops is a deaf priest who dresses up as Santa every year to bring cheer to the orphans, for Pete's sake!) to contend with. The film twangs just about every raw nerve you can think of. There's barely a likable character in sight - even the outwardly likable toy shop owner (who reminds me of Jim Nabors circa the Best Little Whorehouse In Texas) turns out to be an annoying drunk loudmouth - and how about that shiver-inducing moment where a sweet-faced tot confronts the Santa-suited murderer, believing him to be the genuine article, only for him to gift her a bloody Stanley knife! Had Ebeneezer Scrooge lived in the late 20th century, this flick would have had the grumpy old sinner squirming with delight.

Silent Night, Deadly Night came along pretty late in the day as far as the dwindling exploitation / grind-house genre was concerned. This kind of low-budget, independent, envelope-pushing shock fodder had a final blood-spurting burst of activity in the early 80s before video came along and ruined the fun forever, and for that reason alone, SNDN stands as a prime example of a dying breed, a mutant, screeching offspring sired by a rampaging but doomed beast on the brink of extinction. Not even upping the controversy as much as the makers of this undeniably effective and morbidly entertaining splatter flick could save the genre from sinking into the straight-to-video bargain bins, which is kind of a shame - when it comes to eighties chills and spills, I'd take SNDN over corporate-whoring populist schlock like that fraudulent camp-it-up poster-boy Freddie Krueger and his endless crummy sequels any old time.

Now bring us the figgy pudding. We won't go until we've got some.

Naughty.