Review of Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) by Richard A — 16 Dec 2007

Its only fitting that I brush the dust off this good ol' holiday nasty and revisit it yet again especially seeing the time of year it is!

There are a number of christmas horror films out there: Black Christmas (the classic and the dreaded but wonderfully tasteless gorefest remake), Don't Open Till Christmas, Silent Night, Bloody Night, Christmas Evil and so on but this baby takes the cake hands down as pure tasteless exploitative gold.

It spawned a slew of bad sequels including part 2 which is wonderfully worse than this one but not as good, if you can believe that. I especially laughed at how outraged parents, movie critics and even gimpy actor Mickey Rooney spoke out about this film (even funnier when Mickey Rooney himself eventually starred in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker, AHAHAHAHAHAHA!).

Yes, its not something to show children but this movie is tame compared to the shit kids grow up watching these days, its sad.

The idea of a traumatized kid who watched his parents being slain by a hoodlum in a santa suit causing him years later to snap and go on a killing spree sounds like a hell of an idea for a horror film if there ever was one.

Its not scary but there are plenty of gore shocks, T'n A (including an unfortunate close up of a guys hairy ass), a wonderfully bad music score, actors who "act" like morons, vicious nuns and actor Robert Brian Wilson as homicidal santa maniac "billy" who runs around killing unfortunate suckers and shouting "Punish!" or "Naughty!" just before he offs them.

Props must also be given to scream queen actress Linnea Quigley in this flick as she is impaled and mounted on a set of deer antlers plus honorable mention must be given to William Hare in a short but ultimately sweet role as young billy's mentally deranged grandpa "you see Santa Clause tonight, you better run boy, run for yo life!".

As far as bad horror movies go, this one is a must see, its a bloodsoaked Christmas stocking chock full o'fun so wedge your ass into the well etched ass grove already made into your couch, turn on the x-mas lights, spike your egg nog with some rum and enjoy the holidays horror style.