NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980)
Article 3247 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-10-2010
Posting Date: 7-5-2010
Directed by Emmett Alston
Featuring Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace
Country: USA
What it is: Anemic slasher flick

A female DJ hosting a punk/new wave radio show on New Year’s Eve gets calls from a psycho named Evil who claims he’s going to kill someone at midnight for every time zone. The police believe that he intends the DJ to be the final victim.

How authentically punk/new wave is this movie? Well, at one point, we see a punkish musician stick his tongue out to the camera while the music the band is playing sounds like a guitar jam from the Allman Brothers. Later on, when a policeman addresses a crowd of angry punkers on a dance floor, one of the infuriated punks yells “Shut up!” Conclusion: if this was what punk was all about, it was a pretty feeble movement. Fortunately, I’m familiar enough with punk music to know it wasn’t feeble; it’s this movie that’s feeble. Gorehounds in particular will be disappointed; the movie actually gets less and less bloody as it goes along, and ends up feeling more like a police/crime movie than a horror thriller in the final reels. There’s a couple of interesting moments, but a plethora of stupid ones as well, and you’ll see the final twist coming a mile away. This is not one of the high points of the slasher genre.