Silent Night, Bloody Night is a 1972 American slasher film directed by Theodore Gershuny and starring Patrick O'Neal, Mary Woronov, James Patterson, Astrid Heeren, and John Carradine. The plot follows a series of murders that occur in a small New England town on Christmas Eve after a man inherits a family estate which was once an insane asylum.
Co-written by Jeffrey Konvitz, Silent Night, Bloody Night was filmed in November and December 1970 in Oyster Bay, New York. A number of Warhol superstars appear in the film as extras during the film's flashback sequences, among them Ondine, Candy Darling, and Susan Rothenberg.
Silent Night, Bloody Night was briefly released under the alternative title Night of the Dark Full Moon in November 1972 by Cannon Films, before receiving subsequent releases as Silent Night, Bloody Night and later, Death House. Though attributed to Zora Investments Associates, the film was never registered with the United States Copyright Office and thus fell into the public domain.
While it received little critical notice at the time of its release, it was frequently broadcast on television in the late-1970s during the Christmas season, and has been assessed by modern film critics and writers for its surreal style and atmosphere. It has also been noted as a progenitor of the slasher film genre. In 2015, Boston.com ranked it as one of the scariest films of all time, describing it as a "forgotten classic" and "the movie that birthed the modern slasher flick."
