If your New Year’s resolution is to waste 90 minutes of your life watching a slasher movie that manages to be neither scary nor particularly slashy, then New Year’s Evil is here to disappoint you right on schedule. Released in 1980, right as the slasher craze was starting to slice its way through Hollywood, this film is like that one party guest who shows up with off-brand soda and stale chips — technically there, but adding nothing to the occasion.
Directed by Emmett Alston, New Year’s Evil is a movie that thinks it’s clever, timely, and edgy. It’s not. It’s like Halloween’s dumber, tackier cousin — the one that wears leather pants in July and refers to himself as a “ladies’ man” while being asked to leave Denny’s. This is a film so firmly stuck in its era that it might as well have “I Love the ’80s” tattooed across its forehead.
Meet Blaze: Queen of the Cardboard Cutouts
Our protagonist is Diane Sullivan, better known as “Blaze” (played by Roz Kelly, aka Pinky Tuscadero from Happy Days). Blaze is a punk rock TV host with the charisma of a drying sponge. She’s hosting a New Year’s Eve countdown show live from a hotel in Los Angeles, where bands no one remembers are performing music no one wanted while the audience bobs around like they were paid in free shrimp.
Blaze is supposed to be this strong, glamorous woman of the night — a kind of Elvira by way of Studio 54. Instead, she delivers every line like she’s trying to remember what planet she’s on. Her acting falls somewhere between distracted hostess and mannequin with anxiety.
“Eeeevil…”
The film’s slasher gimmick is as high-concept as it is dumb: a masked killer calls in to Blaze’s show and announces that he will kill someone at the stroke of midnight in each U.S. time zone, saving Blaze for last. The killer, whose voice is processed through a sinister voice modulator (read: someone breathing through a kazoo), repeats the word “evil” so many times it becomes comical. “This is EEEEVIL,” he growls, as if auditioning for the part of a confused Satanist in a community theater play.
You’d think this would create tension — a ticking clock, a growing body count, maybe even a shred of dread. Instead, it feels like someone reading a to-do list. Midnight in New York: stab a nurse. Midnight in Chicago: drown someone in a swimming pool. Midnight in Denver: suffocate a woman with a plastic bag. Midnight in LA: try to remember why you’re still watching this movie.
The Killer: A Real Ladykiller… Sort Of
The killer is eventually revealed (spoiler alert for a movie older than half the people on Instagram), and it’s a real letdown. He’s not terrifying or memorable — just a guy with bad hair, a weak chin, and a deep need for therapy. In a baffling series of scenes, he dons various disguises, from a priest to a biker, each more ridiculous than the last. It’s like watching someone work through an identity crisis with the help of a Spirit Halloween clearance bin.
None of his kills are particularly inventive or shocking. The camera cuts away before most of the blood hits the floor, and the aftermath is usually a body that looks like it just finished a nap. It’s all so tame that by the time the final act rolls around, you’re less concerned about Blaze’s safety and more about whether the killer’s wig glue is holding up under pressure.
Production Values? Don’t Look Too Close
The cinematography is flat, the lighting is inconsistent, and the pacing is all over the place. Half the movie is just people walking around hallways or standing in rooms waiting for something interesting to happen — and then it doesn’t.
The “punk” bands that play during Blaze’s countdown show look like extras from a deodorant commercial. They strum, they shout, and they dance like animatronic marionettes with expired batteries. The music is so aggressively mediocre it almost becomes impressive. It’s not quite punk, not quite new wave, and not quite tolerable.
Her Son is… Something
Let’s not forget Blaze’s son, Derek, played by Grant Cramer. He’s introduced as a normal, if whiny, aspiring actor — but quickly spirals into a weird, Freudian sideshow. He sulks in the hotel room, talks to himself in mirrors, and eventually puts a pair of his mom’s red tights over his head and breathes heavily into a phone. Is he just jealous of her attention? Is he a second killer? Is he high on bath salts? The movie doesn’t know, and neither do we.
Derek is one of the film’s many dangling threads. By the end, he’s left alive and wide-eyed, like he’s prepping for a sequel no one ever asked for. It never came, but if it had, it probably would’ve been called New Year’s Evil II: Still Evil, Now With Less Effort.
The Finale: A Whimper, Not a Bang
The big climax takes place on the hotel rooftop. Blaze finally realizes what’s going on after most of the cast is dead or missing, and she’s kidnapped by the killer. There’s a chase. There’s a monologue. There’s some light pushing and shoving. The cops arrive just in time for the killer to make a grand exit — not with a bang, but with a flop, literally.
The final shot tries to be ominous, but it’s too little, too late. The real horror is the knowledge that someone, somewhere, greenlit this film thinking it would launch a franchise.
Final Thoughts: An Evil Waste of Time
New Year’s Evil is a slasher film with no slash, a thriller with no thrills, and a holiday horror movie that makes you wish you’d stayed in and watched the ball drop in silence. It’s not even campy enough to enjoy ironically — just a long, slow stumble through bad acting, bad writing, and worse music.
If the killer had taken out the scriptwriter first, we all might’ve been spared. Instead, we’re left with a movie so desperate to be edgy and cool, it misses the mark entirely and stabs itself in the foot.
