Silent Night Deadly Night

(1984)**
Young Billy has the worst day of his life. First, during a visit to a mental institution to visit his catatonic grandfather, he is left alone with him and during a brief moment of lucidity grandpa turns to Billy and scares the shit out of him by telling him, “Santa’s coming, you better run for your life!” As if that’s not enough to give him PTSD for life, later that evening Billy’s parents are murdered in front of him by a man in a Santa suit after Billy’s father makes the unfortunate decision to offer the road-side assistance to Jolly St. Nick. Following this tragedy Billy is sent to an orphanage where he is tortured by Mother Superior, an old bitch that believes harsh discipline is the way to create solid upstanding citizens.

The film jumps 10 years and Billy is now 18-years old and is hired to work in the local toy store during the holiday season. When some of the hired help fails to show up Billy is forced to play Santa. Given that Billy has spent his entire life trying to repress all things Santa, this sends him into insanity and he begins a killing spree that will eventually lead him back to the orphanage where he was abused.

Silent Night Deadly Night is a cruel, mean-spirited movie that involves terrorizing little kids. In 1984, when the film was initially released, the PTA heavily boycotted this film, which only made it more appealing to teens (i.e., myself and Octo). Twenty-four years later (gulp) I have a 9-year old and I can better appreciate why people hated this film. Wikipedia notes, “Siskel and Ebert condemned the film and went so far as to read the film's production credits on air, saying "shame, shame" after each one”. The greater offense is that it’s just not a good film. It’s a poor rip-off of Halloween in every way with unlikable characters, unoriginal deaths, and a paint-by-numbers ending. Of course there were 4 sequels that have been long out of print (I intended to watch them all this year). One thing that struck me was that there is a lot of nudity (boobs) in this film compared to today’s films. This, of course, gives the film 2 stars.