SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT Midnights This Weekend at 2 St. Louis Wehrenberg Theaters

“You scared, ain’t ya? You should be! Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!”

The Destroy the Brain guys beat them to it when they showed it last Holiday season as part of their Late Night Grindhouse but if you missed SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT when it played midnights here , you’ll have the chance again this weekend when Fangoria Magazine presents, in conjunction with Screenvision, a stunning new HD transfer for the ultimate experience in ho-ho-horror! (though I don’t care how ‘stunning’ it is, it won’t beat the 35mm print they screened at LNGH). The event is this Friday and Saturday (December 6th and 7th) at midnight. The two St. Louis locations are:

ST. CHARLES CINE 18, 1830 FIRST CAPITOL DR. S, ST. CHARLES, MO, 63303

And

RONNIE`S 20 CINE, 5320 S. LINDBERGH, ST. LOUIS, MO, 63126

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT tells the tale of Billy Chapmen, orphaned at five after witnessing the murder of his parents at the hands of a Santa suit-clad madman on Christmas Eve. Now eighteen and out of the brutal grip of orphanage nuns, Billy is forced to confront his greatest fear, sending him on a rampage, leaving a crimson trail in the snow behind him.

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, the poster child for Holiday horror films, caused a huge stink when it was released back in 1984. Influential film critic Gene Siskel especially despised the film, going as far to list, on his syndicated TV show, the film’s producers by name and, wagging his finger like a sweater-vested church lady, wailed “shame, shame, shame” after each name. What got Siskel’s holiday hackles up was the distasteful idea to have a slasher film featuring Saint Nick as its bloodthirsty villain. It wasn’t even the first “killer Santa” movie – (CHRISTMAS EVIL from 1980 has that distinction) but SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is the most notorious because it had the balls to be released during the Christmas season and its holiday television ads attracted the ire of overly-sensitive parents, some of who actually went out and picketed various theaters in protest of it. Outraged moms and dads wrote letters to the film’s producers (“My little Billy is afraid to sit in Santa’s lap because of a TV commercial he saw for your disgusting film”). Consequently, the flick got pulled out of the cinemas and in some markets, including St. Louis, it was never shown theatrically at all. It eventually did find a big audience when it was released to video stores and several increasingly inferior sequels were spawned (though the great Monte Hellman directed part 3!). Lost in the controversy is that SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was actually a pretty solid and scary horror flick. Of course it was never meant for kids, who would likely have been scarred for life if they had seen the opening sequence where an escaped criminal in a Santa suit rapes and kills off a kids mom while the child looks on. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT has plenty of fun bloody death scenes and some great one-liners.

Though I still recommend seeing THE VISITOR midnights this weekend at the Hi-Pointe over this, if you’re up for midnight shows both nights, by all means don’t miss SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT

For more info, go HERE

http://www.screenvision.com/cinema-events/sndn/