Silent Night, Deadly Night

by Mike McGranaghan

Released in 1984, Silent Night, Deadly Night is infamous for two things. One is for being controversial. The concept of an ax-wielding killer Santa Claus so outraged parents that the movie was pulled from theaters after just a week due to protests outside of theaters. (If you’ve never seen Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert excoriate the film, do yourself a favor.) The other thing is for being pretty awful. Despite a couple unforgettable kills, the story is an idiotic mess.

Now Silent Night, Deadly Night has been reimagined by writer/director Mike P. Nelson (Wrong Turn). This new version won’t be even remotely controversial – modern audiences are too jaded for that – but it won’t gain notoriety for awfulness, either. This is a rare remake that vastly, immeasurably improves upon the original.

Billy Chapman (Halloween Ends’ Rohan Campbell) was traumatized as a child when he saw a man in a Santa suit brutally murder his parents. Now he, too, dons such a suit every Christmas season to wreak bloody mayhem, driven by a voice he hears inside his head. While outrunning police, he ends up in a small town, where he gets a job as a stock boy in a Christmas shop run by Mr. Sims (David Lawrence Brown) and his daughter Pamela (Ruby Modine). Billy’s romantic interest in Pamela is threatened by that voice urging him to kill again and again.

Nelson keeps the overall premise and the most memorable kills, including the ax beheading and the deer head impaling, then largely goes his own way. Whereas the ’84 Billy was turned evil by his childhood trauma, the new Billy is much more sympathetic. He doesn’t necessarily want to kill anybody; he’s just taken over by the internal voice. That creates an interesting dynamic where the character is in perpetual conflict with himself. His victims, meanwhile, are less sympathetic. Each of them has done something reprehensible. That small twist eliminates the nastiness that helped fuel animosity toward the original.

One particular sequence sums up the way it works, as Billy lays waste to a room full of Nazis. Normally, tossing swastikas, Seig Heils, and the like into a popcorn movie strikes me as distasteful. It’s too serious a topic for lightweight entertainment. In this case, though, Nelson is clearly speaking to our time. Neo-Nazism and similarly fascistic forces are on the rise across the globe, so watching Billy slice and dice these baddies offers a form of stand-up-and-cheer catharsis. Silent Night, Deadly Night uses the “Killer Santa” concept to comment on the very real evils that exist in the world today.

A streak of macabre humor allows this remake to further distinguish itself. The kills are still gnarly but the film has a self-aware sense of playfulness. (Again, Nazi slaughter!) It’s a quality that extends to the performances. Campbell nicely conveys Billy’s dual nerd/murderer personality, while Modine (Happy Death Day) has fun making Pamela a flirty live wire with a hot temper. Horror movies rarely contain romantic couples this devilishly appealing.

Silent Night, Deadly Night takes what was a mean-spirited slasher flick and turns it into something horror buffs can have a good time with. The gore and thrills are still there, without the icky aftertaste Charles E. Sellier, Jr.’s source material left behind.

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