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I’ve said it time and time again, but Christmas is definitely the holiday with the most horror movies centered around it. Classics like Black Christmas which got no sequels, but two Very different remakes, Gremlins, and Christmas Evil gave way to modern classics like Better Watch Out, Krampus, and Terrifier 3. Then you have the one series that decided to make a whole interconnected universe out of the holiday. With 5 movies that sometimes, rarely, kinda connect with each other and 4 of them out of the way, its finally time to look at the last entry in the series before the quasi remake came out in 2012. I’ve had the pleasure to discuss 1, 3, and 4 in one way or another on the channel and part 5 deserves its flowers too. While two is an awfully good movie, 3-5 can all count as a black sheep and 5 especially has its weird moments both in...

Regardless of any perceived quality when it comes to individual entries, you have to hand it to the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise. It kicked off with a demented killer Santa story that created immense controversy, cementing it as a piece of hallowed horror history. Since then, it has produced a series of movies that each stand out for any number of memorable reasons (my personal favorite). You can certainly argue the successful and not-so-successful elements of a Silent Night, Deadly Night entry, but it’s tough to say any one of them is “normal.” They all offer such unique quirks and oddities that it’s hard not to find them attractive from the right angles.

And Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation is the weirdest one of the bunch and so much better for it.

As a franchise entry, we do need to establish some important context. Long story short,...

The first two Silent Night, Deadly Night films get all the glory — to the point where casual horror fans may be surprised to learn that three more installments were produced in the franchise. The 1984 original generated highly publicized controversy by showing its killer dressed as Santa Claus in advertisements, while the 1987 first sequel gained cult status for its over-the-top campiness and liberal reuse of clips from its predecessor.

The series was then relegated to straight-to-video territory with 1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out, 1990’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation, and 1991’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker. While the third installment continues the killer Santa plot, the storyline was abandoned for the latter two installments, which each tell an unrelated tale set during Christmastime.

Diverging from the franchise’s headline-making narrative may have been a death knell — look at how long it took viewers...

We all have those horror movies that scarred us for life. Whether your blood ran cold from the macabre family dinner in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or you found yourself disturbed and nauseous while watching Regan’s head spin in The Exorcist, these terrible frights became the catalyst for a lifetime of loving horror. When I think back to my childhood, it’s films like Tourist Trap, Poltergeist, and even Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker that left deep impressions. It’s like a frigid winter chill you simply can’t shake, or that ominous sensation that descends at nightfall and seems to rattle among the shadows on your wall. It’s certainly hard to imagine the fifth installment in any B-movie franchise having much to offer, but director Martin Kitrosser’s The Toymaker injected the series with a pinch of whimsy, a few drops of absurdity, and...

Let’s face it: a killer Santa is never not going to look kind of funny. Every entry of the Silent Night, Deadly Night saga knows this (although indignant protestors in 1984 apparently did not). And each opts to deal with this fundamental visual quandary in a markedly different way.

In the original 1984 film, the Santa costume is subverted into a symbol of intrinsic evil, as seen through the eyes of poor Billy Chapman (Robert Brian Wilson). Billy, who looks more like a Patriots linebacker than he does Burl Ives, eventually dons the Santa suit and is subsumed by his own dark thoughts. Try as it might to paint him as a sinister figure by making him muscular and shrouding him in shadow, though, he still looks patently absurd. By Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 3: Better Watch Out! (1989), the homicidal maniac of the second installment, Billy’s little brother Ricky,...

It’s officially Christmas Eve. That means that it’s officially the scariest damn night of the year. You should be afraid, but I suppose if the apocalypse didn’t get you what’s an obese man trying to fit down a chimney with a child labor law violation or two gonna do to you? Welcome to It Came From 1980x. We’ve been following the “evolution” of the Silent Night Deadly Night series starting with a review of the first two movies re-released as a double feature by Anchor Bay and then moving on to the later three sequels that really have jack and shit to do with the rest of the series. That doesn’t mean that we dislike them although my personal preference on the third installment have been documented interwebz wide. This is the final entry in the franchise prior to the reboot/reimaging/remake that...

Let’s get the story straight or at least as straight as I can remember it. One cold winter’s eve I sat down with a four pack of Burton Baton from Dogfish Head and drank the whole damn thing plus an Insanely Mad Elf and probably some vodka. Maybe more beer. In fact I find it highly unlikely that in the time where I was a freak booze hound with a penchant for micro brews with an abnormally high amounts of alcohol and sugar that I wasn’t pouring at least one more six pack down my gullet. Why do I “confess’ this? Because when I was imbibing the spirits of the season I was watching Silent Night, Deadly Night parts 3, 4 and 5 for the very first time and while I enjoyed 4 and 5 (you know how I feel about 3), part 4 has come to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine.