Horny Holiday Horrors: Part One

Greetings my friends, and welcome back to Castle Rackula. This week, my flamboyant cousin Count Ballsackula dragged me to go see Twilight. I was impressed by what I saw of Kristen Stewart (can’t wait to see her play lesbian dominatrix Joan Jett), but I think he was more interested in Robert Pattinson.

In the past, Count Ballsackula has dragged me to see Interview with the Vampire, Gayracula, and to Truman Capote’s table at Studio 54.

But I digress. The subject at hand is holiday horror movies, which I will be exploring throughout the month of December.

We will begin with the most notorious of the genre, Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Santa-themed slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night was directed by Charles E. Sellier, Jr., the man behind Grizzly Adams and the puzzlingly non-nude skiing comedy Snowballin’.

As the film begins, we first see protagonist Billy Chapman as a child visiting his catatonic grandfather in the hospital on Christmas Eve. When Billy is alone with him, the grandfather suddenly wakes up and tells Billy that Santa Claus is actually to be feared because, though he gives presents to good children, he seeks out and punishes the naughty ones.

And there’s only one kind of naughty that counts in a movie like this.

Later that night, Billy witnesses a psychotic criminal wearing a Santa Claus suit shoot and kill his father, then rape and butcher his mother (Tara Buckman), but not before he tears off her top to give us a look at her snow globes.

Three years later on Christmas Eve, Billy is in a Catholic orphanage and peeps though a keyhole to see Barbara Stafford and her left ornament as she gets it on with her boyfriend. But the Mother Superior breaks up the action just as Billy flashes back to his topless mother.

After he turns eighteen, Billy leaves the orphanage to work in a toy store. When Christmas comes around and Billy is asked to put on a Santa suit for the children, he starts telling the children, rather ominously, that Santa’s job is to punish the naughty boys and girls.

At the office party that night, Billy (still dressed as Santa) walks in on his boss, drunk on spiked eggnog, attempting to stick his yule log into a less than enthusiastic, but thankfully topless, Toni Nero. At the sight of this, Billy snaps and, chanting, strangles the guy with Christmas lights and butchering Toni with a box cutter.

This initial act of violent punishment starts a bloody killing spree whose victims include everyone at the office party, two high school bullies, and scream queen Linnea Quigley after she has shown off her rack.

In all, four actresses get topless, although Barbara Stafford, who never made another movie before or since, only showed one boob.

Next week, we’ll take a look at the imitators spawned by Silent Night, Deadly Night, and its plucky pickets-sell-tickets attitude.

But before I wrap up, I would like to dedicate this week’s column to acting legend Paul Benedict, a true gentleman who has just shuffled off this mortal coil.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go dig my mistletoe belt buckle out of the attic.

Until next week’s second round of holiday horrors, fangs for the mammaries!