This 1980s Horror Film Was Shamed by Siskel & Ebert but Became a 7-Film Franchise Hit Instead

This might be hard to believe more than 40 years later, but for a brief period in 1984, the most talked-about movie in America was Silent Night, Deadly Night. The Christmas-themed slasher movie, which debuted in theaters on November 9, was advertised with a poster featuring someone in a Santa suit descending down a chimney while wielding an axe. Meanwhile, the movie’s TV spots also centered on the Santa-suited killer. There was a more or less instant moral outcry, leading to protests, picket lines, and the birth of one of the longest-running slasher franchises in history.

The Fight Against Silent Night, Deadly Night

Never mind the fact that Silent Night, Deadly Night was not actually about Santa killing anybody. It’s a psychological thriller about a young man whose parents were killed by a carjacker dressed as Santa, who is forced to dress up as Santa during the Christmas season at the toy store where he works as a stockboy, snaps as a result of this, and goes on a murderous rampage to punish the naughty, none of whom are actual children.

Nobody cared about something as boring as the truth. “I only read the headline” culture existed long before Twitter was invented, after all. Anyway, people got themselves worked up into a good lather about the promotional materials, saying that the movie was morally objectionable because it made children afraid of Santa (you know, that totally unscary Christmas character who surveils your behavior 24/7, sneaks into your house in the middle of the night to drink your milk, and whose existence is actually a lie cooked up by a consortium of adults who are gaslighting you for no real reason).

‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ (1984)Credit: Tri-Star Pictures

Milwaukee housewife Kathleen Eberhardt started a coalition called Citizens Against Movie Madness that encouraged protests, with picketers descending upon screenings in New York City and Milwaukee. All of this was celebrated by film critic Gene Siskel, who roundly criticized the movie on his own platform.

On his legendary film review series At the Movies, which he co-hosted with Roger Ebert, Siskel called the Silent Night, Deadly Night ads “sick and sleazy and mean-spirited,” specifically calling out TriStar Pictures, Columbia Pictures, CBS, and Home Box Office to say “shame on you” and continuing his review by directly addressing screenwriter Michael Hickey, director Charles E. Sellier Jr., and producer Ira Richard Barmak to say that “you people have nothing to be proud of.”

Ebert, who, like Siskel, was no friend to the slasher subgenre in the early 1980s, took up the same thread, suggesting that “I would like to hear them explain to their children and their grandchildren that it’s only a movie.” This public shaming of the movie was the nail in the coffin of Silent Night, Deadly Night , which was eventually pulled from theaters after running for just two weeks.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Was the Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back

One strange thing about the controversy that was stoked by the release of Silent Night, Deadly Night was the fact that two Christmas-themed slasher movies had already debuted in 1980, passing through theaters with next to no comment from angry parents.

David Hess’ To All a Goodnight featured a killer in a Santa Claus outfit mowing down co-eds on winter break, while Lewis Jackson’s Christmas Evil follows a toy factory worker who was traumatized as a child by witnessing his mother hooking up with a man dressed as Santa and later goes on his own Santa-suited rampage. In addition to boasting a similar storyline to Silent Night , Christmas Evil literally featured an axe-wielding Santa Claus on its poster.

‘Christmas Evil’ (1980)Credit: Pan American Pictures

To All a Goodnight , Christmas Evil , and Silent Night, Deadly Night weren’t alone in using slasher tropes to subvert the cheerful trappings of major holidays. This trend had already been booming for some time, thanks to the success of John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 slasher Halloween. Between October 1978 and November 1984, theaters were besieged by slashers set on holidays including New Year’s Eve (New Year’s Evil , Terror Train), Valentine’s Day (My Bloody Valentine , Hospital Massacre), Thanksgiving (Home Sweet Home), Mother’s Day (Mother’s Day), Labor Day (Humongous), and even non-holiday events like Friday the 13th (the Friday the 13th movies), birthdays (Happy Birthday to Me , Bloody Birthday , Sweet 16), graduation (Graduation Day , The Prowler), and prom (Prom Night).

So where did the widespread, trumped-up dissent against Silent Night, Deadly Night come from? As with most moral panics centered on a pop culture object, said object was in the wrong place at the wrong time. By the mid-1980s, the mainstream social and political culture of the U.S. was undergoing a major shift toward conservatism, Ronald Reagan having been in office since 1981.

Remember, this was a time when the Satanic Panic was being stoked across the nation, with parents fearing that their children were being lured into abusive Satan-worshiping cults by the likes of Dungeons & Dragons. And in November 1984, the nation was just months away from the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center, which successfully fought to have Parental Advisory stickers put on CDs containing explicit music after co-founder Tipper Gore was scandalized by Prince’s 1984 album Purple Rain.

Additionally, slasher fatigue had definitely begun to set in. People who were upset by the violent content in hits like Halloween or 1980’s Friday the 13th may not have piped up at the time, feeling like those movies were one-off successes. However, more than six dozen major slasher movies hit U.S. theaters between the debut of Friday the 13th and the arrival of Silent Night, Deadly Night , making the latter the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Silent Night, Deadly Night ’s White Christmas

Have you ever heard of the Streisand effect? It’s the idea that the mere act of trying to censor something actually makes people more aware that it exists, and it’s the reason Silent Night, Deadly Night didn’t die an ignominious death in 1984.

Naturally, the fact that the slasher movie was causing a stir intrigued just as many people as angry. In addition to the core group of slasher fans that would have gone to see it anyway, plenty of audience members bought a ticket out of sheer curiosity during the two weeks that they were able to do so.

Therefore, the movie was able to more than triple its $750,000 budget, earning $2.5 million in theaters in the two weeks before it was pulled. The laws of Hollywood commerce being what they were, the movie naturally earned a sequel. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 demurely waited until 1987 to drop, by which point the controversy had died down. The movie didn’t cause a stir whatsoever. Nor did its 1989 sequel, or its direct-to-video standalone sequels from the early 1990s.

In fact, four-time Oscar nominee Mickey Rooney, who was one of the most vocal opponents of the original movie, eventually donned a Santa suit and went on his own deadly rampage in 1991’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker.

‘Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker’ (1991)Credit: Still Silent Films

The Christmas movie franchise continued to expand with two remakes, one in 2012 and one in 2025, bringing the total number of Silent Night, Deadly Night movies to a whopping seven. Ultimately, the controversy only helped it thrive, as it has now lasted longer than a number of other major slasher franchises that kicked off before the first installment debuted, including Psycho(five movies and a TV show), Prom Night(five movies), and Sleepaway Camp(four movies).

Have you seen Silent Night, Deadly Night? If you have, please let us know what you think of the movie! If not, feel free to chime in on whether the controversy makes you more or less interested in checking it out.