“If you see Santa Claus tonight, you better run boy. You better run for your life!”
The slasher craze of the 80s was a glorious time. A handful of icons propelled this sub-genre to the forefront of popular culture. The emergence of talented makeup geniuses, writers, directors, and actors, combined with the VHS boom, caused a voracious appetite for horror movies. Thanks to critics and our Mothers’ passionate disdain for these movies, we fans knew they had to be seen. The attempts to invent the next Freddy or Jason were plentiful, but thanks to the success of Halloween, studios set their sights on holidays. And none of them got out alive.
So in the spirit of the season, I look back and recommend an essential from the 80s. One that, believe it or not, was such a cause of controversy the goddamn “Parent Teachers Association” effectively and dramatically shortened its theatrical run. The film I speak of is, of course, Silent Night Deadly Night.
Notoriety aside, the movie does give some pretty wild, borderline disturbing imagery in the first half hour. Billy’s insane Grandpa tells him Christmas is actually the scariest night of the whole damn year and Santa is looking to punish the naughty. As our plot would have it, a thug dressed as Santa Claus sets this prophecy into motion. Billy watches Santa blow his Dad away and tear his defenseless Mom’s shirt wide open before slitting her throat, all while his baby brother screams his lungs out. Santa gets away and things get worse for poor Billy, who needless to say has a bit of a Santa Claus complex.
Do orphans still go to live with nuns? I mean is that even a thing?
For our purposes back in 1984 sure!
Mother Superior was pretty hardcore to poor Billy. This nun whipped his ass, tied him to his bed for having nightmares and (I shit you not) forced him to sit on Santa’s lap and then whipped his ass some more with precisely zero fucks given. Thanks to some good old-fashioned Catholic guilt, after poor Billy gets busted for perving on some teens engaging in some much frowned upon fornication (don’t forget, it’s the 80s), we have the second complex for poor Billy. Flash forward ten years and Billy has grown up looking like a full-fledged member of the Cobra Kai. Blonde, tall, and buff he looks the part for the typical 80s, Aryan a-hole type. He lands a job at a toy store and seems to be getting along ok (insert 80s montage) but what does his sleazy manager make him do? Wanna guess? I’ll wait…
He makes him dress up as Santa! Billy in full Santa garb then sees his douchey co-worker make some rapey moves on his crush and SNAP! So, thanks to Grandpa ruining Santa Claus and thanks to the Nuns ruining sex, the murder of his parents and years of physical, emotional and mental torture, poor Billy has all the inspiration he needs to spend the rest of the holidays seeking out and punishing the naughty. There is too much fun left to disclose entirely…
Unfortunately, I wasn’t born at the time of its release but word on the street is a shitstorm was caused by poor Billy. Our Moms and the PTA could not handle the imagery of an axe-wielding Santa Claus descending the chimney, let alone impaling a horny babysitter or decapitating some random cannon fodder just out for a sled ride. Can anyone tell me the last time when a movie was protested so successfully that all advertising material was pulled only days after its release? The fanboys were nowhere near as effective after hearing Ben Affleck was going to be Batman! Silent Night Deadly Night didn’t last longer than two weeks in theaters. But in that time it briefly out-grossed one of the classics of the slasher sub-genre A Nightmare on Elm Street, which opened the same week.
Is it a good movie? That’s not my place to say. Is it so depraved a mere viewing will ruin your childhood and the spirit of Christmas? Of course not. The word for that is censorship, which is deserving of a soapbox on another website. I can tell you without a shred of doubt that it is beyond enjoyable and a total blast to watch and isn’t that what we want and why we watch these movies? Especially looking back on this decade. When everything was big: body counts, blood, boobs, and sequels. Speaking of sequels, remember Billy’s baby brother? Maybe if you are good next year I’ll tell you about his adventures in Silent Night Deadly Night part 2.
So until then, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas!!