For those too young to remember to who weren't even born yet, Silent Night, Deadly Night was the movie that the parents hated! The commercials and poster featured and Ax wielding Santa that simply enraged parents groups. There were protests all over the country which is pretty shocking to think about today. Our society has become so desensitized that I doubt a killer Santa film would garner so much as a raised eyebrow today.

Once you get past the hype the Silent Night, Deadly Night is one of the best Christmas Horror flicks made but its also has a by-the-numbers slasher plot. As a boy, Billy and his family are visiting his grandpa at a retirement home. Grandpa seems non-responsive to the world around him until he's left alone with Billy and then he goes ape shit crazy ranting about how Christmas is the scariest night of the year because Santa is coming to punish the bad kids. Billy is now Understandably worried now about seeing Santa but promises his Grandpa that he'll be a good boy. But fate has other plans for Billy and his family.

On the way home the family come across a broken down car in the road driven by a man in a Santa suit. Of course this is the same Santa that just finished robbing a liquor store and killing the sales clerk. Billy starts to freak out telling his parents to drive on but they don't and Santa kills his parents while Billy runs away and hides in the bushes watching. Only Billy and his baby brother Ricky survive.

Fast forward to years later and we find Billy & Ricky are living in a orphanage and Billy is still terrified of Santa. It doesn't help that the Mother Superior tries forcing him to sit on Santa's Lap or that he's witness to the Mother Superior beating two kids for having sex while she screams about how naughty they are. The filmmakers at least make an attempt to make the killing spree he goes on later in life seem plausible.

Billy gets older and finds a job at a local toy store and everything seems perfect. In a bad 80's montage with horrible Randy Newman type music, we see Billy stocking shelves, cleaning up, helping little kids reach things, smiling at customers, and getting to know the store hottie. However Christmas finally comes to the and Billy is asked to play Santa for the kids. He reluctantly does it and tells the kids that squirm or complain that if they're not good he's going to punish them while their parents look on and comment how great he is with their kids.

Christmas Eve arrives and the store closes for a little Christmas party. Billy, still dressed as Santa, see's the hottie he's had a crush on get attacked by one of his co-workers and he snaps. He kills everyone that works at the store and heads out on the town. We're given some decent creative kills here Billy does decapitations, antler impaling, and some bludgeoning, All the while screaming "NAUGHTY!". Christmas morning Billy heads back to the orphanage to kill Mother Superior but is stopped by a local detective before he can finish the job. The ending leaves a lot to be desired and there could have been some more killings in there too but for a typical 80's slasher film it's still pretty good.

Silent Night, Deadly Night has really become something of a classic Christmas horror movie even with all its failings. As with many slasher films of the time it became a franchise spawning 4 sequels. The second film is horrible by any standard but features a bizarre killing spree by Billy's little brother Ricky. He's ridiculously sarcastic and says really stupid things before shooting people while walking down a suburban street. It may be worth the watch just for that. Parts 3, 4 and 5 have been out of print for some time but were just a week ago reissued on DVD. I'll be reviewing them next week for HauntedHouse.com.

5.5 out of 10 bloody axes

- Henry Northrup

REVIEW: The House of the Devil
Directed by Ti West
Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov , Greta Gerwig , AJ Bowen , Dee Wallace

Ah the 1980's! The era of big hair, happy non-threatening metal bands, tight jeans, and satanic panic! Back in the 1980's I can still remember the panic over anything that seemed satanic. whether it be music, movies, or people the parents were all over it like white on rice. Even in my home town we had the usual rumors that every small town no doubt had about satanic cults that met under bridges, in cemeteries, or in the darkness of the woods. Looking back on it now 20 years later it seems really surreal that we actually worried about that kind of thing. The Satanic panic fizzled out in the 90's and is pretty much dead today. For all the rumors and speculation there was little to no proof that such practices in worship of the devil ever occurred anywhere. Nor that anyone was ever hurt or killed because of it. Its in this world that Ti West (The Roost, Trigger Man) has set his latest film, House of the Devil. A film that captures the look and feel of every satanic panic film from the period so well that it you might thing its a long lost gem from the 80's!

Ti West's latest independent film 'The House of the Devil takes us back to the early 1980s and the height of the satanic panic that gripped communities all over the country. It's the early 80's and Samantha, played by Jocelin Donahue, is a college student looking for a new place to live off campus. She finds the perfect house but has to come up with the $300 to move in before the following Monday. Luckily a babysitter position out in the middle of nowhere turns up on a campus bulletin board. Samantha's friend Megan (Greta Gerwig), worried that she might be walking into a horror movie, offers to drive Samantha to the house and make sure its ok before leaving. Of course everything is far from ok. Upon arriving to the Victorian home, Mr. Ulman, played by the always creepy Tom Noonan, explains that the job isn't babysitting a child but rather a invalid woman who's bed bound and hardly a bother. Samantha's reluctant to stay but is eventually won over by the offer of $400 for one nights work. Megan tries to talk Samantha into leaving but she refuses. Mr. Ulman and his wife leave for the evening and then strange things begin to happen.

Ti West's films have always been an acquired taste. Films like the Roost and Trigger Man have been throwbacks to previous decades of cinema and they burn slowly. House of the Devil is no different. Samantha spends much of the films running time creeping around the house and discovering bits and pieces of the mystery to keep things moving. Do the Ulmans really live in this house? Are they who they say they are? How does the lunar eclipse play into the evenings events? All these questions are eventually answered but only after a slow build up. The events of the night manage to pull you to the edge of your seat ever so slowly as the dread mounts. But, many may find that the films finale doesn't quite match with the level of build up and it feels like a bit of a letdown.

One could argue that that House of the Devils conclusion is true to many of the Satanic Panic flicks of the 70's and 80's and I tend to agree. I grew up watching these kinds of films and rarely did they end any bigger or explain things as well as House of the Devil. The film works because of the setting. Even though it takes place in the early 1980's it doesn't dwell on the time period trying to make a statement or poke fun at it. Instead it just happens to be a story that takes place in that time period. Everything from the performances, the wardrobe and even the credits of the film will make you feel like you watching a lost film from the 1980's. I'm convinced if you saw this without knowing what it was on TV one night you would assume it was made in 1983.
In Jocelin Donahue, West has the perfect 1980s heroine. She's equal parts Margot Kidder and Karen Allen. Her portrayal of Samantha and her journey is what the whole film is built upon and with a lesser actress House of The Devil could have been a disaster.

Unfortunately I doubt most modern horror fans would get what the movie is even about or would find it boring. For fans of grindhouse cinema, devil films from the 80's, or just those who want to take a trip back in time, House of the Devil is a great trip down memory lane.

8 bloody Axes out of 10

With the Holiday season now in full swing we wanted to kick things off in style. HauntedHouse.com will be presenting trailers, news, and reviews of holiday horror films in the build up to Christmas day. To start thing off we present a short horror holiday flick called TREEVENGE

TREEVENGE is directed by Jason Eisener Jason Eisener and independent film maker from Canada who gained a bit of notoriety for his excellent "Hobo with a Shotgun" trailer he created for in a contest for the film GrindHouse. Watch his latest brilliant opus TREEVENGE below. Definitely NSFW.