Silent Night, Deadly Night Review

"Time to get shit-faced!"

Director: Charles E. Sellier Jr. Writers: Paul Caimi and Michael Hickey

When you look up Christmas horror movies Silent Night, Deadly Night is one of those that pop up quite a lot with a lot of other movies like Black Christmas, since the Xmas slashers seem pretty popular and a lot of people like this film, I've seen it online a couple times this year with comments that imply it's actually fun and very underrated and I love a lot of horrors with a similar following so I decided to watch it this festive season. I didn't expect too much from it but I expected to at least enjoy it for what it is, an 80's slasher movie. Is it a good 80's slasher movie?...errrrmmm not really.

The movie follows the character of Billy who's very young to begin with and is visiting his very far gone and very mixed up grandpa at the mental hospital for Christmas Eve, when they get a moment alone, grandpa tells Billy that Santa Claus punishes naughty children and scares the shit out of him, good going pops. On the way back home a man dressed as Santa flags the family down for help but when he pulls a gun out, Billy's farther tries to reverse and escape, they crash and Billy runs behind a bush and watches his parents get killed and abused by 'Santa Claus' Billy and his baby brother (Yes there was a baby in the car, good times) end up at Saint Mary's orphanage and Billy grows up developing festive PTSD and always acts irrational around Christmas time, this causes him to get punished by Mother Superior (No she's not a super villain) a lot. When Billy hits the age of 18 he gets a job in a toy store and it all seems to be going well but like every year, Christmas time rolls around and his behavior becomes concerning, especially as Santa rocks up at the store (It's a guy in a suit but don't tell the kids) and freaks him out. Events occur and Billy has to don the Santa suit at work, he's not the best with the kids. At the stores Christmas party, everyone get's 'Shit-faced' and after some encouraging words from his boss, Billy kills his entire work force and then goes on a killing spree. It's not the greatest story but for a 80's slasher movie, I don't hate it. It has a suitable cheese factor to it.

The main character Billy's dialog mostly consists on the word naughty but I guess they set up the fact he's deranged pretty well, actually the characters are all well set up in the sense of you know what kind of people they are but you can just make them 1 dimensional to do that. So I didn't really like any of the characters, well I guess the toy shop keeper was a little funny anyway.

A good amount of this films run time consists of random boob shots and close ups of peoples faces as dramatic, off putting music plays. I don't think the direction is particularly well handled, some of the kill scenes were actually directed by a different director since Charles E. Sellier was not comfortable with them. There's a couple of cool shots but nothing ground breaking, in fact I'm trying to think and there's only one that really comes to my head. The kills are pretty hit or miss (ha) and mostly consist of un-creativity, there's two kills that are pretty awesome though, you know the ones. The movie tries its hand at comedy a little too, which is unsuccessful, there's one pretty clever joke but it isn't delivered too well and the rest are just flat. This movie has a little of the 80's awkwardness. I actually think the scene where his parents die is pretty effective though, so there's a plus.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is stuffed with Christmas songs I've never heard before and are pretty weird and the score isn't bad but it's not the easiest on the ears. At least it gets its point across.

I was disappointed mostly and I really wanted to like this movie, I can definitely see the cult factor in it but I think they missed a trick and didn't bring too much to the table. The effects mostly consisted of a bottle of ketchup in a plastic stick and the entire film seems a little flat. I see a lot of people really like this movie and will defend it but I mainly think it's more of a so bad it's good deal. But it's really not THAT bad, but it's not good either.

Rating: **½

Pros -Short and sweet -That sledge death scene -That Denise death scene -Linnea Quigley -Some pretty effective scenes