All Through The Basement

TODD NUNES TALKS YULETIDE SLASHE RS AND REMAKING A GRINDHOUSE CLASSIC…

- Kevan Farrow

There’s a grand and long-standing tradition of horror films that take place around the festive season. Bob Clark’s proto-slasher classic Black Christmas always leaps immediately to mind, but the concept of the yuletide fright flick really came alive once the golden age of the slasher was underway. Louis Jackson’s Christmas Evil (1980) was once described by John Waters as the “greatest Christmas movie ever made” and the likes of British sleazefest Don’t Open ‘Till Christmas (1984) and the later Jack Frost (1998) have strong fanbases, but it is 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night which remains perhaps the sub-genre’s figurehead film, and the one that provided chief inspiration for Todd Nunes’ All Through the House. “I’ve always had bits and pieces [of the story] in my mind ever since I first saw the poster for Silent Night, Deadly Night back in 1986,” the director tells me of his 2015 gorefest; “I was mesmerised by that poster featuring an evil, axe-carrying Santa slinking down the chimney. I was fascinated by the concept of taking the happiest time of the year and covering it with blood and chaos.”