Pop’s Cult Theater: Silent Night, Deadly Night + Blood Beat

For our December installment, Pop’s Cult Theater is bringing you a double-whammy of 80’s holiday horror!

In our first film, Santa Claus is coming to town . . . and this time he’s got an axe! Community leaders tried to stop it. The P.T.A. fought to ban it. Now, one of the most controversial slasher films of all time is back in a new restoration from the original camera negative. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) is the demented story of little Billy Chapman, traumatized by his parents’ Christmas Eve murder and then brutalized by sadistic nuns in an orphanage. When Billy grows up and dresses as Santa, he goes on a yuletide rampage to punish the naughty with extreme prejudice. Robert Brian Wilson and Linnea Quigley (NIGHT OF THE DEMONS) star in this harrowing horror classic that continues to ruffle the feathers of angry parents and stuffy critics over thirty years later.

In our secong film, Sarah and her boyfriend Ted have decided to spend Christmas with Ted’s mother at her home in rural Wisconsin. Upon arriving, a mysterious figure garbed in a Samurai outfit begins murdering the townsfolk, eventually setting his sights on Sarah, Ted, and his family! A co-production between France and Wisconsin, Blood Beat (1982) is a supernatural slasher like no other. Director Fabrice Zaphiratos applies an arthouse aesthetic to American regional cinema stylings, resulting in a dreamy and haunting atmosphere that compliments the bloodletting and outrageous twists.