Silent Night, Deadly Night

In theory—well, maybe—one is not supposed to laugh while watching the events of Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) unfold, but damn does this feel cathartic and mirth-inducing. Critic Gene Siskel was so offended by the movie that he read the names of the people involved in making it aloud on TV in an effort to shame them.

It’s tempting to read the film as a metaphor—and warning—for what can occur when we don’t deal with our trauma. Anyone, though, who has ever felt extreme pressure has entertained notions of how satisfying it would feel to just give in and snap—briefly, and not murderously, but merely to say, “Screw this! Enough!” and go with the feeling. 

Silent Night, Deadly Night is the ultimate Christmas film with the double middle finger mindset. The plot centers on 18-year-old Billy (Robert Brian Wilson), who, at age 5, was riding in the car with his mom, dad, and baby brother when a man dressed as Santa Claus flagged them down from the side of the road, shot the dad, tried to rape the mom and slit her throat—we see her breasts in flashback seemingly every quarter hour going forward—and presumably killed the baby, after Billy had scampered off but still witnessed it all. The boy is then raised in an orphanage with a really strict crone of a Mother Superior and some horny nun sex in broad daylight. Nonetheless, the lad becomes an upstanding, strapping young man and lands a job stocking shelves in a toy store, which goes okay until he has to substitute for the ailing regular Santa.

No one is going to argue that Silent Night, Deadly Night is high art, but it is fun, and even if you feel guilty saying as much, the guilt will pass. Santa won’t hold it against you for having affection for this movie. He probably likes it, too, when Santa-clad Billy sets off into the night. Some would say the work is unintentionally funny, but it’s smarter than it may seem at first, just as Billy himself is no idiot—simply crazy. Trauma, as they say, is a bitch. Deal with it, or be dealt with by it. There’s a sad story inside of the larger arc. Billy is not a monster. For half the film, we see a decent guy. A hard worker. And while we’re responsible, ultimately, for our own snapping, you feel for Billy.

But because you feel for him, you also sort of root for him, whether he’s beheading someone sledding and sending them back from whence they came; impaling a topless, randy babysitter on a pair of deer antlers; shooting a colleague in the back with a toy arrow; or hanging an annoying co-worker-turned-rapist with some Christmas lights (but then unfortunately gutting the rapist’s female victim who protested a bit too much about the manner in which she was rescued).

Silent Night, Deadly Night features what has to be the most depressing holiday party in movie history: a five-person employee affair after the toy store closes that commences with the owner saying, “Time to get shit-faced!”—we’re not talking Fezziwig here—and gets worse (much worse) from there. But whether you’re the Grinch or Father Christmas himself, you are bound to adopt Billy’s one-word catchphrase—“Naughty!”—as your own for the remainder of the holiday season anytime someone annoys you. Go with it. Feels good.

There’s a nice shot of blood dripping from a hatchet contrasted with the angelic purity of recently fallen snow, but director Charles E. Sellier Jr. wasn’t so much looking to dazzle cineastes as he was trying to get an audience to exclaim a collective, “Fuck yeah.” A little girl receives a present of a blood-smeared box cutter, and, for a few seconds anyway, you can’t say that she appears disappointed. The whole thing looks very 1980s (note those Jabba the Hutt playsets on the toy-store shelves), but the movie’s datedness is part of its charm. This is an upbeat slasher, which makes it a notable novelty, and if you ever want to blow off some steam at Christmas and stay out of jail while doing it, this is the picture for you. 🩸