I know i was supposed to rewrite/revise or straight up redo old reviews for the rest of January, but since i usually don’t do it due 12 Days Of Dino December filling up the slots, i’ve figured i still would write a brand new review, about one of the few “New Year’s Eve” themed holiday 80s slashers.
No, not that one, we’re doing Bloody New Year.
Yeah, it’s a cop-out since it’s almost February, but whatever, consider it a freebie of sorts, a Spooktacular Eight review but in January, if you prefer.
Regardless, yes, surprisingly this subniche of holiday horror hasn’t been mined.. at all, without doing some research i struggle to come up with any more of “new year’s slashers” that isn’t the other one i alluded to before, New Year’s Evil.
That one is far more memorable and actually features prominently the “new year’s eve” as part of the plot…. this is Bloody New Year.
The plot – at a glance – actually seems a bit more original, as it starts off with in 1959, with a group of partygoers going to the Grand Island Hotel to celebrate new year’s eve, only for them to vanish.
Decades later we see a group of teens spending time at a seaside fair that jump in to defend an american tourist, Carol, from a trio of not-so-sweet or tender hooligans, then fleeing them by going with Carol on a boat and going out to sea, only to get stranded on Grand Island.
They then come across the aforementioned Grand Island Hotel, which seems deserted and curiously adorned with Christmas ornaments despite being frigging July….
The easy follow up to that is “and then it becomes a cheap mixture of cliches and ideas seen done better in other movies, but mostly the Evil Dead”… and that is correct, because the camera work is so obviously aping Sam Raimi’s style, the zombies/ghosts act and even sound like the Deadites, just this time around there’s no borrowing from Lovecraft mythos the Necronomicon itself, it’s actually all due to a plane crashing there on New Year while carrying some secret material that can bend time and space or some shit, causing the place to be stuck in a time loop on 1959’s New Years Eve.
Spoilers, but it’s not like the explanation matters (sure as hell doesn’t explain why every inanimate object comes alive or why the Cry No More band is performing on a ghostly stage), since it’s such an obvious Evil Dead rip-off that went for a more scifi-esque twist to barely cover its own ass, and the movie it’s less about that and more of a sequence of things happenings, how and why its none of your business, that’s the long and short of it.
The initial timecut to “modern times” is as abrupt as a surprise billhook in the prostate, lots of POV shots are might as well have “this is for the cameraman more than the audience to see” label on screen, a lot of scenes are just the ghosts doing things the characters just plain can’t see, so it’s just for the audience.
the whole entire opening scene in the amusement park is so random, with just some random douches that harass women in teacup rides, and then… join up with the ride operator… because we gotta set up some random ass antagonists that come back later (yep, they follow them to fuckin island, because they have nothing better to do), why the fuck was the ride operator in cohoots with the ruffians (not very bau bau of them) to begin with? I’m assuming that because any other explanation on the why he would spontenously team up with these douches makes no sense.
Things kinda just happens, as a whole, from the boat almost immediatly (given how it’s edited) falling apart, forcing them to go ashore on the island, there’s even them just hearing voices and its the hotel cinema room playing Fiend Without A Face (a classic killer alien brain movie you’d wish you were watching instead) to an empty audience, so why the fuck not just sit back and watch that?
That is not a rethorical question, btw, the characters just do that.
Why not, it’s free B-movie night, haunted or not who gives a shit.
On the positive side of thing, since the movie just opts to throw shit at the wall (regardless if it makes sense for anyone in the movie, ghost included, who mostly do shit just for the audience viewpoint), it not slow moving or boring, there’s always something happening, it understands that at least, since it doesn’t make any sense at all, from having movie characters come out of the screen, weird seaweed monster emerge from dank crates and then vanish into the muck (with the help of reversing the footage), staircase decorations coming alive, haunted pinball machines, etc.
Actually, the opening part in the amusement park just sets the tone right, with the crashing in the haunted house attractions, the hooligans randomly harrassing people, the startled fortuneteller, some misplaced ass music in one scene and then mostly catchy or okay piano tunes, to say nothing of how the actors, when they’re supposed to be thrown flying off a ride because of someone removing the power supply… it’s so laughably, crystal clear obvious they just launched themselves off the thing, when it logically supposed to look accidental. XD
Acting by “teens²” is bad but enjoyably wooden, it adds to the loony charm of the movie, which has that fabled “tongue-in-cheek” quality to its bungum as in its clear no one took it too seriously and most likely had fun with it, just went with the flow, and it all makes for a surreal brew of low budget horror shenaningans that does indeed blatantly rip off Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead with no shame, and admittedly manages to find some clever tricks for the kills and the effects, in spite of the low budget, but often they just feel and look as they are, cheap, and it doesn’t get much cheaper than one of the two teens (quotations implied) being followed by a mob… an invisible mob, able to make noises and shake the bushes (shaking the bushes, boss!) and leave footprints on the sand.
Not that this stops the two from somehow being able to dodge these invisible people multiple times… as in, dodge what’s its supposed to be the entity’s POV but it’s just another round of playing with/for the cameraman.
Honestly, for the last feature lenght film of UK schlockmaister Norman J. Warren (Satan’s Slave, Inseminoid, 1977’s Prey, Spaced Out/Outer Touch, Terror/Delirium House), you can go out on so much worse, this is actually pretty entertaining 80 cheesy nonsense that makes for a perfect Halloween movie too, due to its “anything goes” attitude that make it a horror carnival dark ride/haunted house attraction experience, you feel the 90 minutes more than you should, i will say, but it’s honestly mostly entertaining enough, tacky and goofy to the point of being charming, and even at it’s worse it never quite boring, due to its tongue in cheek feel and its willingness to thrown any ideas at the proverbial wall, be it a table monsters, bootleg Deadites or indoors snow storms.
It’s not quite a “so bad it’s good” film, mind you, but it’s close, it’s never quite dull despite being a hot mess of a film, and it was rereleased on a Blu-Ray + DVD combo by Vinegar Syndrome, if you desire to add it to your collection (it’s about as its gonna get as the original negative was destroyed and Vinegar Syndrome were forced to use the only existing one available, they did a great job despite this), it’s an interesting, messy footnote in terms of holiday horror slashers and the likes.
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