Silent Night, Bloody Night

There was only one thing more terrifying than leaving the house...staying in it! SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT - At neighborhoods. This juicy, macabre story which was kept hidden for a few years now pops up on 42nd Street at the bottom of a double bill. Yet the film provides enough moments of stark terror for chiller-philes to glean a few goosebumps from it. The involved and sometimes confused plot is about a family in which incest and insanity are the order, and a quartet of town bigwigs who have a vested interest in purchasing their old mansion, once used as an asylum, and now merely a haunted house. Director Ted Gershuny keeps much of the film in hushed whispers and visual darkness, but when the sepia-toned flashback unravels, the rowdy audience at the theatre sat back and hushed up. The performances range from excellent, like those of Patrick O'Neal and the late James Patterson, to mediocre, like that of Mary Woronov. John Carradine is spooky. And casting Candy Darling as a staff member of a mental hospital took real courage.