Silent Night, Deadly Night

The Original Bad Santa.

A cult horror classic, Silent Night, Deadly Night is something of a treat for the old school horror faithful. Plot has a young boy witness the slaying of his parents by a man dressed as Santa Claus. He grows up in an orphanage run by an over zealous Mother Superior, moves out when manhood beckons and gets a job in a department store. Come Christmas time he is coerced into being the store Santa and promptly cracks up, grabbing an axe and wreaking slasher hell on everyone who gets in his way.

That's pretty much it, the stalk and slash formula in all its bloody glory. It's done very well here, with invention, genuine shocks and it's all boosted by having the mad Santa as an angelic faced beefcake (Robert Brian Wil...

Beware: An ax-wielding Santa

A traumatized boy grows up at a Catholic orphanage in a small Utah town near the mountains. Once he gets a job at a toy store at 18, havoc ensues.

"Silent Night, Deadly Night" (1984) is infamous for causing moral outrage when it was released, but I never understood the indignation. Not only is this a horror flick, its a slasher. Shock and grisly killings come with the territory. Aduh.

Consider clowns for a moment. They are whimsical & funny and yet no one had an issue when they were used for scares in He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Terror on Tour (1980) and Poltergeist (1982). How exactly is Santa off limits, especially since he was depicted as the killer twelve years earlier in Tales from the Crypt...