Silent Night, Bloody Night (

1972

)

Genres take time to solidify, and the aspects that define them linger long after they have departed. Thus its very easy to speak generally about them, and say that European Giallo provided the inspiration for early American slashers, but very hard to pin down specifics. See the never-ending debate over what really is the first true slasher movie for the perfect example of this. Personally, I'm inclined to say The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) given its complete disregard for the elements of mystery that defined early giallo and its focus on younger American victims, but this is ultimately a pointless opinion. You could point to any number of ways in which The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) differs from the later established rules of the slasher genre (IE the final girl is not explicitly a virgin, and the main killer is not operating alone) and say as a result it shouldn't count. There was a good six to ten years during the 1970s when the influence of giallos was making itself felt on American cinema, but the conventions of horror had not yet crystallized into the formulaic slashers that we all know. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), today's film also exists in the same nebulous space between straight giallo and straight slasher. Unlike The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) though, Silent Night, Blood Night is much more on the giallo side of the spectrum, deploying such iconic traits as POV shots from an unknown, black leather glove wearing murderer. Indeed, aside from a few trifling details, Silent Night, Blood Night could be counted as an American giallo, certainly far more easily than it could be considered a slasher.

The central mystery of Silent Night, Bloody Night gets points right away for being genuinely mysterious. On Christmas Eve 1950, a young female narrator tells us, the local eccentric hermit Wilfred Butler set himself on fire and burned to death. We get to watch it happen, all while an obscured figure sits inside and plays a haunting tune on the organ. Butler willed his house to his grandson Jeffery Butler, on the condition that he keep it up as a monument to his grandfather's inhumanity. So right away the viewer is presented with a number of mysteries: Did Wilfred set himself on fire? Or was he killed? Who was inside while he burned? What the hell happened in the house to make Wilfred want to keep it standing as a monument to his sins? It's all very Lovecraftian, with it's the themes of past atrocities and long buried evils. The small New England town, an invented place called East Willard but convincing enough that it reminded me at times of my hometown, that the story unfolds in only adds to the general Lovecraftian impression. Sure, it's a bit heavy on the exposition at the beginning and the constant voice over narration gives the impression that this is a shitty 1950s monster movie, not a quality 1970s giallo, but I'm willing to give the film a pass for hooking me in and hooking me in early.

From there we jump ahead twenty years, to the present day when John Carter, a lawyer from Boston claiming to represent Jeffery Butler, arrives in East Willard looking to sell Wilfred's old house to the town council. For kicks he's brought along his Nordic mistress, Ingrid, figuring it would be a waste to just sell the old house without breaking it in so to speak. Unbeknownst to him, the news of the sale of the Butler house has filtered though to the local asylum and upon reading that particular article one unnamed inmate went ballistic and pulled a Michael Meyers (though since this is 5 years before Halloween (1977), just who copied who?) fleeing the hospital while armed with a wrench and quickly hijacking a car. We're left in the dark about just who the inmate is or what pissed him off so much about the sale of the house, at least for now anyway.

Carter and his girlfriend stop at the town hall to speak with the mayor and the rest of the town council. Here, the film momentarily lets the illusion of small Massachusetts town slip. The town hall is a dump, a little gray office building in an industrial park underneath a bridge. The towns in New England are, by American standards anyway, ancient, and even the poorest of them can at least boast a beautiful old city hall to remind them of long forgotten glory days. I might not bat an eye at it if this film was set in East Willard Wisconsin but not East Willard Massachusetts. I know this is a low budget film and locations are expensive, but other than this particular scene you would never guess it. I suppose that is the advantage of filming a spooky old house movie, once you have the house secured then you've taken care of your biggest expense. As soon as we see the town council we can tell there is something off about all of them. Part of it might just be the fact that non-professional actors (and they are all amateurs, excepting of course John Carradine) are often surprisingly adept at playing twitchy weirdos, but it goes deeper than that. The four councilors, Mayor Adams, Sheriff Mason, switchboard operator Tess Howard, and Towman all clearly have something that they are hiding. Towman in particular is taciturn, only uttering one line of dialogue in the entire movie and otherwise only communicating by ringing a bell. My guess, this production only had enough money to pay John Carradine to say that single line, any more would have been outside of his, admittedly very low, price range.

With a deal in hand, Carter and Ingrid depart for the Butler house. Little do they know, the escaped lunatic has already picked up a pair of black leather gloves and is waiting for them inside. Rather than jumping the couple at the first possible moment, the killer bides his time and merely stalks them. As night falls, the music gradually ratchets up in intensity as the flirtation between the two lovers gets more and more passionate. We alternate between the killers slow, deliberate approach, and the couple undressing for bed. The erotic tension mirroring and enhancing the horrific tension. Its as neat a piece of suspense as I've ever seen. I was tense and uncomfortable with anticipation and fear as the killing blow drew nearer and nearer. When it landed, and I saw Carter and Ingrid butchered by an ax, it almost came as a relief. It's a hell of a sequence, and unfortunately the rest of the film lives in its shadow. From there the killer heads into town to kill off the town council, Jeffery Butler appears to check on what's up with the deal, and Mayor Adams' daughter, Diane, gets roped into the conflict. That's not to say that the back nine of Silent Night, Bloody Night is bad by any stretch of the imagination, only that next to the brilliant midway sequence it starts to look a bit dim by way of comparison.

A big part of the problem is the absurdity of the central mystery once the truth is revealed, I'd like to look at this in some detail so from here on “There be Spoilers.” As it turns out, the great sin of Wilfred Butler was that he raped and impregnated his own daughter, Marianne. She understandably went crazy as a result of this experience, so Wilfred transformed his house into an asylum. On Christmas Eve 1935, sick of all the way he felt the hospital staff and administrators were taking advantage of him, Wilfred let the lunatics loose from the asylum and had them kill everybody. Those lunatics then escaped to become the town councilors. Fifteen years later, Wilfred faked his own death and went to live anonymously in asylums, breaking out only when he heard that his old house was up for sale. But if that's the case, how did the escaped inmates manage to keep their identities secret this whole time. Even ignoring the logistical difficulties of getting ID, clothing, and jobs, how did a bunch of people so crazy they needed to be committed to an asylum act normal enough to not just blend into society but reach positions of prominence within it? Insanity is the kind of thing that generally makes itself known, especially if you're in a public facing role like the mayor. Hell, even Mayor Adams' own daughter can hardly believed he's an escaped homicidal maniac. If the dude can keep himself under control for thirty five years he probably didn't need to be in the sanitarium in the first place. Moreover, Wilfred's actions don't make a whole lot of sense either. Why kill all the hospital staff rather than you know, just firing them? After all, he was the one bankrolling this whole operation. Even more baffling, why wait 15 years to fake his own death before high tailing it to the local loony bin? After the initial “wow” of the twist dies away you're left with the uncomfortable feeling that all these surprises serve no other purpose aside from empty shock value.

Still, the big reveal isn't all bad, at least the dumb revelations are presented in an exciting fashion. The whole film switches over to a sepia toned German expressionist movie for a few minutes as we watch the events play out. Sounds are twisted and distorted, people speak out sync with their lips and shadows are cast in all sorts of interesting and unsettling ways. Sure, twenty minutes of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) spliced into an already slow movie is not the wisest decision, but it gives the flashbacks a really distinct feel from the rest of the film. Nor is the rest of the film a dull-looking affair. There are plenty of “arty” shots, characters seen through windows or between the branches of a Christmas tree. Silent Night, Blood Night stays visually interesting, even when it doesn't have anything interesting actually happen for long stretches. To me, this makes the end result a bit more tragic, with a better script, a central mystery that made sense, and a twist that wasn't a cheap cop-out, Silent Night, Bloody Night would have been a masterpiece.