A Beautiful Turd is a title I only give to very special films. A Beautiful Turd may be misunderstood, unfairly maligned or simply ignored. But a Beautiful Turd may also be ridiculous, outrageous, full of contradictions, insane, deranged or confused about what it is. A Beautiful Turd is not necessarily a bad movie or even a so-bad-it's-good movie. But a Beautiful Turd is also not going to win any awards. No matter what, a Beautiful Turd is a film you'll never forget.
This month's Beautiful Turd is...
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT
Directed by: Charles E. Sellier Jr.
Starring: Robert Brian Wilson, Lilyan Chauvin, Linnea Quigley
Year of release: 1984 Country: USA
I love this cheesy title
You know a film is going to be awesome when it has two tag lines. You can just picture the producer using both of them as the initial pitch for funding.
"Okay, you remember that movie Halloween?"
"Um, yes."
"Christmas."
"What?"
"Christmas. How's this, 'you've made it through Halloween, now try and survive Christmas.' Brilliant, huh?"
"So the movie's called 'Christmas'?"
"No, no, Silent Night, Deadly Night. Santa hacking up promiscuous teens."
"Uh..."
"'He knows when you've been naughty' - ya know, like the song?"
"Well, alright, just keep the budget low."
Yes, Silent Night, Deadly Night is gimmicky, cynical filmmaking, but more so in its promotion rather than its execution. The film itself - at times - is surprisingly effective, and it is much better than you'd envision a film about a killer Santa to be (low as your expectations may be). That said, this isn't high art - after all, this is a Beautiful Turd. We've essentially got two films violently jammed together. A fairly strong and depressing character study (the film's first half) and a gory, fun slasher (the film's latter half). It's jarring, but I love it so bloody much.
Silent Night, Deadly Night makes for perfect Christmas viewing. You couldn't ask for a story more in tune with the message of everyone's favourite Christian holiday. Little Billy (played in young child form by Jonathan Best) visits his geriatric and mentally unstable grandfather (Will Hare) on Christmas. The grandfather doesn't speak when Billy's parents and baby brother Ricky (in Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, he will utter the infamous "garbage day" line) are around, but once he's left alone with Billy he doesn't shut up. Granddad delivers a demented sermon to Billy that reveals the truth about Santa. Yes, Santa punishes the naughty boys and girls. The family leaves the grandfather in peace, and we swiftly move onto Billy's parents' inevitable demise. A man who has just held up a convenience store dressed as Santa waits on the side of the road with the ruse that his car has broken down. Billy's good natured parents stop to help him. Our fake Santa shoots Billy's father dead and pulls the screaming mother out of the car. Billy escapes and hides in the bushes near the road and watches his mother get viciously raped by Santa while his baby brother cries inside the car. Santa slits the mother's throat and leaves. Merry Christmas.
Fast-forward three years, Billy is eight (and now played by Danny Wagner) and living in an orphanage with his brother Ricky (at this point played by Max Broadhead). The horrible Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) regularly punishes the gentle Billy for drawing disturbing pictures of Santa and spying on couples having sex. This further damages our young hero's psyche. This treatment continues until he reaches eighteen. He leaves the orphanage to work in a toy store during the Christmas season. Then Silent Night, Deadly Night becomes a different movie altogether. Billy (Robert Brian Wilson, the third and final actor to portray Billy) has grown into a hulking lug, but he's retained his gentle nature and gets along well with the manager of the toy store. Things go well, until the store Santa is fired and, in a truly bad decision on the manager's behalf, Billy's asked to fill in. Dressed up as his childhood nightmare, Billy's mental stability takes a whopping blow. At the toy store's Christmas party, he stops a co-worker from (sort of) raping another female clerk. She is not impressed with Billy's method though... he kills the would-be-rapist. And thus begins Billy's descent to murder and mayhem as he strolls around town "punishing" all the naughty boys and girls.
The schizophrenia of Silent Night, Deadly Night is difficult to stomach at first. Over time, I've grown to love this aspect of the movie, but on first viewing, it's frustrating. The first half is a series of well structured and well performed scenes. Billy's horrible childhood is genuinely heartbreaking, and the violent murder of his parents is disturbing. The opening half benefits from an excellent performance from child actor Danny Wagner. Wagner doesn't seem like your typical child performer and has a believable, albeit amateurish, delivery. He doesn't look like a plastic Hollywood kid and seems simply real. Lilyan Chauvin is also fantastic as Mother Superior. Her character is surprisingly layered. She is the antagonist of the film's first half, but she is not a cut-and-dry villain. She has her reasons for punishing Billy, as backwards as they may be. As soon as Billy becomes an adult, Silent Night, Deadly Night - for better and worse - drops in I.Q. significantly. From here on, the film is a slasher of the dumbest kind. But it is also a slasher of incredible quality delivering everything you could possibly want from a grimy 80s horror.
The casting of Robert Brian Wilson as adult Billy is either a stroke of genius or pure stupidity. Wilson is not much of an actor, but he's huge and looks like a generic high school football jock. To watch this buffoon act like a child and intensely stare at himself in a mirror dressed as Santa is hysterical to say the least. Wilson, while giving a pretty bad performance, is instantly likable. Despite becoming the film's monster, it is hard not to be on his side. It helps that he's spent the movie as the protagonist up until his first killing. I know this is a mindless slasher, but I couldn't help but hope for the best for him as - before everything is ruined by the Santa suit - we get an amazing montage of him working hard at the toy store. These feelings were quickly washed away when I first heard Wilson shout "punish!" while still dressed up as Santa, hat and all. There's few things in the world of exploitation cinema that excite me as much as Billy's wild shouting of "punish"... that and his creative dismemberment of idiotic teens.
The death scenes on display are a highlight. And yes, much to my delight, many of them are Christmas themed. I won't ruin them all, but I've got to discuss Linnea Quigley's death. Any film from the 1980s that features Quigley is instantly a winner in my books. Quigley is a true scream queen appearing in two of my favourite horror films of all time; Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Demons. Just like in those two films - her graveyard striptease in Return of the Living Dead and the brilliant lipstick scene in Night of the Demons - Quigley's scene in Silent Night, Deadly Night is perhaps the film's most memorable moment. Billy - on his murderous rampage - spots two teens having sex; one of which is Quigley, as expected, she spends the whole scene topless. Quigley's character hears a noise and, thinking it's the cat trying to get in, she opens the door. But no, it's Billy. He screams "punish", grabs the panicked Quigley and slams her against the antlers of an antelope head hanging on the wall. The boyfriend then gets a less creative treatment and is thrown out of a window to his death. Quigley's scene stands as one of the best ridiculous death scenes from the 1980s.
Silent Night, Deadly Night is a gory film, but the death scenes are surprisingly few and far between. So why did it cause such a stink when it came out? The PTA wanted it removed from theatres, but they didn't have a problem with You Better Watch Out (aka Christmas Evil); a film with a similar premise released in 1980. Siskel and Ebert agreed in their critical judgment of this one despising it equally. (On a side note, what a hypocrite Ebert could be, being the writer of some of Russ Meyer's more rape-heavy films!) They read the film's production credits on air repeating "shame, shame" after each one! Most other critics hated Silent Night, Deadly Night with similar venom, and angry parents protested the film by picketing cinemas. I think what caused this controversy was not the violence or even the idea of a killer Santa - even though those elements are a big part of it - I think what makes Silent Night, Deadly Night so offensive is its cruelty. This is not just a Santa slasher. Just to name a few atrocities, we've got Santa raping a mother in front of her child, we get an innocent man dressed as Santa violently shot dead by police in front of a crowd on screaming children and we've got nuns viciously beating children. This film peels back the layers of Christmas and gets down to what Christmas is truly about. Christmas is for children and Silent Night, Deadly Night treats them with an intense nastiness. This film is funny to watch as an adult, but it would truly ruin a child.
Silent Night, Deadly Night deserves to be placed highly amongst holiday horror classics like Halloween and Black Christmas. It is more in tone with the cheesy goodness of a Friday the 13th than Carpenter's classy Halloween making it an extremely fun watch. This film caused its share of whiny controversy, and it's one of the few films, watching it back now, where the controversy is kind of understandable. People don't like horror films treading on their favourite holiday. So I say, good work idiots/geniuses behind Silent Night, Deadly Night for making this unpleasant, violent turd! As goofy as this film can be, I think horror fanatics will be pleasantly surprised with how good it actually is. Silent Night, Deadly Night was followed by a multitude of sequels (the last two are sequels in name only). These days, the first sequel is perhaps more well known and watched than the original due to the outrageous portrayal of Billy's brother Ricky by Eric Freeman. Freeman's performance is honestly the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen and - if you can sit through the thirty plus minutes of flashbacks (I'm not kidding) - you'll find Ricky is more than just "garbage day". But I'd recommend watching the original first. Silent Night, Deadly Night is a fine piece of trash. Punish!
You know a film is going to be awesome when it has two tag lines. You can just picture the producer using both of them as the initial pitch for funding.
"Okay, you remember that movie Halloween?"
"Um, yes."
"Christmas."
"What?"
"Christmas. How's this, 'you've made it through Halloween, now try and survive Christmas.' Brilliant, huh?"
"So the movie's called 'Christmas'?"
"No, no, Silent Night, Deadly Night. Santa hacking up promiscuous teens."
"Uh..."
"'He knows when you've been naughty' - ya know, like the song?"
"Well, alright, just keep the budget low."
Yes, Silent Night, Deadly Night is gimmicky, cynical filmmaking, but more so in its promotion rather than its execution. The film itself - at times - is surprisingly effective, and it is much better than you'd envision a film about a killer Santa to be (low as your expectations may be). That said, this isn't high art - after all, this is a Beautiful Turd. We've essentially got two films violently jammed together. A fairly strong and depressing character study (the film's first half) and a gory, fun slasher (the film's latter half). It's jarring, but I love it so bloody much.
Punish?
Silent Night, Deadly Night makes for perfect Christmas viewing. You couldn't ask for a story more in tune with the message of everyone's favourite Christian holiday. Little Billy (played in young child form by Jonathan Best) visits his geriatric and mentally unstable grandfather (Will Hare) on Christmas. The grandfather doesn't speak when Billy's parents and baby brother Ricky (in Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, he will utter the infamous "garbage day" line) are around, but once he's left alone with Billy he doesn't shut up. Granddad delivers a demented sermon to Billy that reveals the truth about Santa. Yes, Santa punishes the naughty boys and girls. The family leaves the grandfather in peace, and we swiftly move onto Billy's parents' inevitable demise. A man who has just held up a convenience store dressed as Santa waits on the side of the road with the ruse that his car has broken down. Billy's good natured parents stop to help him. Our fake Santa shoots Billy's father dead and pulls the screaming mother out of the car. Billy escapes and hides in the bushes near the road and watches his mother get viciously raped by Santa while his baby brother cries inside the car. Santa slits the mother's throat and leaves. Merry Christmas.
Without a doubt, the worst Christmas ever
Fast-forward three years, Billy is eight (and now played by Danny Wagner) and living in an orphanage with his brother Ricky (at this point played by Max Broadhead). The horrible Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) regularly punishes the gentle Billy for drawing disturbing pictures of Santa and spying on couples having sex. This further damages our young hero's psyche. This treatment continues until he reaches eighteen. He leaves the orphanage to work in a toy store during the Christmas season. Then Silent Night, Deadly Night becomes a different movie altogether. Billy (Robert Brian Wilson, the third and final actor to portray Billy) has grown into a hulking lug, but he's retained his gentle nature and gets along well with the manager of the toy store. Things go well, until the store Santa is fired and, in a truly bad decision on the manager's behalf, Billy's asked to fill in. Dressed up as his childhood nightmare, Billy's mental stability takes a whopping blow. At the toy store's Christmas party, he stops a co-worker from (sort of) raping another female clerk. She is not impressed with Billy's method though... he kills the would-be-rapist. And thus begins Billy's descent to murder and mayhem as he strolls around town "punishing" all the naughty boys and girls.
Punished
The schizophrenia of Silent Night, Deadly Night is difficult to stomach at first. Over time, I've grown to love this aspect of the movie, but on first viewing, it's frustrating. The first half is a series of well structured and well performed scenes. Billy's horrible childhood is genuinely heartbreaking, and the violent murder of his parents is disturbing. The opening half benefits from an excellent performance from child actor Danny Wagner. Wagner doesn't seem like your typical child performer and has a believable, albeit amateurish, delivery. He doesn't look like a plastic Hollywood kid and seems simply real. Lilyan Chauvin is also fantastic as Mother Superior. Her character is surprisingly layered. She is the antagonist of the film's first half, but she is not a cut-and-dry villain. She has her reasons for punishing Billy, as backwards as they may be. As soon as Billy becomes an adult, Silent Night, Deadly Night - for better and worse - drops in I.Q. significantly. From here on, the film is a slasher of the dumbest kind. But it is also a slasher of incredible quality delivering everything you could possibly want from a grimy 80s horror.
A young Billy learns about sex
The casting of Robert Brian Wilson as adult Billy is either a stroke of genius or pure stupidity. Wilson is not much of an actor, but he's huge and looks like a generic high school football jock. To watch this buffoon act like a child and intensely stare at himself in a mirror dressed as Santa is hysterical to say the least. Wilson, while giving a pretty bad performance, is instantly likable. Despite becoming the film's monster, it is hard not to be on his side. It helps that he's spent the movie as the protagonist up until his first killing. I know this is a mindless slasher, but I couldn't help but hope for the best for him as - before everything is ruined by the Santa suit - we get an amazing montage of him working hard at the toy store. These feelings were quickly washed away when I first heard Wilson shout "punish!" while still dressed up as Santa, hat and all. There's few things in the world of exploitation cinema that excite me as much as Billy's wild shouting of "punish"... that and his creative dismemberment of idiotic teens.
Billy, a gentle giant
The death scenes on display are a highlight. And yes, much to my delight, many of them are Christmas themed. I won't ruin them all, but I've got to discuss Linnea Quigley's death. Any film from the 1980s that features Quigley is instantly a winner in my books. Quigley is a true scream queen appearing in two of my favourite horror films of all time; Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Demons. Just like in those two films - her graveyard striptease in Return of the Living Dead and the brilliant lipstick scene in Night of the Demons - Quigley's scene in Silent Night, Deadly Night is perhaps the film's most memorable moment. Billy - on his murderous rampage - spots two teens having sex; one of which is Quigley, as expected, she spends the whole scene topless. Quigley's character hears a noise and, thinking it's the cat trying to get in, she opens the door. But no, it's Billy. He screams "punish", grabs the panicked Quigley and slams her against the antlers of an antelope head hanging on the wall. The boyfriend then gets a less creative treatment and is thrown out of a window to his death. Quigley's scene stands as one of the best ridiculous death scenes from the 1980s.
Another classic Quigley scene
Silent Night, Deadly Night is a gory film, but the death scenes are surprisingly few and far between. So why did it cause such a stink when it came out? The PTA wanted it removed from theatres, but they didn't have a problem with You Better Watch Out (aka Christmas Evil); a film with a similar premise released in 1980. Siskel and Ebert agreed in their critical judgment of this one despising it equally. (On a side note, what a hypocrite Ebert could be, being the writer of some of Russ Meyer's more rape-heavy films!) They read the film's production credits on air repeating "shame, shame" after each one! Most other critics hated Silent Night, Deadly Night with similar venom, and angry parents protested the film by picketing cinemas. I think what caused this controversy was not the violence or even the idea of a killer Santa - even though those elements are a big part of it - I think what makes Silent Night, Deadly Night so offensive is its cruelty. This is not just a Santa slasher. Just to name a few atrocities, we've got Santa raping a mother in front of her child, we get an innocent man dressed as Santa violently shot dead by police in front of a crowd on screaming children and we've got nuns viciously beating children. This film peels back the layers of Christmas and gets down to what Christmas is truly about. Christmas is for children and Silent Night, Deadly Night treats them with an intense nastiness. This film is funny to watch as an adult, but it would truly ruin a child.
Some poor sucker mowed down in front of a bunch of impressionable kids
Silent Night, Deadly Night deserves to be placed highly amongst holiday horror classics like Halloween and Black Christmas. It is more in tone with the cheesy goodness of a Friday the 13th than Carpenter's classy Halloween making it an extremely fun watch. This film caused its share of whiny controversy, and it's one of the few films, watching it back now, where the controversy is kind of understandable. People don't like horror films treading on their favourite holiday. So I say, good work idiots/geniuses behind Silent Night, Deadly Night for making this unpleasant, violent turd! As goofy as this film can be, I think horror fanatics will be pleasantly surprised with how good it actually is. Silent Night, Deadly Night was followed by a multitude of sequels (the last two are sequels in name only). These days, the first sequel is perhaps more well known and watched than the original due to the outrageous portrayal of Billy's brother Ricky by Eric Freeman. Freeman's performance is honestly the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen and - if you can sit through the thirty plus minutes of flashbacks (I'm not kidding) - you'll find Ricky is more than just "garbage day". But I'd recommend watching the original first. Silent Night, Deadly Night is a fine piece of trash. Punish!
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