By 1980, a lot of the choice dates for seasonal set slasher films had already been nabbed with Black Christmas, Halloween and Friday The 13th already doing the rounds, but when it came to ringing in the new year with a scream, it was time for the amusingly named New Year’s Evil to step up and do its thing – or at least, it would have, if Jamie Lee Curtis’ Terror Train hadn’t beaten it to the punch by a good two months…
Anyway… an early production by the Cannon Group – the exuberant production company more famous for keeping Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson in employment throughout the 80s – the movie aimed to put a slightly different spin on the usual slasher shenanigans by focusing just as time on the killer as he rushes to keep his unrealistic murder schedule as it does his primary victim, however, those who’ve seen it are more likely to point out that the movie is more an unofficial showcase for a clutch of gyrating Punk Rock and New Wave bands who pad out the run time at very regular intervals while we paternity wait for the villainous “Evil” to get a bloody move on.
It’s New Years Eve (unsurprisingly) and popular DJ Blaze is hosting a live, televised celebration of Punk and New Wave music as the countdown to a new year gathers momentum; however, a quick look behind the scenes reveals that things are getting tense because if the show goes off without a hitch, then this could mean big things for Blaze’s career. Also adding to the atmosphere feeling as thick as a malfunctioning dry ice machine is the fact that Blaze’s son, the incredibly highly strung Derek, is feeling horribly marginalised despite recently landing a large acting gig and it becomes pretty obvious almost instantly that the young man’s elevator doesn’t quite go all the way to the top floor – if you know what I mean.
However, all this drama is rendered moot by the actions of rampaging madman who rings up the show, introduces himself as “Evil” (or should that be “Eeeeeee-viiiiiilllll“?) and claims he’s going to murder a “naughty girl” at the stroke of midnight in every U.S. time zone and then finish his grim work by offing Blaze herself.
Staunchly taking a “the show must go on” stance to proceedings Blaze forges on with the broadcast flanked by a dismissive detective who thinks this madman is no better than the writhing, unkempt youths who are currently shuffling round the studio’s mosh pit, but as it approaches midnight on the East coast, Evil gets to work.
Less a masked, animalistic maniac and more of a viciously charismatic opportunist, Evil bounces all over the city clad in a variety of disguises as he targets various women and records their strangled gasps as he ends their lives with his switch blade and plays it back on air to a horrified Blaze. What does this lunatic want and can anyone stop this oddly contained rampage before he get to extinguish Blaze herself?
Ask around and you’ll find that New Year’s Evil hasn’t got a particularly good reputation with classic slasher fans and after a long overdue watch, it’s somewhat easy to see why as it wilfully breaks a bunch of rules that the sub-genre had been carefully establishing over the years. For a start, instead of the action being confined to a single location such as a sorority house or a summer camp, the movie stages its action all over Los Angeles as its killer picks the most randomness victims to slay during his incredibly tight time frame. As a result, Evil’s M.O. is less like Michael Myers, Pamela Voorhees or the mysterious Billy and more like that of Scorpio from Dirty Harry and the movie focuses more directly on the killer trying to accomplish his deeds to the point where the audience is almost rendered an accomplice as he targets progressively more ditzier women as he works back toward his ultimate goal.
I’ll say this for Evil, he sure doesn’t make things easy for himself as he picks the oddest victims to take out. The first involves him disguising himself as medical staff, infiltrating a mental hospital and seducing a nurse, all so he can plunge a knife into her at one of the various strokes of midnight. Elsewhere, we find him pasting on a fake porn moustache and trying his best to pull a couple of blondes at a bar as his next deadline counts steadily down and it makes you wonder why he’s making it all so hard on himself – you mean to tell me there’s not one prostitute working the streets of L.A. on New Year’s Eve that he could coerce into a secluded alleyway with a stack of Benjamins?
Still, while Evil lacks the common sense of, say, Michael Myers, you can’t say the dude doesn’t have game as he somehow racks up a small, but capable bodycount like he’s performing some weird-ass, serial killer scavenger hunt.
However, hard core slasher fans might find themselves getting a little antsy as Evil tends to do a lot of his killing off screen as the movie steers well clear of Tom Savini style gore and keeps things a little more subtle, however, this means that New Year’s Evil features a bodycount a little more modest than your average 80s stab-a-thon (barely over five) and thus has drawn the ire of fans who like their slashers a little more fast paced. But if Evil doesn’t manage to score that big a victim tally, what does the movie fill the rest of its running time with? Well, I’m glad you asked, because while the stress levels of Roz Kelly’s strangely mature looking host and the weird, tights-related breakdown of her neglected son fill some of the gaps, the rest of the movie is taken up with long, extended performances by bands I’ve never heard of such as Shadow and Made In Japan as we get near endless footage of them rocking out on stage in front of a disturbingly blank faced audience. “Surely there can’t be that much.” I hear some of you say – well, let’s put it this way: Shadow perform the title track of “New Year’s Evil” not less than three times during the duration of the film, with the first two occuring within the first thirteen minutes of the movie…
However, I found the movie to be quite the refreshing change from the norm, with the increased focus on the killer and heightened thriller aspects making things nicely unpredictable. Plus an unplanned altercation with a biker gang and the true identity of Evil mix things up even more and of course the large amounts of 80s cheese in effect here makes things all the more silly in a good way. The voice modulator Evil uses makes him sound oddly like the indie wrestler known as Danhausen, his choice of Stan Laurel mask is impressively weird and there’s a legitimately startling moment involving a dumpster fakeout and if you drop the established rules of a typical slasher and take it on it’s own merits, New Year’s Evil is an off-beat attempt to ring in the new fear.
And if nothing else, at least there’s a lot of music…
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