SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984)

Director: Charles E. Sellier, Jr.

Writers: Michael Hickey from a story by Paul Caimi

Producer: Ira Richard Barmak

Cast: Robert Brian Wilson, Lilyan Chauvin, Tara Buckman, Britt Leach, Danny Wagner, Jonathan Best, Will Hare, Charles Dierkop, Gilmer McCormick, Nancy Borgenicht, Jeff Hansen, Toni Nero, Randy Stumpf, Linnea Quigley, Leo Geter, Max Robinson, Amy Stuyvesant, A. Madeline Smith, H.E.D. Redford, Eric Hart, Vince Massa, Michael Alvarez, John Bishop, Richard Terry, Spenser Alston, Alex Burton, Max Broadhead, Oscar Rowland, Melissa Best, Spenser Ashby, Angela Montoya, Don Shanks (uncredited)

After witnessing the Christmas Eve murder of his parents (Tara Buckman and Jeff Hansen) by a killer (Charles Dierkop) dressed as Santa Claus, five-year-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) is sent to an orphanage. As he grows, Billy (Danny Wagner) continues to be tormented by the memories of his yuletide tragedy and is subjected to strict punishments from Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin), the head nun at the orphanage. Many years later, the teenage Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) gets a job at a toy store. On Christmas Eve, the store’s owner (Britt Leach) coerces Billy into being the substitute Santa Claus for the store’s young customers. Donning the costume of his childhood horror deranges Billy, who becomes a murderous St. Nick punishing those he deems naughty.

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Despite what Andy Williams’ seasonal crooning would have us believe, the most wonderful time of the year is always complicated with Christmas controversies:

• Get a real or artificial tree? 
• Buy gifts or give money? 
• Open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?
• Turkey, goose, or ham for Christmas dinner? 
• Who the hell does the dishes?

So, in the yuletide spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill to men, allow me to settle some Christmas controversies: 

• If you do the trimming, buy any damn tree you want. 
• Giving money is always the right size. 
• Opening gifts Christmas Eve must not interfere with my drinking time and opening them on Christmas Day must be done after I sleep off my drunk. 
• Anything that makes a good base for booze can end up on my Christmas dinner plate. 
• Serve the dinner on paper plates and I’ll do the dishes. 

However, back in 1984, even my yuletide pragmatism could not quell the controversy caused by the holiday horror of Silent Night, Deadly Night. This film was released as the slasher film craze had begun to wane and so had the self-righteous indignation of self-appointed moral guardians. But the television ads for this movie about a killer dressed as Santa Claus were traumatizing tots all over the United States. That resulted not only in renewed lambasting by the slasher film-hating movie critics, but also protests from parents that prompted the immediately profitable film to be pulled from theaters. The violation of children’s joyful image of Santa Claus for an R-rated horror film was treated as child abuse. I find it rather ironic that, prior to this film’s ads, probably half of the panicked parents’ kids would already scream bloody murder or be petrified with fear when they were made to sit on a department store Santa’s lap, anyway.

Despite all the outrage directed at Silent Night, Deadly Night, it was certainly not the first time the movies made maniacal, murderous merriment with a sinister St. Nick. Both 1972’s Tales from the Crypt and 1980’s Christmas Evil featured dangerous Santa Claus imposters. Apparently, the 1984 film’s ad campaign was all too effective in an era when the horror sub-genre of the slasher film had become yet another scapegoat for misbehaving youth and poor parenting. The fact that these R-rated films were unable to be seen at the theaters by lone youngsters under 17 years of age did not matter. Yeah, yeah, I understand it was the TV ads creeping into families’ homes during prime time that was causing the shit storm. However, I also understand that the outrage was not directed at the marketing, but at the very existence of the film itself. My response to such censorship sentiment is a hearty “Bah! Humbug!”

According to director Charles E. Sellier, Jr., the aim of the film was for the financing distributor, Tri-Star Pictures, to hit the low-budget/low-risk tier of film production with just the sort of product that had been profitable in recent years. Horror film aficionados will notice that the filmmakers behind Silent Night, Deadly Night were making a list of slasher flick tropes and checking it twice:

holiday-themed mayhem ✔✔

prologue of past trauma ✔✔

traumatized maniac menace ✔✔

distinctive outfit for the killer ✔✔

gory kills via a variety of techniques ✔✔

sex and nudity ✔✔

There are also a few variations from the slasher film norm that make Silent Night, Deadly Night distinctive. The identity of the traumatized maniac is not a mystery; we know who he is and see how he becomes a menace. While there is nothing very deep and profound being expressed in this film, we spend a lot of time seeing how an ongoing series of tragedies and abuse contribute to the maladjustment of the boy who will grow up to become the film’s murderous main protagonist. There is an odd mix of decency and brutality. While not only the nasty people get offed in the traditional slasher film, there seems to be a few instances here where not only are nice people killed, but their deaths seem even more undignified than usual. I think the impact this film has is an ongoing sense of injustice. Both people and fate can be indiscriminate doling out punishment.

Billy Chapman is the kid whose Christmas karma is consistently crapped on. Five-year-old Billy and his family are visiting his catatonic grandpa (Will Hare) at a mental facility on Christmas Eve. As soon as Billy’s parents leave him alone for a moment with his unresponsive grandpa, the old codger gets a wicked gleam in his eye and tells Billy that Christmas Eve is the scariest night of the year. Grandpa gets Billy to admit he wasn’t always a good boy that year, so Grandpa says that Santa will arrive that night to punish him. As soon as the parents return, the sadistic, old geezer plays catatonic again. No reason is ever given for Grandpa’s behavior, and this is the last we see of him, but the movie is already establishing an unsavory vibe for the yuletide season. This is my favorite scene in the film, as it just seems so strange and inappropriate. Will Hare should have nabbed an Oscar that year.

From this point on, Billy’s Christmas and all his Christmases to come are cursed. On the Chapman family’s drive home from the mental facility, they are flagged down by an armed robber in a Santa suit, who kills the parents. Billy and his baby brother are raised in an orphanage that is run by the strict nun Mother Superior, who preaches that no one ever gets away with being naughty and punishment is good. Unfortunately, as poor Billy ages, his past Christmas trauma makes him act out during the yuletide season and he keeps getting punished.

Once Billy is old enough to hold a job, the kindly Sister Margaret (Gilmer McCormick) finds him a position stocking shelves at Ira’s Toys. The young man seems to be an exemplary employee until the store’s Santa Claus for the kids can’t perform and Billy is pushed into the role. Despite his horrific Santa memories, Billy somehow manages to endure playing Santa until things get out of hand at the store’s after-hours Christmas Eve party. Then Billy snaps, becomes the Santa of his grandpa’s malicious taunts, and sets out to punish the naughty and just about anyone else who gets in his way.

In his very first role as the full-grown Billy Chapman, Robert Brian Wilson has a likable and naïve demeanor. When suited up as Santa, his smiles seem both childlike and demented. His best scene is during his Christmas Eve killing spree when he offers a young child (Amy Stuyvesant) a gift. This is suspenseful, peculiar, and funny.

The stunning Tara Buckman appeared in a lot of television roles, but the only other thing I recall seeing her in is the action-comedy The Cannonball Run (1981), where she played the blonde bombshell race driver partnered with brunette bombshell Adrienne Barbeau. As little Billy Chapman’s mother, Buckman’s murder is Silent Night, Deadly Night’s nastiest moment and sets the tone for the rest of the film.

The 1980s scream queen and B-movie favorite, Linnea Quigley, is featured in a small role. Her character’s reluctant involvement with deer antlers is probably the film’s most famous scene.

Silent Night, Deadly Night defied its critics and protesters by spawning four sequels. Paradoxically, the veteran Hollywood actor who had objected to the original film, Mickey Rooney, starred in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991). The original film was remade as Silent Night in 2012. A brand-new version of Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) is currently playing in theaters this holiday season.

So, if you want to wallow in nostalgia for an era when a cinematic Christmas cash grab could cause a commotion and gain cult status, see Silent Night, Deadly Night. It always puts me in the holiday spirit. Seeing a serial-killing St. Nick brutally punish others who are naughty helps me appreciate those lumps of coal I keep getting in my stocking every year.

ROLLERBALL (1975)

Director: Norman Jewison

Writer: William Harrison adapting his 1973 short story “Roller Ball Murder”

Producer: Norman Jewison

Cast: James Caan, John Houseman, John Beck, Moses Gunn, Maud Adams, Barbara Trentham, Pamela Hensley, Shane Rimmer, Ralph Richardson, Robert Ito, Richard LeParmentier, Burt Kwouk, Nancy Blieier, John Normington, (and uncredited cast members) Craig R. Baxley, Steve Boyum, Jimmy Berg, Tony Brubaker, Walter Scott, Bob Minor, Robert Dancel, Alan Hamane, Danny Wong, Eddie Kubo, Bob Leon, Burnell Tucker, Angus MacInnes, Dick Enberg, Bob Miller, Byron Morrow, Anthony Chinn, Sarah Douglas, Valli Kemp, Yasuko Nagazumi, Robert Lee, Mac MacDonald

In the future, the world is controlled by six major corporations. Each corporation has its own rollerball sports team. Rollerball is a brutal variation on roller derby that includes aspects of football, hockey, and motocross. The greatest champion in the sport is the captain of the Houston team, Jonathan E (James Caan). After ten years in the sport, the famous and celebrated Jonathan E. is being pressured to retire by Mr. Bartholomew (John Houseman), the CEO of the Energy Corporation that owns the Houston team. As Jonathan continues to resist retirement, the rules of rollerball are changed to increase the danger of the game.

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Rollerball is a dystopian science fiction film that speculates more about the trajectory of society than the advance of technology. It has concerns that are even more relevant today half a century after it was made. We not only are shown how the public mania for sports can devolve into mindless enthusiasm for barbarity, but also how that diversion can distract the masses from the corporate puppet masters pulling all of civilization’s strings.

Canadian director and producer Norman Jewison was struck by how the sport of hockey was being promoted on television in the United States. Jewison felt that “highlights” of the body checking and fights were being shown to promote the game as a blood sport. He found that emphasis repulsive and set out to make Rollerball a film condemning violence in sports. Jewison was just as offended when he was approached to get the rights to the game of rollerball for the development of an actual professional rollerball league.

The film’s thrilling rollerball action was performed by the actors and stuntmen on an actual track built in a Munich, Germany sports arena. The sport of rollerball was devised in its entirety with rules that make the scenes shot during the game seem to have a practical justification. Regardless of its brutality, this is a credible athletic competition being depicted. Since this bloodsport seems all too believable, we are not distanced by fantasy elements that give us a comfort zone to avoid grappling with the morality of such a nasty spectacle and its effect on society.

Director Jewison also had an even more valid concern: the ever more pervasive control of society by corporations. Fifty years later, we are seeing how a handful of CEOs are becoming ever more influential in every aspect of our lives. They provide our modern conveniences and infrastructure while exerting more control with their market pressures and monied political pull. Those concerns may be nothing new, but we seem to be accelerating into a business-as-usual mindset about such machinations.

In the world of Rollerball, corporate control has replaced politics and nationalism, which seems to have eliminated poverty and disease. Yet that corporate control must be maintained by dumbing down the masses and diminishing individuality. All human knowledge has been catalogued in a central computer. By either intent or incompetence, portions of that knowledge can be restricted or deleted. If only one corporate-directed entity is allowed to be the caretaker of humanity’s culture and history, how can people be sure that knowledge will be preserved? After all, keeping the masses ignorant makes them less independent and more easily manipulated.

As the captain of the Houston Energy team, Jonathan E. is this future world’s most revered rollerball athlete. He has distinguished himself as the greatest player of the game and is well provided for. He lives on his spacious ranch amidst beautiful scenery and is treated to a succession of lovely women assigned to him as live-in companions. Despite his fame and luxury, he is frustrated. Eventually, we learn that the only thing that ever meant anything to Jonathan, besides rollerball, was his wife, Ella (Maud Adams). She was taken away from him by a corporate executive who wanted her. Now, the only thing that Jonathan can feel any passion for is playing the game of rollerball.

Jonathan E. may have been resigned to his life of being a rollerball champion, but that personal distinction is being jeopardized by Mr. Bartholomew, the CEO of the Energy Corporation that owns his team. Mr. Bartholomew suggests it is time for Jonathan to retire. Jonathan resists this, to the growing aggravation of Mr. Bartholomew. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Jonathan is curious about how things are run by corporations. He wants to know why he is being pressured to give up the last thing in his life he is passionate about. Jonathan only finds secrecy and grows more wary about his own safety.

Aside from the camaraderie he has with his fellow rollerballers, Jonathan has no real relationships. He seems detached and frustrated when not on the rollerball track. As Jonathan, James Caan gives a performance that could be taken as disinterested, but I think that is the point of the film. Caan’s character, like all the other citizens in this future world, has been kept complacent with comfort and security. Like everyone else, he has been conditioned to accept the status quo of corporate control. It takes both the loss of his wife and the threat of being forced out of his sport to stir enough unrest in him to begin to question and resist corporate authority. I think Caan’s underplaying shows the damage that he and the rest of humanity have suffered far more effectively than a lot of snark and threats. Caan’s Jonathan E. does have a few outbursts, but these seem to take a while to build up. Jonathan is just one more victim of the mental and emotional neutering of people in this dystopia.

While there are some moments of humor and anger displayed in this film, there is a pervasive coldness to it all. The people are intellectually numb and incapable of truly engaging at an honest emotional level. This may make us have a more difficult time bonding with the characters, but I think it is a realistic indication of that loss of individuality that is the threat posed by corporate-directed conformity.