New Year’s Evil (1980)

By 1980, every holiday was taken. All writer and director Emmett Alston had left was New Year’s Evil. It would have to do.

TV’s most beloved punk, Diane “Blaze” Sullivan (“Pinky” Tuscadero from TV’s Happy Days) is getting ready to count the night down from a Hollywood hotel. Things are great until Evil himself call, saying that in each timezone, he’ll be killing a naughty girl, with Diane being the last to die.

In an insane asylum nearby, a nurse is the first victim, with the killer audiotaping each kill and replaying them. Who is he? A crazy fan? A religious nut? Her son? Her husband?

Whomever it is — I won’t tell — he dies by jumping off the roof of the hotel. But as Diane is loaded into the ambulance, her son (Grant Cramer, Killer Klowns from Outer Space) is at the wheel, wearing the mask of the killer.

The big selling point of this movie for me? Fake 1980’s punks. There is nothing like the Hollywood mainstream ideal of what punk rockers are like, because it is always far from the truth and always awesome.

This is fine, I guess. I wanted it to be something more, but maybe I demand too much from 1980’s slashers. There are good ones out there. This isn’t one of them. But you can always find out for yourself with the Scream! Factory blu-ray or watch it on Amazon Prime.

3 thoughts on “New Year’s Evil (1980)

  1. Pingback: Galaxy of Terror (1981) – B&S About Movies

  2. Pingback: Chained Heat (1983) – B&S About Movies

  3. Yes! The punks are the best part. 🙂 That opening scene, with the punks driving and the awesome theme song on the soundtrack (later played at the concert also) sets the tone and puts me in a punk-rock mood for the rest of the movie. I first saw this movie on TCM several years ago, along with TERRORVISION–two more movies I’d somehow missed during their original era, but was glad to discover later in life.

    Like

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