It is holiday season and what could be better way to celebrate it than with bloodshed? New Year is just around the corner which means many of seasonal killers are waking up from their hibernation, hungry for blood and vengeance for any demented reason they might have. And who knows, maybe this night you are going to be lucky enough to be picked for dying in the most brutal ways your twisted mind can imagine.
This MGM/Cannon offspring starts with phone talk between two friends, Diane (played by Roz Kelly) and Yvonne (played by Alicia Dhanifu). Naturally, when two women are yacking on the phone, you can’t expect any constructive conversation. And as usual, they are badmouthing Diane’s husband Richard. To be honest, Yvonne tipped him off to his wife as she had seen him wasted in Palm Springs (I really can’t blame him considering how boring is his wife). Well that was her last gossip since couple of moments later, after hanging up the phone, she ended up brutally slaughtered. Serves her right for getting involved in men’s business she doesn’t understand.
Put a sock in it…or knife!
Diane is punk rock star known as Blaze and New Year’s countdown starts with her hosting Hollywood Countdown show. she seems far too old and unattractive to be hosting this kind of show and given the way she dresses and acts she seem more like she would be more at home hosting games of bingo than a music show that seems to aimed at the punk rocker set. Also she has grown son Derek (played by Grant Cramer) who practically begs for her attention. Anyway, viewers can call her live and vote for the best song. All is going well until Diane receives a phone call from an odd sounding stranger claiming his name is Evil, who announces on live television that he going to kill someone close to her at midnight. I guess he doesn’t like songs which are presented on voting list. And he is obviously a man of his word since he butchered a nurse while having sex with her (win-win situation). He calls back Diane to inform her about keeping her promise right on Eastern Central Time and announces when the clock strikes twelve in each time zone, a ‘Naughty Girl’ will be punished ,then the killer signs off with a threat claiming that Diane will be the last Naughty Girl to be punished. Cops informed Diane about both nurse and Yvonne and now she is scared for her life.
Homicide hot line
While his mother is going through a living hell Derek cuts her red stockings and puts it over his face while watching her show. I don’t see the point of this scene since we know that Derek is not the killer. Face of Evil had been shown to us in previous scenes but there are some similarities between him and Derek. Maybe the director Emmett Alston wanted to give us false lead. If that is the case he shouldn’t have shown us the real killer before it. Or maybe it is not false lead after all? Anyway, our real killer turns out to be master in disguise. He puts false mustaches on his face (and that’s all, he didn’t even change the haircut or color of the hair) and goes to some club where he picks some bimbo with promise he is going to take her to wild New Year party. His plan went
wrong when she suddenly took her roommate Lisa with herself. Needing a time to improvise Evil cruised through streets while bimbo was dribbling into his ear about self-help meditations she has been practicing. In that moment even I felt the urge to strangle her with my bare hands. Evil had done the next best thing. He pulled over his car, sent Lisa to buy Champagne and killed bimbo by putting a plastic bag over her head. And then sliced her throat (better safe than sorry). But that was not the end of it. There is still nosy roommate needed to be disposed off. So Evil creates a trail of shoes which leads to nearby secluded dumpster. Of course, Lisa follows the trail and when she approached – big surprise peek a boo, I see you!
As it is his habit Evil ran over to the nearest phone booth to inform Diane about his most recent achievement. Lt. Clayton (played by Chris Wallace) now can only wait for new victims hoping for killer to make a wrong move. He also follows the schedule and announces that Evil will strike again at 11 pm. And boy, was he right. Now disguised as a priest, Evil went to the local drive in theater where he unexpectedly killed some unsuspecting biker who got in his way. Beware of hand of God for it shall slice you! But the biker was not alone. Soon motorcycle band stormed in the theater which made Evil started to panic. So he quickly hijacked the car of some teenage couple who were having fun on the backseat. It seemed that the poor girl was done for especially since her
boyfriend was chucked out of the car back in theater. But she was lucky enough to take opportunity to escape when Evil went outside to have a fight with two drunken idiots he almost had run over. Boy, was his face red! Oh, Oh and the movie that was giving in drive in cinema was 1963. horror classic “Blood Feast”. See the link?
’60s slashers are the best turn on
Evil manages to sneak into Diane’s show by killing a police officer and taking his uniform. There we find out his true identity. It is Diane’s husband – Richard (played by Kip Niven). He got Diane right where he wanted her to be – in stuck elevator (which he had previously sabotaged; no porn pun intended). He explains to her that he knows about her cheating around. Derek has told him all about that. Derek also said that his mother tried to seduce him and cut his and his father’s allowance (?) So Richard got fed up of her and Yvonne. And the reason why he killed other women is that they are all the same manipulative, selfish, materialistic whores. Hm can’t argue with that. He left Diane hanging by elevator while police cornered him in good old-fashion rooftop chase. There he decides to end his life the only way appropriate for cheesy 80s slashers – ridiculous falling off the building while wearing some kind of comedian mask. And Diane somehow managed to survive. Looks like happy ending. Or is it? You see, Derek took his father’s mask, sneaked in ambulance van his mother was in, took out paramedics leaving him alone with his mother. The end?
Conclusion: Overall this one doesn’t have all that much going for it. One of the many problems here is the fact that this one comes off as a bland, boring thriller which just takes so much out of the film. Premise doesn’t really hold up that much. By using a series of utterly obnoxious story lines is where that tends to fall as the different story lines really don’t make any sense. The fact that the premise isn’t really all that spectacular enough is the prime motivator here which requires a lot of excess scenes along the way to hold itself up, some of which is found by it being dragged out indefinitely with a series of endless and utterly innocuous songs of local bands that really aren’t that great. Kip Niven thinks he’s doing this big theatrical part, but he’s too nerdy to pull it off. His body is tiny, and teeny and yet he can kill women larger than he is. He happens to be in the area where his target victims are and it gets worse: according to the movie, he didn’t plan this. New Year’s Evil ends up being one of the most lifeless, dull films that the Cannon Group ever produced. Watch it at your own risk. The fact that you’re immune to higher-quality mediocre movies just means that you have a higher tolerance for bad movies now. Thank God a sequel wasn’t made.
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