Absolutely brilliant

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

"Silent Night, Bloody Night" is a frustrating film. It manages to set a great mood--chilling and brutal. Yet, it then seems to lose so much momentum late in the film--and left me feeling totally uninterested.When the film begins, you learn that a rich guy died 20 years ago under mysterious circumstances. In the meantime, his home has sat abandoned until recently when his son declares that he's going to sell the place. Soon after his attorney arrives in town to finalize the deal, folks start getting hacked to pieces (the first few are amazingly realistic). All this worked well. However, to explain who it was and how it was, the film had a HUGE and awkward flashback sequence that seemed to take up the last third of the movie!! Surely all this could have been done in a much more straight forward and less sloppy manner. And, as a result the film left me wondering if perhaps a re-write might have resulted in this becoming a much more popular and worthy movie. As it is, I'd only recommend it to die-hard horror fans or folks wanting to see a young Mary Waronov in a major role.

Made in 1972, but not released until 1974, 'Silent Night, Bloody Night' ('Night of the Dark Full Moon) stands as an (undeservedly) obscure footnote to the slasher genre which went onto blossom in the late seventies/early eighties with the likes of 'Halloween' and 'Friday the 13th'…and which has been a Hollywood staple ever since. However, while its footnote status could be argued to be undeserved in that it is actually a fine exercise in suspense as well as a brutal exercise in obsession and madness, it is somewhat understandable as the movie's charms are somewhat obscured by a certain amount of low-budget B-movie sloppiness.The film takes place as a flashback from final girl Diane (Woranov) and relates the attempted sale of a house-cum-asylum owned by a reclusive local man by the name of Wilfred Butler and which, after his death is passed to his grandson Jeffery (Patterson) and subsequently abandoned. Jeffery hires a big-city lawyer type who travels up to the town where he meets the mayor, the sheriff, Tess the switchboard operator, and the mute Mr. Towman, all of whom show some concern about the house and its sale. The atmosphere from the off is eerie and oppressive, due in part to the looming presence of the house, the oddness of the locals, and also in part from the fact that, intentional cinematographic choice or not, the film is very dark. To this is added the information that a lunatic is loose and when people start dying Diane and Jeffery begin to uncover the disturbing history that the house has been witness to.As the plot begins to unfold, culminating in a bizarre sepia-tinted recollection (which has cameos from a couple of people famous for hanging out in Warhol's Factory), I was surprised by how twisted and genuinely horrific the backstory actually is. However, I must admit that in the first 30 minutes I was tempted to stop watching the film on a couple of occasions as I felt it to be a bit amateurish! This was mainly due to the overuse of narration which seemed to be a lazy way to communicate what's going on: simply telling, rather than integrating it into dialogue or communicating it through cinematic craft etc. In addition, the film breaks its own logic as the whole story is told as a reminiscence from Diane which in literary terms situates the film as a first-person limited narrative and yet there are countless scenes which don't feature her and which she would therefore have no knowledge of and be unable to recollect.Having said this, I am happy I kept with the film as, whether despite or because of its flaws, the overall impact of the movie was more than I was expecting and many ideas in the film stayed with me for a good while afterwards. Overall, 'Silent Night, Bloody Night' is a gritty, intelligent, and surprisingly affecting film, which deserves slightly more recognition than it has…but which nonetheless serves its role in the hidden history of the slasher movie admirably and with pride.*************************Public domain movie. Watch for free here (as 'Silent Night, Bloody Night'): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGmLrLn0xY

***SPOILERS*** When the late Wilfred Butler's, Philip Bruns, grandson Jeffery, James Paterson,decided to put the deserted Butler House up for sale thing started popping in the little New England town of New Willard MA. For one thing a deranged lunatic escaped from the local mental institution and made his way straight to the house to murder everyone of prominence in town. It turned out to be NY lawyer John Carter, Patrick O'Neal,and his lover and private secretary Ingrid, Astrid Heere, who were only doing the paperwork for Jeffery in order to put his house up for sale, and not residents of the town, to become his first victims.As we soon find out the Butler House has a long and bloody history behind it. It was there on Christmas Eve 1950 that the man of the house John Butler who was absent or away from it since 1935 paid the house a visit and set himself on fire killing himself! Now with Butler's grandson Jeffery selling the place the ghost of the Butler House's past as well as that of John Butler himself have come to life with what would turn out to be deadly results! We get the story of what happened from Diane Adams, Mary Morovov, who's father played by Walter Able is the Mayor of New Willard. Diane seems to be one of the few people in the movie who survived the escaped lunatic's bloody rampage and live to tell about it. The story about the Butler House and Butler himself is a tale of murder insanity and debauchery that goes back as far as 50 years ago to the late 1920's. And it was Butler who all by him turned the house into his personal insane asylum that lead to the murders,by the inmates, of his 6 year old daughter Maryanne and the carnage that was to accrue in the place some 40 years later. And it was the town council of New Willard who were, together with Butler, to end up paying for it. But it's we the audience watching the film who end up suffering the most in trying to follow what's going on in that the lighting in the movie is so bad that you, like a blind man, have to feel your way around it and try to guess what's happening in the film. Since some of the most important scenes in it, in who gets murdered by the escaped maniac, are filmed in almost total darkness.***SPOILERS*** The big surprise in the film is it's ending that at one point, in a long ten minute flashback scene, is filmed in black & white with a brownish tint to show how the Butler House turned into the horror that it eventually became. That set up the even bigger surprise in the movie that came when it's revealed just what Diane's connection to Jeffery together with her father and the members of the town council connection to Butler had to do with what was going on in the movie, past & present, in the first place. And even more important who exactly the escaped lunatic who was both faceless and nameless all throughout the film really is!P.S James Paterson who played Jeffery Butler unfortunately never lived to see himself in this later to become, it's release was held up for two years, cult horror classic dying at the age of 40 in August 1972 just weeks after the movie was finished filming.

I wanted to like this movie. In fact, I like watching low budget horror movies so I thought I would like this. But it didn't work for me. To be fair, I didn't find the movie to be awful or even bad. There are some things that work. The movie often has a moody, somewhat creepy feeling to it. Occasionally there is a striking image that burns itself in your mind. There is also some mystery at the beginning, and the movie does its best to play tricks on us, even pulling a "Psycho" on two characters we think will be the central characters. But eventually, the movie runs out of juice - the second half of the movie has next to nothing of importance happening. You'll be squirming in your seat with impatience. And whether it was due to the dark print or the garbled storytelling, I couldn't figure what was happening or revealed at the climatic sequence. It's a close call, but I can't recommend this movie. By the way, if you're a John Carradine fan, be warned - the movie gives him next to nothing to do.