I'll warn again that this question is a SPOILER!
Is it that old man that Diane Adams shoots at the end who is the killer?
I'll admit I was suprised since I figured it would have been Jeffrey Butler, but I wasn't expecting a very old man as being the killer. Who was the old guy, anyway?
Yes, he was the killer. He was also her father. He had an incestuous relationship with Diane's sister, from which she was conceived. So her sister is also her mother. Pretty creepy.
shareuh wrong..............he was wilfred butler, or jeffrey's father. wilfred raped his own daughter marianne, and their son was jeffrey. so he was both jeffrey's grandfather and father. diane adams is marianne, adopted by one of the crazies wilfred buter set free all those years before. wilfred thought marianne was killed by the crazies and came back years later to find the crazies he set free running the town. he decides to off them one by one to get back at murdering his daughter. then in the finale he sees she's still alive and "wants" her again, i guess? so she shoots him. very strange stuff.
i saw no mention of wilfred having two daughters, or diane having a daughter?????
what i didn't understand was why they showed marrianne holding a gun when she was 8 years old, the same time she was shooting her dad at the end of the movie. i'm gonna ask the horror board about this one.
yeah I wondered that also. I think it was just making sure everyone knew she was his daughter and she's finally getting revenge on him for what he did. But, then she should've been older because the bad stuff didn't happen until she was 15 right?
shareNo! Wilfred only THOUGHT that MarriAnne was his daughter because he was all old and senile. And i don't remember anything about her being adopted...i thought she was the crazy mayor's actual daughter.
shareOld man Butler mistook the mayor's daughter as his own. Had that been truly Marianne Butler she would have been fifteen years older than Jeffrey, who was in his late 30's at the time. The photo with little Marianne Butler holding the gun was designed to let the viewer know the old man's senile perspective.
You're right, he did "want" her again!
what i don't understand is how can Diane/Marriane be Jeffrey's mother when they look about the same age. Is this just a goof? Or did i miss something in the plot?
and Diane/Marriane's 'father' is suppose to be one of the escaped criminally insane inmates - how did he have enough wits and sanity to become the mayor?
"The Blood of these whores is KILLING ME!"
e bathory, you missed something. Diane and Marriane are NOT the same person. They're not even related.
Nothing? NOTHING? NOTHING, tra la la?
emineric, when you claim Diane to be Marianne, are you trying to say that Jeffrey is Diane's SON? Not possible, given their ages. They appear to be of the same age. No proof but that's how it appears.
The plausible explanation is that Wilfred Butler saw Marianne in Diane since he was hallucinating. The film does not give any clues to Marianne carrying a gun as a child. So, this should be the only answer.
Also, as you correctly mention, there is no hint of Diane and Marianne having been sisters either. So, the previous poster's answers are not correct.
I just finished watching this film last night, and have some thoughts on the ending. Keep in mind that I watched it in parts over several nights, so I'm sure I missed some of the improtant details. Anyway, one of my thoughts on the killer's identity was that it was Wilfred Butler. This seems like the obvious choice. However, the more I thought about, I'm wondering if it acutally WAS Marianne. Her father thought she was killed by the other mental patients, but we never really know. She could have been the one who escaped from the mental hospital in the beginning, trying to get to her son Jeffery. And this would explain Wilfred's "accidental" death...meaning, she stayed at the house, and when he eventually came back she took her revenge on him for what he did to her. I'm not too sure how she would have ended up in a mental institution in some other town, though. Also, on the thought of Diane Adams actually being Wilfred's daughter Marriane, that would have made her Jeffry's mother. I realize she was only 15 when she had him, but she certainly didn't appear to be 15 years older than him. Anyway, I suppose it needs a repeat viewing. Overall, a great atmospheric film. I loved the way the flashback was filmed!
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Great review rjm. I liked this movie too. Don't want to nitpick but you said that Marianne was 15 in 1933 when its sounds more like 13 from your statement (1933-1920). I love the cmplication in the plot line with the twist at the end. And that gory axe-scene!!
© Thésê ærèn't thë Høßþíts yõû'rë löökîng fôr¿
Definately a great and thought out timeline and goofs guide! :) I like this movie, because it reminds me alot of Black Christmas, because you don't get to get the killer (for the most part) and there are alot of scenes from his POV and not a guy in a hockey mask running around offing people....
As for Wilfred's hair, maybe he joined hair club for men? lol just kidding!
The movie makes it seem that the house is far outside of town.
Why did Jeffrey change from his sweater and leather coat to a black-bow-tie Tuxedo with redlined cape?
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I love this movie and am psyched to find this discussion thread!! The excellent timeline above looks fabulously researched, and I am delighted to see that somebody else figured it all out!! It is Diane who hands Jeffery the gun at the very end, Stimpy -- Remember? She had it back in her house and presumably would have brought it along with all the creepy things going on. Lord knows I woulda been packin' some heat!!
NOW, I do believe our esteemed and highly informed timeline plotter *MAY* have made one slight omission, no fault of his, and in relation to a detail over which I have been puzzling for a while. The versions of SNBN going around on these DVDs are all the same cut 82m print, and while I do not have an uncut verson to examine (since none exist on home video to this date, 11/20/05) this is what I think is going on that they missed. Give it a try and let me know what you think:
The murders of the lawyer & his girlfriend struck me as being without a motive and the mega-creepy attitude of the four town heads tipped me off that something was amiss, as if they knew something was about to happen and were offering the man a way out (which he could not take since he was cheating on his wife on Christmas Eve & did not want his name in a hotel registry + people who saw him with someone else). It is important that they first warn and then offer twice to put Mr. Carter and his nookie piece up in the local hotel and he says no, even to their presumably five star "Paradise Inn", a hinting nod that they knew he was mixing business with illicit pleasure.
They were NOT just trying to be nice, and would most likely have already known before the lawyer arrived that it was Wilfred Butler who had escaped from the asylum and was probably lurking around preparing to do whatever he planned to do even though we are never told that specifically. But their *attitude* suggests that they already suspected something was brewing that would require some additional killings by someone, and had a plan of their own ...
Thursday December 24th 1970 -- John Carter, the hotshot attorney for Jeffrey Butler, offers Butler House to the town council on the terms that they close noon tomorrow, Christmas Day, for $50,000 cash. The council agrees and the Mayor leaves to get the $50,000. Wilfred Butler, now 80 years old, dishes out payback for Marianne’s death on Christmas Eve 1935. In the end, everyone is killed except for Diane Adams, the narrator and also the Mayor’s daughter.
OK, it is the seemingly unmotivated, brutal and gruesome murders of the couple followed the shot of the cross being placed into the bloodied hand of Mr. Carter that gave me the clue, and repeated watchings of the scene where the town heads decide to act is what made me draw my conclusion. After the ax murder the killer also opens a bible and runs his finger along a passage, as if saying a prayer. The killer certainly had a schedule to keep but I don't think he would have arbitrarily butchered the couple just out of convenience & then bought off his conscience by laying a rosary and reading a prayer to himself, though it's just a hunch, bolstered by the mayor being the only one of the town leaders to defend the lawyer's actions: "He's only doing his job."
I am of the opinion that it is the MAYOR who kills the couple since Wilfred Butler had no real reason to do so (aside from being totally insane!! hehe :-D), though there isn't much evidence in the 82m print of such, and I may be misreading a red herring in showing the mayor dressed in a similar grey top coat and black gloves in the previous scene -- The fullframe version's POV centers on the mayor as he speaks to the town heads and he is dressed identically as the killer, for all intents & purposes, which may be a setup to throw suspicion on him, dunno. After the killer phones in the muders the telephone lady also calls his office and his home as if she expected him to be there, meaning that if he HAD gone to get the money for the house he would have been expected to be back by that time. We later see him driving home as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary, or rather that things had gone as expected. And remember he IS an insane murderer or at least an accessory to murder already. Why stop while you're ahead?
Also, when the sherrif buys it out in the cemetery the initial presumption is that he is there burying the bodies of the hacked up couple -- but we never see their bodies (in the cut version, at any rate) and, more importantly, the killer is seen wearing a *VERY* different overcoat than the grey one worn by the mayor: It's sort of brownish and looks more like an overcoat or trenchcoat. This may have been a continuity error but I am of the opinion that he was digging up something out there rather than burying the couple, and that one of the things missing from the complete 88 minute version is a BODY FINDING SCENE where either Jeffery or Diane or both find the hacked up remains of the ax murders -- they were NOT buried out in the cemetery, or at least we are never specifically shown such.
I may not be right but there seems to be two killers at work: One who feels a certain remorse and another who is just hell bent on this revenge thing. The only problem is the phone call to the telephone lady right after the ax murder, which more or less has to be the person who killed them -- Either that is the mayor covering his tracks by setting up a distraction by framing Jeffery for the murders, or I am dead wrong & have been snookered by the director.
:-)
It's fun to find a movie open to so many possibilities, and I'm glad to see that timeline recorded, inspired to try the same approach with a couple of my own pet intrigue titles like SLAUGHTER HOTEL that also have murders which may have been comitted by more than one person, with a patsy taking the fall for all the murders at the end. And YES; Diane and Maryanne are very different people, and Maryanne was not Diane's mother. Her father is the mayor, remember, and I don't know if her mother is ever discussed at all -- Diane and the mayor also don't have any scenes together, which is odd once you think about it.
One last thought is that the DVD and Paragon Video versions all run the same 82 minutes, and six minutes of screen time is a VERY long time for a movie of this nature. What has been cut is not just images of gore, brutality or nudity & sex, but entire SCENES where some of the discontinuities may have been addressed. In other words and in strictest terms of consideration this 82 minute version has been "altered" significantly beyond normal content cuts, and the entire version of the film may never have been shown at all for whatever reason. The images of Diane at age 8 or so scrambling away from someone (presumably Butler) that are blended with the footage of her shooting Wilfred Butler at the end also speak of additional flashback material that may have been removed -- her opening monologue also refers to her father having brought her to Butler House to play as a kid: Perhaps the dirty doctor tried to cop a feel from her as an 8 year old & that was some of what is missing as well.
It would be mighty interesting to even find a shooting script to see what would have filled that time, or memorabilia such as lobby cards or promotional stills that depict material not present in the 82 minute cut -- I agree 100% with the sentiment that footage is missing from the scene where John Carradine's body is found, and that book is just the sort of evidence that might suggest a change to the meaning of the entire movie by the addition of even one or two short scenes.
MAD fun, and happy holidays!!
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Wilfred Butler himself admitted in the diary that he had lived anonymously, like an animal, in various asylums since the horrific events at Christmastime 1935, so I don't consider it a mistake to save the identity of the burning man until the end. On a second viewing, watching the killer playing the hymn on the organ while the fire and smoke is still going outside the window makes it quite clear that Butler is alive (no explanation is really necessary as to why Butler returned). Having the strange looking Jeffrey smashing his car window is a perfectly acceptable case of misleading the audience; snatching one of Tess' birds is different, but a not unwelcome one, only providing an odd touch that confounds viewers. Butler's gravestone contains the words, "whoever bears the cross shall wear the crown," so the killer's obsession with the bible and the crucifix is another tip off to his true identity. The reason Wilfred Butler is discovered by the sheriff at his own grave site is he was recovering the diary that had been buried there, resulting in the murder with a shovel of the snooping lawman. This is how Wilfred Butler is able to confess his debaucheries within its pages, read by grandson Jeffrey, who then tells Diane that the house still belongs to his grandfather. Jeffrey's comment about "so stupid to lie," is just an admission about how little he actually knows of his past (the diary really opens his eyes). Towman shows up at the house before Tess does because she did indeed walk all the way while he drove his car directly from her home. I don't believe they filmed Towman's encounter with the killer, otherwise the surprise with the "take my hand" would have been lost. In order to lure Tess to the house the killer pretends to be Marianne, whom Tess already knows is dead because she was one of the inmates who did her in. Jeffrey covered Towman's handless body with a blanket from the back seat of Carter's car, and it is Towman's corpse that Mayor Adams discovers in the Butler foyer, still covered (he screams). This is followed by Diane giving Jeffrey her own pistol that she first pointed at him when they first met. Unwittingly, her gun kills her own father, otherwise only Jeffrey would have been shot dead; it is this same pistol that she uses to kill Wilfred Butler (so much going on). Diane is no relation to the Butlers although it is curious we are told nothing about her mother, the mayor's wife, who I assume is deceased. When Wilfred Butler comes down the stairs at the end, he sees Diane and erroneously believes that she is his daughter Marianne, proving to be pretty far gone by this time. Neither Jeffrey nor the mayor kill anyone until they fire at each other during the climax (I can't figure all the confusion here, but I first saw this film in 1977 and never forgot it). This is no slapdash, thrown-together script, but a truly complex, well-thought out piece of work. Incidentally, screenwriter Jeffrey Konvitz was later responsible for the less-impressive "The Sentinel" (1976), which, oddly enough, also wastes the talents of the venerable John Carradine. I have never found any evidence that the original release was 87 minutes, this has been reported by every available source ever since. The REEL CLASSIC FILMS DVD is the best quality issue I have found, all the credits are intact (it is such a relief to see everything so clear and legible after all these years), it runs 85 minutes, and appears to be the original theatrical print. Can there be any other obscurity that has generated so much discussion and that now has its own website? (sadly taken down by now).
shareYour explanation and timeline helped *a lot* - it was really bothering me to think that Marianne was Diane. Thank you for explaining it and clearing that up.
Indeed, I will have to watch this one again. The first time i saw it, the movie was so dark that i could hardly see anything for the most part. They really should restore the movie and re-release it in better quality.
Thanks again!!!
and the newspaper read, "her head was not found"
Thursday December 24th 1970 – Wilfred Butler, and inmate of the Margaretville State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, learns of forthcoming sale of his “monument.” He escapes and returns to Butler House pretending to be Marianne on the phone to lure the responsible townspeople to the house.
4. Why does Jeffrey Butler smash his car windshield when Diane won’t stop to help him? It adds to the suspense and mystery of Jeffrey’s character, but seems out of place in review seeing his demeanor otherwise.
I also have a question. at the end, the killer "mistakes" the girl for his own daughter. But, when he is using the phone earlier in the film to scare "prank call" the mayor, the killer tells the mayor that jeffrey is at the house with his daughter (the mayors daughter). so how come at the end he thinks its marianne if he indeed knows it was the mayors daughter?
sharei havent seen this movie in over 25 years, but i remember a rape scene that scared me as a kid. there was a young girl constantly crying and in the background you could hear spanish music playing. they were recalling the incident where this girl was violated by an inmate and she was young. is this the scene that is talked about???
shareShe is raped by her father, then later killed by a group of inmates who are insane.
shareok
thanks for the info
Thanks for taking part of your time to solve the movie's most important situations rjm_efm.
This movie is heavily underrated. It even started the premise of the maniac hiding upstairs and making creepy phone calls.
"Hate is baggage, life's too short to be pissed off all the time".
Part of what makes this film so much fun to watch is that it isn't "simple." It takes some thought to truly "get" it. It's a very rewarding horror story.
The Silent Night, Bloody Night Fan Site
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Old but entertaining thread; lots of cool theories that flew under my radar.
My Take:
1) Marianne indeed was killed in 1935 during the purge in the dining room.
Diane Adams is the mayor's daughter.
2) Marianne's mother, Catherine Butler, died from TB in 1930. The mother's
untimely death sets up the situation that ensues. I suspect the rape occurred
due to Wilfred's longing for his wife and the daughter was the only one around.
The child Jeffrey is sent to California with no true explanation of his background.
3) A repentant but unrehabilitated Wilfred tries to atone his crime by hiring a doctor
to care for his mentally traumatized daughter. The doctor sees an opportunity and
convinces the wealthy Butler to hire friends in the field and turn the estate into an
asylum. It is within this ruse, as I'll explain, Butler commits his daughter in the
hopes that she can cured of her trauma. I suppose that in this pretend world of
movies, a rich criminal can use his money to transform his property into a kind
of physical philanthropy as cover to hide his rape.
4) When Butler begins to doubt the motivations of the doctors, he unwittingly
decides to allow the patients to have their moment of justice. When Marianne
is mistaken to be a relative, confidant or friend of the resident abusing doctors
by the marauding charges, they kill her too. Butler, possibly witnessing this,
knows whom to blame.
5) From that day forward, Butler, in his own mad way, decides the mansion needs
to be preserved as a monument to human cruelty and anyone who trespasses or
undermines that purpose will be dealt with on Butler's terms. That explains why
the squatter is burned to death in 1950. Again, in the suspension of disbelief
that most films require, is how Butler came to realize there even was a trespasser.
Is it possible that one of the ex-inmates had a sympathetic connection and passed
this information on to him? Clear as mud. Remember how O'Neal's character
"Carter" confides to his mistress during their evening meal of sandwiches that
Jeff Butler's loss will be the town's gain and that the most likely outcome of the
sale of Butler House will be tract housing? Chance has it that Butler, holed up
upstairs since his knowledge of the sale reached the penitentiary, walks downstairs
close enough to overhear Carter's conversation. Butler misinterprets this information
and believes Carter is the shark responsible for selling the house and thus dooms
the lawyer and lady. He then moves on to trapping the rest of the living ex-inmates
in an attempt to stop the sale. Because Jeff is his son, he is off-limits. Diane is simply
an innocent who reads into the history of Willard and informs us of the true history
of the house.
6) Lots of red herrings abound: The gloves, Marianne, Diane, the squatter, the bird,
the knifing of the dog, the smashing of the windshield. It's all timed to throw us off.
It's easy to get lost because things happen swiftly, but it's clear Butler knifes the dog
because it's frustrating his ability to gain access inside the gates to his house. The
windshield matter is confusing but probably best taken as it is: a red herring.
7) Butler's hallucinations at the end are just that. Diane's a brunette. Butler's maniacal
need to right the past right to the futile end. That obsession leads to a final, ironic tragedy.
8) There's plenty of mistakes and continuity errors that confound viewers. The sunglasses
on the sheriff? Jeff's cape? The ending dissatisfies because life intervened in the production.
Whatever date of filming we believe, somehow Patterson's illness frustrated the original
intended ending. As I see it, the actors were called back in post-production to connect
the dots but Patterson's illness prevented his participation.
9) This film was made during a time when the west had become generally suspicious
of psychotherapy, moreso than in subsequent decades possibly due to the availability
of new drugs. I suspect it was in this "enlightened" mindset that the movie was filmed.
You can make what you will of that.
Point 8 is fodder for yet another thread!
"Watch horror films, keep America strong."
Bob Wilkins