BILLY THE KILLER SANTA FROM SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT!!
From all of us here at Arrow in the Head, here's wishing all you guys and ghouls a very-merry-scary Christmas and upcoming Happy new year. Be safe, be civil, be motherf*cking drunk!
Now, with those priceless pearls of wisdom out of the way, on to this week's yuletide Dissection. But instead of focusing on a real life writer, director or actor this time out, we thought it'd be a whole lot of fun if we carved up a killer-character from one of our most treasured Christmastime slasher joints. That's right y'all, we're talking about little badass Billy from the controversially cruel 1984 video nasty…SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT. What a guy! After witnessing his parents get savagely slaughtered by liquor-store-robbing, Santa-suit-wearing criminal – Billy's deep psychic scars and tormented memories come back to haunting reality 10 years later. He himself suits-up in red and white, straps on the bushy beard and ultimately goes on an unrelenting kill-crazy rampage. And that's just the start. So, as this truly black-hearted and mean-spirited slasher classic celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, it only seems right we reciprocate and give Billy (played by Robert Brian Wilson) from SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT the present he deserves. Let's Dissect!
BEST WORK
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No joke, there's some ruthlessly crafted homicidal handy-work in Santa's gaudy gift bag. So bountiful in fact it's actually quite tough to choose which present to unwrap and marvel at first. Think about it. Baleful little Billy exacts a sick Christmas-light strangulation, stabs a girl in the gut with a box-cutter and flays her open like a fish with a 6" incision. He hammer-claws his boss' forehead to death, lands a bow and arrow shot plum through another bitch's back and out through her sternum, then plants an ax-head dead into the chest of a state trooper. Santa just keeps on giving doesn't he?! However, there are two gross omissions in that litany you must be if not aware of, flat out mad at. Fuck yeah I'm talking about the wall-mounted-deer-antler-impalement and delicious sleigh-ride decollation! Peep it…
Without a doubt, the most original and profligate death scene in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT happens to also be my favorite. Occurring at the dead-apogee of his murderous rampage (the peak of the rollercoaster if you will), Billy just so happens to burst in on the homestead of a pair of horny teenagers getting freaky. Enter the inimitable Linnea Quigley, scream queen extraordinaire, in all her nubile ripeness. Already parading around the house topless, her pert tits aflutter, when Billy comes storming in he just can't seem to control his ire. My man goes berserk, quickly corralling the hot blonde, squeezing her tight, only to lift her fine ass up off the ground and – somewhat redolent of the meathook scene in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE – fully impale the bitch on a giant pair of deer antlers hanging on the wall. Now that's what I call getting stuffed and mounted! Such a great scene, so fully realized, punctuated with the final medium-close-up of Quigley as her tits dangle and blood dribbles from her mouth to her chest. Utter bliss!
And speaking of pure merriment, what's better than watching a happily unsuspecting sleigh rider get his motherf*cking dome lopped off? WOW! Talk about saving the best for the last! As Billy makes one last ditch effort to evade the coppers and keep his killing streak intact, he finds himself hiding on a nearby ski-slope, or at least a makeshift one. There, as he waits for a bobsledder to descend the hill, just as the victim nears the bottom, Billy jumps out of nowhere and with one fell swoop of the ax-blade…like butter…shaves the dude's head completely off of his neck. Even better? We see the immediate aftermath, as a bobsledder's friend looks on in pure horror as his pal's head comes gorily rolling down the pristine mountain slope. Then we see the body…a blackish blood smeared like oil all over the kid's Christmas sweater…a gruesome stump where his head used to reside. It's a deliciously decadent death-scene, and easily one of the most memorable under Santa Billy's utility belt!
WORST WORK
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As thankful as we all are for the films unbridled grue and graphic mid-80s carnage, there's clearly one death scene that feels very out of place and it is a goofily implausible death scene to boot. Of course, any super fan of the flick knows I'm speaking of the literal throwaway fatality scene toward the end. When Billy, at the near pinnacle of his fevered rampage, runs through the neighbor's house, up the stairs, only to find an unsuspecting bystander in his way. What does he do? How does he respond? Instead of carving that sucker up in a commensurately grisly way, all Billy does is grab the dude by the lapels and launch him out of a second story window. Sure, he kicks, chokes and slams him around a bit first, but really, all took to send dude into eternal sleep was toss him out of the window? Even lamer, the dude happens to land in a patch of grass, right next to a mound of snow. Hardly a fatal fall, right? At least we get a medium-close-up of the aftermath a few moments later, where it's revealed large shards of glass extruding from dude's face were the more likely cause of death. Still, too tame given the barbarous comparisons.
TRADEMARKS
Get SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III: BETTER WATCH OUT Here
Aside from the repetitive trance-like muttering of idioms like "naughty" and "punished" right before each of his victims is slain, I'd argue Billy boy's most glaring hallmark is his indiscriminate butchery. Good grief! Dude plays absolutely no favorites, shows not one ounce of clemency, instead comports himself as an equal-opportunity mass-murderer…albeit with the most Christmas spirit we've seen out of such an unhinged psychopath. Youths, elders, male, female, good guy, bad guy, hell…nuns aren't even safe around this f*cking whacko!
And to that end, just as his killing spree is littered with a varied degree of victimhood, so too are his tools of terror. My man isn't content with just a single sharp instrument or blunt object to fell a foe, oh hell no, dude gets creative with it. Knives, antlers, axes, hammers, bow and arrows, Christmas lights…Old Jolly Saint Dick gifts us with an assorted array of murderous madness. We should feel grateful!
HIDDEN GEMS
Get SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 4: THE INITIATION Here
We teased them a tad up top, rightly so, what's a Christmas without an early peek at the goods right? Well, decorating the tree of grisly mayhem are a pair of horror ornaments in SNDN that never seem to lose their luster. And frankly, they couldn't be more different.
The first isn't so much hidden as it is easily overlooked. The very first fatality Billy exacts in the film happens right after he sees a broad he had his eye on get molested in the storage room of the department store he works in. After a long drawn-out hypnotic reverie, Billy rips off a strand of big-bulb Christmas lights and brutally strangles the grease-ball with brute force, lifting him up off his feet a good three feet to do the job right. And not only does he clinch the cord so damn tight that drawn is blood from the dude's neck, the best part of the scene is the way director Charles E. Sellier Jr. films the dude's quaking boots, dangling in midair, as his life is slowly choked away. It's some Coen brothers shite right there!
Immediately following is another gorgeously graphic death scene that feels like it could really only be made in the year it was, 1984, the halcyon days of hardcore slasher gore. So, as Billy just saved a broad from being raped on sight, you think she's at all grateful? Hell nah, she's quick to call Billy a crazy sumbitch, which only incites further rage in the sadistic Santa. How does he respond? He cold jabs a box-cutter blade (exacto knife) into the bitch's gut, and slices upward a good six inches to her sternum. The chick writhes, moans and bleeds out like a stuck hog. Or a flayed bluegill! Seriously, there's no obligatory cutaways here, we see the entire money-shot from penetration point, carve job and ugly aftermath. It's the kind of slasher-flick carnage that would all but disappear only a few years later with the Reagan era MPAA neuter job that rendered a lot of late 80s slasher joints impotent. Not here…Santa's got balls!
OVERALL
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As you can clearly see, big bad Billy from SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is one cruel customer. He hacks, carves, flays, shoots, chops, dices and decapitates with great frequency, zero discrimination and a whole lot of motherf*cking Christmas spirit. For 30 years now Billy has spread his annual yuletide terror, more or less becoming the Father Christmas of Sadistic Santas. Played with brooding intensity by Robert Brian Wilson, given superbly lethal direction by Charles E. Sellier Jr., Billy's demented vengeance and savage bouts of bloodletting are gifts that keep on giving. Do wise and have yourself a SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT this Christmas!