For those hording toilet paper

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Christmas Eve is the scariest damn time of the year!

You see Santa Claus, boy, you better run….you better run for your life!

Okay, so let’s see.

• Billy is told by his senile grandpa in the senior care facility that Santa Claus will punish him and that Christmas Eve is scary.

• Billy sees this come to fruition when a hood dressed as Santa shoots his father, rapes and slits the throat of his mother, and threatens to kill him.

• Billy and younger brother Ricky are sent to a Catholic orphanage where the Mother Superior is unwilling to accept that either carries any emotional damage as a result of the incidents to their parents.

• The absurd stance by Mother Superior that Billy will be trained with strict discipline and is not susceptible to a trigger towards violence even against the correct advise of Sister Margaret, punished with belt beatings by her as punishment for leaving his room (even though he was told to by Sister Margaret!). Because she seems hellbent on “taking action” against Billy when he shows signs of trauma (bloody gore drawings of those relived events in his mind and nightmares that torment him in his sleep), like scolding him or even binding his arms to the bedposts. The most severe coming when Mother Superior insists on Billy sitting on Santa’s lap. Never does Mother Superior accept Sister Margaret’s sound advice (the signs are obvious) that Billy is deeply troubled and in need of psychiatric help. When Billy hunkers in a corner inside of his bedroom, an image of terror holds as the screen freezes and you hear Mother Superior’s angered calling of his name as if she were Satan about to take him to hell.

• We get “The Warm Side of the Door”, a cheesy ballad as hunky 18-year old Billy helps stock shelves at Ira’s Toys, seemingly happy and rehabilitated, soon succumbing to the same traumas he experienced in the orphanage (we are never quite sure what happened those ten years of being in the orphanage under Mother Superior’s iron fist) when Christmas returns. Billy, understanding from Mother Superior that punishment comes (it is ABSOLUTE) when kids are naughty, even as a young adult still is haunted by her words (while Santa reminds him of his parents’ death and the killer dressed as St. Nick, with all the punishment jazz beat into his psyche).

• You can bet that Billy will be stuck in the Santa costume; it is only natural that he would, right? What better way to send Billy into Psychopathic Candyland than being stuck in the Santa suit.

• Of course, he sees stock manager ripping the shirt of his co-worker gleefully on the verge of raping her, setting him off. Billy, thanks to flashbacks, becomes one with the psycho who attacked his parents.

• Billy is really strong. He can lift a man with Christmas lights high off his feet.

• Billy never lets a box cutter go to ill use. Even when the victim has done nothing wrong worthy of punishment besides calling him crazy (which is the truth).

• I guess Ira’s being drunk was the reason he got the hammer to the skull. Maybe that’s why his employee (the last remaining one that remained after closing still alive) gets the bow-and-arrow treatment. Or it is because their drunken renditions of “Santa’s Watching” was deserved of punishment?

• You can’t let “Twas the Night Before Christmas” go to waste, especially if uttered by a maniac in Santa garb.

• Linnea Quigley was listed in the opening credits which means…BOOBS.

• Quigley in Daisy Dukes: Yes, please.

• Quigley answering the front door with breasts exposed: Yes, please.

• Quigley impaled on the antlers of a mounted deer head with breasts exposed: Ditto.

• Speaking of the impaling, Quigley’s petite little body being hoisted in the air was actually believable because we see most of it. Putting her body completely through those antlers: maybe a bit ridiculous. It makes for a memorable, hard-to-forget visual, though.

• I don’t think I have to tell you this was a film that could be easily described as an exercise in bad taste.

• If a guy gets thrown out a window, it is only fitting that there be huge shards of glass sticking out of his body to emphasize how harsh this death was.

• Santa should reward the good kids with weapons of destruction containing the blood of a victim.

• Santa beheading a bully is perhaps the one kill scene liable to invoke cheers instead of disgust. As he is sledding down a snowy hill, no less. Nothing like seeing a body collapsing next to the head once attached to it.

• In order for the police to not get in contact with the orphanage, a girl must be playing on the phone with her dolly just as this attempt at communication takes place. The highway patrolmen in the area is on the way to supposedly save the day. Too bad he shoots a priest…who was deaf…in front of orphans. Yes, even some of the priest’s blood streams on a child as he looks on in horror (guess what? It was Ricky, Billy’s brother. Coincidence?). This had to be designed as black humor and a good stab at the Catholic Church. Why not have the year’s Santa be a deaf priest while Billy is on his way to the orphanage. You better believe Mother Superior will emasculate the poor cop who mistakenly shot the priest, letting him know that he has “done nothing but harm.”

• Being a cop patrolling the grounds (meaning he’ll be dead soon), Mother Superior may have wished he had stayed nearby. She leads the kids into singing carols (yes, they really look like they sound as if they were a vibrant chorus of jolly carolers), as Billy buries an ax in their only law enforcement outside the orphanage. The cop was punished for…being a cop, I guess. Actually, the kids look bored, apathetic, and appear to be barely moving their lips. Of course, Mother Superior is now in a wheelchair so she can’t really protect them.

• Billy came oh so close to driving that ax into Mother Superior’s mug. I wonder how many were hoping he would have succeeded. She will sit in her chair and probably feel as if she had done nothing wrong. Sister Margaret knows differently.

This viewing of the film went by in a flash. It always seemed to feel a bit longer before.

This was an ongoing write-up. This is the first time I have ever watched it as Christmas Eve passed into Christmas Day. It will be the last time, too. For some strange reason, I'm glad I watched the sequel before this one. I just wish I had gotten around to both of them far earlier in the month. I don't typically watch Christmas horror too close to Christmas. Just never made the habit of it. I still have Christmas Evil on tap for tonight right before the day ends.