---

I am in Xmas denial. Like…‘tis the season and all, but I’m not super feeling it this year. And I really didn’t/don’t have much in the way of an Xmas TBR. I just started a cool (so far) collection of Hanukkah crime short stories, and then I had this, the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT novelization. 

“Silent Night, Deadly Night” is not one of my franchises. As a teenager, I saw the first movie once or twice, but it was never a favorite. And if I’ve ever seen any of the sequels, I don’t remember them at all. It’s just one of those things…while the imagery from the covers of the VHS tapes at the video store are etched in my memories, these were just never movies I bothered with. I did go back and rewatch the original movie prior to reading this novelization, because it had been so long and for one reason or another, I just decided to watch the movie first.

Which of course got me thinking of the concept of a movie “holding up,” something I think about often & have complicated feelings about. I think it can be incredibly hard to be objective about this, and that the line between a movie that holds up and a movie that was just a favorite of yours when you were younger is very blurry. Like, to my way of thinking the original “Halloween” is a stone cold masterpiece, and it holds up extremely well. 

But maybe I can’t be anything but subjective about it, because me & my friends were utterly obsessed with the “Halloween” franchise as teenagers. 

So does “Silent Night, Deadly Night” hold up for me? No. It doesn’t. It’s got its nostalgic appeal, for sure. But I think the pacing of the movie is pretty choppy & it’s a bit of a slog to get through. By design, it’s an ugly, mean-spirited movie, and to that end, it was never destined to be a favorite for me. 

One thing I had no awareness of (I was five years old when this movie came out) was how controversial it was when it was released. There’s an introduction from the producers of the movie in the novelization detailing a bit about the pushback against the movie, but I did a bit of online digging and it seems like ultimately…the fervor over the movie had more to do with the idea of a killer Santa Claus movie than it did with the actual content of the film. Because there really isn’t anything in SNDN that’s more shocking or graphic than the Halloweens and Nightmare on Elm Sts. and Friday the 13ths of the day. 

But the novelization changes all that. In that introduction the producers say they wanted Armando Muñoz to feel creatively free, to really push the envelope. He did that & more, and the results are…unpleasant. I had a lot of issues with this book, but enjoyed it to a point. But holy shit, the story as it’s written here would never in a million years have been released theatrically in the US in 1984. Hell, it wouldn’t be released now. Scenes from the movie that are quick & forgettable become grotesquely violent & shocking.  I’ll try to talk about the book as its own entity as much as I can, but I’ll inevitably be comparing it to the movie in places. 

After witnessing the brutal murder of his parents at the hands of a homicidal man dressed up as Santa Claus, five-year-old Billy Chapman and his baby brother, Ricky are sent to Saint Mary’s Home for Orphaned Children. 

Billy is a bright, sensitive kid, but he is suffering from a significant amount of trauma & PTSD, all of it very much connected to the Christmas season. And especially Santa Claus. And rather than try to get him the help that he needs, the cruel nun in charge of the orphanage, Mother Superior, exploits Billy’s fear just to watch him suffer.

This is one of the big changes from the movie, as I recall it. In the movie, yes, Mother Superior is awful. A religious fanatic, an abuser, just a horrible person. But in the book we learn that she isn’t just cold & cruel, she is actively trying to further traumatize Billy, specifically. She just hates him. Thinks he’s a big baby. So any & all attempts to liven the orphanage up around Christmas (with decorations or visits from Santa) are done not to enrich the lives of all the kids at the orphanage, but to torment Billy. It’s just so fucked up.

After Billy ages out of the orphanage, he gets his own apartment & begins to work at a toy store. Sister Margaret is the kindly nun who champions Billy & helps him secure both the apartment and the job. You could argue that in the movie, Sister Margaret is a kind-hearted, innocent character, but oh boy. In the book she has a twisted sexual obsession with Billy, which is fucking gross because she’s basically been raising him since he was five. As Billy gets older & discovers masturbation, the reader is subjected to WAYYYYY TOO MANY scenes with Sister Margaret sneakily consuming Billy’s ejaculate from soiled socks. 

Look, no kink-shaming on this blog but what the fuck are we doing here. This was super off-putting and felt really unnecessary. Muñoz succeeds in dramatically upping the kill count & shock factor in the book, but some of the problematic sexual content was just too much. 

I think I ultimately felt like Muñoz was in over his head with this. Adding so much extra content…it explains some things that were never explained in the movie, but at 400 pages, I’d argue that some of the things didn’t need further explaining. There’s some vague attempts to really dive into Billy’s fragile psyche, leading up to & during his own murderous rampage while dressed as Santa. But it all feels a bit silly, to be honest.

One of my biggest issues with this book is the style it was written in, though given that I’m not a writer, I think I’ll struggle to explain. I tried looking up the difference between “third person omniscient” narration and what is referred to as “head hopping.” As I understand it, head hopping is considered poor writing, sloppy. But I think that’s what was happening in this book maybe? The POV/perspective would seem to shift all the time, with no discernible break. I’m definitely not explaining this well, but it was an unbelievably jarring reading experience.   

The book is a success in that clearly Muñoz wanted to lean extremely hard into the exploitation/sleaze elements of the story. I have no ability to gauge whether fans of the movie will enjoy all the big changes & additions to the story, or if there are real “Silent Night, Deadly Night” purists out there.

Either way, a somewhat unpleasant reading experience for me overall, but still, Xmas horror is always something I’ll enjoy in some capacity.

Thanks to Titan Books for sending this one along!