Silent Night Deadly Night (1984)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: Christmas Eve, 1971, young Billy is taking a long car ride to visit his elderly mentally handicapped grandfather at the mental ward. When Billy is alone with grandfather, the used-to-be catatonic old man starts asking Billy if he’s afraid of Santa and that he should be because if he’s naughty Santa will punish him. This sets in motion the downward spiral for Christmas and Yuletide cheer for young Billy.

While driving home late that evening, they stop the car to assist a man in a Santa suit with a broken down car, which moments earlier we witnessed him steal that car after he shot and killed a convenience store clerk for a lousy $31. This is one nasty Santa and he kills Billy’s dad and attempts to rape his mother before she hits him and then he slits her throat all while Billy watches in horror and his newborn brother, Ricky, wails into the night.

Years later Billy and Ricky live in a orphanage and Billy does not like Christmas. He is scolded when he draws a rather graphic and violent image of Santa and his reindeer. The head of the orphanage is a very strict and malicious nun, Mother Superior (quick question: Are all nuns in a place of power called Mother Superior or is this one very overused name?) who scolds and punishes Billy for the drawing. While Mother Superior and the kindly Sister Margaret know of the events that make Billy loath and fear Christmas Mother Superior thinks discipline and fear of God will cure him of all that. Over the course of the holiday Billy is punished numerous times for things that aren’t necessarily worth punishing a young kid for. He witnesses a couple of teens fornicating in a closet (as far as we see the orphanage has only littler kids and not teens so their presence there is highly debatable) which Mother Superior whips and then canes Billy for watching. He has bad flashback nightmares and tries to leave his room late at night and he is then tied to his bed. The worst punishment we don’t even see on screen and that’s the tip of the scale for Billy’s decent demeanor as he punches a Santa Claus who visited the kids at the orphanage.

We then flash-forward another 10 years and Billy is 18 years old and the orphanage gets him a job at a toy store as a stock boy. I’m sure Christmas will never bother him at a toy store. I mean, every store in the country gears up for the holidays with decorations and attire but a toy store hits more to the point though. Especially when Billy is a last minute replacement to be the store’s Santa for the visiting patrons’ kids. But more on that later. In a few short months (via musical montage) we see Billy struggle with his dark persona and demons while making new friends, excelling at his job and making customers and his boss happy. He also sets his eyes on one of the store’s more attractive employees, Pamela, which never gets past the gaga-eyes stage.

Well as Christmas approaches Billy is asked by his boss to be the store Santa as a last minute replacement. Billy agrees although why would someone with such a hatred and fear of the famous icon go so easily along with this task is beyond me. But anyway he does a decent job even though he scares the wits out most of the kids. At that evenings closing the store has a quick Christmas party and Billy still keeps on the Santa suit. He is introduced to alcohol although we don’t see him get drunk but others do. Billy also loses Pamela to another guy, Andy, as they both go back to the stockroom to make out. Billy eavesdrops on their activities and he is made aware of the aggression of Andy towards Pamela as he nearly rapes her. Billy’s good persona flashes back to seeing the violation of his folks and snaps and hangs Andy by the neck with Christmas lights. Pamela is not too pleased with her rescuer and starts to yell and hit Billy but Billy quickly kills her too. Then Billy waits for the rest of the employees like the boss, Mr. Simms, who is shown the business end of a hammer to the skull. The last worker is killed rather cleverly by Billy with an arrow to the guts. Billy then goes on his little Christmas killing spree. Meanwhile Sister Margaret is made aware that night of Billy’s role of Santa at the store and is worried about him enough to come to the store, seeing the bloodbath.

Billy then takes out two teens who were moments away from doing the deed. As the female, played by scream queen Linnea Quigley, goes upstairs to let in the cat, Billy attacks her, and after a short melee (she is topless this whole time, mind you) he impales her onto the antlers of a mounted deer on the wall. The boyfriend is thrown through a window cutting him to pieces. Billy then comes across the path of some kids sledding (on Christmas eve?!) and lops off a sledder’s head as he slides down the hill. Sister Margaret and the police chief deduce that Billy might be making his way to the orphanage to make that his next killing spree. They send a deputy to the orphanage and as he approaches he sees a Santa walking to the children playing outside. Taking swift action the deputy tries to warn the suspected killer to halt but the Santa ignores the command and so the deputy puts that Santa on the permanent naughty list shooting him dead in front of the kids. It turns out the Santa was a fellow priest who happened to be deaf hence the reason for him ignoring the deputy.

The Deputy is told to stay at the orphanage and be on the lookout for the real killer Santa. After a very long and boring search by the deputy, Billy’s axe and a long flight of stairs ends his tenure at the police department and life. Billy then waltzes into the orphanage and goes to attack Mother Superior but before the axe comes down, he is shot by the police chief just in time. Before the credits roll we see Billy’s brother Ricky say, “Naughty,” thus setting up for an unnecessary sequel.

Silent Night Deadly Night, Part II (1987)

I will only briefly discuss this little gem in short since about half of the movie is literally clips from the first film.

This film of course focuses on Billy’s younger brother Ricky who is now in a mental facility or prison (it’s unclear) and a psychiatrist enters with a tape recorder to interview Ricky. Ricky tells the story of his childhood, which told through the first film’s footage is really Billy’s childhood. This is completely boring if you ever saw the first one (I watched both back-to-back and this was torturous) and ridiculous considering that Ricky is talking about how his parents died by a lunatic Santa and he was only a newborn at the time. But anyway, like I said the whole first half of the film is mostly footage from the first film with even worse acting and commentary from the shrink and Ricky. It’s actually quite hysterical to watch.

So after Ricky catches us up to speed from the first film he tells “his” story of how he was adopted by a kindly middle-class family and raised well—until his foster father dies and somehow his life unravels. He then, like his brother, wishes to punish “naughty” people. In some of Ricky’s killings he is actually somewhat of a do-gooder, defending a guy who was being threatened by a thug and killing him colorfully with an umbrella, and beating up a very obnoxious movie theatre patron disrupting the film while Ricky is on a date with his girlfriend. But its not until he has to defend his girlfriend from a douche-bag ex-boyfriend, electrocuting him with jumper cables that his unnecessary killing spree begins. The girlfriend watches her ex-boyfriend die and voices her disapproval to Ricky, who then strangles her with the ex-boyfriend’s car radio antenna. As soon as her body hits the floor a cop is at the scene and tries to arrest Ricky. Ricky outfoxes the cop and shoots him in the head with the officer’s own gun. Taking the firearm Ricky struts down the street in this sunny suburban neighborhood and shoots whomever crosses his path including the now-famous “Garbage Day” moment when Ricky tries to be witty and just yells, “Garbage day!” to some unlucky victim who was taking out his trash. Ricky spares a little girl on a bike for unknown reasons but then quickly shoots at an incoming car making it flip over and explode! Then Ricky meanders towards a police blockade and laughs maniacally and turns the gun on himself but oops, out of bullets.

At this point Ricky’s story of how he’s in the facility is up to speed and while he’s telling the conclusion to his story we notice the shrink was strangled by the recorder’s tape and is dead. Ricky then escapes the facility and kills a Salvation Army Santa for the suit. His next target is Mother Superior in her home. Strangely enough Mother Superior (who is wheelchair bound and her face is somehow disfigured) manages to give Ricky a hard time killing her, even surviving a fall down a high flight of stairs. Eventually he does his evil deed, decapitating her, but shortly afterward the cops arrive and gun him down. When another nun discovers the severed head of Mother Superior she screams, which makes Ricky’s eyes open, and then he grins.

Are They Actually Jolly: No. They are sub-par slasher flicks dependent on a particular holiday, with the sequel being an abomination of cinema. The sequel, never-minding the 30 minutes of reused footage, doesn’t even mention Christmas until he steals the Santa suit to kill Mother Superior. The first one used the holiday fairly well and for the most part is a watchable horror movie (read: I’ve watched way worse but not many) but the second one example after example of terrible filmmaking, from the piss-poor acting to the nonsensical plot, it is now one of those infamous “So-Bad-its-Good” films like Troll 2 and The Room. But I will give some credit to the original trying hard to become the Yuletide equivalent to John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Jolliest Moment: GARBAGE DAY!!!!

Dumbest Moment: Too many to choose from but what annoyed me the most was the death of the ex-boyfriend in the sequel when Ricky electrocutes him with jumper cables. Ricky holds the guy down to the car hood by squeezing his neck. Then he attaches the jumper cable to the guy’s teeth, electrocuting him, but while the sparks fly Ricky is still holding his neck. Anyone with a 3rd grade education knows that flesh is a good conductor of electricity.

Overall: While the first one isn’t the worst horror movie made it isn’t something I would highly recommend to everyone. What I found strange was that the first one upon its release caused a lot of controversy when large amounts of protestors detested the killer in a Santa suit premise. Even Siskel and Ebert were disgusted by this film and condemned it mostly on the grounds that the film has a killer in a Santa suit. Eventually the distributors pulled the ads for the film to shield the nations’ children from ever seeing a killer Santa. Frankly, this film and especially its sequels (yup there were FIVE total Silent Night, Deadly Night movies) were not worth the uproar.

Score: Silent Night Deadly Night, part I: 6 (out of ten); Silent Night Deadly Night, part II: 2 (out of ten)