How ‘South Park’s Most Controversial Christmas Episode Was Inspired by a Horror Film
What To Know
- One of South Park’s most controversial episodes features adorable animals in a shocking parody of holiday specials.
- The episode was created under intense time pressure, with Trey Parker and Matt Stone struggling for ideas.
- The inspiration for the episode’s infamous “blood orgy” scene came from the horror film, influencing the episode’s blend of cute imagery and graphic violence.
Over the years, South Park masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone have delivered some truly unhinged Christmas specials. From a sentient piece of fecal matter spreading holiday cheer to Jesus attempting to rescue Santa from a hostage situation in Iraq, nothing is off the table when it comes to skewering the season.
However, few come close to the lunacy and depravity that were displayed in the episode “Woodland Critter Christmas” in Season 8 Episode 14. Premiering in 2004, the episode followed Stan as he attempted to help adorable woodland creatures find shelter for the winter, only to discover they are a satanic cult planning an apocalyptic birth of their dark savior, the Antichrist, resulting in a blood orgy of the cute critters.
The episode escalates into graphic parody, complete with ritual sacrifice, a ritualistic massacre, and overt references to The Omen, ultimately revealing itself as a twisted holiday tale told by Cartman, leaning fully into shock humor and horror satire.
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In the creator commentary for the episode, Parker and Stone explained they had less than a week to prepare the episode, and the nightmarish horror film that inspired it.
“I remember all day Friday, just trying and trying, and nothing. There was this little shred of an idea, which was “John Denver Critter Christmas,” but that’s all we knew. Just critter animals/woodland critter Christmas…we couldn’t figure out what the idea was,” said Parker.
“I kept saying whatever this show is, it’s not going to be good because we don’t have any time to do it, and we don’t even have an idea, and I don’t want to ruin the South Park track record for Christmas shows,” continued Parker. “Finally, it’s Saturday morning, we’re sitting there, we’ve got no ideas, the show’s not going anywhere, everyone’s pulling their hair out because the animators are just sitting there with nothing to. Now we’ve got four days to pull off an entire episode, and we’re like, screw it, we’re doing “Critter Christmas” somehow, some way.”
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“I just start writing pages for in the forest [for] all these critters,” said Parker. “I remember Saturday afternoon, it kind of broke. It was like, ‘Okay they need Stan’s help.'”
“The thing that made us go, ‘That’s it!’ was ‘blood orgy,'” said Stone.
“Right! They’re satanic!” confirmed Parker.
“The idea came from that movie Event Horizon, I think, with Laurence Fishburne, where they go out to this spaceship that they’re not getting any signals from, and they’re trying to figure out what happened to the crew, and all the supernatural stuff happens. Then they finally find the tapes of what happened to the crew, and it’s just this blood orgy where they’re all eating each other and having sex. It’s just awful,” explained Stone. “That’s a sweet moment in it, though.”
That ghastly moment in the film became a key scene in the Christmas special, as it revealed the cute fuzzy forest creatures as bloodthirsty worshippers of Satan. And that’s how Paul W.S. Anderson‘s 1997 cosmic-horror cult classic helped inspire one of South Park‘s most infamous and twisted episodes — at least so far.
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