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Silent Night Deadly Night

I still love this movie for all the wrong reasons. It’s essentially about a young boy who has been tortured his entire life after a mall Santa killed his parents. Now as a grown man dressed like Santa, he goes on a brutal killing spree to punish the naughty. For this movie, it’s the acting and corniness that did it for me, but it did have some would-be scares in it. It was just a weird movie overall.

The acting in this movie was really bad and seemed as if the actors and actresses put no effort into trying to even be remotely good. However, you can’t have good acting if the character is wooden. The only notable performances were from Britt Leach (Mr. Sims) and Lilyan Chauvin (Mother Superior), and they were supporting roles. Performances from Robert Brian Wilson (Billy Chapman), Linnea Quigley (Denise) and H.E.D. Redford (Captain Richards), were all pretty bad performances. The movie wants you to feel for this kid, but at the end of the day you end up laughing at him.

Because this movie has so many corny moments, there is no way to categorize them. Just by the look of it, it was very low budget. Santa’s costume looked as if the Salvation Army gathered it and there wasn’t really anything special about the production value. There was noticeable picture quality and lighting jumps and it seems as if the movie was shot and made in a month. Even the special effects, which there weren’t that much of, were a bit campy and looked as though it was done on a strict timetable.

There were really no scares in this movie but there were some great attempts to try to frighten the audience, but it backfired. The killings were not all that special, but what I did enjoy was the style to each murder, even though they were out of way. There was a great scene where a girl gets impaled on a false moose head’s antlers. The only thing that was scary is the idea that Santa, a children’s icon, is now killing people for no reason, which is why many people from that time considered this movie controversial and “cold-blooded.” Overall it was a fun and weird ride. It’s one of the most stupid and strangest movies that I have ever seen, and those are the very same reasons why I love this movie. It’s these kinds of movies that made the 80’s so notorious for dishing out this brand of horror. I would recommend this movie to anybody who loves horror movies, particularly slasher flicks or stalker movies. To those who enjoy cult classics, obscure horror movies or b-movies would also love this movie. It was just a really crazy film with a weird plot and I have to admit, it tops my top 5 of guilty pleasures.

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