Bloody Christmas

A nutter dressed as Santa Claus is roaming around some sleepy town in America wasting people who have been naughty (starting with an adulterer and her lover), and it's up to deputy whats-her-name and grumpy police chief Malcolm McDowell to sort him out.

I was getting fed up with slasher movies since they, at their worst, are just the same things you've seen over and over again (see Bunnyman massacre, Mask Maker etc). Silent Night IS the same sort of thing you've seen before, but it's really well made, contains actual tension, and is a beautiful film to look at.

Of course, there are plenty of undesirable folk for our killer Claus to perforate, from the bratty kid to the pervy priest to the pornographers, and you've got plenty of gore to go with it too (including a head split in two with an axe and someone getting fed into a woodchipper feet first). I'm no worshipper of Malcolm McDowell but here he's pretty funny as the ignorant police chief who won't listen to his deputy. "Don't put avacado on the burger" indeed.

Just shows that a good slasher film can be made if people can be arsed.

Okay 1st off i have to say the kills in this movie are done pretty well but may be a bit much for some who are not into overly grosome kills ex like the kills from old school slashers like Friday the 13th or Fredy! This movie follows alot of the horror movie tropes like ppl making the stupidest decions ever that no real person would ever make but if you can over look that and some of the B movie plot holes there can be some fun! I love christmas horror movies to turn a holiday about love giving and family and turning it into a nightmare is always fun to see how the world they build for the characters is always interesting to me. Malcom Mcdowell is way over the top not to the point of Nic cage but sometimes he had me laughing thinking there is no way the was the best take lol the way the characters act and talk to each other sometimes is way too fake and even pulls you out of the movie cause its just not how a real person would act lol. When it does happen i just had to remind my self its a B movie! Over all i think this could have been a really fun movie but as is id say its just your avg scary movie not good but not bad either.

Let me get this out of the way. I had not seen the original "Silent Night, Deadly Night" until last week. I am a huge horror fan and this one kind of slipped under my radar. The original is by itself pretty bad. The acting is bad and any shades of a good horror movie are lost in the mess of bad acting and nonsensical plot. This movie attempt to rectify the problems with the original by establishing a much simpler storyline. The kills are there for sure. The practical effects are for the most part pretty good. It's a welcome sign to see a horror film that attempts to take full advantage of the advances in practicals. There are some cool callbacks to the original and its sequel while at the same time the film separates itself from the original series. The major issue with the film is that it's just not very exciting. Kills happen, and they are cool, but there is just no tension built. Even though the storyline has been slimmed down compared to the original, it feels like they missed a lot of opportunities to develop some three-dimensional characters. Everyone is just kind of there. Malcolm McDowell is the weakest part of the movie. I'm not sure when he decided to start playing every character the same, but his crazy old man routine is getting stale. Jamie King is mostly okay. We really don't much of a back story on her character and her eventual transformation is kind of out of left field. Donal Logue is probably the best thing in the movie, but his character is also just another throw in. It's a weird movie because it looks professional enough to be a wide release movie, but the holes in the film are just too wide to overcome. All and all it's a fine rental if you have 90 minutes to waste, but it certainly doesn't break any new ground. The original is certainly not hallowed ground. It's the kind of movie that just begs to be remade. I'm fine with what we ended up with. This isn't The Exorcist, The Thing, or Halloween so I'm not going to go off the deep end over a classic being remade.

The police force of a remote Midwestern town search for a killer Santa Claus who is picking off citizens on Christmas Eve.

First of all, let me get this off my chest: the film takes place in the Midwest on Christmas Eve and there is not one flake of snow... and the grass is still green. Even when we have no snow on Christmas (rare, but possible) the grass is quite dead... not sure what these people were thinking.

And second, calling this a "loose remake" of the 1980s slasher "Silent Night, Deadly Night" seems to be just a way to get around the fact the idea of a killer Santa has already been done. The films have practically nothing in common beyond the title... and could be treated as completely unrelated without anyone noticing.

But comparing a 2012 slasher to a 1980s slasher is unfair from the start. The styles are different, the culture is different. And frankly, for as bad as most slashers are these days (particularly the remakes) this one holds up surprisingly well. We like seeing Santa chase people down, we love the ax... and we really love the wood chipper. Sure, I still prefer practical effects, but they did not go overboard on the CG like they could have.

A pretty straightforward remake of the sicko seasonal 1984 classic "Silent Night, Deadly Night", this is all just insane enough, mean-spirited enough, and sadistic enough, to tickle genre fans looking for a no-fooling-around good time. Filmed in my own home province of Manitoba, in Canada, it's actually set in Wisconsin, as a demented moralizer dressed in Santa Claus garb is hellbent on punishing the naughty - insufferable brats, pornographers, slutty teens, everyone is fair game. A young police deputy (the lovely Jaime King) who's not sure she's cut out to be an officer of the law is among those following the mutilated corpses that Psycho Santa is leaving in his wake. Die hard horror fans will relish the high body count and the plethora of practical gore; digital bloodshed is kept to a minimum. They'll also be happy with the amount of female skin on display; Courtney-Jane White, playing Tiffany, is a real looker, but it's Cortney Palm as porno actress Maria who delivers a pleasing dose of extended gratuitous nudity. Palm also figures in what has to be the highlight of the piece. I won't say too much, but let's just say it's similar to something that happens in the Coen brothers' "Fargo". Commendably, none of this is ever played TOO seriously, and fans of the original "Silent Night, Deadly Night" parts 1 and 2 will love the nods to memorable sequences and lines from those two films. This makes for good no-brainer entertainment, and it's done with a reasonable amount of slickness; note the lighting and the atmospheric quality of the final showdown with Aubrey and the killer. It's also worth a mention how the filmmakers are willing to slaughter the younger members of the cast. Director Steven C. Miller keeps the action flowing, and the cast gives this a great effort. King, who'd pulled remake duty in "My Bloody Valentine 3-D" as well, is winning in the lead, and veteran Malcolm McDowell is a total hoot as her macho, posturing sheriff. Donal Logue as cynical Santa performer Jim, Ellen Wong as dispatcher Brenda, Lisa Marie as Mrs. Morwood, and Brendan Fehr as ill-fated deputy Jordan round out a good group of actors. The only real complaint on this viewers' part is that there's no wintertime feel to any of this. Would it have killed the filmmakers to at least have SOME snow on the ground? Overall, though, not bad. Seven out of 10.