Review of Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) by Stuntman R — 27 Dec 2008

Silent Night, Deadly Night is one of those rare hollywood movies crassly created soley to exploit the holiday season, and yet, I doubt even the film's creators could've forseen the kind of controvery they'd generate.

Well, maybe. The lead character goes on a killing spree after years of mental abuse (and I'm sure this probably describes the writer of the screenplay as well) by the nuns at the orphanage where he was placed after his parents were murdered by a man dressed as Santa Claus.

But enough about the plot. Anyway, describing the plot of this movie is like describing the plot of "Pink Flamingoes", there's no doing it justice with mere words. Unlike a Roger Waters film though, I'm not even so sure "Silent Night, Deadly Night" falls under the category of "kitschy" so much as just plain bad.

It's maybe even spectacularly bad. Slow-moving at times, nonsensical at others, it has the sensibility of being written by a 12 year old boy (especially the scene where two bullies steal a couple of smaller kids' snow sleds).

In the producer's rush to create a christmas version of "Halloween", they failed to think of the consequences of having television commercials for this movie portraying Santa Claus gunning down convenience store clerks and raping women.

A monumental miscalculation of marketing and just a bad idea in general, this movie had everything going against it before it was even released (on their review show, Siskel and Ebert read off a list of everyone involved in this film, reciting "shame, shame" after each name was read).

Now, as a dvd release, it's virtually a "play-at-home" version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.