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Silent Night Bloody Night
[Alpha Video]
1974; color
Directed by Theodore Gershuny
Starring: Patrick O'Neal, James Patterson, Mary Woronov, Astrid Heeren, John Carradine, Walter Abel, Fran Stevens & Walter Klavun
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I thought we'd pretty much covered the small but fun array of Christmas oriented horror films here at the Buffet over the years, until the Kommandant unearthed a dusty copy of Silent Night Bloody Night at a flea market over the summer. At the time I made a mental note to bust it out for review in December; a mental note I promptly forgot. (This is why I have to write everything down!) Fortunately last week I decided to reorganize the bin where I keep the review pile and found this DVD hiding under a recent issue of Vogue Knitting. And it's a good thing I did because the Kommandant's suggestion for our holiday menu was to rent that movie where Bill Goldberg plays evil Santa Claus. Anywhoo, I suppose I should point out this isn't so much a Christmas oriented horror movie as it is a horror movie which happens to take place over the Christmas holiday. Kind of like Black Christmas but with less plastic wrap. Interestingly this film also centers around a big old house, except this one is not inhabited by braless co-eds. In fact, until the lawyer representing the house's owner shows up with his lovely thickly accented mistress, no one has sat in it's well appointed living room or laid their head on the carefully preserved master bedroom bedding since the fateful Christmas Eve day oh so many years ago when said owner met his unfortunate fate. As we're soon to learn, after those two hit town and open up a can of worms the town has been trying to recycle for years, no one else will be calling the place home for long... except, of course, the recently escaped mental patient - who broke free from a nearby asylum just in time to celebrate Christmas Eve off campus, natch - who's decided to take up residence there. Which, as we all know from years of watching horror movies, is a complete and total coincidence. I mean, just because it happens to be fifteen years to the day since the last violent incident on the site, doesn't necessarily mean the unidentified escaped mental patient went there with the intent of righting the wrongs done to those who lived and died in the house previously. Although, in this particular movie, it does. It also stars Mary Woronov as the '70s version of "final girl" and features a brief appearance by John Carradine as a mute newspaper man which, on this site, counts as two points in it's favor. While it might not be as well known as it's splashier, similarly named '80s counterpart Silent Night Deadly Night, Silent Night Bloody Night is a cool horror flick worth watching any time of year.
—Bunny
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