{"id":6215,"date":"2011-12-10T11:57:43","date_gmt":"2011-12-10T17:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/?p=6215"},"modified":"2011-12-14T15:10:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T21:10:49","slug":"silent-night-deadly-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/silent-night-deadly-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Raz\u2019s Midnight Macabre Horror Review Xmas Special: “Silent Night, Deadly Night”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Just when you though it was safe to come back to SomeWhatNerdy….. Yes I’m back and this time it’s for an Xmas special, a review of the franchise “Silent Night, Deadly Night”.<\/p>\n

I must admit to you that this film is a favorite of mine to watch during the holiday season, for those of you who don’t know this film was highly controversial upon it’s release, sparking protests from angry parents.
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\n\"\"<\/a>After visiting his deranged Grandpa on Christmas eve and being warned by him that if he hasn’t been good all year he will be punished by Santa, a young child (Billy) sees his parents brutally murdered by a maniac dressed as Santa. it is a memory that haunts him and has left him tragically traumatized.<\/p>\n

We see the effects of this trauma when the movie takes us forward 3 years and he and his younger brother are in an orphanage. Once again its Christmas time and Billy is terrified of the traditional visit from Santa Claus. We are shown a truly disturbed child who doesn’t know how to move on with his life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We fast forward again and Billy is now 18 years old, he gets a job in a toy store and seems to have gotten on with his life and turned out nicely despite his tragic past…. until once again Christmas time rolls round and he is asked to fill in for the missing Santa. Once Billy puts on the Santa outfit you can tell things are not going to end well.<\/p>\n

Billy loses the plot and the killing spree begins, punishing those who are naughty. We see a-lot of brutality in the way he kills his victims, he is clearly a man who has lost his mind and won’t be stopped easily.<\/p>\n

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The film may seem campish and cheesy to today’s standards but it’s still very much an entertaining Holiday Horror. Robert Brian Wilson is amazing as adult Billy, you truly believe he is a very disturbed individual and also you feel compassion for him despite his murderous spree. It’s a shame he’s retired from acting, it seemed he had a bright future.<\/p>\n

The whole cast is actually really good, the characters of the strictly disciplined Mother Superior and the loving and compassionate Sister Margaret are fantastic. We even see a young Linnea Quigley.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If you haven’t seen it then give it a watch, it’s a refreshing watch compared to the usual family friendly holiday films we are saturated with each year.<\/p>\n

Miscellaneous facts about the film:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The release of this film was picketed by angry parents who were not happy to see Santa Claus depicted as an axe murderer. As a result, box office sales plummeted and the film was shelved for another year where it saw new light in an uncut video form (that has since gone out of print).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This film was planned to be a limited release but open wider by Christmas, but the protest canned the idea, and was pulled after two weeks of release.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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To protest the film, critics Roger Ebert\u00a0and Gene Siskel\u00a0read the credits out loud on their television show saying, “shame, shame, shame” after each name.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This film was known as “Slayride” throughout its production. Tri-Star decided to change the title to “Silent Night, Deadly Night” at the last minute.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The title “Slay Ride” actually ended up as a subplot in another film, the Disney holiday movie Ernest Saves Christmas\u00a0In the Ernest film, the prospective Santa that Ernest was looking for was appearing in a horror film entitled “Christmas Slay”.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The toyshop where Billy gets his first job is called “IRA’S TOYS”, Ira is the first name of one of the film’s producers.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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All the films’ TV ads were immediately pulled off the networks because of the trailer showing Santa Claus carrying an ax, which practically depicted him as a mass murderer. This lead parents to protest the film and instantly got yanked out of theaters after making a profit with it’s limited release.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Opened on the same weekend as A Nightmare On Elm Street, and briefly out-grossed the latter by around $161,800 before profits fell about 45% by the second weekend.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In an interview from the documentary ‘Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)’,\u00a0Lilyan Chauvin (Mother Superior) admitted it was a mistake to center the film’s publicity campaign on Santa Claus, and believed it would have generated far less controversy if the studio instead focused on Billy’s psychological plight.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When the film was released widely, angered parents picketed theaters where it was being screened, and asked oncoming patrons to sign petitions to have the film removed from theaters. Two weeks later, the film had been withdrawn.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just when you though it was safe to come back to SomeWhatNerdy….. Yes I’m back and this time it’s for an Xmas special, a review … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":6225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,725],"tags":[230,636,637,708,715],"class_list":["post-6215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-razs-horror","tag-horror","tag-raz","tag-raz-midnight-review","tag-christmas","tag-silent-night-deadly-night","latest_post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/somewhatnerdy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/silentnight-730866-767888.jpg?fit=500%2C763&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35LLI-1Cf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6215"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6364,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215\/revisions\/6364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}