I’ve been trying to find an ancient movie from the old Elvira series that I had viewed at least once or twice in my youth. In trying to sort through foggy, vague memories and poor descriptions, I stumbled across one movie that potentially resembled a few notions that might’ve matched in Silent Night, Bloody Night. The problem with this film is that it’s truly wretched, low budget and I have an impossible time determining the way this movie had been somewhat psychedelically filmed might be the one I had been seeking out for so long.
Now, the positive aspect of this particular movie is that it is in the public domain, thus appearing on its Wikipedia page. So anyone can go check it out for the full movie and plot. When attempting to recall whether or not this movie was, indeed, the original movie I had been searching for, I used the movie from that page and attempted to skip various scenes in order to match potential shots with what I thought were a few implanted memories from my past. However, the way this movie is shot made it impossible to really piece together what was going on and I figured at the end of the day, it would be worth fully viewing from front to back to at least see what was going on.
One major comment I feel is appropriate in addressing a lot of the Elvira TV movies from back in the day is that most felt very “indy-ish.” Before Mystery Science Theater 3000 became a thing, Elvira pretty much was the queen of low budget, cheap horror (although MST3K did provide a cross over with both low budget horror/sci-fi and the occasional detective movie tossed in). The advantage of having these low budget, cheap horror movies with near no-name participants was that Elvira herself could swoop in after a keen shot and make some clowny commentary to further lighten up the mood since the vast majority of these movies were so bad you needed a consistent hook to keep the audiences entranced as a general series.
With Silent Night, Bloody Night, I recognized virtually no one and was required to look up the actors on the movie’s IMDB and Wikipedia pages. The only potential links to anything familiar was seeing the name Carradine and an obscure connection to Andy Warhol via Mary Woronov. But even then nothing really rang a bell for me. And with horror movies, you generally might encounter a familiar face or two or at minimal someone who might eventually become famous (this one was made in 1972). In this case, none of the people really stood out and one of the main actors would sadly succumb to cancer only a few months after this movie was done.
The movie itself is hard to follow and without a Cliff Notes version such as Wikipedia, I would probably have remained in a state of absolute confusion mostly in part to the feverish attempts at stylistic filming. When you read the plot (especially after seeing this movie), it actually makes sense because a lot of the drawn out shots are removed and you can focus on the critical elements that bring the story together. When you watch this film though, you tend to become slightly unfocused as there’s a lot of dead air that occurs that you leave you wondering what the fuck is going on and why.
In some manner, I am almost reminded of a similar film in Manos: The Hands of Fate in that there’s a LOT of pointless scenes or dialogue. Unlike Manos though, Silent Night, Bloody Night’s plot eventually does converge into something semi-coherent. But you are forced to really concentrate as extraneous scenes, shots and dialogue are peppered throughout the movie while one awaits for something to actually occur.
Part of the problem of this movie is that it’s quite unconventional in the direction and flow. Two of the initial characters introduced die off quickly once they have a gratuitous sex scene in the house itself. By the way both characters are presented with some significant attention placed exclusively on them, one would naturally think that they would have some importance to the plot. Instead, they are hacked up expediently and you really wonder why this much emphasis had been placed on either in the first place. But that’s a mere sample of the problems of this movie where you’re presented with time wasting moments that don’t exactly build up anything. Like with these two characters, neither are acted out well nor given material that makes the audience truly care about their existence. Instead, they serve mostly as the chief horror piece in the movie. Their death scene, while grisly, isn’t grotesque nor gratuitous and done quite well in terms of presenting more implied body horror rather than something explicit and unnecessary. Yet again the lead up to that moment takes a great deal of effort and their deaths create a vacuum as what seemed like a main character or two are effectively relieved.
After their demise is complete, the next “main” character is introduced as Jeffrey Butler, who is the son of the home being sold off. The details about Jeffrey are slowly doled out as the story unfolds but we examine him through a suspicious lens due to his heritage and what that implies. He shows up almost randomly at the mayor’s daughter’s home and their interactions are uncomfortable to say the least. I honestly couldn’t tell if that was intentional or simply bad acting. At least with Diane Adams, played by Mary Woronov, I felt the actress was just reading lines off a cue card. But I think part of the problem is the bad acting in this movie where the characters feel distant and the actors portraying them are there to collect a paycheck. Worse yet it’s occasional impossible to hear what they’re saying because the editing and low budget production intrude on key points. Like with the case of Diane, I had to read the Wikipedia page to determine she was the mayor’s daughter. And there’s bizarre details such as her having the key to the Butler home. Why would she have it of all people? Why not keep it in some vault?
The next major death in this movie happens when the sheriff shows up near a grave site after receiving a phone call. I believe he does this because he sees a light near the grave site and decides to investigate the source. One detail here is that the sheriff is wearing sunglasses at night. And we know it’s night because of how fucking dark this movie mostly is and the fact that he sees the light. Why is the sheriff wearing sunglasses at night when it’s clearly dark? Oh because he gets hacked to bits so his sunglasses can flop off while the murderer plants some sort of diary next to the grave. This little detail becomes significant for when Diane and Jeffrey show up so that Diane can remark “it’s the sheriff’s!” How the fuck would she know it’s the sheriff’s? Stuff like this, while helping to move the plot forward a bit, ends up making the movie fall apart faster because of the loopholes in logic.
From there, another major death occurs with some character named Tess. She’s this fat, old, switchboard operator for the town’s phone system. After the killer conversed with the sheriff, he spoke a few words with Tess to encourage her to return to the home. And, despite all the creepiness with the voice and the fact that the murderer, who has an obvious masculine voice, calls himself “Marianne,” this dumb bozo decides to actually go to the home. Here’s where the movie gets really murky with the overly done darkness to convey fright. Tess moves upstairs and the lights go out on her so that the killer can shine a flashlight at her. He offers her his hand, which she accepts for whatever reason and apparently severs the woman’s hand (or possibly hands) off after revealing random recollections of her. However, the scene is so dark you really can’t tell what’s going on and the way the killing is done here is not consistent with the previous grisly death scene that was nicely established in the first two murders.
I have to pause at this point to further comment that I’m tempted to almost want to verify that this could have been the movie I was thinking about as a result of this particular character in Tess. My strained memory recalls an older woman that met her demise in a home like this. Maybe a haunted house. But the killer from what I remember might’ve been dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform wearing sunglasses and bearing an evil grin. I also am tempted to say that the character who died might’ve been killed when he/she was pushed down a flight of stairs on a wheelchair or possibly crushed by a piano. However, the way this scene was shot could’ve been one of those scenes mixed in with my poor memory.
I’m going to skip ahead some more as I don’t want to do a plot summary move for move. One of the major reveals in the movie is the second half of the story that uncovers the accursed history of the home. We learn from a journal that the home was at one point used as an asylum after the owner’s own daughter had been raped. He ended up confining her to the home and inviting a variety of doctors to try and help his child. But apparently, the asylum had other occupants (who aren’t initially shown in parallel with Butler’s child) and the doctors that resided are portrayed in a decadent light that disgusts Butler.
In his dismay, Butler decides to release the other inmates along with his daughter. The inmates (being a bunch of loonies) murder the doctors and end up running the home. Also, inadvertently the daughter gets caught in the crossfire and is killed too. The result of this mess causes Butler to sequester himself a nearby mental hospital.
So this whole subsection of a plot is done in some sort of flashback with a grainy discolored lens to create a certain look. I think another flashback that unveiled a section of the story happened earlier but this whole flashback was quite prolonged. The shots with the decadent doctors and their wives (girlfriends?) at a banquet table and indulging I suppose was meant to denigrate high society but it just lasted too long. Everything here felt protracted and the lead up to one of these doctors having his eye removed by a cracked wine glass doesn’t really lend itself to a poignant horrific moment. It’s just too slow to build up the proper tension and we can’t even see very well the effect of the doctor’s supposed extracted eyeball to understand the consequences. The real pain is waiting for something to finally happen and when it does, you feel more numb for the amount of time it took to get there than the payoff itself.
Now, once this tale is finished we return to the present so that Jeffrey can tell Diane that the people who had been killed were former inmates of the home. I didn’t want to mention this detail at first except that I have a huge issue with the fact that the inmates all run this town. How the fuck does a bunch of crazy people end up running a town? I mean, sure there are sociopaths in the world who run countries but I’m talking about people who are clearly off their rocker and probably can barely function without a great deal of assistance. None of the people that had been killed in the present seemed as though they had clear cut mental problems when they were introduced outside of being suspicious assholes.
At any rate, for whatever reason the mayor shows up as Jeffrey dons some weird presto magician costume with black and red cape included, which make him almost seem like some malevolent character. There’s no good reason why he decides to alter his appearance from his winter garb into this Victorian stately figure. But I suppose his “final form” helped motivate the mayor into shooting him. Of course, Jeffrey brandishes his pistol around the same time for a double KO kill.
Yet Jeffrey really isn’t the bad guy in all of this. We still have the mysteriously absent father figure of the OG Butler who finally makes his appearance as a hysterical Diane runs around trying to avoid the old man who I think believes she is Marianne. I mean, if there’s one thing I gained from this movie it’s that Marianne is a complete wombat when it comes to intelligence. She goes to the door and can’t even open it. How the fuck can you not open a simple door? Then she tries to run AROUND the elder Butler who sluggishly trudges about like a mummy before deciding to pick up Jeffrey’s pistol to end Butler’s life.
Now, I have to point out again that the elder Butler had committed himself to a mental institution and somehow “escaped” when he learned about the sale of this home. How the heck did he get out of the mental institution? He’s ancient and barely could do much. Honestly, Jeffrey would’ve made far more sense as the villain in the movie on the basis that he’s younger and could commit the various heinous acts whereas the elder Butler barely couold move much less catch Diane at the end of the movie.
After that whole debacle happens and somehow Diane doesn’t get accused of murder in all of this, we go back to the beginning in a way because we come to the actual present where Diane narrates about the fate of the home as a bulldozer comes to knock it over and she walks away.
So I can’t call this film ambitious because it’s just badly shot. There’s interesting ideas at work but nothing consistent. Like the first murder scene is really well done because it’s very Alfred Hitchcock-like with more implied violence and quick shots with blood and the after effects. But from there on out, the rest of the death scenes are muddled either with the scene being too dark or a confused set of shots with brief glimpses. Then you get the odd angles that make the movie very surreal. Those odd angles I think are supposed to be viewpoint shots of the hazy eyes of the killer. These would have been cool if they were more consistently done.
Perhaps, that’s the real story behind this movie in that there’s too much inconsistency. There’s germs of ideas at work but nothing cohesive. It’s like the director wanted the film to be more avante garde with regards to horror but didn’t have a real vision of how to make it work. The acting is simply mediocre at best with primarily wooden performances. There’s almost no real character development and no true protagonist in this movie that acts as the center of attention. I can get the gist of why the story was told in this manner in that the director probably wanted to make this more of a mystery than horror but the setup isn’t well done and it’s hard to cling onto anything for long because we have no idea what to expect.
While watching this, I feel both bored and mildly fascinated. Obviously, the prolonged dead air kills a lot of the movie where you just want things to progress faster. But it’s not so botched in the protracted nature of leading one that you completely lose interest. Things do happen and you’re curious what will happen next. Also, there is a story in there somewhere. The plot summarized on the Wikipedia page demonstrates that there is actually a sense of logical progression and why things are happening. But again, the dead air between the key points is enough to detract from allowing one to make conclusions on their own and pull in the pieces together easily. You do need some help if you lose focus and the characters, details and mumbled and sometimes incoherent dialog interfere from the story being more coherent than what the director feels he’s delivering.
One of the most appropriate quotes I’ve read on imdb was “it sets a great mood but then doesn’t quite know what to do with it.” This is the best description of how I feel. The inconsistency in the devices being used to convey horror, etc. hurt the movie. Too many ideas that aren’t necessarily bad but poorly conceived in trying to create a vision just befuddle what could be a great horror film. Then there’s the title as it relates to what could be a Christmas theme. Yes, the song plays here and there but you are too far removed from this being a Christmas film outside of the fact that it’s snowing and you hear that particular tune. There’s no real thematic tie in between the murders to any sense of the spirit of Christmas outside of a nifty hook in the title.
I guess for me I would have liked this more if it weren’t so frustrating with the logical loopholes, the inconsistencies and bad acting. As for whether or not this movie conclusively was the Elvira movie I had been seeking, I’m still up in the air. The way this movie is shot has that surreal mood I mentioned that may have caused some type of subliminal ideas planted in my mind as a young child to cause me to mis-remember certain moments. Like there is an organ scene in the movie but it had nothing to do with a piano being used to crush a victim. The sunglasses from the sheriff being worn at night along with Jeffrey, who does seem very creepy, might’ve been coalesced together in a young child’s simple mind. There’s a lot of dark and blueish shots that can frighten a young child into thinking he’s seeing things in black and white (along with the flashback scenes). Because I would have seen that particular movie at least 45 years prior, it’s impossible for me to correctly identify every little element. But of all the movies I’ve been trying to identify as those sets of memories, this by far comes the closest.
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