SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT Double Feature

It wasn't the first Christmas-based horror film titles like BLACK CHRISTMAS and CHRISTMAS EVIL popped up occasionally throughout the 1970s. And it wasn't the most offensive. Heck, it wasn't even the first film to put a homicidal maniac in a Santa Claus suit (a segment of 1972's TALES FROM THE CRYPT, adapting one of the EC Comics stories from the 1950s, takes that honor). But SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT is by far the most famous of this peculiar sub-genre. The success of FRIDAY THE 13^th and HALLOWEEN resulted in a huge wave of slasher movies in the early 1980s, many of which attempted to ape them with a holiday theme, so it was inevitable that a Christmas killer would emerge. However, the filmmakers behind SNDN never considered how volatile a maniac in a Santa suit could be. With the new spirit of Reaganism and "Family Values" spurring them on, the film's release was greeted with outraged protests from all sorts of parent/teacher/church groups. Soon after, the picture was withdrawn from exhibition, but became a hit again on home video.

Of course, few of these protesters had actually seen the film, with the "I don't have to smell garbage to know it stinks!" attitude holding sway. Most of them were under the impression that the "real" Santa was being portrayed as a killer. The truth is that the story goes to unusual lengths to present the set of circumstances that eventually led Billy Caldwell (Robert Brian Wilson) to begin hacking away at folks with an axe as out of the ordinary. In fact, over a half-hour of screen time is taken up with the backstory of Billy's Santa fixation. On a holiday trip to visit at an asylum, his grandpa tells young Billy that Santa Claus punishes the naughty as well as rewards the good. Almost immediately afterward, Billy sees his parents killed by a robber in a Santa suit (an 'origin' closely paralleling that of Batman). Billy's personality is subsequently further warped by the abuses he suffers in a Catholic orphanage, his ideas about crime and punishment malformed by the Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) and her sense of discipline. After being granted a job at a toy store, Billy gets the chance to become the thing he fears most when his boss asks him to fill in for the store's Santa Claus. One snapperoo later, and the red suited Billy is on a bloody rampage, punishing the naughty.

Following its aborted theatrical run, SNDN has undergone a variety of edits, but here Anchor Bay has assembled the most complete version of the film ever presented, with all the bloody violence reinstated. As a result, some of the footage is slightly less pristine, and there's an odd editing glitch at one point, but for the most part the film looks crystal clear. In a 36-minute audio phone interview included as a DVD extra, director Charles E. Sellier, Jr. talks about how he came to direct his lone horror film out of a career of family-oriented entertainment (GRIZZLY ADAMS), and reveals how a practicing Christian could make a film combining mistreatment by nuns with bloody murder and attempted rape (basically, he felt the correct amount of motivation was in place, and doesn't generalize about the cause and effect of violence). His opinion is that the protest resulted in great business for a picture that would have most likely been forgotten without it, and the studio's decision to yank the picture was based more on public image in the face of a planned stock offering than anything else. ABE also includes a gallery of production stills, and a collection of editorial and review clippings from newspapers, every one of them harshly condemning the film.

This double-sided "flipper" disc also presents SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT PART 2, the first of four sequels (so far), in which Billy's little brother Ricky (Eric Freeman) follows in his brother's footsteps. Though Ricky was just an infant when their parents were killed, he sees the original movie, giving him at least a half hour of it as a flashback. No kidding one scene shows him in an oddly un-darkened theater watching SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT! Ricky's interview in an asylum goes on with more flashbacks 'explaining' how Ricky's Christmas problem is shepherded into outright insanity by a series of violent incidents and terrible dialogue. "No one heard him screaming. But I did," is among his howlers. Ricky is offered some hope of a normal life when Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan) hits his motorcycle with her car. But inevitably, the inane dialogue and bad performances force him to liven things up a bit with more murders, which at least add some novelty.

Writer/director Lee Harry, writer Joseph Earle and actor James Newman share a full length commentrak, and are candid about the fact that they were just there to get a credit on their résumés, and most of the horse laughs to be had at the film's expense are at least partially intentional. They also pass the buck to the studio as far as the extensive use of recycled footage goes it seems they were originally asked to simply pad out a re-edited version of the original for a rip-off "sequel", but had enough principles to ask for slightly more money to make more of a true sequel from the material. The disc includes the screenplay as a DVD-ROM extra to back them up. As far as Eric Freeman's performance goes well, it only makes you appreciate psycho experts like Brad Dourif all the more.

And even a poor movie like SNDNP2 looks like an epic compared to the Xmassacre video movies still being made today, continuing the tradition with backyard productions like SANTA CLAWS, CHRISTMAS SEASON MASSACRE and PSYCHO SANTA. God bless them, every one!