New Year's Evil

 

New Year’s Evil

1980

Director- Emmett Alston

Cast- Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace, Grant Cramer, Jennie Franks

            

    This convoluted slasher is just what you need if you are craving some cheesy 80s horror. It’s from Cannon so you know you’re in for something entertaining, if cheap.

           

     Dianne (Roz Kelly) is a celebrity hosting a televised New Year’s Eve party that will ring in the year 4 times, once for each time zone in the continental U.S. She gets a phone call from a deranged sounding man (Kip Niven) saying that he is going to kill someone for each hour of the New Year.

            

      Sure enough, as the New Year rings in on the East Coast, he murders someone, tapes it, and plays the recording to Dianne over the phone. The police get involved and the killer strikes again when the New Year hits the Central time zone. Will he be caught before he finishes his plan? Why is he doing this? Mixed in with this clever plot is an unnecessary distracting family side plot about an unloved son who likes to wear stockings on his head.

            

     At first glance, this is a low budget slasher. At second glance, it is still a low budget slasher. But on third glance, the genius of this movie becomes evident. Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t Psycho or Silence of the Lambs. This is a Cannon film, after all. What makes this movie different from the mountain of other 80s slashers is that the slasher is the protagonist! Dianne and her New Year’s party are just the plot device, the slasher is the focus, not the “final girl.”

            

     As he is trying to carry out his second murder he runs into complications. He’s stuck in traffic with an airhead girl blathering on about “trancendental meditation” and “transactional analysis” (that’s about as early 80s as you can get). Anyone who has ever been pressed for time on a deadline can totally relate to his frustration. When he runs afoul of a biker gang, his intricate plot unravels and he has to make do with what he can. Watching it, you are rooting for him to get away from them, if for no other reason than to see how he will finish his plan.

           

     Its cleverness aside, the movie is a time capsule of late 70s / early 80s pop culture. Roz Kelly, who plays Dianne, is best known as Pinky Tusccadero from Happy Days, but she also made appearances on Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, The Dukes of Hazzard and Fantasy Island. Kip Niven, who plays the killer starred in several episodes of Alice and The Waltons. Louisa Moritz, one of his victims, made appearances on The Rockford Files, M.A.S.H. and The Incredible Hulk. Taaffe O'Connell, another of the victims, starred in Galaxy of Terror the following year.  Teri Copley, the buxom girl who escapes the killer, was the star of the 80s sitcom, We Got it Made , and a ton of TV movies before appearing on the cover of Playboy.

Fun Fact: the director, Emmett Alston, directed not one, not two, but three different ninja movies!