You might think, dear reader, that, what with it being the festive season and all, you would finally be safe from me banging on about horror. But you’d be wrong! Let’s talk about one of the season’s most iconic movies, and the controversy it faced on its release.
Silent Night, Deadly Night, directed by Charles E Sellier Jr, was released in 1984, the midst of the golden age of 20th-century slasher cinema. It follows the story of Billy Chapman (Robert Brian Wilson), a teenager who’s traumatised after witnessing the assault and murder of his parents by a man dressed as Santa Claus . After a sprinkling of trauma at the hands of an upbringing in a Catholic school to consolidate everything, Billy, upon turning eighteen, has to fill in for the store Santa at his workplace and…well, this is a slasher movie. You can probably figure out where it goes from there. Let’s just say that one half of the title is accurate, and it’s the not the first.
And, while this movie has earned itself a pretty decent reputation in the four decades since it came out, it faced some serious pushback upon its initial release. Silent Night, Deadly Night, in a slightly unusual move at the time, was distributed by Tri-Star, a relatively large company for the still-nascent slasher genre, and, as a result, had an impressive ad campaign to its name. The issue first began the week before its release, in early November 1984, when TV spots for the film began airing in between episodes of Three’s Company and Little House on the Prairie:
It’s a fabulously fun trailer by today’s standards – the incongruency of Santa slipping a gun into his pocket, the re-worked Christmas icons to tools of terror, the campy tagline (“he knows when you’ve been naughty!”). But, not unreasonably, the focus on the murderous Santa slotted in between episodes of a show that was decidedly family-focused stirred up a rush of controversy around the movie, with parents claiming that their kids were now terrified by the notion of jolly old Saint Nick making a visit that Christmas. The poster, which showed Santa climbing down the chimney, brandishing an axe, did little to salve their concerns. One mother branded it “absolutely disgusting”, and declared that “something had to be done.“
And it wasn’t just those at home who were critical of the movie’s Christmastime setting. A slew of pre-release reviews were critical of the movie’s use of Christmas as a backdrop for its slashery – Dann Gire of the Daily Herald called it an example of “disgusting anti-humanist film fodder” while John Schorg protested that “there seems something particularly ugly in the way these men use the Christmas theme to gloat over the agony they put the people in this film through”. Gene Siskel, reviewing the movie with Roger Ebert, declared that any profits of the film were “blood money”, and the pair read out the names of those involved in production, following each of them with an intoned “shame!”.
Upon its wide release on 16th November, 1984, Silent Night, Deadly Night showings were picketed across the country. In the Bronx, more than 100 people turned out, holding signs (scrawled with things like “Santa brings JOY, not pain!” and “Santa does not slay!”) and singing Christmas carols, to protest the film. In Milwaukee, a group called Citizens Against Movie Madness picketed cinemas (often with the very childen they wanted to protect from the movie’s so-called horrific contents) – in Maryland, several people were arrested after they turned out to protest the film’s release. Actor Mickey Rooney condemned the film, saying that the “scum” who made it should be “run out of town”, before starring in the fifth part of the franchise a few years later.
But not all publicity is good publicity; the movie, with just a $750,000 budget, only pulled about $530,000 on its opening weekend. All ads were pulled for the film, and the movie didn’t last much longer than a week on wide release. Though Tri-Star claimed that it was due to the movie’s disappointing box-office takings, not the protests, but whatever the reason, it soon vanished from distribution.
The film’s creative team were, to say the least, baffled by the reaction to the movie’s Christmas setting. “Not for one second during the conception, development, or leading up to the release of the film,” producer Scott Schneid commented, “did I think for one second that there was going to be any kind of backlash against this project”. And, honestly, I see where he’s coming from – Silent Night, Deadly Night was far from the first movie to tap in to the Christmas horror theme, with movies such as Christmas Evil and even iconic anthology horror Tales from the Crypt using the festive season as a backdrop from some good, old-fashioned spookery. And the movie was hardly aimed at children, which is who much of the hand-wringing had revolved around – it had, according to Schneid, been intended for “the most rebellious creatures on the planet”, teenagers –”the idea of us taking the Santa character and inverting or subverting it, whatever you want to say, seemed to us that it would appeal tremendously to the teenage demographic out there… and felt they would just love the idea of blood on the snow and the psycho Santa”.
If I had to guess, I’d say Silent Night, Deadly Night was a victim of its marketing – the prominent feature of the TV spot in the midst of family-friendly programming drew the attention of people who might otherwise have lived in blissful ignorance of this low-budget slasher flick, and that’s what spurred the controversy.
Despite this, though, the movie did spawn a handful of sequels, and gained a fond place amongst slasher enthusiasts over the course of the 2000s and 2010s – it received a cinematic re-release in 2013, and has since received a pretty solid critical re-evaluation for its depiction of trauma and the cycle of abuse. And, as of 2024, there’s a re-imagining of the movie in the works from Wrong Turn director Mike P. Nelson, due for release late next year. Though it’s hard to imagine that it will earn as much controversy as the original, I’m willing to grab some seasonal placards and turn out for a good, down-home protest, for old time’s sake.
What’s your take on this festive classic – and what do you make of the controversy that surrounded its original release? If you were around when it came out, what do you remember of this horror holiday scandal? Let me know in the comments! If this story’s of interest to you, I’d recommend checking out this excellent write-up at Hysteria Lives, which was a great resource for this post.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via IMDB)
No But Listen 