New Year's Evil (1980)

directed by Emmett Alston
USA
86 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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Slashers in the 1980s and before seemed to be much more creative with their plots, possibly because the horror industry hadn't yet figured out that they could churn out dozens of "people go to a cabin in the woods and get killed with an axe" films on the cheap. I feel like slashers are generally judged on either the visual intensity of their death scenes or the strength of their villains, and because New Year's Evil is full of overacting and awkward fake choking noises, the second option is more viable.

Another thing that the slasher genre seems to have lost over time is the distinctiveness of its bad guys: Somehow we went from the lurking, almost-faceless presence of people like Jason Voorhees and the over-the-phone killer from Black Christmas to just anybody who can wield a large object with extreme prejudice. In some ways this is an interesting development, because the shift from killers having some distinctive element about them to killers being random people we might meet on the street is very realistic, and because of that I can't really say that I prefer character villains to average-Joe villains. This is why I thought New Year's Evil's antagonist was unique: he shape-shifts enough between evil deeds to be somewhat unnerving, and has enough of the unfamiliar in him to freak us out, but the casual reveal of his tie to the lead woman and his unfortunately realistic misogynist motives make him feel truer than monolithic, instantly recognizable Freddy Krueger types.

This definitely has an established place among cult-ish classics of the subgenre, but honestly, aside from a vaguely original villain, there's not a whole lot to remember it by. Like I said, a lot of the acting is too over-the-top right where it's important for acting not to be over-the-top, and a lot of it has that inherent fakeness that comes about whenever any mainstream film attempts to depict punks. It has an original theme song that's moderately rad, but this early on into the evolution of punkdom, it seems like there was a kind of crossover between punks and new wavers that leads to the music feeling a lot more subdued than I'd expect from anything with the label "punk" today.

I get the feeling this is a movie that not a lot of people watch sober. I've always loved the camaraderie of New Year's Eve, because at virtually no other time can one find people literally all over the world celebrating the same (somewhat arbitrary) thing (unless you use a different calendar). So happy New Year from me to you, if this is indeed your New Year's; if it is not, I hope this Monday treats you well.