Does the Omicron strain of the Coronavirus have you staying in this New Year’s Eve? If so, I have a few suggestions: You can tune into The Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy network, you can watch the ball drop, or you can rent Emmett Alston’s seasonal 1980 slasher New Year’s Evil on Amazon Prime. An early post-Halloween slasher, New Year’s Evil is a bad movie with bad acting that has developed quite the cult following over the years, as younger Boomers and Gen X’ers seem to have quite the affinity for a film such as this awful gem (I’m one of those types, for sure). Another classic with a New Year’s Eve setting, Terror Train, starring Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis, was released a few months earlier and is the superior film. However, I am on short time here, and despite the latter fact, I still feel as though New Year’s Evil has a more relevant, holiday-themed demeanor. This particular Director has a reputation for this kind of schlock, acting as either Director, Writer, and/or Cinematographer for such schlocky classics as Demonwarp (1988), Nine Deaths of the Ninja (1985) Moonchild (1972), and the infamous Deliverance rip-off, Hunter’s Blood (1986). He is kind of the poor man’s Hershel Gordon Lewis, if you will.
New Year’s Evil checks off plenty of slasher stereotypes that, rather unfairly, have dominated the thoughts of their detractors. First and foremost is the killer’s misogynistic tendencies, as he specifically targets dumb blondes despite the fact that his grand finale object is a redhead. Next, as a lead-in for the opening credits, the film’s only African-American character, Yvonne (Alicia Dhanifu) is the first victim; an unfortunate tendency of early slashers that seems to finally be turning a corner in more recent times. Another popular trope is that of either the inept or the jerk police, to which this film has both. Sometimes, the lead policeman is a nice guy, but not this time. New Year’s Evil is also very formulaic when it comes to the process of the body count, picking off each victim in record time, making it more Friday the 13th (released seven months earlier) than Halloween.
New Year’s Evil uses the post-punk new wave scene as a kind of narrator to this thin plot, employing second rate bands named “Shadow” and “Made in Japan” as performers during DJ Diane “Blaze” Sullivan’s (Roz Kelly) New Year’s Eve radio broadcast. The title song is just as popular a the movie itself, it would be unusual to find a review, podcast, or blog post without mention of it. “Shadow” may sound more metal than new wave, but don’t let that ruin a good time; whereas “Made In Japan” is more new wave/pop, but that’s ok, too, as these bands add a unique element to the film, giving it some relevance despite bad acting even by the extras in their scenes.
The premise of New Year’s Evil features a killer that cleverly names himself “Evil” (Kip Niven) calling into Diane’s radio show with a New Year’s resolution: to kill one person in each U.S. time zone for each time zone’s midnight hour, with Blaze herself to be the final victim. There is no mystery as to who this killer is, as we see him from the start. Evil leaves a trail of blood, starting at the stroke of midnight, Pacific Standard Time, in which he reveals his weapon of choice as a switchblade and the need to use his 1980 Hitachi boombox to record said killings, as proof to Blaze that he is serious. At the same time, Blaze’s son, Derek (Grant Cramer), is doing weird things, having an obvious complex about how his mother doesn’t pay him much mind.
Evil moves on to Mountain Time, knocking off a few more blondes, each one dumber than the prior blonde that he killed. Both women are posed, Michael Myers-style, rather creatively, and that is to be appreciated. Evil then manages to escape bikers and kill one of them, in a tizzy about checking off his Central Standard Time zone victim. This won’t happen, however, as his attempt to dispose of the latest blonde is thwarted by the police, though they don’t really make much of an attempt to chase him. So, a now Jeffrey Dahmer-looking Evil, skips the CST killing in favor of getting to his final destination. There is a twist ending that I will not reveal due to the obscurity of this film. I don’t want to spoil it for you! Suffice it to say, it is rather cookie cutter; the kind of twist that you may kick yourself for not figuring out on your own, if you hadn’t.
New Year’s Evil’s cult status may be a bit much, as it just isn’t as appealing as its contemporaries. However, it is fun enough for an annual watch if you let yourself just enjoy it and ignore the terrible acting and seemingly purposeful, suspect filmmaking. New Year’s Evil is the kind of film that, if I made it as my first feature, I would be extremely proud of. This works for Emmett Alston, as this is only his second feature as Director and first horror film.
Roger Ebert only gave New Year’s Evil 1.5 stars, but at the same time, seems ok with Alston’s aim. See below:
“New Year’s Evil” is an endangered species – a plain, old-fashioned, gory thriller. It is not very good. It is sometimes unpleasantly bloody. The plot is dumb and the twist at the end has been borrowed from hundreds if not thousands of other movies. But as thrillers go these days, “New Year’s Evil” is a throwback to an older and simpler tradition, one that flourished way back in the dimly remembered past, before 1978.”
Horrormetrics 