How on Earth (good will towards men) did we get from good-hearted classics like A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life to this schlocky mid-'80s slasher film from the dregs of the human spirit? Once again, I blame my heroic holiday intake of Christmas cocktails. As it happens, I was getting a little burned out on decency and kindness by the time I reached this point in the marathon, so I was more than happy to see a guy dressed up as Santa Claus take an axe to a bunch of innocent bystanders, but that's just how I roll. Don't show this to any children you may happen to have lying around the house; I saw it for the first time when I was 15, and look how I turned out. Revolution Number Nine in the Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: the controversial cult classic Silent Night Deadly Night. The movie, starring an astonishing array of actors you have never heard of before or since its release, generated a massive amount of controversy on its release. Its premise is simple enough: a traumatized young boy, whose childhood is marred by a bunch of unlikely coincidences involving Santa Claus, grows up to be a mad killer who takes the St. Nicholasian imperative to reward the good and deny the bad rather beyond its normal purview. Taken as high camp, it's actually not that bad, though hampered by some grade-Z acting and direction that it would be a compliment to call perfunctory. The script, based on a Paul Caimi novel called Slayride (!), is lively enough and clearly doesn't take its moments of high drama very seriously, but the movie caused a sort of national paroxysm of moral panic.
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