After four sequels and a remake, it wouldn't surprise anyone if the latest Silent Night, Deadly Night reboot had little left to add to the conversation. Instead, there must have been some magic in that old axe writer-director Mike P. Nelson found, because it turns out the latest rendition of the Christmas series is the perfect slasher for the current state of the world. For this edition of the Certified Forgotten poddcast, Matt Donato, the King of Christmas Horror, sits down with his cofounder, who has never seen another Silent Night, Deadly Night movie, for a surprisingly aligned conversation about Billy.
When Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell) was a boy, his parents were violently murdered by a man dressed as Santa. But this is not the Silent Night, Deadly Night you think you know - in this version, Billy grows up with his own Dark Passenger, the spirit of his parent’s murderer who helps him identify bad people who need to be “homicided” for the holidays. Since then, Billy has spent the 24 days leading up to Christmas carving a bloody path through the midwest, but something is different this year. After Billy meets the lovely Pam (Ruby Modine), he sees a chance to use his powers for good - and if he’s lucky, he might just get to kill a lot of Nazis along the way. Written and directed by Mike P. Nelson, Silent Night, Deadly Night is a great example of what modern exploitation cinema can be.
In this short excerpt from the episode, Matthew Monagle shares why he thinks Silent Night, Deadly Night is proof that exploitation cinema and modern politics can work together onscreen:
I think the beauty of this film is that it takes everything we expect from exploitation cinema - the violence and the overtly, cartoonishly bad characters, the exaggeration of it all. It has all of that in there, but it puts it in service of punching up. The notion that the bad people in this movie are bad people that have power within the community.
The Silent Night, Deadly Night episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, or the podcast platform of your choice.
