Silent Night, Deadly Night
exploded onto the scene in 1984 amidst endless controversy, as it was
the world's first Christmas horror film to feature a killer Santa
Claus. Parental groups and critics rallied against it and its
tasteless subject matter and marketing, which was plastered
everywhere with the image of Father Christmas carrying an ax. Horror
fans ate it up with a spoon though, as this film actually BEAT Wes
Craven's epic A Nightmare on Elm Street at the box office on
their opening weekend. The film was eventually yanked from theaters
in response to the controversy, but its legacy was already cemented.
However, it WASN'T the first “psycho
Santa” movie. That honour goes to today's film, 1980's Christmas
Evil, or You Better Watch Out as it was originally known.
Written and directed by Lewis Jackson, this film came and went
without making a sound but has gone on to earn a substantial cult
following in the years since. I'm choosing to review this one not
because I seem to only review horror themed holiday films, but
because this is LEGENDARY for having one of the most WTF endings in movie history. That's certainly
more than enough to earn it a spot in my review queue, so let's see
if it can live up to the hype with A Ghoul Versus Christmas Evil!
We open on Christmas Eve, 1947 in
Anywhereville USA, to a shot of a festively decorated suburban home.
A mother and her two young boys watch from the staircase as “Santa
Claus” comes down the chimney, coughing from all the soot. He gets
to work delivering presents, as we jump cut to later where the two
boys, Harry and... Philly? Philly? It's short for Philip, but I
must say I've never heard it shortened like that. Anyway, Harry and
Philly argue over whether that was just their dad or the real deal.
Harry, whom one could describe as
“Creepy Hellchild” decides to settle things by talking to his
parents. He finds them downstairs getting frisky, dad still dressed
in the Santa outfit. I say frisky, but really dad is just running
his hands over the mother's stockings. This shocks Harry, so he runs
upstairs to find his William Shatner mask and- oh, wait. Wrong
movie. He goes upstairs to the attic, where he smashes a snow globe
and uses the glass to cut his hand open. Yes, that's a PERFECTLY
sane reaction to something so tame!
We jump ahead to present day, where we
see Harry has grown up to be... slightly odd. He has a house full of
horror movie issued dolls, his walls are plastered with photos of
Santa, and he loves to laugh at himself in the mirror as he shaves.
As he shaves, he has a flashback to that HORRIBLY TRAUMATIC day
thirty some years ago where he saw Santa stroking his mother's leg.
He's- he's still hung up on that?! They're were fully clothed, I've
seen more explicit stuff on the ABC Family Channel!
Well, maybe this is just a one off
thing and he hasn't grown up to be a complete freak- nope, there he
is spying on his neighbours' CHILDREN with binoculars. Oh dear. We
learn he does this to see if they're being naughty or nice, and has
actually been keeping an obsessively detailed record of all their
deeds in a giant book in his house. Okay, but I'm sure he's at least
not a sociopath at his job at the Jolly Dream toy factory, right?
Actually he isn't, he just got promoted to supervisor and seems to be
doing decent with the negative that no one respects him. After
getting roped into working an extra shift by one of his coworkers
named Frank, he storms home and breaks a doll while bitterly humming
“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.
On a lark, he returns to his childhood
home where an adult Philip now lives with his wife Jackie and their
two boys. Harry spies on them through the window, watching them
passionately make out on the couch after sending their children to
bed. See, THIS would have been at least a little bit more jarring
for Harry to see instead of Santa caressing his mother's LEG. The
next day Jackie makes Philip promise to be nice to Harry, whom is
expected over soon for Thanksgiving dinner. Harry calls to cancel
though, so he can stay home and obsessively watch the Thanksgiving
Day parade on TV so he can ogle Santa. Uh huh, that is SO the
decision I would have made too. The film just kind of wanders around
for awhile doing absolutely NOTHING for a very long time, the only
thing worth noting is we see Harry gradually preparing to be Santa on
Christmas, preparing a costume, building toys, and going as far to
paint a sleigh on his van.
Christmas Eve finally arrives and he
goes about his night, kicking it off by breaking into Philip's house
and sloppily leaving some presents under the tree. He drives out to
a state mental hospital for children to deliver bags of toys he stole
from work, which actually is a touching little scene. Maybe I was
being too harsh on Harry, maybe he's not that bad of a guy after all!
Let's see what heartwarming job his next stop will bring! He heads
to the church where his boss is attending Christmas mass, the movie
having established earlier that his boss is a total asshole that is
lacking the holiday spirit. I bet Harry is going to change his mind!
Harry stands outside, waiting for the churchgoers to exit at the
conclusion of the ceremony. Two of the first men to leave begin to
make fun of Harry, so he pulls out a toy soldier out of his bag as a
peace offering. And by that I mean he SHOVES IT IN THE GUY'S FUCKING
EYEBALL!
Now THAT'S what I call a tone shift.
Harry pulls out an ax and begins gingerly hacking up everyone in
sight, hopping into his van and speeding off. He parks outside of a
building where a dance is being held, taking the time to celebrate
with everyone for awhile before he remembers there's more heads that
need a splittin', so he leaves to hunt down some more of his
coworkers. After unsuccessfully trying to go down a chimney in a
scene that only serves to make this boring movie even longer, Harry
simply enters through an open basement window in the house of his
next victim, Frank. He finds Frank asleep in bed next to his wife,
trying to smother him with his bag but that doesn't work so he slits
his throat open with the star topper on their Christmas tree.
Practical!
The next morning we catch up with
Philip and Jackie, who are worried because Harry hasn't shown up for
Christmas yet. Yeah, I wouldn't be losing too much sleep over his
absence. Harry wakes up in the back of his van, now parked outside
the Jolly Dream factory. He goes inside and turns on all the
assembly lines, because why not? We cut to the police station where
they are going over potential suspects for last night's murder spree,
the two cops in charge making a lot of inappropriate jokes about the
situation. Did they just TRY to make a movie with the most
unlikeable characters humanly imaginable, or was this just something
that happened organically?
Harry calls Philip to say a whole lot
of nothing, bringing up his “tune”. See, the whole movie Harry
has been ranting about finding the right notes for his tune, which
meant nothing then and continues to mean nothing now. He drives to a
rich looking neighbourhood, talking a walk to admire all the
decorations when he gets surrounded by a group of kids who thank him
for their presents. Their parents round the corner, horrified at
what they see because Harry matches the description of the murderer
all over the news. One of the fathers pulls out a knife and begins
advancing on Harry, the kids surrounding him to protect him.
When one of the mothers tries to stop
the father from killing a man in front of their children, Harry takes
this as his cue to head for the hills. The father reaches into his
pocket and pulls out an Insta-Mob (TM), as he now has a group of
torch wielding allies to hunt down Harry. I'd ask why such an
affluent community all carries Frankenstein-quality lynchin' torches
on their persons, but there's only like ten minutes left in this
thing so let's not prolong this any longer than we have to. Harry
escapes the mob, driving to Philip's house to confess everything.
Philip, as sick of Harry as the rest of us at this point, strangles
him to death while Jackie watches and half-heartedly tells him to
stop. It's okay Jackie, we're not going to judge you for not trying
harder.
Philip, horror dawning over what he's
just done, drags Harry outside and throws him in his van. Harry
isn't dead though naturally, opening his eyes and punching him out.
He starts up the van and leaves, finding the way blocked by the mob.
Damn, they move quick! He drives through them, ending up going off a
nearby bridge... and here's where the film earns its legacy. Instead
of crashing to the ground below, the van begins to FLY THROUGH THE
AIR AND INTO THE SKY.
Cue the credits.
Certainly didn't expect that! After
ninety minutes of complete realism, let's just end the movie with
Harry flying to the fucking moon! Or did he? With an ending like
this you're bound to get alternate interpretations of what actually
happened, and one of the more popular ones it that it was all a dying
hallucination Harry had. There is some credible evidence to this
because when the mob tries to cut Harry off we can see Philip chasing
after the van. Philip falls and rolls down a hill into some debris,
making a crashing sound. Many people think the crashing sound was
really Harry's van, but then we see Philip looking up at the sky
awestruck instead of looking down, so who knows?
I'm sure this was all intentional on
Lewis Jackson's part, because without the ending Christmas Evil
would have been an immensely mundane movie that would have faded into
deep obscurity without it. Not to say that this was a BAD movie,
because everyone was doing their best and delivered some fantastic
acting for a slasher movie. Harry's actor, Brandon Maggart, deserves
immense praise as he put on what I can easily call one of the best
performances in a horror movie that I've ever seen. The writing
certainly wasn't there for him, but damn if he didn't give every line
his all. And if you ever want a piece of trivia to throw at
somebody, Maggart is the father of singer/songwriter Fiona Apple.
But let's talk about the writing, which
is what has kept this a cult movie instead of something much bigger.
The plot here is after learning Santa isn't real, Harry is basically
driven insane and spends the rest of his life trying to infuse the
world with Christmas spirit. Now that's fine, I can accept a slasher
movie where the killer's crazy because he's crazy. The problem is
the rest of the story is dedicated to trying to rationalize his
crazy, only we don't get to SEE any of this! The film periodically
cuts to Philip constantly talking about what a loser Harry is and the
burden of taking care of him, yet we never see HOW this plays out due
to the time jump.
At the end when Harry comes to Philip's
house, he babbles about the point of everything he was doing was
because of Philip's lack of belief in Santa. You mean that one scene
thirty years ago where they argued about Santa for ten seconds?
That's the impetus to justify Harry's inexplicable murder spree?
This really needed to follow their lives over the years, leading UP
to the murders. I would have even been happy with even ONE scene of
the brothers interacting with each other, throwing out some lines of
exposition to set up any of these elements. But I suppose it was
MUCH more important to watch Harry dance with people at Christmas
party for an entire scene. It's almost like this started off as a
different story about two estranged brothers before the slasher
element was introduced, but Jackson couldn't be bothered to hammer
this out into a cohesive script.
Setting all of that aside though, this
is still among the better Christmas themed slashers as you're ever
going to find thanks to the all to rare of concept of making the
acting front and center of everything. The entire film has an ominous
dread to it as you're just waiting for that one thing to make Harry
snap, because you know he has a lifetime of psychoses to work out as
violently as possible. The killings themselves are quite tame for
horror standards, but that works in this movie's favour because they
have a lot more weight to them. Definitely a movie I can recommend
if you're looking for a smarter slasher, and DEFINITELY one I can
recommend if you're looking for a good holiday one.
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