New Year’s Evil (1980)

New Year’s Evil is bad, but the kind of bad you can have fun laughing at. From what I can tell the film wasn’t made with any intentional camp, despite it being so comedic at times. The acting is terrible, the editing is amateur, the whole plot is messy and contrived, and the musical numbers are unnecessary. Oh yeah, there’s musical numbers alright, as well as minute long cuts of punks violently slam dancing. It’s a genuinely bizarre artistic choice.

The film centers around punk queen Blaze as she hosts a punk rock New Years eve special. Maybe it was before my time, but I just can’t imagine this being a thing? Anyway, as she’s hosting this televised concert, she gets an on-air call threatening her and those she cares about. She tries to brush it off at first, but the threat begins to seem more and more real. Meanwhile, we watch the killer travel across the country in the course of several hours, committing murders as midnight strikes in each time zone, planning to end with Blaze on the west coast. In between these acts are the shots of mosh pits and full length original song performances.

So where does this film go wrong? Pretty much everywhere. I haven’t put a ton of effort into the math but it just seems improbable that someone could make that journey and do all the stuff he does. Also, there’s a scene in the beginning that doesn’t make much sense if the killer is working alone, which is a pretty big plot hole. One unique thing this movie does is that a lot of it follows the killer, his journey, and his plan. More time is spent with him than most slasher villains, which I think was a refreshing route to take, it’s just a shame he wasn’t more interesting. None of the characters really stand out, although the son’s mental breakdown where he puts a stocking on his head is kind of hilariously random.

I don’t know that I’d say this film is exactly WORTH watching, but it’s kind of hilariously bad enough that you’ll have a good time if you watch it. Plus some of the artistic choices that were made are just so strange you kind of have to see it to believe it.

Netflix available? No

Hulu available? Yes

Xfinity available? No

Rating: 2/5