The Christmas Movie That Was Banned From Theaters One Week After Release
Silent Night, Deadly Night was banned after just one week in theaters but managed to earn $2.5 million during that time, kicking off a minor horror franchise.
Christmas movies seem to overtake the world when the calendar turns over from Thanksgiving; classics from Home Alone and It’s a Wonderful Life, to newer releases like Benedict Cumberbatch’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and the Will Ferrell/Ryan Reynolds sequel, Spirited, take over the movie channels. One genre that doesn’t get a lot of attention from the big-budget Christmas movie category is horror, with a handful of low-budget slashers coming through the pipeline each year. But in 1984, one Christmas horror movie titled Silent Night, Deadly Night disturbed people so severely it was pulled from theaters, entering it into the halls of Hollywood legend.
The 1980s weren’t devoid of slasher movies; in fact, the decade was when the genre took off with Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and others, but adding in a character as beloved as Santa Clause, but making him the killer proved to be too much to handle for watch groups. A television campaign that featured Santa Clause cradling an ax before dropping down a chimney to commit murder drew the ire of parents until those ads were relegated to after 9 pm. That wasn’t enough to placate the protesters, as only a week after the film’s release it was pulled from theaters, but only after it brought in $2.5 million on a $750,000 budget.
Silent Night, Deadly Night was far from a commercial success, but it had a massive video release, and that was enough to justify the beginning of a small-budget franchise, picking up four sequels when all is said and done. Talent agent Scott Schneid optioned the film because he believed that it could be a similar level of a franchise as other horror films of the day, maybe even getting as big as Friday the 13th and Halloween. But in the end, people simply weren’t ready to accept the sacrilege of using one of the most beloved benevolent myths on the planet to score shock and awe and a fistful of cash.
A Nightmare on Elm Street opened the same weekend as Silent Night, Deadly Night, likely stealing a lot of the financial love that audiences may have put into a similar horror story. However, even if it was the only horror movie to be seen in the theaters, movie reviewer Gene Siskel was personally offended by the movie, saying it was one of the only genuinely contemptible movies he had ever seen, the other one being I Spit on Your Grave, calling them both quite sick. He and his partner, Roger Ebert, discussed the movie on their show, At the Movies, where they addressed the ad campaign for the film by calling it mean-spirited, and telling Tri-Star Pictures the money made from tickets was blood money.
While an ax-wielding Santa Clause isn’t the worst thing that audiences have seen on the movie screen, there is apparently a social line for Santa Clause. Not only did groups oppose the violent nature of the film, but they said the film would ruin the trust of the children, causing them to not believe in Santa Clause. With a movie like Violent Night bloodying up the movie screen with the protagonist dressed like Santa, it’s hard to believe that the concept caused a lot of backlash.
