NEW YEAR’S EVE BAD MOVIE: NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980)

The best thing about these seasonal bad movie reviews of mine is the fact that they save a lot of time by being appropriate AND already done. From 2010 it’s a repost of my review of the laughably bad holiday horror film New Year’s Evil.

NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980) – Category:  Enjoyably campy bad movie  elevated by kitsch-value in the casting    This is another of those holiday-themed slasher movies that followed in the bloody footsteps of the original Halloween. See my review of the Thanksgiving slasher movie Slasher In The House for more on this odd sub-genre.

Our cups runneth over with kitsch-casting in this little honey. ROZ KELLY, “Pinky Tuscadero” herself, stars as Blaze, an alleged punk rock icon who hosts an alleged punk rock (but really New Wave) concert being televised on New Year’s Eve.

Kelly is way too old for this role, since the character is presented as being the hippest thing in punk (Hilarious!). Nothing would have been lost by instead making Blaze an over-the- hill rocker trying desperately to revive her career by reinventing herself as a punk diva. Well, that’s not true, I guess. A large amount of the unintentional laughter this film generates would be lost and that’s really the only reason to watch it.

KIP NIVEN plays our slasher, who calls himself “Evil”. He calls Blaze’s show to play tape recordings of his murders, which he plans to commit as the New Year arrives in all four time zones of the U.S., synchronized with Blaze’s show, which will also ring in hourly New Year’s Days as it plays throughout the night.   Yep, it’s the same type of plot as in that other New Year’s Eve slasher, where a bullet- train is making its way across the country, timing its arrival in each time zone to coincide with midnight, with a slasher striking at each playing of Auld Lang Syne. 

GRANT CRAMER, actress Terry Moore’s son, plays Blaze’s unstable son, who is very clearly being set up all along to be the new slasher in a  New Year’s Evil sequel that never came. TERI COPLEY, the We Got It Made star herself, plays a potential victim of our slasher. SHADOW and MADE IN JAPAN play themselves, rock bands performing in Blaze’s New Years’ Dyin’ Eve, or whatever she wants to call it. Now that Shadow and Made In Japan are so famous, it’s interesting to see their humble beginnings. (I’m kidding!)

Other things to love in this flick include: 

a) Match Game bimbo Louisa Moritz as one of the victims

b) the hopelessly lame songs, especially the title tune, which we get to hear 3 times during the movie,

c) the bizarre, quasi- flirtatious dialogue between Blaze and the detective assigned to get to the bottom of these New Year’s Eve killings

and d) the show-stopping WTF interlude where “Evil” engages in a looooong running fight with a biker gang for no reason except padding the film’s running time and to sprinkle in a few cutesy cult movie scenes when their battle takes them into a Drive- In.  

I recommend this film for bad movie fans who don’t like heavy gore because this film’s violence is so low- key you’d swear it must be a made- for tv movie (at least until you see Teri Copley’s boobs on display).  

SPOILER ALERT – One thing the movie does right is remember the fact that, since Hawaii is part of the U.S., the New Year isn’t fully here until it’s midnight in Hawaii, setting up the film’s climactic slaying. “Mele Kalike MURDER” for you Quinn Martin fans out there!    

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