Review #317: Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
The Twelve Slays of Christmas #3 - Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
This certainly was... a movie. I've never seen this one before (there's a ton of these movies, including seemingly two different movies claiming to be Silent Night Deadly Night 6) so I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect THAT.
I guess let me give a synopsis. A little kid named Billy goes with his parents on Christmas Eve on a day-long drive to deal with some paperwork at his grandfather's nursing home, and grandpa ominously warns Billy that Santa will punish him if he ever does anything naughty. Later that night, a serial killer dressed as Santa kills his father, and sexually assaults & kills his mother but leaves Billy and his infant brother alive. The boys are sent to an orphanage where Billy spends the following few years being abused by nuns, punished for witnessing a couple having sex, and forced to take part in Christmas celebrations despite the nuns knowing full well he's got a bit of a bugbear about Santa Claus (on account of, you know, Santa killing his parents in front of him). As Billy reaches adulthood he's hired at a toy store and then forced to dress up as Santa around Christmastime- again, despite the fact that he's got good reason to be against it- and then he kind of snaps, and goes on a killing spree killing anyone he deems to be "naughty". We then end the film with him getting brutally killed by the police in front of the entire orphanage, likely causing another cycle of children being unable to deal with their trauma until it bubbles over and they snap too. (I wonder what the sequel is about, hmm?)
I know a lot of hay has been made about looking critically at franchises like Batman where the story could technically be boiled down to "billionaire beats up mental patient" and asking whether this was the best setup for a story, but I really can't think of any other way to look at Silent Night, Deadly Night. Billy was very clearly traumatized and is outright triggered by the concept of Christmas- remember, he didn't know Santa Claus wasn't real when he watched Santa assault his mother and kill both of his parents, so imagine being forced by the people entrusted with your care to sit on your parents' murderer's lap while everyone laughed and cheered- and literally all of this bloodshed could have been stopped in its tracks by a single person just saying, "Hey, Billy's parents were killed on Christmas Eve, so you have to understand he's a bit touchy about Christmas." Bing bang boom, crisis averted. Let the kid spend his holiday alone watching TV or something. Maybe don't put him in the same outfit his parents' murderer was wearing when he assaulted Billy's mother, and maybe you won't get murdered. I don't mean to victim blame but seriously, EVERYONE in charge of Billy's well-being failed him on multiple levels.
But all of that aside, this movie is bonkers. Once Billy goes on his spree, his victims seem completely unrelated and random. How did he know those two teens were about to have sex in that girl's basement? Did he develop some kind of "naughty sense" that led him off through the town to find the one amorous couple? Because he wasn't watching them through the window (that we saw, anyway), he just showed up at the door and happened to be standing there when the girl came to the door topless. And then, instead of going from house to house killing everyone who was naughty (surely most people in the town would qualify, right?) his next kills are out in the woods at a random spot where some kids are sledding (a spot that, despite the screen telling us otherwise, is outright stated to be untouched by other kids, so it's not like this was a well-tread spot for kids to go pick on other kids). Why did he go there? How did he know that one random spot in the woods would soon be the site of some bullies stealing sleds? Again, did he have some kind of preternatural "naughty sense" that led him to that point because he knew naughtiness would occur any minute now?
And the final setpiece for the film has the orphanage full of children not only witness ONE, but TWO Santa Clauses get brutally gunned down by cops right in front of them. Seriously, those children are going to be WRECKED, every last one of them. If Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 isn't about an entire generation of orphans taking out their trauma on the world around them I am going to be very disappointed.
Wild film. Absolutely wild.
Overall Rating: 6/10 Screaming Nutcrackers
Treasure Trove: I absolutely loved spending the toy store scenes scanning the background and looking at the toys on the shelves (all of which were actual branded toys- I feel like nowadays they would all be mocked-up lookalikes or just generic toys). If you pay attention, you can see the He-Man Castle Grayskull Playset, Mouse Trap, a Jabba the Hutt toy, a Krull Glaive, and some game called "Stuff Yer Face"!
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