Silent Night Deadly Night Review

• 5th Apr 2011

This oldie but goldie from the slasher period finds a small child completely traumatised when a criminal murders his parents in cold blood (whilst dressed as Santa). The boy is send to an orphanage where he grows up with Santa loving nuns and kids and, therefore, becomes even more traumatised by the fact that he is scorned for his behaviour.

Naturally, it’s only a matter of time before he completely flips his lid. But this doesn’t happen until he’s around the age of 18 and goes to work, er, dressed as Santa. Once happy night goes a bit wrong when Junior flips his lid and decides that everyone naughty must be punished and in android like fashion sets about hacking, slashing, beating, axing and throttling his co-workers and people about town with the intention of ending up at the orphanage for a bit of old fashioned revenge.

The transfer in places is pretty bad – as if certain scenes were not able to be transferred to a decent quality.  But it is nice to compare the difference in quality and how it has been improved. The film as it stands isn’t really one of the better slashers (yet it was sequalised no end). Although, it is pretty much thrown into the same category as the holiday named slashers, which means that if it is lucky it will get remade one day. It shouldn’t be too hard to top, but having said that, at least this film spends a lot of time trying to give us an origin and back-story, which is rare.

You can see where Eli Roth gets his ideas from – especially his Thanksgiving trailer in the Grindhouse release.

So naughty or nice – how will it look on your shelf?

Steven Hurst