Bloody New Year (1987)

Teenagers?? The actors look like they are well into their 20's, if not older! A group of "teens" find themselves in a spot of bother at the seaside when their boat starts to sink and they swim to the nearest island. Here there is a seemingly deserted hotel, stuck in a time warp of New Year's Eve 1959. Ghastly things start to happen to them, one by one. Plot wise I felt able to follow it, despite being a load of nonsense. On the negative side the acting was very wooden, as mentioned before the actors look much older than teenagers, the special effects are cheap looking and it has an obvious low budget feel and look to it. On the positives some of it was filmed at Barry Island seaside resort, a place that I have visited several times and it was nice to see how it used to look. Among the effects are a few clever tricks, such as an arm coming out of a mirror and pulling a victim inside. The British VHS comes in a terrific, 3D box. The picture quality isn't great, not sure if it has ever been released on DVD/BR but deserves to be. Not Warren's best film and not the best film to watch on NYE either but reasonably entertaining if you like bad movies.

Fmovies: If you have seen "The Rocky Horror Show" and "The Shining", good. This movie, "Bloody New Year" is a lot more schlocky to me. It's got good horror though, yet there are some things that are commonly usual. It's the end of the 50's, transitioning to the 60's. However, an experiment being performed goes horribly wrong. Everyone in the New Year's Eve party began to disappear, without a trace. So when 5 English people take a boat out to an island resort, it appears deserted. Nothing unusual, except it hasn't been operational since the 1950's. All the clothes are to be in that decade. And the staff, happened to be ghosts. Even the guests who stayed there are ghosts. Each one of the survivors of the boat wreck would later fall victim to the hotel's spirit. Very much exploitive, yet equally fun. It's not for everyone. I enjoyed it very much. 2 out of 5 stars

"Bloody New Year" is a very cheesy horror film set on an isolated island.The acting is wonderfully bad and the gore scenes as well as various exploitation elements known from earlier Norman J.Warren's releases("Satan's Slave","Alien Prey")are almost completely absent.The film has some really surprising moments-the scene where Rick and his girlfriend are chased by a crowd of people through the rustling woods except their pursuers are invisible is the highlight of the film.6 out of 10!

Bloody New Year fmovies. Man, this one is a must see to believe. First this, I search youtube on a regular base to find some old school horrors and then I will search the Web to locate them. As noted on this issue it was possible to track it down but it isn't that cheap anyway. Redemption had it out on DVD but is now an OOP. So VHS was the way to catch it. I found a version with a pop up VHS box. Just like the limited blu ray edition of Jennifer's Body. It isn't easy to find it without damage but it arrived here from the UK in perfect condition. Even the quality of the tape is excellent for a VHS from the 80's. It's just like it never been watched and that's what happened to this turkey. Oh there are funny moments in it but for a flick from the eighties no titties are shown let's even say, no underwear is even shown. Not that it has to be shown but it is stated that almost all flicks from that era have some nudity. Made at the fall of the slashers and even made at a period when all public holidays have there horror edition, remember, all fools day, silent night..., mother's day...it had to be good to be remembered. But it is a fact, it is remembered but in a bad way. Oh sure, the makers of this flick were addicted to the genre and have been putting every effort in it to make it a great flick but they failed. First of all, the storyline isn't original anymore. Again being on an abandoned island were bad things are happening, but this time it isn't a killer on the loose, this time it is a haunted house , scary isn't it? The movie starts of pretty well with the girl disappearing into a mirror but then it falls apart. We are watching some scene's at a fair but here things go wrong for the youth but also for the movie. It takes too long and it is childish. The bad people aren't believable and if I ever come in front of them well I wouldn't run away. Anyway, when they arrive on the island they hide in a hotel. From then on there is one thing on your mind, they tried to make an Evil Dead replica. You see a normal face, she turns away, her voice changes and then she's possessed and her face has changed, in a terrible way. And by that I mean the make up. Man, it's just like she woke up from a hangover vomit all over her face. You must see it to believe it. Sure, this is a low budget all the way. The only thing worth noticing is the turning of the head. But ghosts appear with a fade in and disappear with a fade out. Jesus, it's the eighties not Nosferatu. The blood never flows, only in the beginning when one of the bad guys is hit by, euh, the feet of an Elephant of a merry-go-round. At the end of the day, it was one to watch. All influences are in it, Evil Dead for the most part, Exorcist, Friday The 13th (the life boat on the end) but still it failed to give you the creeps. It sure is watchable, but watch it for the effects. Bloody New Year? Naaah. Cold Turkey yeah!

I went into this film expecting it to be another seasonal slasher along the same lines as Halloween and April Fools Day, but was surprised to find that it's actually a bizarre demonic horror films, sort of along the same lines as The Evil Dead. The good news stops there, however, because in spite of a decent idea that could have lead to a successful horror film; Bloody New Year just has far too many things wrong with it for it to really be a success. The plot takes the usual 'bunch of kids' base and we focus on a group of them that become shipwrecked and end up having to take refuge in an old abandoned hotel. Unfortunately for them, this is no ordinary old abandoned hotel and that soon becomes apparent when the place comes alive and several members of the group become demons. The film is directed by British director Norman J Warren who was also behind the moderately successful 'Terror' as well as the awful 'Satans Slave' in the late seventies. This film is just as trashy as those. The main influence would definitely seem to be Sam Raimi's masterpiece 'The Evil Dead' and the film directly rips it off when it gets into the second half with the noises the demons make. However, the rip off basically stops there; which is a big shame because if there's one thing this film needs, it's a big bucket of gore. Most of the stuff that goes on is not explained and it's all a bit mind numbing really. The film does pick up in the second half but not much and it's a definite case of 'too little too late'. Oh well. I wouldn't recommend anyone goes out of their way to find this film.

If my personal resolution for 2008 would to avoid watching worthless, crummy and totally retarded horror movies, I already would have sinned with "Bloody New Year". This is quite an incoherent and severely unsatisfying hodgepodge of potentially interesting story ideas, truly poor scripting work, horrible acting performances and a painful shortage of gore. I expected a holiday-themed slasher storyline (in the likes of "Happy Birthday to Me" or "Silent Night, Deadly Night"), but instead this film is a bizarre type of ghost story/demonic possession tale. Six hugely irritating teenagers intend to spend their summer vacation quarreling with carnival carnies and taking boat trips too far off the safe English coasts. Their boat hits a rock and the sextet washes ashore an island where everything is decorated to celebrate New Year's Eve of 1959. From this point on, a whole series of ridiculous and laughable UN-horrific events takes place, including the ghostly appearances of housemaids, murderous fishing nets coming to life, distant buzzing and laughter can be heard all over the island and the teenagers gradually turn into a bloodthirsty demons with rotting faces. There's no waterproof explanation for the events, but the script repeatedly hints that the crashing of government plane, carrying a top-secret experiment, on the 31st of December 1959 caused the island to be stuck in a time warp. Still that doesn't explain how pool tables come to life or why soup kettles develop murderous tendencies, but who cares? The island setting is atmospheric and the time warp concept is admirable (particularly with the New Year's celebration), but the overall execution is very weak. None of the characters are sympathetic, so you really don't care whether they all live or die, and there's zero tension throughout the entire film. "Bloody New Year" is overlong even with a running time of barely 90 minutes and the total absence of graphic gore & nudity are unforgivable. Damned, this is an 80's movie starring 6 dimwitted teenagers AND it's directed by UK's shlockmeister Norman J. Warren! The least I expected from the creator of such rancid nonsense as "Prey", "Inseminoid" and "Satan's Slave" was a bit more mindless violence and/or sleaze. One to avoid.