Silent Night, Deadly Night

Billy Chapman witnesses his parents' murder on Christmas Eve when the killer is dressed as Santa Claus. The trauma deepens during his years at an orphanage run by a punitive Mother Superior, and it follows him into adulthood. At eighteen, Billy works in a toy store, and when he is asked to put on a Santa suit himself during the holiday season, the memory of that night overwhelms him.

Charles E. Sellier Jr. directed the film, his follow-up to his earlier features after a career producing television movies. Michael Hickey wrote the screenplay, and Ira Barmak produced. Robert Brian Wilson plays Billy at eighteen, with Lilyan Chauvin as Mother Superior, Gilmer McCormick as Sister Margaret, Charles Dierkop as the Killer Santa, Toni Nero as Pamela and Randy Stumpf as Andy. The production, made by Slayride on a budget of about one million dollars, took roughly twice that at the worldwide box office. Around forty-seven cast members and sixty crew members are credited.

On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 5.8 from about twenty-two thousand votes, while on TMDB it sits at 5.9 from more than four hundred votes. A critics' rating of 5.8 from thirty-one reviews places it close to those audience scores, a sign that opinion on the film has settled rather than divided sharply. Released in November 1984 and running seventy-nine minutes, it belongs to the horror and thriller genres.