New Year’s Evil is a ho-hum horror movie with little horror and the kills pretty standard. Save for the finale, this is a bore of a film that might have a minor following but for myself, little about this was enjoyable outside of Kip Niven’s creepy but fun performance.
New Year’s Evil
(1980)
Genre(s): Horror, Suspense/Thriller
Kino Lorber| R – 85 min. – $29.95 | April 12, 2022
Date Published: 04/08/2022 | Author: The Movieman
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Kino Lorber provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post.
The opinions I share are my own.
THE MOVIE — 2½/5 |
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Plot Synopsis: On a totally punked-out New Year’s Eve, vivacious TV hostess Diane “Blaze” Sullivan (ROZ KELLY) counts down the hours to midnight. But as her show progresses, every hour, on the hour, a savage maniac slashes up a new female victim. As the trail of mutilated bodies spreads throughout the city, it becomes apparent that the psychopath’s ultimate target is Blaze herself. Desperate to stop the bloody rampage, the police frantically seal off the ongoing televised festivities. But the killer is quicker than they suspected—and he’s also the last one anyone suspects.
Quick Hit Review: Slasher flicks from the 1980s never were my thing outside of the occasional Friday the 13th or Halloween sequel, though even those were becoming a bore. New Year’s Evil, released late in 1980, had an OK set-up with your usual paper-thin characters, paired with questionable performances, and a slow start-up. But unlike others, this one took its good old time trying to gather momentum but it never comes until probably the very end where I actually began to enjoy and appreciate some of the darker humor. The kills aren’t anything special or memorable, although the last involving Ms. Kelly was fairly inventive. If there was one big plus is it would be with Kip Niven playing the killer. He presented some great on-screen chemistry to the point even when his character puts on a fake mustache that would not fool anyone (albeit nobody in this film blinked twice). In any case, Niven, whose career has mainly been short films and one-off appearances on a variety of B-level television shows (like “Walker, Texas Ranger”), is a hoot in the role and one of the few saving graces.
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SPECIAL FEATURES – 2½/5 |
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This release comes with a matted slip cover and the interior artwork is reversible, the other side containing the original poster artwork. Audio Commentary – Writer/Director Emmett Alston, with Bill Olson from Shout Factory moderating, offers up a low key but informative track recounting stories on the set and how he became involved with the project. Call Me Evil: The Making of New Year’s Evil (7:16) is a decent, if not a tad short, retrospective featurette with new interviews with director of photographer Thomas Ackerman and Actors Kip Niven, Grant Cramer and Taaffe O’Connell. Theatrical Trailer (1:46) |
VIDEO – 4¼/5 |
| New Year’s Evil makes its second release (in North America anyway) on Blu-ray, the first through Shout Factory in 2015. This newest one from Kino Lorber gets a new 1080p high-definition transfer from a new 2K master and looking at it, it does look quite good with sharp detail throughout and colors well balanced without appearing oversaturated. There were some specs and dust marks that were noticeable especially against darker backgrounds however the natural noise and grain was still present and there didn’t appear to be any noticeable artifacts, aliasing or pixilation. Without doing a direct comparison, I would say this is a good upgrade over the Shout Factory release. |
AUDIO – 4/5 |
| Presumably this is the same audio track from the Shout Factory release. This DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track provides clear enough dialogue with no apparent hissing or pops along with some decent depth for the killing scenes. |
OVERALL – 2½/5 |
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New Year’s Evil is a ho-hum horror movie with little horror and the kills pretty standard. Save for the finale, this is a bore of a film that might have a minor following but for myself, little about this was enjoyable outside of Kip Niven’s creepy but fun performance. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.