The 1980 Yuletide Horror Film Christmas Evil is John Water's Favorite Christmas Movie for a Reason: It's Great!
I am nothing if not obsessive. I am generally of the mindset that if something is worth doing it’s worth doing as intensely, aggressively and exhaustingly as possible.
For example a week ago I had never seen the notorious 1984 Christmas shocker Silent Night, Deadly Night despite its notoriety. I’ve cobbled together a career out of chronicling the reviled. With the possible exception of I Spit on Your Grave, Silent Night, Deadly Night is perhaps the single most reviled motion picture of the 1980s, and that includes The Last Temptation of Christ.
That was then. This is now. I’ve decided to celebrate the Christmas season over at my Substack newsletter Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas by writing up every movie in the Silent Night, Deadly Night series, including the surprisingly well-received 2012 reboot Silent Night, which, full disclosure, is nothing special or even particularly interesting.
I’ve watched all five movies in the original series—1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night, 1987’s Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, 1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out, 1990’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: The Initiation and finally 1991’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker.
There’s something notable and impressively insane about each film in the series. Silent Night, Deadly Night was of course huge national news and a legitimate flashpoint in our nation’s never-ending culture wars. Siskel & Ebert didn't just hate it; they found it morally repulsive and took the time to name and shame everyone involved with it, from its writer, director and producer to the studio that distributed it and its parent company. It was picketed by an aggregation of moralistic busybodies who eventually succeeded in getting the film pulled from theaters.
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is a cult classic that shamelessly re-uses about forty percent of its predecessor yet still manages to carve out its own identity as an essential cult classic for the ages through Eric Freeman’s iconic portrayal of crazed Christmas killer Ricky Caldwell, which climaxes giddily with the actor shouting “garbage day!” in a hypnotic singsong cadence at an unfortunate soul taking out his trash just before shooting him.
Not to be outdone, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out somehow secured the services of a genuine auteur in Monte Hellman and name actors like Richard Beymer, Robert Culp, Mulholland Drive’s Laura Harring in her film debut and horror icon Bill Moseley as Ricky Caldwell, who emerges from a six year coma and has his brain contained in a little dome just above his head.
That movie was weird! In an even stranger twist, the fourth entry in this most disreputable of franchises decided to do away with the whole “killer Santa Claus” thing and focused instead on a woman’s empowerment group that’s really just a coven of demonic she-demons and was directed by Brian Yuzna, who has major horror movie credibility due to his longstanding relationship with Stuart Gordon, whose classic films he produced before striking out on his own and directing the cult classic Society.
Last and also least Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker stars Mickey Rooney, who previously published an open letter in which he called the people who made Silent Night, Deadly Night “scum” and said they should be ran out of town, as Joe Petto, a punningly named toy-maker with an awful lot in common with Gepetto.
It wasn’t enough for me to watch, and then write about all of these movies in a mad rush. No, I had to go deeper and further so I decided to follow up my Silent Night, Deadly Night marathon with 1980’s Christmas Evil, AKA You Better Watch Out.
It’s a movie about a mentally ill man in a Santa suit who goes on a Yuletide killing spree that managed to not enrage the parents of America or become national news.
That’s partially because Christmas Evil wasn’t advertised on Saturday afternoon football games and didn’t have a poster that’s pure nightmare fuel, particularly for the ten and under crowd.
But Christmas Evil was not treated like a cynical, disgusting exploitation movie because it's not. Super-fan John Waters has called Christmas Evil the best Christmas movie ever made. I would not go that far but it could very well be the single greatest Christmas horror movie.
I wasn’t just impressed by Christmas Evil. I was blown away. It is a legitimately great motion picture thanks largely to Brandon Maggart, who stars as Christmas-obsessed misfit Harry Stadling.
The Yuletide obsessive’s life changes forever when, as a small child, his brother tells him that in their household the role of Santa Claus is played by their dad. Young Harry is further traumatized when he sees “Santa” in a carnal pose with his mother.
Harry nevertheless grows up to be one of those sad, poignant weirdoes for whom Christmas isn’t just a favorite holiday; it’s a way of life and pretty much their entire personality.
Harry’s home is festooned with Christmas kitsch. For him there is no such thing as too much Christmas or too much Santa Claus. He’s based his life and career on Santa Claus. He works at Jolly Dream, a toy factory run by cynical bastards who lost touch with their inner child while still small children and keeps a detailed list of which neighborhood children are naughty and which are nice.
He is, in other words, a deeply disturbed individual seemingly devoid of friends, romantic relationships or anything else that might interfere with his soul-consuming passion for Christmas.
For Harry making toys for all the good little girls and boys is a sacred duty, a solemn obligation. For the debached libertines around him, however, working in a toy factory is just another job, and not a particularly good one, either.
Christmas Evil methodically follows its unforgettable villain as he prepares for Christmas. When he’s in his own world singing Christmas songs, fussily assembling a homemade Santa suit or making toys he’s content, even blissful. Harry may not have a romantic partner or children or friends but he has Christmas and for a while that is enough.
Maggart plays Harry as a man-child with a mind so rigid that the hypocrisy and sleaziness of capitalism and adulthood send him into a murderous rage. He’d be fine if he could exist forever in a world with only nice children but this sick, sad, degraded world leads him to be a killer as well as a gift-giver.
Maggart is very good playing at playing a criminal.
Maggart makes Harry a very human monster. He gives the character an unexpected tenderness and vulnerability that calls to mind Anthony Perkins in Psycho. The highest and most deserved praise I can give Maggart here is that his performance deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Perkins’ iconic turn as Norman Bates.
Christmas Evil works so well as a 1970s-style character study about a sad, lost man out of touch with the world that it almost seems a shame that Harry has to kill people.
The protagonist’s reign of terror only begins after the film is half over. By that point we’ve had plenty of time to know Harry and his world. It’s hard not to empathize with someone in so much pain, who wants the world to be merry and bright and cannot accept its sordid darkness.
I was so impressed by the depth, complexity and richness of Maggart’s performance that halfway through the film I looked him up on Wikipedia. I don’t recall seeing Maggart in anything before (I have, he’s been in movies like Dressed to Kill and The World According to Garp) and the actor is so utterly convincing here that it felt like on some level Maggart WAS this character, that he’d somehow managed to become him on an existential level.
I was not terribly surprised to discover that Maggart had a very impressive career in television, theater and film. He was on Sesame Street at the very beginning of its run and picked up multiple Tony nominations.
But what really impressed me about Maggart’s background is that he’s Fiona Apple’s dad. THAT surprised me. And it impressed me. Considering what a remarkable and unique human being Apple is it makes sense that her father would be a brilliant character actor best known for playing a killer Kris Kringle. I kind of wish that I hadn’t looked him up because there was some dumb part of my brain that thought, “Oh my God, that’s Fiona Apple’s dad!” throughout the rest of the film.
Despite that unnecessary distraction Christmas Evil had me riveted from the first frame to the last. It’s a masterpiece that deserves to be part of the great canon of classic Christmas movies and not just because it stars Fiona Apple’s dad in one of the greatest performances in the history of horror.
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