December 27, 2005
Anti-Claus
Back in the Reagan era it was Santa Claus who needed rescuing. The threat was to jolly old Saint Nick’s image. Innocent child minds were being polluted. The culprit: Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). PTA mothers, along with the regular band of uptight, self-righteous fanatics, picketed theaters. Even an LA Weekly reviewer dubbed it the work of “sick minds”. After a hot week at the box office, Tri-Star, about to make a public stock offering, for fear of the media fallout, actually pulled the movie. It was never released on the west coast. Silent Night, Deadly Night, is definitely not to be confused with another similarly titled landmark movie of ten years earlier, Silent Night, Bloody Night. Bloody Night has serious art creds. In the older movie the cast of psych-ward maniacs, like Ondine who plays the chief inmate, are all our favorite denizens of the Warhol Factory. Mary Woronov narrates. But the picture isn’t really about Christmas. Its plot is layered and, without wanting to give anything away, has to do with a homicidal maniac at large in a town whose leading citizens are all hiding a dark secret – very mysterious. Deadly Night, on the other hand, is a slasher film with just about the subtlety of a giant clown hammer. While it is true that on the surface there are similarities – both are the story of a deeply disturbed mental case on a serial killing spree – Deadly Night plays off the fact that, despite public sentiment to the contrary, there is, as any child could tell you, something very spooky about the portly red elf. The movie begins with a child who witnesses the brutal rape of his mother and cold-blooded murder of his family. To thwart easy recognition during the holiday season the robber is dressed as Santa. Years in a Catholic orphanage have traumatized the boy even further. Eventually, Billy, now 18, has come to associate Saint Nick with violence and punishment. Once a trigger is contrived, the rest is pure black humor. Santa as an ax murderer is, of course, an unforgettable image. Sheriff deputies with Christmas Eve orders to arrest him on sight is a good device. There’s no doubt that there is something brutal about seeing the jolly old bastard shot dead… twice. As far as the moral protest was concerned the gimmick of the movie is all about mistaken identity. Is it really Santa? Who’s in the Santa suit? Is it really a homicidal psycho maniac behind the white beard? What is odd is that irreverence to the authority of symbols is so loudly protested. Unless that protest comes from those, like the Bush Crime Family and the Neocons, who are fully aware of how flimsy their hold on the public mind really is.