“What next? A marauding turkey at Thanksgiving?”

When Silent Night, Deadly Night was released on November 9, 1984 – the same day as A Nightmare on Elm Street! – it’s probably safe to say that nobody involved expected the film to be making mainstream headlines in the coming days; the low-budget movie seemed destined to blend in with all the other slasher films of the time.

Of course, the film’s fate was quite the opposite.

Silent Night, Deadly Night indeed did make headlines in the wake of TriStar Pictures releasing it into nearly 400 theaters in November 1984, becoming the most controversial movie of the year when parents began picketing outside of theaters where it was playing and demanding, through signs and written letters, that it be pulled from theaters.

Shortly after it was released, TriStar responded to all the outrage by doing just that – an act that would ensure SNDN‘s place in the halls of horror film infamy. In an instant, Silent Night, Deadly Night transformed from just another slasher film to a veritable cult classic, the very people who sought to banish it from existence serving to make it one of the most must-see horror films of the entire decade. Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?

It wasn’t the movie itself that ruffled so many feathers, but rather the TV advertisements that played during afternoon football games. In the TV spots, “Santa” was seen pulling an axe off the wall, which was more than enough, understandably so, for the parents of young children to start making phone calls and writing letters.

“They showed ads for the movie, like a week before it opened, on Sunday afternoon when the whole family in the Midwest was around watching the Green Bay Packers football game,” producer Scott Schneid explains in Scream Factory’s new making-of documentary. “Mom… dad… little Johnny… little Amy. And there’s the trailer, in a commercial, for Silent Night, Deadly Night.”

Many of those angry letters are included on Scream Factory’s new Silent Night, Deadly Night Blu-ray, as well as most of the film’s releases, and we wanted to share them today, along with two vintage photos of the actual protests that took place in November ’84!