How ‘Friday the 13th’ Inspired a Movie About Santa Claus
One of the most famous horror films of all time was Friday the 13th. While the movie was not a critical success, it inspired numerous slasher movies that came after it — including a Christmas horror movie about a killer Santa Claus. The film in question is very different from Friday the 13th in a lot of ways. It’s actually a lot better than its fore-bearer.
‘Friday the 13th’ was part of a wave of slasher films that inspired a killer Santa Claus movie
1980 was the year of the slasher film. Some of the slasher titles released that year include Christmas Evil, New Year’s Evil, Prom Night, Terror Train, He Knows You’re Alone, Funeral Home, Maniac, Mother’s Day, and Don’t Answer the Phone! While some of these films are underrated or have cult followings, the only slasher films from 1980 that spawned franchises are Friday the 13th and Prom Night — and the former series is so much more famous than the latter!
In a 2013 interview with The Duquesne Duke, producer Scott Schneid discussed the origin of his movie Silent Night, Deadly Night. “I received a screenplay from a former student from a college screenwriting course I taught,” he said. “It was called He Sees You When You’re Sleeping. It was very amateur: a slasher movie with a Santa Claus character in it.
“Even though the screenplay was unprofessional, there was an idea embedded in it — a psycho dressed in a Santa Claus suit — I felt was fantastic,” he added. “This was the time of the first Friday the 13th and Halloween, and I said, ‘Wow. No one’s done anything like this for a teen audience: what about a killer Santa?’ We threw the script out basically and developed a whole new project.”
‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ was not the 1st flick about a murderous Santa Claus
Interestingly, Schneid was wrong about Silent Night, Deadly Night. It was not the first slasher movie about a killer in a Santa Claus suit. Christmas Evil and To All a Goodnight are both about murderers who dress like Jolly Old Saint Nicholas. However, both of those movies flew under the radar.
Writer Michael Hickey was brought in to pen a new screenplay for Silent Night, Deadly Night. Hickey discussed how the relationship between the final film and his script. “As for changes going into production, the movie as it stands, is at least 99% faithful to the script that was turned in,” he recalled. “The dialogue is all verbatim, except for that of one actor — the actor who played Andy, Billy’s boss in the stock room of the toy store, ad-libbed a couple of lines of dialogue.” Hickey said that he hates hearing the ad-libbed dialog when he watches the film.
Why ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ is a better movie than ‘Friday the 13th’
While Friday the 13th and Silent Night, Deadly Night are both slasher movies, they take very different approaches to the genre. The latter is a whodunnit with little to no character development. Meanwhile, Silent Night, Deadly Night is essentially a character study about its villain. While Silent Night, Deadly Night, is the more complex film, Friday the 13th is more famous. That’s because it was distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Love or hate Friday the 13th, its influence on the horror genre is hard to overstate.
