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Wyrmwood road of the dead sequel12/11/2022 ![]() When it was released on home video, it found its widest audience and began its ascent as a cult classic. Tri-Star eventually caved to pressure and pulled the film from theaters after two weeks, but by that time the film had already turned a profit, due in no small part to the controversy. TV spots, featuring shots of the Santa with a gun and Billy in full gear wielding an axe, were run during football games and prime-time family viewing hours. Siskel called it (along with I Spit on Your Grave-1978) “one of the two most detestable films I have seen” and the profits “blood money.” There is no doubt that Silent Night, Deadly Night is one of the more mean-spirited slashers of the ’80s, but it was the marketing of the film that led most directly to the controversy. Parents groups, religious organizations, celebrities like Mickey Rooney, and critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert came out in full force against the film claiming it was damaging to children. ![]() It is also a great deal of fun, filled with unforgettable sequences, quotable lines, and pitch-black humor, all of which contributed to its infamous reputation.Įven more notorious than the film itself is the controversy that erupted surrounding it in November of 1984. It is wild, gory, vicious, and about as far over-the-top as 80s slashers get. The film also features not one, but two men in Santa suits shot in front of children and another punched in the face. The best-known kill is one of the most iconic in all of horror with a barely dressed Linnea Quigley impaled on a rack of antlers. Some of the more memorable kills include strangling a co-worker with Christmas lights, putting a claw hammer through his boss’s head, and decapitating a bully on a sled with an axe. When forced by his boss to play Santa, however, all that childhood trauma and angst that has been repressed since early childhood explodes and he goes on one of the most vicious killing sprees of any slasher. When he turns eighteen, Billy ( Robert Brian Wilson) is given a job at a toy store. Punishment is good” are drilled into his mind over the course of years under her iron hand. He and his little brother Ricky then face further torment when relegated to Saint Mary’s Home for Orphaned Children where Billy is routinely punished by the Mother Superior ( Lilyan Chauvin). This childhood trauma is compounded to an unbearable degree when he witnesses his parents brutally murdered by a criminal dressed as Santa. You better run for your life,” before returning to his catatonic state. “Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year,” he warns young Billy then adds, “if you see Santa Claus tonight, you better run, boy. It defines Billy’s psychology by giving him a great deal of backstory, starting with one of the most disturbing kindertrauma scenes in horror: the visit with grandpa, memorably played by Will Hare. Unlike many of these films, however, Silent Night, Deadly Night follows the killer rather than focusing on the victims. The original film was the latest in a long line of holiday-themed slashers initiated by Black Christmas and Halloween and followed up by the likes of Friday the 13 th, My Bloody Valentine, New Year’s Evil, Mother’s Day, and more. Though it begins with the relatively simple premise of a traumatized person snapping and going on a killing spree while dressed as Santa Claus, the series quickly flies off these rails into some of the most bizarre, imaginative, and entertaining territory of any holiday horror film ever created. ![]() But from its notorious original to its bonkers direct-to-video finale, the series is without a doubt one of the most unique in all of horror. ![]() It is wildly uneven in tone and quality, whiplashing between deadly serious and high camp, dizzying heights and the lowest depths often within the same movie. The Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise is one of horror’s strangest and boldest.
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