Silent Night Deadly Night (1984)

I am struggling through my feelings about Silent Night Deadly Night not to sound like a touch-sensitive prude.  By this point, I can take a gut-bucket slasher film more or less in stride, but the filmmakers here aren’t making it easy.  Silent Night Deadly Night just made me sad.  Even on the level of trashy exploitation, this is a movie that falls so far beneath contempt that . . . okay, I never finished it.

That’s right, I didn’t watch the whole thing.  The last scene that I remember before checking out was a guy in a Santa suit shooting a woman in the back with the bow and arrow.  By that point I think I got the gist of it.  At that moment, I was loathing what was in front of me and I have a feeling that nothing in the remaining time might have changed my mind.

Up to the point with the bow and arrow I had already seen a store proprietor shot several times by a robber dressed as Santa then a family stalked and murdered the same creep.  I had seen the now orphaned son tied to a bed by nuns.  I had seen a guy get a hammer claw to the head, and a rape victim gutted with a box cutter.  What really remained that could turn this around?

But, life is short.  What I saw was bringing me down.  I cannot imagine who would want to see this movie but clearly it is not me.  The image of Santa Claus robbing a store then shooting a man then massacring a couple in front of their children was pathetic and sad.  I have no idea about the people who made this film or the people who might have wanted to see it.  I left before the first hour was up, I might have left sooner.  I don’t know what I was thinking.

To all a good night.