Editorials
‘Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker’ is a Misunderstood, Overlooked Holiday Classic
We all have those horror movies that scarred us for life. Whether your blood ran cold from the macabre family dinner in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or you found yourself disturbed and nauseous while watching Regan’s head spin in The Exorcist, these terrible frights became the catalyst for a lifetime of loving horror. When I think back to my childhood, it’s films like Tourist Trap, Poltergeist, and even Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker that left deep impressions. It’s like a frigid winter chill you simply can’t shake, or that ominous sensation that descends at nightfall and seems to rattle among the shadows on your wall. It’s certainly hard to imagine the fifth installment in any B-movie franchise having much to offer, but director Martin Kitrosser’s The Toymaker injected the series with a pinch of whimsy, a few drops of absurdity, and a whole fistful of mayhem that is just as terrifying today.
Issued on VHS in late 1991, The Toymaker, the screenplay for which was penned by Kitrosser and Brian Yuzna (the man behind Society, Bride of Re-Animator, The Dentist, and a slew of other schlocky ‘90s horror gems), adapts the magical Pinocchio fable into a perverse tale about childhood trauma. Kitrosser weaves themes of abuse and hunger for love into the fabric of the story through the use of the absolute fantastic as a framework. Naturally, as a then-five-year-old kid, I was far more hooked into the grisly violence when toys, seemingly innocent inanimate objects, came to life and killed. In adulthood, I have come to appreciate the dysfunctional, splintered household, something I also experienced, and how one boy’s imagination is completely destroyed after witnessing the murder of his step-father.
It’s Christmas Eve, and there’s a knock at the door. Too naïve for his own good, an angel-faced boy named Derek (William Thorne) answers and discovers a perfectly wrapped package on the front steps. His stepfather Tom (Van Quattro) lashes out, demonstrating his own harbored fears, and orders him upstairs to bed. His curiosity to know what’s inside the package gets the better of him, of course. When he tears away the glistening holiday paper, he finds a musical orb inside, its bright red curves not unlike that of Santa Claus himself. The tinker toy plays the sweetest of melodies before morphing into a devilish creature with sharp fangs and go-go Inspector Gadget rubber arms, which latch onto Tom’s face, seemingly sucking the life from him. In a tussle to break free, Tom stumbles and impales himself on a fireplace poker 一 and poor Derek, hidden on the stairs, bears witness to it all.
What a horrifying experience. It’s certainly, unequivocally etched into his memory, no doubt. This opening scene primes the viewer for a wonderful level of camp; the set-ups are typically ridiculous, but Kitrosser dexterously walks a fine line between serious and goofy. As a franchise, Silent Night, Deadly Night relied on the audience’s willingness to suspend their disbelief to the same level you would for the Child’s Play and Puppet Master movies. But these horror stories work because it banks hard into one of the greatest fears I had as a kid, and probably most people did: bloodthirsty toys wrecking utter bedlam. I was also terrified of Sid and his mangled playthings in 1994’s Toy Story, so what do I know.
Two weeks later, Derek’s mother Sarah (Jane Higginson) laments that he still hasn’t recovered. And how could he? It’s way too soon. “On top of everything, he won’t go into his room now,” she expresses to her best friend Kim (Neith Hunter), noting how he hasn’t spoken a word since the accident. Derek barricades himself from the world, as much as he does from the land of make believe. Toys only represent the greatest horror of his young life, and even a Christmas commercial jingle, hocking the exact toy that killed Tom, triggers him.
“Derek, I know you’re angry and you’re scared, and you have every right to be 一 but you also have to remember that you’re not alone,” consoles Sarah later that morning. To perhaps entice him out of his self-imposed shell, she takes him on a shopping trip to Petto’s Toys, founded by jolly proprietor Joe Petto, an erratic but fascinating performance from Mickey Rooney. “Fate plays some cruel tricks on us all,” Joe says, offering his best condolences. After his son Pino (Brian Bremer) tries to force them to purchase a Larry the Larvae toy, Sarah and Derek abruptly flee the store, much to Joe’s annoyance. “A real son would help his father!” he huffs in anger.
Joe tends to erupt into blind rages when Pino doesn’t quite live up to his expectations and blames him for the store’s financial ruin. His personal tragedy (the death of his first son before birth) fuels his suffering and he puts it all squarely on Pino’s shoulders. Perhaps in an attempt to reclaim a sense of purpose in his existence, Pino later breaks into Sarah’s house, where he used to live in 1975. Upon discovery, Joe unleashes all his pent-up resentment, seething acidic words and chasing him into the store basement. Joe’s pain has become Pino’s punishment, embodying the cyclical nature of human existence. As they say, hurt people hurt people 一 and all Pino wants is to love and be loved.
In his desperation for the unconditional kindness Joe refuses, and more importantly, can’t give to him, Pino rewires many of the shop’s toys to possess an unnatural hunger for human flesh. He frequently leaves anonymous Christmas packages on Sarah’s doorstep in the hope that Derek will die and he can finally have the family he always wanted. His unpredictable behavior frames many of the best, most memorable images the film has to offer, including a set of roller blades that spark and emit smoke like cryogenic boosters.
“It’s human nature to want nice, neat answers to everything, but life doesn’t work that way,” Kim expresses to Sarah moments before her son Lonnie loots a pair of roller blades and is nearly killed by a car. This simple, almost throwaway scene becomes the crux of the entire film. From the toys going haywire to the appearance of Derek’s real father Noah (Tracy Fraim), who spends the entirety of the film tracking down and buying all the damaged toys, the brutality of the real world appears ornamental but in truth, it throbs at the center.
Presented as an expected red herring, Noah has only the best intentions. His subplot comes into clear focus mid-way through in a touching scene with Sarah. As it turns out, she never told Noah about her pregnancy, and he ran off nearly six years ago. “I wanted to tell you,” she says, almost in tears. But he was never “ready to settle down,” she says. “I wanted to finish college. I wanted a career. I needed security, and you couldn’t give me that. Tom could.”
Her words sting, but his feelings remain unchanged. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he vows. The two then engage in a hatchback romp, and Kitrosser juxtaposes this rekindling of romance against a murderous, blood-soaked backdrop. Back home, babysitter Merideth (Amy L. Taylor) and her punk boyfriend Buck (Eric Welch) get freaky in the sheets with their own sexual exploits, as an army of toys (including a T-Rex and a wayward animatronic hand, planted by Joe) stalk and then attack in the goriest setpiece of the film. In Buck’s struggle to disentangle a rubber snake from around his throat, a remote control car, decked out with razor-sharp blades and spikes, launches into his chest and slices deep into his jugular.
Amidst the mayhem, Joe abducts Derek and takes him away to his toy shop to set up for one of the most peculiar showdowns in horror. Sarah dashes through the snow and confronts Joe down in the bunker, a makeshift factory beneath the store. It’s quickly revealed that Joe isn’t Joe after all. It’s Pino, who killed his father in a fit of rage. “He always broke me. I had to be sure this time that he didn’t hurt me any more,” says Pino, exposing his true form as a robot. The revelation is disturbing enough, but his delusional thinking, that killing his father finally set him free, plops the outlandish picture in a vat of cold, hard truth.
Many people have suffered trauma during the Christmas season, and it can be incredibly difficult to navigate reopened wounds and a flood of emotions. The Toymaker does a surprising job with planting this thematic seed inside such an exaggerated premise, and it only gets more distressing from there. Pino proceeds to strip out of his Santa suit 一 don’t worry, he’s not anatomically correct 一 and mimics only what he’s seen from Merideth and Buck’s sexy rendezvous earlier. “All I ever wanted to be was a good son,” he says. He inches closer and grabs Sarah, assaulting her as he continues expressing his lustful desires, “Derek has to die so you can be my mommy. I can be your son now. I can love you like a real son. I can. I can. I can. I love you, mommy!”
Pino does eventually get defeated (Noah and Sarah both take turns hacking him into pieces with an axe), but it’s this assault scene that’s given me shuddering nightmares over the years. It’s a level of creep that makes me think Pino must have watched Black Christmas at some point; an aggressive, possessive attitude toward women is omnipresent in both films. Now, imagine a five-year-old huddled beneath his homemade blanket in terror. There’s no way I would come away unscathed.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker holds up remarkably well. As much as I hate the word, the film is underrated. In conversations about haunted or demonic toys, the 1991 feature is largely ignored. Kitrosser cakes on mounds of gore, tension, and social commentary with a way that feels organic and serves the plot. Where Disney’s animated adventure Pinocchio (1940) instills a message of moral integrity, The Toymaker digs way deeper into the darkest crevices of human existence, from death to sexual assault, to present the realities of the world in the harshest light possible. Beneath these layers, it still remains a damn entertaining horror film thirty years later.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on December 10, 2021.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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