When it comes to seasonal slashers, the grandaddy of them all is Black Christmas.
Through a combination of actually being a great movie in its own right, and two disastrous remakes in the last twenty years that have had many run screaming back to the original, the gruesome slasher has earned its place in the annals of horror history. But Black Christmas, while it might have kick-started the genre, is only the tip of the iceberg of seasonal slasher nastiness – and today, we need to talk about its maniacal little brother, a movie that had America gripped by a moral panic as Santa took some pretty big swings to remove people from the naughty list. This is Silent Night, Deadly Night, one of the most controversial horror movies in an era full of them, and, with the remake imminent, it’s high time to revisit the sickest Christmas movie ever.
Directed by Charles Edward Sellier Jr., Silent Night is a tale of a boy named Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) – who, thanks to witnessing his family getting murdered by a man he thinks is Santa combined with the questionable teachings of a particularly nasty nun, takes it upon himself to avenge Santa when the trauma and mental torment push him to the edge over one particularly difficult Christmas season. Except, for Billy, Santa’s naughty or nice rules don’t leave a lot of room for interpretation.
Unlike other slashers, like Black Christmas’ faceless predator or many the masked villains that would follow, Silent Night is most interested in what makes these characters who they are. While the character work is pretty hamfisted, Sellier Jnr goes to great lengths to lay the groundwork as to what causes Billy’s transformation from traumatized boy to festive killing machine. We are given insight into his family’s history of mental illness: his grandfather is supposedly catatonic in an institution except for when Billy is left alone with him, then he’s freaking the poor child out with his first tales of vengeful Santa. His parents being gunned down and throat-slashed on the drive home by the very Santa (at least in Billy’s mind) his grandfather told him about won’t have helped.
We never see that Santa again, though he’s arguably the most influential character on Billy’s development – leering at Billy’s mother’s breasts before he kills her, interlacing in Billy’s mind his relationship with sex to violence and the guilt of attraction. And just so we can make sure he is really fucked, he is tormented by Mother Superior who, in her own mind, thinks the very thing that will cure Billy is torturing him so much that he is afraid to do anything at all. I’ve seem nicer nuns in Conjuring movies.
Nearly every small town horror movie has a legend that is used to freak the kids out. In Halloween, it’s Michael murdering his sister; in A Nightmare on Elm Street, it was what Freddie did and what was done to him in turn. Silent Night, Deadly Night is what happens when that story becomes the whole movie. As a result, it fits in a lot more with modern genre riffs like In a Violent Nature and tortured antihero movies like Joker, explorations of specific genre details and an earnest attempt to explain what could create a person capable of such acts. There is pathos to the final act – all Billy really wanted was to wipe out the ideas and people that wronged him. Instead, it was released in 1984, and was accused of besmirching the honourable idea of a fat man deciding whether your morality fit his own definitions enough that he would break into your house.
Silent Night does what horror is meant to do. Take something you find safe and comfortable, turn it into something that would have film’s morality police call sick, wrong, and morally abhorrent, and wait for the cult cred to come through. And it has –
Silent Night, Deadly Night is far from a classic. It is crass, exploitative, yet it stands above these criticisms because of how compelling Billy truly is, a truly brilliant character snuck into a standard boobs, gore, and gross-out tale. Billy is why this story lasts, Billy is why it finds new life in 2025 – and Billy is the character I’m most interested to see a modern take on with the new film hitting cinemas this week.
Where does Silent Night, Deadly Night rank on the Christmas slasher list for you? Do you think it has enough to it to support a remake, or is it just a festive cash-grab? Let me know in the comments!
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By Kevin Boyle
(header image via Screen Slate)
No But Listen 