10 Banned Horror Movies That Shocked The World
1. Silent Night, Deadly Night
Not one you'd expect to rock the world when it's surrounded by far more sexually explicit, abhorrent, and downright depraved movies, the campy Christmas horror movie Silent Night, Deadly Night actually managed to get itself into a right mess upon release in 1984 since it was the first time in the mainstream that good old Saint Nick had been depicted as anything other than jolly.
Taking lovable Santa Claus and turning him into a spectre of violence and death, the film faced some serious backlash for daring to tread on the happy holiday's toes - getting banned by the UK film board, which refused to give it a rating and the filmmakers refused to cut it to their standards.
And in the places it was allowed to actually screen, Silent Night, Deadly Night was protested outside cinemas by families believing it would scare their children away from the holiday. Terrifying adverts accidentally cut between family-friendly television slots really didn't help the film in the short term, either.
Whilst it's now a celebrated cult classic, at the time, the film was pulled from theatres in its opening two weeks. Now that's hardly in the spirit, is it?