Rent Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Enjoyable 1984 Horror with a Decent Plot - prob classed as a video nasty at the time - Silent Night, Deadly Night review by PV

I learnt about this film only recently in a Channel 4 Mark Kermode programme about Christmas movies of the past. So I rented it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure, it's a horror but it's also a film so not real, which is why I always find such movies funny.

A decent plot with backstory here; a nasty baddie; a deranged kid; nuns - what more do you want? Breasts? Well there's quite a few on display here, which will so annoy the feminist hardcore (good!) - but there are also naked male buttocks for balance.

Thoroughly enjoyable. Though (no spoilers) the end didn't satisfy as it could have done - but 'nun' happening.

4 stars. Cheaply made, imperfect, but enjoyable!

Naughty List Energy, Mid Film - Silent Night, Deadly Night review by griggs

There’s a scrappy little Christmas slasher in here that occasionally sparks, then sags again. It wants to be a nasty seasonal jolt, but it spends long stretches coasting between the good bits.

Silent Night, Deadly Night has a great pulpy hook — childhood Santa trauma curdling into a red-suit rampage — and when it sticks to that simple line it’s brisk, grubby fun. A couple of kills have proper exploitation bite, and the low-budget roughness sometimes helps, giving it that video-shelf grit.

The trouble is the stop-start rhythm. The build-up keeps looping, scenes linger past their point, and the film’s energy leaks away between highlights. You can see why it became infamous, but as a full sit it’s more curiosity than classic: a few sharp jolts, surrounded by a lot of dead air.