1 of 5 | Rohan Campbell plays Billy Chapman in “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Cineverse
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 11 (UPI) — Writer/director Mike P. Nelson and star Ruby Modine said Christmas and Halloween naturally go together in horror films like their Silent Night, Deadly Night, in theaters Friday. The film is a remake of the controversial 1984 killer Santa movie.
Rohan Campbell plays Billy Chapman, a man who saw a Santa suited killer murder his parents as a child and now dons a suit himself to kill people in December. Modine plays Pam, a clerk at Billy’s day job who bonds with him over violent outbursts around the holidays.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Modine says she continues Halloween all the way through Christmas.
“My Christmases are still sprinkled with Halloween,” Modine said. “All the way until January is Christmas and Halloween combined.”
Nelson said Christmas brings back memories of winters in Minnesota. Christmas lights and meals with family brought warmth to the cold.
“Hence why I wanted to do a Christmas movie, something that was cozy and warm but bring a little bit of the ultraviolence,” Nelson said. “Deck the halls with a little gore.”
The 1984 film was pulled from theaters after outcry from parent groups over showing a Santa Claus committing graphic murders. Even though the film was rated R, the marketing alerted young viewers to the killer Santa.
“It’s not a big deal anymore,” Nelson said. “To our producer Scott [Scheind]’s point, there were killer Santa films prior to Silent Night, Deadly Night. They were just more indie. That was the first one that hit the mainstream in a way.”
Now, other horror icons get in on the Christmas spirit. Terrifier 3 had Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) don a Santa suit, and included a mall Santa amongst his victims.
Cineverse releases both the Terrifier films and Silent Night, Deadly Night.
“Wouldn’t that be something if those worlds collided at some point?” Nelson suggested.
The mere mention of Art the Clown scared Modine, who is herself a horror veteran from the Happy Death Day movies.
“Oh, I just got chills,” she said. “He’s so scary.”
Nelson’s take on Silent Night, Deadly Night is that Billy kills people who have committed some sort of sin. He still speaks with Charles, the voice of the killer Santa who offed his parents.
“I wanted Billy to be somebody that you could kind of cheer for,” Nelson said. “He’s doing God’s work or St. Nick, whatever.”
Pam doesn’t kill people but she has an explosive temper too. She is sympathetic to Billy, but of course does not learn the full extent of his rage until later in the film.
“They want to keep their demons at bay, so to speak, but inevitably the explosion is what creates a beautiful, chaotic mess,” Modine said. “It could be the most epic mortal combat of all time or romance. You have to watch the film to see which way it goes.”
When a youth hockey team gangs up on Pam’s brother, she takes to the ice to defend him. Modine wore shoes with modified soles to allow her to walk on ice, but still slipped taking swings at stuntmen.
“It felt like I was walking on solid ground,” she said. “I mean, it didn’t stop because I fell.”
Billy targets a lecherous old customer and a rude hockey mom. One major set piece shows Billy attending a Nazi Christmas party and doing away with the whole room.
“As a child of growing up and being obsessed with the Indiana Jones films and them being like the big enemies, the forever bad guys, I was like when am I ever going to get this opportunity again to really just go full bore?” Nelson said.
“You get to see a side of Billy that he’s not just going along for the ride. He’s got these principles.”
Nelson also paid homage to the 1984 film’s most famous kill, in which horror icon Linnea Quigley got impaled on the antlers of a mounted deer head. Nelson wanted to give his antlers kill a different meaning.
“I wanted it to be in the movie,” Nelson said. “I wanted it to be something that affected Billy as his first kill.”
The 1984 film spawned four sequels and another 2012 remake. Nelson also has plans for a sequel.
“If I make a sequel, you will get to see parts that happened from this movie that were not in this movie,” Nelson said. “Not stuff that we shot, but my hope is you’ll get to see maybe a bit more of the mysterious Charlie and that you’ll get to see a little bit of Rohan’s Billy at another point in his life.”
Modine said she appreciates how horror movies give her a safe outlet for fears. The daughter of Mathew Modine and Caridad Rivera, she went to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City as a psychology major before she took a fateful opportunity to act in Los Angeles.
“I’m grateful for the ‘cut,'” Modine said. “I’m running away from somebody and Mike gets to go, ‘Okay, that’s it’ as opposed to what happens in real life. The very first film that I ever did was a horror film and it’s been a really scary, nightmare-driven career since then.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, undeniably, is the queen of scream queens. Appearing in 1978’s “Halloween,” Curtis spent four decades battling the undead murderer Michael Myers and teaching the “last girl” in every slasher flick since how to survive. Photo by Chris Chew/UPI | License Photo
