Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) on Netflix
A man in a Santa suit murders Billy Chapman's parents on Christmas Eve. Billy grows up in a Catholic orphanage, beaten by Mother Superior, and at eighteen works in a toy store.
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb5.8/1022,445 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes52%
Trailer
Plot summary
Billy Chapman is five when a man in a Santa suit kills his parents beside a Utah road on Christmas Eve. Earlier that evening his grandfather, a patient at a nursing home, tells the boy that Santa rewards children who have been good and punishes the rest. Billy hides in the bushes, and his baby brother Ricky is left in the car. Three years later the brothers live in a Catholic orphanage run by Mother Superior, who whips children she calls naughty, while Sister Margaret pleads for them. Billy draws a violent Christmas picture, and any mention of Santa frightens him and brings more punishment. At eighteen he leaves the orphanage to work at a toy store.
Cast
- Toni Neroas Pamela
- Randy Stumpfas Andy
- Amy Styvesantas Cindy
- Danny Wagneras Billy at 8
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A 30-second TV spot showing the Santa-suited killer breaking down a door with an axe and drawing a knife aired during daytime and early-evening television, including a nationally televised Green Bay Packers game, and drew parents' complaints that it had terrified their children of Santa Claus.
- Kathleen Eberhardt, a Milwaukee housewife who saw the advertisement, founded Citizens Against Movie Madness and coordinated a nationwide protest; on release day protesters picketed a Bronx theater and sang Christmas carols, while Brooklyn protests drew hundreds.
- Tri-Star submitted Silent Night, Deadly Night to the MPAA three times and received three successive X ratings; only after significant cuts to the violence and gore did the film receive an R rating, around November 2, 1984.
- After Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert condemned the film at length, the backlash grew louder, and TriStar Pictures retracted all its advertisements on November 8, 1984, the day before the film's theatrical release.
- Producers Scott Schneid and Dennis Whitehead signed a contract with Ira Barmak that excluded them as executive producers, a decision they called a mistake that left them "frozen out of the project"; Schneid reacquired the film's rights in 2019.
- Because the film was shot in late spring, there was no natural snow in the region; to fake snowfall in some scenes, such as establishing shots of the toy store, the crew threw fake plastic snowflakes from the building's roof.
- The Ira's Toys storefront was a vacant former hardware store rented by the production, and as of 2022 the building still stood and was operating as a gym.
- The 2022 film Christmas Bloody Christmas began as a pitch for a remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night, was rejected for straying too far from the original, and was then developed into its own film.
