New Year's Evil (1980)

Halloween came out in 1978 and took the horror world by storm.  It was an independent slasher film making big bucks thanks to the direction of John Carpenter, the acting of Jamie Lee Curtis, and the spookiness of Michael Myers.  Audiences took notice and went out to see it.  Studios also took notice, and decided to make their own slasher movies in order to make some of the big bucks that Halloween was raking in.

1980 was a pretty big year for the slashers made to capitalize on the success of Halloween.  Prom Night came out, bringing the horror to the biggest night of dance that high school has to offer.  Friday the 13^th came out, which didn’t yet feature Jason as the killer but used one of the unluckiest days to kill off a bunch of camp counselors.  Christmas Evil made the holiday cheer into holiday fear.  Then there was New Year’s Evil, which rounded out the year with some murder.

New Year’s Evil took place on New Year’s Eve.  Diane Sullivan (Roz Kelly), known by the nickname Blaze, was hosting a punk New Year’s concert that was broadcast on television.  A mysterious caller called into the show and said they were going to murder someone at midnight.  When midnight Eastern Standard Time came around, the caller followed through on their promise and committed a murder.  The murders were going to happen every hour on the hour as the different American time zones entered the new year.

The idea behind New Year’s Evil was pretty good.  It wasn’t a simple case of people getting killed for the sake of being killed.  There was a modus operandi to what was going on.  Many of the slasher movies that came out as a result of Halloween’s success had the murders happening on a specific day.  This one fit with that too.  But there was the added detail that it would be happening every hour on the hour.  The killer was much more deliberate in that way, which raised the stakes because there were multiple ticking clocks as the night went on.  It helped to make everything tenser.

There were a few things that separated New Year’s Evil from many of the slasher movies of the time.  The most notable was the identity of the killer.  The vast majority of slasher flicks hide the face of the killer until the end of the movie, if they show it at all.  The Scream movies were all about trying to figure out who the murderer was.  The Friday the 13^th movies and the Halloween movies let the audience know who the killer was, but hid their faces behind masks.  If a slasher movie shows the killer’s face throughout the movie, like in A Nightmare on Elm Street, there tends to be a disfiguration to their face that will set them apart from the average person.  New Year’s Evil took a different approach.

Early in the movie, the killer was revealed.  The audience wasn’t let in on exactly who they were or why they were doing what they were doing, but their face was all over the movie.  The killer was a master of disguise, going from one look to another.  They were shown changing disguises between each of the murders they committed.  There was never any doubt about which person the killer was or what they looked like at any given moment.  It was their full identity that was hidden until closer to the end of the movie.  That set New Year’s Evil apart from most of the other slasher movies of the time.

Another thing that set New Year’s Evil apart from other slasher movies was the use of music.  Most slashers up to that point relied on their score to accentuate what was going on.  That was there as well.  The thing is, New Year’s Evil also used punk music to give everything a certain feel.  Having not seen every slasher movie, it’s hard to say for sure, but it seems like this might have been one of the earliest examples of a non-score soundtrack being an important part of a slasher movie.  The Friday the 13^th movies would use some lyrical music by the time they reached their fourth installment, and A Nightmare on Elm Street had Dokken making a theme song for the third installment, but New Year’s Evil was doing that years before either of those franchises.

The music was an integral part of New Year’s Evil.  There was, of course, the New Year’s Eve punk concert that was being broadcast.  It was this show that the killer called into.  It was the host of the show who was ostensibly the protagonist, though the killer was the person followed through most of the runtime.  The concert was an important part of the story.  The punk soundtrack also gave a sort of anti-authority vibe that fit with the killer snapping and going on a spree.  The songs fit with the host’s son having his own breakdown.  And the punk aesthetic was a good contrast to the police authority types who were on the scene to keep the killer from going after Blaze.  Punk might have only been used because it was the late 1970s when the film was made and they wanted to capitalize both on the holiday horror and punk crazes, but it mixed well with the horror to make a fun little film.

New Year’s Evil was the result of a few entertainment elements, made to earn money off of what the filmmakers thought were the fads of the time.  Luckily for the people who enjoyed them, punk and slasher flicks weren’t a fad.  They were long-lasting parts of the entertainment landscape that would survive the test of time.  New Year’s Evil was a part of both, and an enjoyable one at that.  The kills were fun, the music was memorable, and the story gave some twists and turns that were refreshing though predictable.  For something that was a resultant production, it ended up being a pretty good one.

Now there are a few notes before you head off for the week:

• This post mentioned Halloween.  I’ve watched one Halloween movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, and it was Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (week 48).
• Friday the 13^th was also mentioned.  Three movies from that series have been featured.  They were Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (week 46), Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (week 294), and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (week 85).
• Richard Brown was in New Year's Evil, returning to the Sunday "Bad" Movies after appearing in Glitter (week 22).
• Have you seen New Year’s Evil?  What did you think about it?  Was it good or bad or somewhere in between?  Let me know in the comments.
• The comments or Twitter are good places to suggest movies that I should be watching for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Tell me about any movies you think would fit.
• Sometimes when I watch bad movies, I’ll share clips of them on Snapchat (jurassicgriffin).  Add me if you want.
• Next week, I’ll be checking out a sequel to some movies that I’ve seen for the blog before.  I know there’s at least one person who reads the blog who has been looking forward to this one.  The time has come.  God’s Not Dead 3: A Light in the Darkness will be featured next week, so I’ll see you all then, once I’ve had this spiritual quest.