Apparently, there were parental groups out protesting the 1984 slasher flick Silent Night, Deadly Night because they didn’t like the idea of a movie with a killer Santa Claus somehow attracting children to see it. That fails to notice it was an R-rated horror movie, not the first Christmas-themed horror film, not the only one or perhaps even the first to have a killer Santa, nor is it even the last. It wasn’t likely to have too many kids in the theater anyway unless there were some particularly dim parents taking them there.
Then again, I’ve seen parents walk into all kinds of movies with kids in tow, so I could be very wrong there.
When Billy Chapman was about five years old, he got creeped out when his generally-out-of-it grandpa got lucent enough to tell the boy Santa punishes bad children. It’s around Christmas time, and the only carol the movie seems to have the rights to is about how Santa is watching at all times. But then a man in a Santa Claus suit, one who just robbed a convenience store and killed the clerk, pulls a gun and shoots Billy’s dad, tries to assault Billy’s mom, and then kills her anyway, leaving Billy and his infant brother to be raised in an orphanage where the Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) inflicts further harm on the boy in the years to come by ignoring the lad’s obvious Santa issues and dispensing with corporal punishment when Billy once spots two older kids having sex in a side room. Suffice to say, Billy has a somewhat warped idea of Santa, being naughty, and being nice.
Cut to about ten years later when the 18 year old Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) gets a job at a toy store for Christmas time. Circumstances force Billy to don a Santa suit, but after the doors close on Christmas Eve, Billy spots a co-worker he didn’t get along with forcing himself on another that Billy may have had a thing for. He ends up snapping, killing both, and then going on a rampage across town in his Santa suit, murdering anyone he sees as being “naughty”. The one nun who cared for Billy, Sister Margaret (Gilmer McCormick), alerts the police, but it’s still Christmas time. There are a lot of men dressed like Santa out there, and finding Billy before he kills too many people may be a very difficult thing to do.
OK, why anyone would think this is a kids movie I have no idea. There’s nothing really here that says its all that family friendly. It hits a lot of the tropes expected for a movie like this. Billy seems to appear and disappear at will once his killing streak starts, pretty much every young woman save Sister Margaret has a topless scene–including 80s B-movie scream queen Linnea Quigley–and much of what follows seems to be creative ways to kill people. However, the movie doesn’t actually get to Billy’s rampage until around the halfway point, and before that, it takes its time to establish who Billy is and why he does what he does. He’s not some Michael Myers type who just kills for no discernable reason. He has reasons, and arguably the Mother Superior is the movie’s real villain.
That’s not to say this is a good movie. It’s very much a typical 80s slasher movie, only this one has a killer in a Santa Claus suit. It’s very average in its way. Sure, I can see why it has a cult appeal, and it does occasionally flash a nasty sense of humor. Some of the kills are creative, but there wasn’t a whole lot that struck me as special about this one. It’s not the awful (if heavily memed) second installment where Billy’s kid brother Ricky took over as the killer, but it’s also not that great either. It’s a really solid “meh”.
And no, I am not planning on watching and reviewing the sequel, no matter how much the Internet loves “garbage day”.
Grade: C
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