brendan halpin

It’s tough for us horror weirdos when Halloween ends and we start getting bombarded with treacly Christmas entertainment. Fortunately, there’s always some weirdo who puts out a nasty Christmas horror movie, and may Satan bless them for their efforts.

On a recent episode of the Tomb of Terrors podcast, host Old Man Brad extolled the virtues of the new Silent Night, Deadly Night. I had never seen the original, so I decided to correct that before seeing the new one.

The only thing I really knew about the original was that Siskel & Ebert absolutely lost their minds about it when it came out. (yes, I was watching Siskel & Ebert in 10th grade. Wasn’t everybody?) I mean, they hated slashers in general, but they seemed profoundly offended by this one, clutching their pearls about THE CHILDREN and how evil it was to have a killer in a Santa suit. (Had they seen Christmas Evil in 1980?).

Now look—there are certainly slashers that are soulless exploitation films, but this isn’t one of them. This is a movie that makes a strong case that trauma and abuse make monsters. It’s pretty clear that if Billy had been treated with compassion and understanding rather than abuse, he probably wouldn’t have snapped and started killing everybody. (Great kills in this movie, by the way, and the gore is there, but pretty tame even by 80’s standards).

Anyway, great atmosphere, psychological realism, and great kills. What else do you want from a slasher movie? (SPOILER: for the evil mother superior to get the axe, but I guess you can’t have everything.)

Went to the movies to see the new one, and it is an utter delight. There’s no need to see the original to appreciate the new one, by the way. There are some homages to the original in this new one, but it in no way depends on any knowledge of the original.

When I saw the recent Nosferatu, I complained that there seemed to be no point in this new version becuase there wasn’t any new vision for the story or the characters. Well, director/writer Mike P. Nelson definitely has a different vision for his Silent Night, Deadly Night. He plays up the comic elements without ever making it a full-on comedy, and he introduces a supernatural element absent from the original which changes the whole thing thematically. Oh yeah, and also a love story that feels credible, which you almost never see in a slasher movie (It’s a Wonderful Knife is the only other one I can think of).

And, once again, there’s gore, but it’s not a splatterfest by any means. The story is extremely clever, and the fact that I saw the final twist coming did not make it any less satisfying. Oh yeah, and it features an incredibly satisfying sequence in which a whole lotta Nazis are killed. It’s not quite at the level of The Bride vs The Crazy 88 from Kill Bill 1, but much, much more satifying. Anyway, this is an absolutely delightful movie that rocketed right into my top 4 Christmas Horror movies. (Along with Black Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Knife, and Christmas Evil, all of which you should also see.)