When Milwaukee came out to protest a ‘slasher’ Santa
It started, as many things do, during a Packers game.
During a telecast of the Nov. 4, 1984, game against the New Orleans Saints, WITI-TV (Channel 6) aired a commercial for a movie opening the following Friday: "Silent Night, Deadly Night," about a killer Santa.
"It was absolutely disgusting," Kathleen Eberhardt, a Milwaukee mother of two small children, told The Milwaukee Journal's Meg Kissinger in a front-page story published Nov. 6, 1984. "I was fuming."
Eberhardt wasn't alone. Like-minded Milwaukee viewers called TV stations to complain about the ad — all five of the city's commercial stations at the time were carrying it. But she took it a step further, organizing a group to picket the movie when it opened in Milwaukee on Nov. 9, 1984.
"Something has to be done," Eberhardt said.
The movie's shock value, of course, was part of its box-office appeal.
In "Silent Night, Deadly Night," a boy witnesses the murder of his father, and murder and rape of his mother by a crook in a Santa suit.
Years later, after the boy leaves a traumatizing orphanage, he lands a job at a toy store. On Christmas Eve, his boss forces him to dress up as Santa — and another brutal incident triggers his rampage of killing.
" 'Miracle on 34th Street' it ain't," David Rosenfelt, vice president of advertising for Tri-Star Pictures, the movie's distributor, told The Journal.
By Nov. 8, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported on Nov. 9, all five TV stations had pulled the ads for the movie. (The ads continued to run in The Journal.)
Four Milwaukee theaters were set to show "Silent Night, Deadly Night." The night before the movie opened, Eberhardt's group, Citizens Against Movie Madness, had pickets outside one of them, the Grand Cinema, 214 W. Wisconsin Ave. The Milwaukee County Board endorsed the protest.
Moviegoers turned out for the opening of "Silent Night, Deadly Night," and so did protesters.
"… The bloodier the scene, the louder the laughs and cheers from an audience of about 75 … (including) several small children accompanied by their parents," wrote Sentinel film critic Duane Dudek in a review published Nov. 10, 1984.
In a Nov. 10 story in The Journal, Don Behm reported that one of the protesters outside the Grand held a sign reading "Save Santa."
Milwaukee wasn't the only place where people picketed "Silent Night, Deadly Night," but it might have been
About This Feature
Each Wednesday, Our Back Pages dips into the Journal Sentinel archives, sharing photos and stories from the past that connect, reflect and sometimes contradict the Milwaukee we know today.
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the loudest. The Milwaukee protest got mentions in newspapers around the country, on "The CBS Evening News" and in People magazine.
Eberhardt and Karen Knowles, another organizer of Citizens against Movie Madness, appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" the following Monday, touting the success of the protests.
"If they don't make any money on this sort of film, maybe they won't make any more like it," Knowles told "GMA," according to a Nov. 14 column by Journal film critic Douglas D. Armstrong.
That's not how it played out. According to Box Office Mojo, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" took in a healthy $1.43 million during its opening weekend.
"Silent Night, Deadly Night" only lasted one week in Milwaukee theaters, and was gone elsewhere a week after that. "I guess in the end all my griping did some good," Eberhardt told The Journal in a Nov. 24, 1984, story.
The movie, which came out on video in 1986, spawned five low-budget sequels — fueled in part by the controversy over the first movie's release.
Next week, Shout! Factory is re-releasing "Silent Night, Deadly Night" on Blu-Ray. The package includes an unrated version of the movie and a making-of documentary, "Slay Bells Ring: The Story of 'Silent Night, Deadly Night.' "
The documentary doesn't mention the Milwaukee protest.