RETRO REVIEW: NEW YEAR'S EVIL (1980)
A killer targets the host of a live New Year’s broadcast in EMMETT ALSTON’S NEW YEAR’S EVIL.
I think we can collectively agree that the year 2020 will go down as one of the worst years in recent memory. It was a 365-day colossal dumpster fire that saw so many people lose jobs, lose lives, lose normalcy, lose hope. Never has a new year had so much expectation and anticipation placed upon it as 2021 has. People even consciously stayed up just to be there once this complete shitshow of a year finally ended and a new, fresh year was finally ushered in. But, as EMMETT ALSTON’s new year’s slasher romp, NEW YEAR’S EVIL shows, even being on the cusp of a brand new year, doesn’t mean that the old one still won’t take its pound of flesh from us (quite literally) with the time it has left.
ROZ KELLY as punk goddess Diane Sullivan (aka Blaze).
PLOT:
It’s New Year’s Eve, and in LA, television’s most famous punk rock icon, Diane Sullivan, or Blaze as she’s also known (ROZ KELLY) is hosting a live countdown celebration being simulcast in New York, Chicago, Aspen, and of course, Los Angeles. The revels start out promising, but suddenly Diane receives a phone call on the air from a man calling himself “Evil”, who says that when the clock strikes midnight in each time zone, he is going to kill someone close to her, As the night goes on, and the bodies start to pile up, the killer circles in closer to his ultimate victim, Diane herself.
Even horny teens are not safe from the New Year’s killer.
KILLS:
The killer in NEW YEAR’S EVIL is in a literal race against time to claim victims. As he navigates around various celebrations all around LA, he’s set himself an immense challenge to claim a victim at the stroke of midnight for each time zone, as each zone is essentially only set apart by an hour. As this particular killer is a process, not product killer, he doesn’t care how he ends his victims, only that they are ended according to his very specific time table. This of course, leads to some near misses for some of his would-be victims, including a poor teenage girl who was just making out with her boyfriend in a car at a drive-in theater. The killer kicks the boyfriend out with the girl still in the back of it and the killer takes off in the car with her. She catches a lucky break when some New Year’s drunks run out in front of the car, and gets away, leaving the killer unfulfilled in completing his murder.
Despite the one that got away, the killer is still able to complete quite a few murders in a very short time span, and though the kills aren’t terribly gory, I should point out that they are all women (with the exception of an unfortunate biker at the drive-in). You may be asking, “yeah, yeah, Dana, so they’re all women - is that important?” Well, yeah, it actually is. Normally, in slasher films, especially one’s from the 80’s, the victims of killers all follow the blond, big-boobed archetype we’ve come to accept (and in some cases, slightly resent). But, what sets the killer in NEW YEAR’S EVIL apart from some other movie slashers is that these women are being targeted precisely because they ARE women. Without giving more away, and let’s be honest, the killer's face is presented to us pretty much right away, the killer is not just motivated by making a name for himself, he wants to make an example of women. Basically, the killer is a hater of women. In this respect, I got absolute TED BUNDY vibes from his character the whole time while watching this. He’s charming, uses disguises and fake identities to lure his victims, and is handsome and cunning, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the character was based in part on the famous killer.
The kills range from stabbing with a switchblade, to strangulation, and even in one particularly gruesome moment, the killer picks up a young woman named Sally (LOUISA MORITZ) at a party, offers her some weed in his car, and as he opens up the large plastic bag with the weed in bottom, brings it over her head, suffocating her along with quite of few grams of sweet Sour Diesel, her final breaths on this mortal coil being the heady inhalations of that kind, kind bud. RIP Sally. Blaze 420 in heaven, girl.
A new wave, New Year’s countdown becomes the target of a serial killer in NEW YEAR’S EVIL.
VISUALS/SFX:
If you are looking to saturate your eyeballs as well as your eardrums with 80’s era sights and sounds, this film has them in spades. From protagonist Diane’s outfit (plastic, iridescent mini dress, black dog collar, and magenta eyebrows - yas gawd), this movie is a fun 80’s fest for the retro lover. With the film being set at a live music broadcast, there’s also plenty of 80’s music to be had as well, though, to be honest, only a little of it could be considered new wave, or even pop punk. One hilarious scene sees one of the bands for the night - called Shadow - playing a slow, bluesy guitar tune to a room full of hardcore punks who are all still headbanging and swaying (albeit very slowly) to the music. It’s completely ridiculous, but pretty funny.
The gore itself, while pretty ho-hum, is not terrible. During the course of his New Year’s Eve spree, he manages to get two victims at once, the aforementioned Sally (plastic bag girl) and her friend Lisa (ANITA CRANE) outside a liquor store. By this time, the cops are hot on his trail and follow their lead to a small outdoor playground just behind the store, where we see Sally’s body hanging from the jungle gym with the weed bag still over her head, eyes open, and a New Year’s party hat on her head. Pretty gruesome. As they follow the crime scene, they spot a purse sitting at the end of a slide, and no sooner do they pick it up that Lisa’s body comes sliding down, a knife wound to her very silicon-looking boobs.
A New Year’s killer lurks in the shadows in NEW YEAR’S EVIL.
PERFORMANCES:
Without revealing specifically who the killer is, I will say that his performance was definitely one of the more memorable in the film. Once we learn more about his motivations for killing, his hatred for women, his actions become all the more disturbing and insidious. He is calculating, charming, smarmy, and cunning - like I said, basically Ted Bundy.
ROZ KELLY as Diane is our protagonist, the woman ultimately being the true target of the killer for reasons she doesn’t understand except she’s famous. She’s not only a Siouxsie Sioux-esque new wave icon, but she’s also a savvy businesswoman and mother. It’s obvious she’s had to sacrifice a lot with her family in order to get to where she is, and that, in part, is one of the reasons the killer wants to hurt her so much. She’s a successful, independent, and is the bread-winner of her family. In short, everything the killer hates about women of the 80’s. It should also be noted that her son, Derek (played to creepy perfection by GRANT CRAMER) is affected by her success as well. As an aspiring young actor, he yearns to connect with his wildly successful mom by sharing news of a big acting gig he scored, but all she can seem to do is focus on herself and her big broadcast that night.
Perhaps my favorite performance though has to be the short lived appearance of Sally (LOUISA MORITZ), one of the killer’s victims. Though her screen time is fairly brief, her hilarious encapsulation of 80’s culture was more than memorable. While sitting in the front seat of the killer’s car with her friend Lisa beside her, she proceeds to list off all the various fad late 70’s/early 80’s therapies she’s tried, like Transcendental Meditation and even EST Therapy (remember that!?). She recommends meditation to the killer saying, “it stopped me from biting my nails and helped with Lisa’s nervous diarrhea” to which Lisa is hilariously mortified. Sally then goes on to say, “TM, TA, Zen...all that don’t mean doodly-dee squat. When a girl doesn’t have a date on New Year’s, she’s in shit city.” Sally deserved better than death by weed bag.
GRANT CRAMER as Diane’s creepy son, Derek.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:
For those looking for a niche holiday classic to revisit when New Year’s rolls around, NEW YEAR’S EVIL is a solid bet to add to your yearly watch list. With its condensed timeline and location, it’s able to solidly build tension, even though it leaves some pretty big threads loose at the end. For most of the 90-minute run, it’s a fun, straight-ahead slasher film, but once the true motives of the killer are revealed at the end, the tone takes a distinctly darker and misogynist turn, which feels a little late and disjointed at the end. But regardless, it’s an enjoyable, cheesy, fun, little slasher film.
For so many of us, 2020 felt like living in a real-life horror film, leaving us as bloodied and beaten at the end of it as so many ubiquitous final girls. With so much fear, dread, and uncertainty becoming a normal part of our everyday lives, we find ourselves now clinging to the hope and promise that 2021 seems to hold - a light at the end of a very dark tunnel that brings with it the optimism that things will get better for all of us. Even the killer has this hope for himself, saying at one point, “this has been a very bad year for me, but midnight starts the first day of my new life.” Bad or good, everyone is just looking for a fresh start, a new promise, one that only a new year can bring.
Plenty of camp and scares in NEW YEAR’S EVIL.
THE GORY DETAILS:
The drive-in theater seems to show HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS’ BLOOD FEAST (1963), as indicated by the opening title shown on the drive-in screen. But the film that is actually showing is THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES (1972), aka LA DAMA ROSSA UCCIDE SETTE VOLTE. It was also distributed under the name BLOOD FEAST, which, yes, is very confusing.
Director EMMETT ALSTON has a Hitchcock-style cameo as a bearded camera operator.
The film was released five days before New Years Eve 1981.
MY RATING: 6/10
WHERE TO WATCH:
Amazon Prime, Sling TV, Philo, and YouTube (for free).
