I submitted a couple of reviews to Joe Horror a while back which weren't accepted due to editorial considerations. I thought we'd worked it out, but they still haven't been posted there, so I'll post 'em here. I put effort into these things, dammit, so somebody is going to get to read them!

I picked up a stack of horror/thriller double features at the flea market a few weeks ago. They're one step up from no-name releases, but I recognized enough of the titles to take a chance on four of 'em (for about ten bucks and change).

First up is Silent Night, Bloody Night. After watching this movie and putting down my initial impressions, I did a little research on it. I discovered that it was made a full two years before the seminal Black Christmas even though both movies were released in 1974. Black Christmas is considered by some to be the original slasher flick, but this movie was actually the first to introduce the main elements of the genre.

Silent Night, Bloody Night is a low budget effort that mostly works, right up until the surprise ending. Yes, it was a surprise (to me anyway), but it really stretched my capacity for suspending disbelief. Stretched it right beyond the breaking point. The plot itself is somewhat confused, but I had no problem following the main arc of the story.

The movie opens with a nifty little point-of-view scene (shades of Halloween!) where someone uses a monkey wrench to bludgeon their way to freedom as they escape from a mental hospital.

Next, in a narrated flashback we witness old man Butler burning to death in his front yard. He set himself on fire in one of those freak fireplace accidents you hear about all too often. You havenÂ’t? Me neither. In his will, the old man left his mansion to his grandson, with the proviso that the house be left empty. Over the years, the house gained a reputation for being haunted.

Thirty years later, the house is up for sale. Nobody has lived there in accordance with the wishes of old man Butler, but a caretaker has kept the property and house in good repair. A hotshot city lawyer is in town to handle the process, and he offers it to the town council for a fraction of what it’s worth. The town council jumps at the offer for reasons that become clear later on. The lawyer and his girlfriend are staying at the house overnight, even though the council members offer to put them up in a motel. Ominously, the town’s switchboard operator offers to re-connect the telephone service to the house “just in case”.

Having that phone connected comes in handy, just not for the lawyer and his girlfriend. They get brutally hacked to death while having sex. Afterwards, the axe-wielding maniac uses the phone to place chilling calls to the members of the town council, inviting them out to the house.

The grandson himself makes an appearance and ends up accompanying the MayorÂ’s daughter (Mary Woronov) through the rest of the movie. When asked why heÂ’s selling, he simply answers that he needs the money.

The rest of the plot is your now-standard fare, as victims are isolated and killed one by one. ItÂ’s only interesting here because the slasher genre that we now know so well hadnÂ’t evolved yet, at the time of this movie it was all brand new.

The acting was pretty good all around. Woronov as the MayorÂ’s daughter has the best role in the flick. John Carradine plays one of the members of the town council and he communicates by ringing a desk clerk bell when he agrees with something that someone else said.

Ok, back to the ending that I hated so much. ItÂ’s memorable, because the whole background story about the house and the Butler family is told, accompanied by an extended flashback done in sepia-tone. The actors that appear in the flashback were all from Andy WarholÂ’s Factory. While the story told is chilling, the writers took it one step too far. Sharks are cool, sharks with frigginÂ’ laser beams on their heads is silly. You know what I mean?

The first axe murder in the movie is nicely gory, but after that most of the killing happens in darkness, making it impossible to see details. Part of the problem is the original camera work, which is strictly low-budget, but the video transfer on my copy was very poor. The movie has been released several times by different distributors and the picture quality varies among them.

The opening music to the movie was a creepy version of “Silent Night”. Done in a minor key and using unexpected dissonant chords, the song was recognizable and yet the entire feel of the music went from reverential to sinister. Very nicely done.

Silent Night, Bloody Night is kind of a missing link between 60Â’s horror and how the genre evolved into the slasher craze, and for that reason alone I think itÂ’s worth seeing.

Posted by: Ted at 05:29 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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