Sunday, December 8, 2019

Silent Night Deadly Night





Silent Night Deadly Night
1984
Director- Charles Sellier
Cast- Robert Brian Wilson, Lilyan Chauvin, Gilmer McCormick, Toni Nero, Britt Leach, Linnea Quigley
            
    This movie begins with little Billy being taken by the old folks home to visit grandpa on Christmas Eve. Everyone believes that grandpa is catatonic but when the adults step out of the room, leaving Billy alone with gramps, the old geezer comes to life and warns Billy that Santa is a vengeful force that punishes all of the naughty kids.
            
    On the way home, Billy’s family picks up what appears to be a stranded motorist in a Santa suit. Unbeknownst to them he has just robbed a convenience store and murdered the clerk!  This evil old elf pulls a gun on the family, shoots dad and sexually assaults mom before cutting her throat, all in plain view of little Billy.

   Orphaned and traumatized, Billy is raised in a Catholic orphanage. He, predictably, has a rather morbid view of Christmas. The Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) is determined to make him into a normal child, even if it means punishing him until he learns to suppress his feelings. Billy’s childhood is filled with the inevitable mixed messages of a hyper religious upbringing. He witnesses two people having sex (which triggers the memory of seeing his mother’s assault). He is caught by Mother Superior, and to drive the point home that sex is “naughty” the Mother beats Billy for witnessing the act. He is haunted by nightmares, seen as an outcast by the other kids and as his trauma becomes more pronounced, the Mother Superior’s discipline becomes more extreme.

 Fast forward a few years and Billy has grown into a strong young man. He gets a job stocking in a toy store. The closer it gets to Christmas the more tense he gets. He meets a nice girl but can’t even enjoy a sexual fantasy; memories of his trauma intrude even into his dreams. Billy, meanwhile, is preoccupied with trying to be good and not “naughty”. The department store loses its mall Santa and the boss sticks Billy in the Santa suit.  His warped morality becomes evident when he tells a little girl that is squirming in his lap that if she doesn’t sit still he’ll have to punish her severely for being naughty.

But, against all odds, he makes it to Christmas Eve without snapping. At the office Christmas party the booze starts flowing and the girl that Billy had the hots for pairs off with a jerk co-worker who had been giving Billy a hard time.  Things get out of control and the co-worker tries to rape the girl. This is the final straw needed to break Billy.  He charges in, strangling the would be rapist with Christmas lights with a yell of “Naughty!” He then kills the girl too, telling her that “punishment is necessary”. And why not? His whole life, sex has been associated with violence.

Billy is now past the point of no return and sets out on a string of mass murder, working his way through the rest of his coworkers and then various members of the town. The most standout scene in the movie is when he kills a very topless Linnea Quigley by impaling her on deer antlers while he declares “Punish! Punish!”. He then gives her little sister a box cutter as a present before leaving the home!

The movie is obviously at its heart a slasher, and I wouldn’t say this was a deep examination of psychopathology like Manhunter or Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. Having said that, the makers of this film either had some education about trauma or an intuitive understanding of it. The depiction of the effect of childhood trauma is pretty accurate, if exaggerated; stress, nightmares, isolation, the inability to connect intimately, the intrusion of the troubled psyche into the sex life, rigidly separating people into good and bad, and the continuation of the trauma cycle when the victim becomes the perpetrator.  

The movie, at first glance, appears to be gruesome satire paring morbid subject matter with festive holiday imagery. But this is a serious and very grim movie. It starts very dark and never lightens up. If you are wanting something fun to watch for Christmas, stick with Gremlins or Die Hard. Save Silent Night Deadly Night for when you want to be disturbed.


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