New Year's Evil
(1980)
Director: Emmett Alston
Cast: Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace
As you have
probably guessed by now, the way that movies give me the most enjoyment
is by actually watching them. That's what movies were made for in the
first place, to be seen by the mass public. But while I try to watch a
movie most of the time when I feel the subject of movies is of great
interest to me at the time, occasionally I will do something else.
Though that "something else" happens to be related to the subject of
movies. Certainly, as I have mentioned many times before on this web
site, I like to read about movies - how they were made, for example.
But I also like on occasion to just think about why some things are so
in the movie genre. One thing I like to think about are movie genres
that are dead or essentially dead. Quite often I like to wonder why
public taste turned from liking a certain movie genre to now not caring
all that much about it. The silent movie genre is one early example,
and one that doesn't take much thought to conclude why it died out.
Having sound gives movies a lot more possibilities, and once audiences
got a taste of that, they quickly felt that silent movies were
primitive storytellers by comparison. Then there was the western genre.
It seems curious at first that a genre that was wildly popular for many
decades started to die out as the 1970s came around, and within a few
years was pretty much dead. After a lot of thought, I concluded that
not only had the past decades exhausted pretty much any spin on the
western genre, but new and exciting genres (like cop movies) had sprung
up to interest audiences in them.
Then there is the slasher genre that for a brief time in
the 1980s was very popular. Like with silent movies, it doesn't take
too much examination of the genre to discover why it essentially died
out, though of course for a reason much different than silent movies.
The hard truth was that most slashers were not only not very good, they
quite often repeated the same kind of characters and situations over
and over. But while slasher movies may be guilty of those particular
flaws, a closer look at the genre does uncover some interesting
observations, particularly regarding those repeated elements. When it
came to settings, there were a particular few that were very popular
with filmmakers. A lot of slasher movies were set on campuses, like Night School, Final Exam, and Slaughter
High. A lot of other slasher movies were set in the
outdoors, like The Forest, The Prey, and Madman.
But possibly the most well known setting for slasher movies back in the
golden age of the genre were slasher movies that were set during
special calendar dates. I'm talking about movies like My Bloody Valentine,
April
Fool's Day, Mother's
Day, Prom
Night, Graduation
Day, Silent
Night Deadly Night...
I could go on and on for quite some time. The question comes up as to
why so many slasher movies were set during special calendar dates, and
I think the answer to that is easy. First, in 1978 came the slasher
movie Halloween,
which made a serious amount of money. Then two years later came the
slasher movie Friday
The 13th,
which also made a great splash at the box office. The success of two
special calendar date slasher movies made fairly close to each other
seemed to suggest to filmmakers that even more money could be made by
making more such movies.
But I think there are other reasons why slasher movies
set on special calendar dates were so popular. If you think about it,
most holidays and other special times on the calendar are times when
people are supposed to have fun. So filmmakers have probably concluded
that introducing horror
to people having fun on holidays might make the
horror seem more terrifying than if the horror was introduced on an
ordinary day. While I am sure that this theory of mine is true to a
degree, let's face it - most slasher movie makers were probably trying
to ape Halloween
and Friday The
13th. When I got my hands on a copy of New Year's Evil,
I was sure that its makers had that intention most of all in their
minds. But what interested me about it was that it was not only one of
the first slashers to ape those two aforementioned famous slasher
movies, but it was also one of the first efforts made by producers
Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus after purchasing Cannon Films the
previous year. Did it live up to its interesting pedigree? Well, first
the plot. In Los Angeles during New Year's Eve, aging disc jockey Diane
(Kelly, The Owl And The Pussycat)
is the host of a showcase of various new wave musical acts as part of a
televised celebration of the coming new year. She no doubt feels the
pressure of trying to grab an audience when her youth is long behind
her, but she also has the problem of dealing with her neglected adult
son Derek (Grant Cramer, Killer Klowns From Outer Space).
However, she soon has another problem on her hands. A mysterious man
(Niven, Damnation Alley)
has murder on his mind, and when it reaches midnight in the eastern
time zone, he not only commits murder, but telephones Diane afterwards
during her show to brag about it. And the killer isn't content to stick
with one murder - as midnight reaches the other time zones in America,
he does the same thing again. Naturally, Diane is seriously creeped
out, especially because the killer makes it pretty clear in his phone
calls that when midnight reaches the west coast, Diane will be his last
victim.
If you haven't recently seen any slashers from the
1980s, and/or you are familiar with the writings of movie critics of
the era covering slasher movies (like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert),
it's quite possible that your perspective of 1980s slashers is that
they pile on the horror and gore with the subtility of a fire hose
turned on full blast. But the truth is that many 1980s slashers seen
today more than 30 years later come across tamer than you might think.
This is certainly true for New Year's Evil.
First, there is the level of blood and gore in the movie. There are
much fewer scenes of this gooshy stuff being displayed than you might
think. And what there is could almost certainly be shown on prime time
television unedited more than 40 years later. In fact, the movie would
probably get a PG-13 rating today if it weren't for a little language
and some fleeting nudity. With that fact in mind, you've probably
concluded that the stalk-and-slash sequences don't pack all that much
punch, and you would be correct. Director Emmett Alston (Demonwarp)
more often than not seems intent on not staging these sequences to the
maximum effect. Some of the murders happen off-screen or out of camera
range. At other times, the murders are beforehand set up in a way that
you know exactly how the
person will be killed, so there is absolutely no surprise when it
actually happens in front of your eyes. Oddly, the only real creepy
stalking sequence happens when the intended victim doesn't end up being
killed. Instead, we get a sequence showing the panic and pleading of a
woman in the back seat of the killer's car. She eventually escapes, but
she does manage to leave more of a lasting (and uneasy) impression than
the characters who were actually (and lamely) killed.
But the (unbloody) meat of New Year's Evil
- it's intent to creep out and thrill its audience - is not just
unsuccessful due to the lame ways the stalk-and-slash scenes have been
set up. The failure can also be blamed on the portrayal of the
character of the killer. There is initially some promise that this
particular slasher will be more interesting than most other slasher
characters of this period, given that we see his face right from the
start, as well as that he has a substantial amount of dialogue. But all
the same, the character isn't all that scary. In fact, he seems almost
comical at times. There are scenes where he speaks with a distorted
voice ("Call me EEEVIL!") that
are meant to be creepy, but instead simply sound goofy. He
is more menacing when he speaks normally, but not that much; actor
Niven does not put any edge into his performance as he sets up his
kills, so we in the audience are not uneasy in the slightest seeing
this guy. And while this character eventually gets a monologue
explaining why he's doing what he's doing, it's far from satisfying or
substantial; you'll have a lot of questions that are simply not
answered. He remains a mystery, and not in a chilly way like Michael
Myers in Halloween.
As it turns out, none of the other lead characters in New Year's Evil
are all that interesting or fleshed-out. The characters of Diane and
Derek have very little backgrounds, so we can't really see what is
pushing them in positive or negative ways. It doesn't help that later
in the movie, they are pushed to the backburner for long periods of
time in favor of showing the killer, so we don't get that many
opportunities that show them feeling a great threat is coming their way.
The only character in the movie that really makes an
impression is a character played by Louisa Moritz (Hot Chili).
Playing a ditzy woman that the killer picks up, Moritz shows some
effective comic spark, and as the killer realizes he is running behind
schedule while trying to find time to kill her, the sequence becomes
both amusing and tense. Other than this scene and the aforementioned
near-kill scene, Alston can't seem to do much to liven up New Year's Evil.
The script (which Alston is given story credit to)
has additional weakness, one of them being that like many other
slashers, there isn't a heck of a lot of story here. But instead of
entertaining us with one kill after another, Alston instead puts a lot
of focus on the new wave musical acts that Diane is hosting. And while
I love 1980s music, even I have to admit that almost all of the music
in this movie simply isn't all that good, though the title track does
stand out from the pack. As for Alston's direction of the other aspects
of the movie, it's kind of a mixed bag. Despite the low budget imposed
on him by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the movie's
lighting and cinematography do look pretty professional and glossy. The
low budget does show occasionally, such as with the generally tight
feel of the enterprise instead of a "wide" feeling, but it's never too
distracting. However, viewers will feel that the movie is missing
"snap" throughout, not just with the murder sequences. Instead of
grabbing us and putting a bloody knife to our throats, the movie pretty
much just plods along at a much slower pace than we would like.
Although I was never bored at any period, at the same time I wanted a
lot more than what I was getting. The highest I can say about this
movie is that it's somewhat better than most other slashers of this
period... but as you no doubt know, most slashers of this period were
really bad stuff. Proceed with caution.
(Posted November 30, 2020)
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD)
-
-
Check for availability on Amazon (Blu-Ray)
-
-
Check for availability on Amazon (Amazon Prime Video)
See also: Don't Open Till
Christmas, Elves, To
All A Good Night
|