Silent Night, Bloody Night

MOVIE #1,294 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 12.25.23 Why does Jeffrey change into a fancy outfit and cape that makes him look like Dracula before the final duel? This is a question that won't make sense to anyone reading this who hasn't seen the 1972 ‘holiday’ slasher, Silent Night, Bloody Night (not to be confused with Silent Night, Deadly Night which came out over a decade later). Also, it's an innocuous, oblivious and completely unnecessary question. But, even though this is a horrible way to start a review, I find the query indicative of the film and its motivation on the whole: this entire movie is a question and even though almost all the answers are provided, you will still come back to the question(s), not so much with confusion but with a bemusing “huh” or “hmm” that lands somewhere between frustration and amusement.

Because this story is needlessly convoluted. With less than twenty minutes left they begin a lengthy flashback which seems to twist all the possible motivations up into a knot once again (the logline: a series of murders that occur in a small New England town on Christmas Eve after a man inherits a family estate which was once an insane asylum). It wasn't enough we just learned moments earlier that the mansion had actually been turned into an insane asylum after the rape of the owner’s young daughter, now we find out he was really the rapist and he freed all the inmates because the doctors he hired liked to party too much? And then the inmates eventually became all the central town characters (the mayor, the sheriff, the newspaper man and the switchboard operator)? I hate this expression, but this movie is drunk.

In the first act, it feels like there's a slew of plot holes but things move so jaggedly you can't even tell what they are. The editing is disjointed and there's too much voiceover, but the score is solid and the picture looks good. The tricks reside in the form/structure and not the execution. Perhaps unintentionally, this unfolds like a bad dream. But they never establish a strong enough character to ground things. Still, its lower budget aesthetics and general weirdness/creepiness make up for a lot. I'm fascinated that they produced a long gap and, apparently, direct sequel in 2015.

Also, Christmas is a complete afterthought here. They mention it's Christmas Eve a few times but I don't think I even saw a single wreath. It's as if they added that element to the script at the last second for marketing purposes.

It's not a good movie or a So Bad It's Good movie, but it's not necessarily a bad movie either. It exists in some perplexing void and that's at least something.

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Silent Night, Bloody Night is a 1972 American slasher film directed by Theodore Gershuny and co-produced by Lloyd Kaufman. The film stars Patrick O'Neal and cult actress Mary Woronov in leading roles, with John Carradine in a supporting performance. The plot follows a series of murders that occur in a small New England town on Christmas Eve after a man inherits a family estate which was once an insane asylum. It was released on November 17, 1972.