Holiday Horror

You may or may not have know that Santa is an anagram for Satan. Well now you do, so keeping that in mind, let’s revisit one of our favorite holiday horror films, the 1984 Santa slasher, ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night.’

The film tells the story of Billy, a young boy who witnesses his parents’ murder by a deranged man in a Santa Claus suit one Christmas Eve. Raised by nuns in a Utah orphanage, Billy grows up and goes on to find work at a toyshop where things go well, until Christmas rolls around. It became one of the most controversial of the 1980s, and it caught a lot of flack for scarring kiddies with its TV ads depicting an axe-weilding Santa. Gene Siskel calls it “sick, sleezy and meanspirited” and one of the two most contemptible films (along with ‘I Spit on Your Grave‘) he’s ever seen. We call it plain old Christmas camp.