In keeping with the Loose Cannons Podcast, I recently re-watched the 1980 slasher New Year's Evil.
A psychopath (Kip Niven) leaves a trail of bodies
on his way to a New Year's Bash celebration hosted by popular VJ
Diane Sullivan (Roz Kelly). Will she still be alive at the stroke of
midnight?
Now, I say re-watched, but I remembered
very little of it, as this was another title that I saw through
Elvira's Movie Macabre in the early nineties. As far as eighties
slashers go, this is pretty low on the totem pole. The movie featured
very little gore, was overly convoluted at times, and seemed to often
forget that it is a slasher, like when the killer suddenly decided to
start wearing a mask well into the last reel.
Black Christmas styles! |
Having said that, New Year's Evil does
have some entertaining qualities. The theme song was so catchy that
the filmmakers decided to use it in its entirety a total of three
times. The depiction of “New Wave Rock” culture was pretty
laughable, as seen when the band was playing some weird blues-y riff
and the crowd basically looked they were moshing to a ballad. It
was also pretty amusing to see them try and fill the venue with thirty or so extras. You can actually hear the echoing emptiness of the
room as they shuffle around.
I think the filmmakers were trying to
create another slasher icon by naming him Evil, but he's actually
kind of shit at his vocation. I admit that the idea of a guy who
kills people every hour leading up to New Year's Eve – representing
each time zone – was pretty cool, but the closer he got, the more
he started mucking things up. I suppose I should say SPOILER here,
but do you really give a shit? By the time he reached Diane
Sullivan, and it was revealed that he was, in fact, her husband – I
wonder if Nightmares in A Damaged Brain scooped this twist from here
– the gig was pretty much up.
He proceeded to spew out some misogyny
just before the cops showed up and he threw himself (or at least a
poorly disguised mannequin) off the roof. The movie then ends with
her son Derek (Grant Kramer), who has spent most of the running time doing all sorts of
weird stuff with pantyhose, picking up where his father left off. As
you would.
We need to talk about Derek. |
In complete contrast to the films of
today, almost everybody in the movie is played by someone who is
older than they should be. I think in that regard I prefer it the way
it is today. It also had a scene in a Drive-In and I always like
those. If I'm not mistaken, the movie playing may have been footage from an earlier Cannon release (The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times). There's a bit of free trivia for you. New Year's
Evil isn't great, but it's serviceable, much like a lot of the
horrors that were being churned out by this point in the early
eighties.
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