Silent Night, Bloody Night, 1972.
Directed by Theodore Gershuny.
Starring Patrick O’Neal, James Patterson, Mary Woronov and John Carradine.
SYNOPSIS:
It’s Christmas Eve in a small town, when a murderer begins a killing spree against many of the town’s important figures, in apparent act of revenge relating to the horrific death of Wilfred Butler, whose house was once a mental asylum until one particularly horrific night and is currently being sold by his grandson. His reappearance may or may not be related to the recent escape of an inmate from a local mental hospital.
Well everyone if you followed my October Horrors series you probably guessed I would try my hand at this. So welcome all to 12 Days of Christmas Horror where I’ll be looking at 12 films that look at the darker side of the season to be jolly.
So without further hesitation let’s dive into our stocking for our first lump of coal, 1972’s Silent Night, Bloody Night or whatever IMDB decides to list it under – seriously this film has more alternate names than Grant Shapps (I wonder how many people still gets that reference?).
This film is what you can would a grind-house film, meaning that it’s essentially a sleazy cheap slasher made for the sole purpose of being shown on the drive-in circuit, so as to give people in their cars something to watch when they weren’t too busy screwing, which would frankly be a better use of their time, because this film was a bloody chore to sit through.
The acting from the film’s cast, which oddly enough consists of several of artist Andy Warhol’s “superstars” and horror legend John Carradine (perhaps best known for his work in the Golden Age of Universal horror in the 1930s and 40s), is nothing short of dull. Our leading actress Mary Woronov is perhaps the worst offender, giving a performance that I can politely describe as catatonic, portraying her character with virtually no expression or emotion and delivering her dialogue as if she were reading a particularly dull book of bicycle seats.
You don’t expect Woronov to be the leading lady of the film, because it tricks you into thinking that the middle-aged lawyer and his much younger European assistant will be the heroes of the piece, with the first 35 minutes of the film being almost entirely spent with them. These scenes are also incredibly dull – if I wanted to see an old man live with a younger European woman, I’d visit the White House on January 20th (that joke’s going to seem dated a lot quicker than you think). Then the film decides to do away with these two characters, a pretty horrifically I’ll admit, with both being murdered in a particularly gruesome axe murder, which certainly wakes you up. For about five minutes.
Really the gruesome axe murder is really where the film peaked for me, with it being a sudden bloody shot to the arm, but then the film ends up sliding back into an incredibly dull murder mystery in which the whole town gets gets bumped off. I kept praying watching that someone would just bump me off next so I don’t have to watch the rest of the film.
The story tries to throw in a few twists here and there so as to surprise the viewer, but really they don’t make anything any less boring – in fact, they make even worse. For example, we have a near 15-minute flashback sequence that takes up almost the entire finale of the film, with it being filmed in a yellow tint that either makes it looks like it was filmed in the 1930s or that someone pissed on the film reels. This overlong flashback really only exists to reveal that the supposed grandson of Wilfred Butler (and our protagonist) is actually his son that he fathered with his daughter. I know Christmas is supposed to bring the family closer together, but I always thought there were limits.
This film was so boring and slow that I’m not kidding when I say that I spent the best part of its running time trying to come up with silly alternate titles for it to keep myself entertained. Also so I could pad this review out with some of them for your reading pleasure. Here’s just a few of them and I apologise for their awfulness in advance, Silent Night, Boring Night, Silent Night, Sleepy Night and finally Silent Night, Piece of Shite.
In short, don’t watch Silent Night, Bloody Night unless you’re having trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve because you’re just so excited about the presents you’re going to get from St Nick. Stick this turd on and you’ll be out in minutes. Avoid this one at all costs.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★/ Movie: ★
Graeme Robertson
