Customer Reviews

New Years Evil [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

New Years Evil is an early entry in the slasher movie boom. Coming out hot on the heels of Friday the 13th, it's an obvious attempt at the "holiday" slasher movie theme. However, this movie doesn't take the Jason/Michael/Madman Marz approach of making the killer an almost supernatural, unstoppable juggernaut who never speaks. This is more of the When A Stranger Calls style, where the killer is a more true to life psychopath. No mask, no mystery. We see him constantly and half of the film is devoted to following him around as he goes on his spree. Basically he's the central character of the film. Throughout the film, "Richard" AKA "Evil" calls into a televised rock and roll New Years Eve extravaganza hosted by Rozz Kelly. His plan is to commit four murders, one for each time zone(New York on through to California) when the clock strikes midnight for the New Year. Th final murder is to be Rozz herself. Dear God, who is this guy?? Well, those fluent in horror films will figure out what's really happening long before the movie ends.
Not much in the gore or suspense departments, but the performance of Kip Niven as the sly psychopath is actually quite good.
But being that there are no surprises here, this movie will still be entertaining for fans of slasher films and classic(and I use the term lightly here)horror films. Fans of Resident Evil: 4-DArmegeddonwastelandplaguematrixripoff will simply hate it.

One star?!! Obviously, somebody doesn't appreciate low budget horror! New Year's Evil is one of the better "slasher" films of the 80s, in my opinion. I'm sure many would disagree with me, but N.Y.E. is way more interesting than the extremely overrated Friday The 13th Pt. 1, a movie so boring that I've only watched it once. I just saw N.Y.E. last week and I've already watched it twice, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna make my friends watch it on New Year's Eve too! N.Y.E. isn't overly gory and it's easy to figure out who the killer is, but this movie has that charm that only 70s and 80s low budget horror films can contain. If you love ignored horror gems like Sleepaway Camp, Night Of The Creep or Rock 'N Roll Nightmare then definitely give New Year's Evil a view.

New Years Evil is your typical low grade B-Movie but a lot more awful with bad acting and really predictable throughout and boring and then when the scary parts come it's all sadistic but still awful to sit through all the New Wave Music.

Succinctly, bad acting by bad actors, given bad script containing bad dialogue. Watch for one of my favorite scenes (cynically) in horror movie history in which a policeman looking in I believe a parking garage recites with great depth and emotion what amounts to perhaps the only line he ever read in his acting career, "Look, more blood." It was a line my friends and I used tongue in cheek for a variety of reasons for quite some time (eg. @ a baseball game, "Look, more Bud"). But that typifies the pitiful quality of all things involved in this flick. Roz Kelly was supposed to be the draw in this piece of dreck, but the fact she can't act only adds to the terrible plot, plausibility and drama involved in what became one of many horror movies based on a certain holiday. I'm sure I've seen this rated among the worst horror movies, much less movies in general by several sources. Watch this if you want to see why. For the record, I saw this when we'd go see any horror movie when drunk enough not to care what it was.