Billy Chapman (Silent Night, Deadly Night)

Billy Chapman
Silent Night, Deadly Night character
Billy Chapman (portrayed by Robert Brian Wilson)
Created by Paul Caimi
Michael Hickey
Portrayed by Robert Brian Wilson
Danny Wagner (age 8)
Jonathan Best (age 5)
Information
Full name William Chapman
Gender Male
Occupation Toy store employee
Family Jim Chapman (father, deceased)
Ellie Chapman (mother, deceased)
Ricky Caldwell (brother, deceased)
Nationality American

Billy Chapman is a fictional character in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise. Created by writers Paul Caimi and Michael Hickey, the character serves as the protagonist and antihero of the first film, Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), and is featured in flashbacks in the sequel, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987).[1]

In the first film, Billy is first introduced at age five, when he witnesses his parents' murder on a country road on Christmas Eve by a hitchhiker in a Santa Claus costume. The event leaves him with a pathological aversion to Christmas.[2] Billy is placed in an orphanage under Mother Superior, and experiences abuse there throughout his childhood that compounds his mental state. At age eighteen, Billy acquires a job working at Ira's Toy Store; however, as Christmas arrives, he finds himself under increasing psychological duress, and eventually murders his co-workers at an employee Christmas party. Billy then embarks on a murder spree on Christmas Eve, killing numerous people he encounters. On Christmas Day he arrives at the orphanage where he was raised to enact revenge on Mother Superior, but is stopped by police who shoot him to death.

The character was largely received by critics as offensive due to the violent acts he commits on Christmas, and the film was widely protested upon its theatrical release in 1984.[3]

Appearances

In Silent Night, Deadly Night, Billy first appears at age five in 1971, driving with his parents and infant brother, Ricky, to visit his grandfather in a psychiatric care facility on Christmas Eve. On their way home, his parents stop on a desolate country road where a man in a Santa Claus suit has experienced a car breakdown. The man murders Billy's parents in front of him and rapes his mother; Billy manages to hide in a ditch, and the killer flees the scene.

Billy and Ricky are placed in an orphanage run by the abusive and strict Mother Superior. Shunned by his peers, Billy finds companionship in the sympathetic Sister Margaret. At age eight, Billy witnesses two of the teenagers in the orphanage having sex; they are caught by Mother Superior, who punishes them severely. In 1984 at age eighteen, Billy leaves the orphanage and acquires a job at Ira's Toy Store. As the Christmas season arrives, however, Billy is troubled by hallucinations and posttraumatic stress related to his parents' murders. At the store's Christmas Eve party, he witnesses a male employee attempting to rape a female employee in the stock room; Billy snaps, and murders them both, then kills his boss and other coworker.

Billy then dons a Santa Claus suit and embarks on a killing spree. He stumbles upon a suburban house where a couple, Denise and Tommy, are having sex. He impales Denise on a pair of antlers on a taxidermy deer head, and throws Tommy through a window to the ground below, killing him. The commotion awakens Denise's little sister, who sees Billy, dressed as Santa, in the living room. He asks if she's been naughty or nice, and then gives her a utility knife he had used in a murder. After this, Billy follows two teenagers into the woods where they are sledding, and decapitates one of them with an axe as they sled down a hillside and the other screams in terror.

The next morning, Christmas Day, Billy arrives at the orphanage to kill Mother Superior; however, with the help of Sister Margaret, the police have already determined his arrival there, and lay in wait. He enters the orphanage, where the children are unwrapping Christmas gifts; Mother Superior has been confined to wheelchair. He attempts to kill her, but is shot to death in front of the children, one of whom is his younger brother, Ricky; Ricky looks at the Mother Superior, and utters the word "naughty."

In Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, Billy appears in flashback via footage from Silent Night, Deadly Night as Ricky recounts he and his brother's troubled lives.

Reception

In his review of Silent Night, Deadly Night, film critic Leonard Maltin admonished the character of Billy, writing: "what's next—the Easter Bunny as a child molestor?"[4] Further backlash from the public over the "killer Santa" character fueled the film's publicity campaign, but did not lead to generally favorable reception.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Grant, Stacey (December 12, 2015). "Why Silent Night, Deadly Night Is the Best Christmas Horror Movie You've Never Seen". MTV. Retrieved January 9, 2017.
  2. ↑ Crump, William (2013). The Christmas Encyclopedia (Third ed.). McFarland. p. 378. ISBN 978-1-476-60573-9.
  3. ↑ Rockoff 2011, p. 156.
  4. ↑ Maltin 2008, p. 1250.
  5. ↑ Kersewelll, J.A. "Ho-Ho-HOMICIDE: The Silent Night, Deadly Night Controversy". Hysteria Lives!. Retrieved January 11, 2017.

Works cited

  • Maltin, Leonard (2008). Leonard Maltin's 2009 Movie Guide. Signet. ISBN 978-0-45122-468-2.
  • Rockoff, Adam (2011). Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-78646-932-1.
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