Auld Lang Psychopaths: New Years Evil

 

Don't you hate blown concepts?  Like a story with potential winding up being made into a crappy movie?  Well, welcome to New Years Evil.

It seems we have a television hostess, whose program will ring in the new year in all of the time zones while people call in and tell her what they think the best song of the year is.  A pair of new wave-ish bands play along with the happenings, one called Shadow, the other, Made In Japan.  To be honest, the tunes aren't bad despite the bands looking like complete caricatures of what they are supposed to be.  Our host gets a phone call from someone calling himself the uber-original name of "Evil", and says he will kill someone as each time zone rings in the new year.  And he goes about doing this.  

Sadly, with no suspense, drama, and even less acting.  Don't get me wrong, the production values are there (This was a 1980 Cannon Film, so Menachem and Yorum were looking to jump on the holiday slasher genre bandwagon, and they spent the money), but the concept of the story is fleshed out terribly. 

Our star, the rockin' New Year Lady, looking to take over the ratings of the big networks with her low-budget program (I kept questioning that if the nets were occupied with her competition, who was carrying her show?) is played by none other than Roz Kelly,  aka Pinky Tuscadero of Happy Days infamy.  Our slasher, (in a not half bad performance from Kip Niven) does not have his face hidden, though his identity is supposed to be.  It would take someone with the IQ of a fencepost (thanks, Tom Waits) to not be able to piece together who he is from the first 5 minutes of dialogue, however. 

Some generic cops get involved, all while our killer gets sidetracked in a fairly humorous fashion by crashing into bikers while lost in thought, wearing various cheesy disguises to acquire his victims, and none of this impedes his perfectly feathered hair.   Meanwhile, our rockin' host's son starts popping drugs, and wandering around doing weirder and weirder shit leading to a completely predictable set of circumstances at the finale. 

There is however a terrific comic monologue from a future victim, as she rambles on about moving from the midwest, and the slew of mind/spirit expansion cults she's joined. (I wonder if Keith Raniere watched this movie?)  She even lists them all  in hilarious fashion.  If only the rest of the writing had achieved the level that sequence did, this could have been a hell of a movie with the fairly nifty plot device its writers hatched. 

Oh, well.  It was 1980.  What are ya gonna do?