Well, everybody is saying that 2021 will be better than 2020, yeah uh I’ll believe it when I see it. Anyways, this bit of visual white noise will at least put you off to a good start, “New Years Evil”!
Yeah yeah this is your typical early 1980’s slasher, a guy gets pissed that every woman, including his wife, are being “bitches” and starts taking them out. He had a traumatic experience when he was younger and he was put into an insane asylum. Again a typical slasher, except this slasher has New Wave music, the New Year’s event is hosted by Diane Sullivan (played by Roz Kelly) whose son and husband, Richard Sullivan (played by character actor Kip Niven) are pissed at her. The Shadows and Made in Japan play at the New Years event, where a guy with a voice modulator calls into the radio request line saying he is gonna kill a person in each time zone as the year changes over.
The police race to stop him, you start wondering if the son and/or the husband is doing the crimes to get revenge on her. Not many horror films take place around New Years Eve, the other ones I can think of off the top of my head are, “Bloody New Years” and “Terror Train” all nutso entries. For a slasher film it has little nudity, most slasher films you can expect flopping tits and voluminous southern carpets. Not so in this one, you can see the top of the tit of one of the chicks in the car smoking a joint while her boyfriend feels her up.
This…
Leads to this…
So is this worth your attention? Yep. Not the best out of the roster of early 1980’s slasher films, but its still a 80’s slasher film and that is better than most of the shit that passes for “horror” these days. Another thing, it was put out by independent, 1980’s exploitation machine, Cannon, which means this bit of noise takes no prisoners and reigns in the New Year in style. “New Year’s Evil” played at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema in LA on December 29th, 2018 which says a lot, and I am not a fan of everything Quentin does. Well its New Years Day as I write this, if you want a New Years movie watch it here (hate youtube but you can watch it here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMzXP6Scndo
To all who read this, hope the next year is better for you and everybody else.