Horror Movie Review: New Year’s Evil (1980)

It’s New Year’s Eve & Diane (or Blaze as she is also called) is hosting a late night live party at a Hollywood hotel. Diane (Roz Kelly) is a TV icon. A punk rocker loved by all it seems except her adult son, Richard (Kip Niven). A massive man-child, he’s desperate for his mother’s attention but she’s busy & distracted with the show.

The show is going well but in a poorly thought out idea, Diane takes live calls. One of which comes from a man who uses a voice-changer to declare his name is ‘Evil’. That’s not all though, he also says he is going to punish a ‘naughty girl’ every hour. One in each time zone within America as they celebrate the New Year ending with Diane.

What follows is a fairly sub-standard slasher horror with an easy to work out ‘twist’. A paint by numbers effort that has very little in the way of originality or excitement save for occasional gory violence. A lot of the problems lie in just how ‘meh’ the killer is. His threat lies in his suave & enticing personality but beyond being ‘mad’ there is little motivation for his murderous spree.

The idea of murdering people as the clock hits midnight in each time-zone just ends up feeling really contrived & when you strip that away it’s nothing more then a bland slasher with very little original content.

The ’twist’ is one that you can see coming a mile away & the film doesn’t exactly do much to hide it either. It’s hardly helped by a pretty bad performance by Kip Niven. His cheesy over-acting becomes more unbearable the more he’s on screen.

Roz Kelly isn’t so bad though, hardly having to put much effort in. Her character is at least a little bit unique being a punk rocker.

As the credits roll you’ll struggle to muster up much feeling either way. It’s not a bad movie, it’s just really forgettable.

[amazon_link asins=’B00P9UVB5Y,B01EW16QSC,B004BGQSCS,B000O5XZFI’ template=’UseThisOne’ store=’g0e5b-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’dad70f3c-e352-11e7-80ab-1b69b9c84319′]