I would have bet anyone a thousand dollars that 1972’s SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT directed by Theodore Gershuny had been renamed to its current title for a home video release around 1984 in order to cash in on the then new Silent Night, Deadly Night, and I would have lost that bet. “The film was given a limited release in the United States under the title Night of the Full Dark Moon through Cannon Films, beginning November 17, 1972. It was subsequently released as Silent Night, Bloody Night in the spring of 1973 and continued to screen under this title through December 1973.”
Quick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed “Bad Movie Monday”. The premise was simple: We’d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature highlights of those night so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.
Despite being a rather fun and bonkers seventies arthouse film, I’d been reticent about bringing it to BAD MOVIE MONDAY because the old VHS copy I had was such a grainy and washed out and cropped mess that I didn’t think it was worth showing. I’m hardly a stickler for perfect video and audio quality, but I kind of draw the line when it makes the film incomprehensible. I’d seen Bloody Night at least a dozen times over the last thirty-five years, but in all that time I had never been able to tell what was happening during the third act. However, as if by a Christmas miracle, I found a VERY good looking print on Tubi last year so me and my friends were able to watch it properly. The film is still grainy, it’s not a remaster or anything, just a well preserved copy. However, it’s a gigantic improvement. It has the correct aspect ratio and the ending scenes are so much clearer that I finally understood what was going on.
Black Christmas has long been credited as the first holiday themed slasher movie, but I feel that Silent Night, Bloody Night is far more deserving of the title because it came out two years earlier and has a lot more in common with later slasher films than Black Christmas. Tell me if this sounds familiar: A maniac escapes from an insane asylum by stealing a station wagon and then hides in an old abandoned house where something terrible happened decades before. The house is being sold and the maniac begins to kill everyone involved with either buying or selling it, one by one. Mary Woronov, our final girl whose father has a secret connection to the house, gets mixed up with the rather sinister grandson of the original owner who died in an “accident” twenty-two year prior.
So it’s not quite a slasher film, more of a Giallo. However, other than the killer not being masked (although his identity is a mystery and his face is only revealed at the end) and not being silent, it’s pretty close. All the pieces of the puzzle are there, just not assembled in quite the right way.
Alright! Now we come to my favorite part of the review where I list ten things that went through my mind as I watched the film.
#1 – Mary Woronov is a Goddess. Hugely underrated actress. Any movie that she’s in is always improved simply by the virtue of her being in it.
#2 – A lot of Warhol people are in this movie. Woronov, Jack Smith, Candy Darling, Ondine. I’m sure there are others.
#3 – Looking at what they shot and how it was put together, there is almost a 100% chance that the film’s plot, or at least the ending, was entirely manufactured during editing.
#4 – I believe John Carradine starred in this under the condition he could do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was to not have to talk. Instead, he communicates by ringing a bell. And, yes, it’s as insane as it sounds.
#5 – They obviously only hired Patrick O’Neil for a few days, and even then he probably only agreed to do this if he could act opposite John Carradine and shoot love scenes with a pretty girl. Not at the same time of course.
#6 – Despite having nearly the same budget as John Carpenter’s Halloween, the film doesn’t seem to have been shot with any sound and looks like it cost about the same to make as Deep Throat.
#7 – I’m not saying the makers of Black Christmas copied the killer’s voice and the fact that he calls people on the phone, but it’s eerily familiar.
#8 – Ten points for dreamlike atmosphere in the flashbacks scenes, but minus a thousand points for making it look like something the ophthalmologist would use to test your eyesight.
#9 – At one point someone puts on a cape and takes up a dueling pistol AND IT’S NOT THE KILLER.
#10 – The ending goes to great lengths to explain everything in intricate detail and still makes almost no goddamn sense.
My biggest takeaway when watching SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT is that despite a few very silly and weird bits this is a legitimate arthouse film. Director Theodore Gershuny wasn’t trying to make a sleazy cash grab, this is something he was obviously passionate about. It’s just that the line between being ridiculous and being art is a thin one indeed.