Bloody New Year (1987)

Episode 155, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Happy New Year, everybody. Or should I say, bloody New Year? Oh god. It’s gonna be one of those, isn’t it? It’s gonna be one of those. We have to find our joy when we get it when we review movies like this, I think. I guess.   Today’s movie is none other than Bloody New Year, a 1987 hit, that, I don’t know. I assume it came out in theaters, but I’ve only seen it on VHS. Now I will I do have one Todd thing to say about this movie, and maybe only 1, and that is the cover art for the VHS tape. Did you go and look that up? No. I didn’t. It is iconic. It it it is, something that I saw on the shelves absolutely, every time I passed by the horror section in those VHS rental stores. It is a, skeleton with, eyeballs and a party hat and a disco ball behind him blowing on a What is that thing called? 

Craig:  I don’t know. 

Todd:  The thing that shoots out. You know, you blow it, and it’s yeah. It goes out. 

Craig:  I know what you’re talking about. And and now that you describe it, I can picture Todd. So I know what you’re talking about. 

Todd:  Yeah. And with a cover like that, you would have thought I would have picked it up at some point in my childhood, but never did. Well 

Craig:  and with a cover like that, you would think, well, this will be fun. 

Todd:  The cover shouts fun, doesn’t it? The movie, not so much. 

Craig:  Would be mistaken. Yeah. 

Todd:  Horribly mistaken. So this is a film it is a British film Done by a guy named Norman j Warren, who apparently did a lot of these schlocky terrible movies. And, His previous hit before this was In Semenoid. Mhmm. I’m thinking we ought to put that on the docket for later. It seems to me that would be at least be a little bit more entertaining than this 1. 

Craig:  I don’t know. 

Todd:  We’ll see. So, we we, of course, chose this because it had new year in the title. It might be one of the last, that we’ll be able to dig up, but it was a bit on the nose. And so here we are. Bloody New Year is about a host of young adults who are basically shipwrecked on an island. The way it goes down is this. The movie starts in this really cool actual credit sequence Yeah. That looks like 16 millimeter home video of a New Year’s celebration in some ballroom of a hotel.   We later find out. It’s black and white, and People are dancing and drinking and having a good time. There’s a band playing on the stage. It’s there’s a big banner in the background that says, goodbye 1959. Hello 1960. And and then that sort of fades out to a larger frame and turns into color As the last of the partygoers exit the ballroom and 1 girl stays behind and absolutely wanders into the room, Putters around a little bit, goes over to a mirror, checks her hair, puts on some lipstick, walks away from the mirror, comes back to the mirror for some unexplained reason and suddenly gets yanked into it Yeah. By her own reflection. And then immediately, it cuts to a woman Springing out of the water in a beach.   And I thought for a second, is this supposed to be the same woman? I know. But it’s It’s 

Craig:  It was such a quick cut. Like, somebody reaches out and grabs her through their mirror, and then it’s just an immediate cut to this beach scene. It almost seems like You flipped the channel. Yeah. 

Todd:  That is the best way to explain it. It really does. Then I thought, oh, this woman kinda got pulled through the mirror and came out somewhere else. And I was really looking at her. I was thinking, is this the same woman? Is this some like, she warped there or something like that? But no. Absolutely not. It has nothing that I could perceive, to do with that 

Craig:  right now. 

Todd:  Anyway, this woman is among a group of people. We have Jan, who’s a brunette with long hair, Leslie, who’s a blonde, Carol, who we meet a little bit later, A guy named Tom with short curly blonde hair and a dude named Spud, which is great. And the, I guess, Leader of the gang of Friends, Rick? Yep. Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know. All of none of these characters are very well drawn out at all, Actually At all. There’s nothing to these people you don’t even care as the movie goes 

Craig:  on. Like, their relationships are very tenuous. Like Yeah. I think that Rick and, Jan are kind of together, and It seems like maybe Leslie and Tom are sort of kind of together or something, but, like, it it’s so tenuous, and it doesn’t really matter. Yeah. And, like, at at different points, they’ll kinda, like, crossover and I don’t even know. 

Todd:  It it was It’s hard to keep track, really. 

Craig:  It is hard. There are so many of them. It is hard to keep track, especially because none of them are really significant as far as character is concerned. Like, None of them has, I don’t know, any particularly unique characteristics or motivations or backstories or anything, they are just a random group of people who we know very little about and we care nothing Wow. 

Todd:  And they’re utterly interchangeable. Yes. Yeah. And it doesn’t help that most of the movie is shot at wide wide shots or medium shots. So You can’t even tell without squinting sometimes, like, who is in that particular scene Yeah. If you even cared. But it doesn’t even seem to matter. 

Craig:  No. It doesn’t really matter. No. Not really. 

Todd:  And they go to a fun fair. Hey. Let’s go to the fun fair, which apparently is British for, like, a carnival. Yeah. It’s this fun looking fun fair, and I at first, I was kinda I got pretty excited. I like seeing all this old footage of even if it’s 19 eighties, it’s still pretty classic, you know, with the, Tilt A Whirl and all these things in the haunted house, you know, that you can sit on and ride through. And, I like those scenes of the fun fair, and they’re Crowded with lots of people. 

Craig:  Yeah. I would have much rather have gone to that place than watch the rest of this movie. Like, it looks it looks pretty fun. It was a pretty decent setup. It reminded me of gosh. I don’t even know where they are, but it looks like like on the Jersey Shore or something, like, one of those, kind of carnival type 

Todd:  things, like, set up on a pier. 

Craig:  Like, that’s what it reminded me. I carnival type things, like set up on a pier. Like, that’s what it reminded me of, like, Coney Island or something. 

Todd:  I don’t know. 

Craig:  It was cool. 

Todd:  It’s what I think Coney Island should be. I’ve never been to Coney Island, but that’s kinda the other water. Coney Island in my head. Yeah. I would have much rather just watched footage of this place. Just People’s home videos of it would have been better than watching this movie. It was interesting, though, because, as they go as our characters go through the fun fair, That footage obviously gets cut with random shots of other crowds of people, you know, playing it on things. And if you watch very carefully, you notice that Most of the footage all of the footage with them in it, there’s little to nobody in the background or on the rides.   Uh-huh. Even though the rides are moving and there’s motion in the scene, And then they’ll cut to another shot, and you’ll see, like, tons of people there, but none of our actors. So it was clearly, like, shot on 2 different Todd, And the acting you know, the shots with the actors were shot when the place was basically empty, and they just spun the rides and made them go. It it I don’t know. It’s it’s done well enough that it’s not obvious, but I was I always look for this sort of thing, and so I thought it was kind of kind of telling. 

Craig:  Yeah. But, like, even in the beginning, the the plot just seems Kind of dumb. Like, it’s also circumstantial and stupid. Like, so all the the friends are there, And, like, they’re, like, painted out as being kind of the clean-cut, good guy kids. And then there’s a deal on the Tilt a Whirl where there are, like, these thugs. And, like, I guess these are, like, carny thugs, I guess. Yeah. Maybe.   And, they’re they’re bothering this girl. There’s this it it ends up being Carol. She’s A curly haired brunette, which is the only thing that distinguishes her from Jan the straight haired brunette. 

Todd:  Oh, but she’s also an American, we hear. 

Craig:  Oh, okay. Yeah. 

Todd:  Go figure it. 

Craig:  Right. And she’s apparently at this British fun fair by herself, and she’s Riding the Tilt a Whirl by herself, and these, like, carny thugs are, like, harassing her. Like, they just keep spinning her Tilt a Whirl seat. Like, they just won’t leave her alone. And so Spud, I think, and, like, calls over his other buddies, and they get up and get into, like, a brawl with these carny guys, which then turns into, like, a 1930 style chase through the at armhole. Like That’s right. 

Todd:  It it like, it seems like a silent movie. Like, there could just be music 

Craig:  in the background, like, do 

Todd:  do do do do do do. Like You’re right. And maybe that’s why I felt like this was the most entertaining part of the entire film. Oh, it’s silly. It’s silly. Well, it’s Silly because of the whole point. I mean, like, they leave what instead of actually just running away, running out of the carnival, they decide that they’re gonna Run-in between rides and run over rides and run around. I mean, just run everywhere except where they should go, which is just out.   Yeah. It’s but, actually, I like this sequence because it actually had some action, and the action was I wouldn’t say competently filmed, but it wasn’t entirely Uncompetently filmed. 

Craig:  Well and I felt like there was some of the spookiest imagery in the movie. Like, they run into the funhouse or whatever, And, the Kearny guys are, like, chasing them, and there’s kind of I don’t know if I would call it a strobe effect, but there’s stuff where, like, The lights are going off and on, and you’re just catching glimpses of things. And so you get kind of this menacing effect 

Todd:  Mhmm. 

Craig:  Where the the bad guys like, you’re just seeing glimpses of them every time the light flashes on for just a second. And that’s kind of intermixed with images of the spooky stuff that’s set up in the funhouse. And that was a little bit Spooky. I I mean, I would say that’s probably about as creepy as the movie gets. 

Todd:  Yeah. I mean You’re you’re not you’re not wrong about that. But then we get, you know, a Blues Brothers styles crash through the fun house Yeah. In a in a car. And I thought it was the bad guys, but, actually, isn’t it the A couple of our 

Craig:  other friends. Guys. 

Todd:  It’s Rick and Uh-huh. And the others who are coming in to rescue them. So they Destroy property by smashing into this, yeah, fun house, and pulling them out of it. Good thing they didn’t, you know, Run over them blindly crashing into 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  But, anyway, they all pile in the car, and they escape, basically. And the very next scene, almost as if you turned the channel, was is them floating on a boat. Yeah. At first, I thought, please, are you telling me they’re trying to escape on a boat, but I guess this was just part of the fun. This is Rick’s boat. Right? 

Craig:  Yeah. It’s a little sailboat. Terry Jaws 2, you know, lots of 20 somethings out on a sailboat. A tiny a good time. 

Todd:  It’s almost like a canoe with a, with a Sail. 

Craig:  With the sail. 

Todd:  Yeah. Pretty small. And, even though they’re way out, I mean, way out away from what looks like any shore, because we get this nice wide shot of it just floating out there. They run a ground of something, on the boat, and it damages the bottom. And the water starts coming in, and they say they have to bail. So they bail, and they swim to the nearest shore. And the nearest shore isn’t Apparently, where they left from, it is a island of some kind. 

Craig:  Yeah. Which I got the impression that they were that’s where they were trying to go anyway, but I I didn’t understand why. Like, I there’s just no explanation for anything like 

Todd:  stuff with them. It’s not like they have bags or things like they have a picnic packed or anything like that. 

Craig:  Right. Then they, you know, they just run ashore of this island. And and, Todd. I I feel like the movie makes some attempts at, like, trying to establish plot points, but, ultimately, you don’t care. But, like so they they get onto this island. They’re like, oh, we’re on this island, and they’re like, oh, look. Here’s a Danger. Do not proceed sign.   Okay. And oh, oh, look. Here’s a plane crash. Ashley. 

Todd:  I don’t believe it. Do you think anyone ever made it here without crashing? 

Craig:  But they had a rough landing. 

Clip:  Okay. What sort of plan this is? I’ve got no idea. 

Craig:  And then they keep walking along until they find, like, a freaking resort. Like Yeah. And it looks great. Like, you know, I would have been excited to find this place too because I woulda looked at it and been like, oh, it it’s gonna have a bar, so we’re fine. And that’s basically, I guess, kinda what they think. And I don’t know. It was it’s the Grand Island Hotel. 

Todd:  Looks like a big home. Yeah. 

Craig:  I mean, it it looks Nice from the outside. Like, sure. I’d stay there on an island, whatever. But then they go inside. And, mysteriously, as they are very quick to point out, everything’s all decorated with, like, Christmas decorations. And they make a big point of it, and they’re like, oh, it’s decorated for Christmas. But wait a second. This is July.   And when they and when they said that, I was like, you tricked me. 

Todd:  This is supposed to be our New Year’s episode, and it’s happening in July. 

Craig:  I know. It’s okay because Whatever. 

Todd:  Yeah. It was a little disappointing. The, the New Year’s thing gets kinda shoehorned in there. I think it’s still legitimately we can call this New Year’s Because there’s Yeah. It’s twist at the end, which There is a big face. Totally hold off on telling you we’re gonna we wanna keep the suspense for as long as possible. God. Yeah.   They’re they’re walking through this place. They find the bar. They find old magazines. And, obviously, because we saw the first part of the of the movie. We we we can figure this out pretty quickly. This is the same hotel we saw before and obviously has not changed since that party. So it’s been deserted. Something’s Right.   You know? 

Craig:  But but they make they make a point of saying all this stuff is new. Like, it doesn’t look Run down or decrepit. Right. It looks like somebody had just recently decorated, which further confuses them. Like, You know, had it been abandoned at Christmas time or New Year’s and there had been, like, cobwebs and dust and stuff, that would have been one thing. But, no, everything looks Fine. And it looks like this is, you know, a clean place that has just been spruced up for the holidays. It’s just odd that it’s completely out of Sees it. 

Todd:  And sort of like the whole rest of the movie, everything that’s odd that happens is kind of remarked upon and then immediately forgotten about. Uh-huh. They’re not Freaked out by this. They make no mention of it after that. They just find the bar, sit down, and, you know, start looking for bourbon. And the woman flips through a magazine, which is clearly an old magazine, and she sets it down. And when she walks away from it, The magazine mysteriously blows back closed. And then 1 of the girls is still wet.   Why nobody else is still wet? I don’t know. But one of the girls is still wet, and she is, let, in a room while I think it’s Spud runs off. It’s Carol, right, who’s still wet. 

Craig:  Yeah. And then 

Todd:  Spud goes off to find a blanket for her. In the meantime, we see this maid literally fade in to the screen like a ghost just materializes as she walks across and brings a blanket to her and says, here you go, miss. And she’s like, oh, thank you. And then she walks out. Again Yeah. Hey. There’s a person in this hotel you thought was deserted who Knew that you needed a blanket and came in and oh, thank you. It’s woman And, 

Craig:  yeah, and I feel like that’s what happens for, like, the next 20 minutes is just, oh, here are completely in your face clues that this is a haunted hotel. And stupid things that amount to nothing. Like, you said, like, the magazine blowing closed. And, like, at one point, some of them are playing Whatever the British equivalent of billiards is, I don’t know. The balls look different. I don’t know what it was called, but, like, the balls will rearrange themselves in the perfect order. And There’s 

Todd:  a lot of rewind in this movie. 

Craig:  A lot. Yes. They like 

Todd:  that cheap effect of of just reversing the film to make it look like something is happening in reverse. Uh-huh. 

Craig:  And and there’s, you know, like, Somebody’s always watching them. And at some point, Leslie, like, opens a window, and there’s somebody out there, but they run away. And Jan takes a bath and, like, the shower head, like, acts like a snake and crawls into the bath, and she kind of notices, but then she just kinda shrugs it off. That’s the thing that bothered me the most about this movie the whole time. So, of course, as it turns out And there is kind of some weird stupid explanation, but it’s basically a haunted hotel. But all these weird things start happening, and eventually, People start dying, but none of the surviving people like, they don’t even bat an eye. Like Yeah. Like like, they’re they’re they don’t act like they’re scared.   Like, I don’t even remember who it is that dies first. Somebody dies, And nobody like, like, they don’t even care. They just, like, run outside like, woah. That was weird. It’s So it’s so true. 

Todd:  It’s funny. Well, I love it because none of the electricity is working, and then, they go to the basement and Some spooky stuff happens, and then he turns on the electricity. And then finally, they have electricity in the place. And when they go downstairs, there’s, like, a Santa Claus, electronic Santa doll that is suddenly starts ringing its bell and walking on the counter on the lobby. And everybody’s like, woah. What’s that? And the dude says, oh, I just turned on the electricity. He picks up the Santa doll that’s not plugged into anything and just throws the switch off on the back. This battery operated Santa came to life when they turned the electricity on in the hotel.   This there’s a lot of just inept, Stupid, dumb stuff like that going on too. However, in at this moment, there is a really neat part. Okay. So I’ll give the movie a little bit more credit. It has this way of of at least doling out to you in bits and pieces what you’re supposed to put together by the end of it. When the electricity does go on, There and I think it’s after this little Santa incident. Everybody walks into another room while the camera pans into, like, the library or some other room downstairs where there’s a television that has also come on. And it’s a 19 fifties style TV, and it’s Showing what is obviously an extremely old program from, like, the early sixties or late fifties, whatever.   Right. From that night, basically Mhmm. That where these panelists And the writing is terrible. I mean, it’s really terrible. Yeah. But, anyway, these 2 scientist panelists are arguing about a new technology. 

Clip:  Professor Kaplan, you were describing for us your experimental anti radar device, which you launched in the opening hours of 1960. 

Todd:  Bending light, making the plane invisible. It it’s it’s interfering with light, with with time itself. Playing Todd. Very, very dangerous. Jeez, judgment. I’m And so if you’re thinking half with half a brain, you can think about the plane that they found, that they made a big point of Right. You know, that it crashed earlier and what they’re talking about on the thing. And you’re and you start to go, oh, this is kind of interesting.   Even though the movie is not interesting, this idea, this notion is interesting. And I Liked those bits where I learned a little bit more and it wasn’t actually thrown at me, at least for a while, exactly what’s going on. Because a lot of movies like this, they’ll just leave this stuff hanging. You know? Or exposition person comes in at some point and just explains a bunch of stuff that you had no Hope of knowing before. 

Craig:  Well, that kind of happens here too. That happens in, like, the last 10 minutes of the movie. By the time you already know. Yeah. Right. And, you know, okay. I’m I appreciate the fact that they threw in some intrigue, but the intrigue that they threw in is Dumb. Yeah.   Like, it’s it’s, like, it’s about, like, radar. They’re like, we’ve figured out this new way to use radar, and it’ll make a Playing invisible for one second. Like, oh, well, great. I mean, that’s really helpful. Like, what? Like, what is even the point if it’s only gonna be visible for one second? Yeah. And then what does radar have anything to do with the time Base continuum. Like, the like, the they’re not even related. Like, why would it it doesn’t.   Ultimately, it does it doesn’t matter. And, you know, I I fine. You say, well, some of these movies will just leave it hanging. It’s never really explained. Well, it could have just as easily not gone explained, and it would have made me different. 

Todd:  True. It’s still dumb. It’s still really stupid. If the explanation is bad and stupid, then, yeah, maybe it doesn’t matter. 

Craig:  But but and it doesn’t I mean, I guess it kind of amounts to something ultimately. But, like, they try to make it like, there’s this creepy, Like, zombie pilot that follows them around, like, through the whole movie, and you just keep getting glimpses of him. Like, he just keeps popping out from behind trees. Like, it’ll just be a a, like, a long shot, like, 50 yards away of a tree, and you’ll see this guy just pop his head out from the side. Pop it. Back back. Right. And it’ll, like, play this creepy, ominous music, and that happens, like, 3 or 4 times throughout Out the movie.   And so then I’m thinking, well, you know, he’s probably gonna be exposition guy, or maybe he’s a good guy who’s gonna help them or something. And, No. Ultimately, he’s just another one of those creeps or ghosts or whatever it is wandering around the island. 

Todd:  Oh, god. Halloween, this is not, For sure. No. When the power comes on, those projectors kick on in the cinema that is also downstairs in this hotel. And this is where that first kill happens that you just mentioned. The 1 guy walks close to the screen, and some character springs out of the screen and starts strangling him while everybody else kinda looks on? Uh-huh. And he gets scratched on the face, and then the character thing disappears. And they walk over, and they say, Oh my god.   Spud is dead. 

Craig:  Because he got scratched on the face. Yeah. What? 

Todd:  Apparently. I mean, nobody’s gonna they’re just gonna trust themselves about this. Nobody’s gonna make any phone calls. They just leave, like you said. 

Craig:  They run outside, and then Jan, Todd her credit, is the only one who freaks out, but not to her credit. She’s freaking out through the whole movie. Like, she’s the only one. Like, she’s just hysterical. Like, I just wanted somebody to slap her. Like, shut up. But what was so frustrating okay. So first of all, I wanna say When they go into the theater and they see that a movie is playing, first, it’s like an old fifties b movie, and I would Have rather seen that movie.   It looked fun. It was like did. It was like it was like brains, like, flying through the air. Attacking people. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  Yeah. That looks fun. I would watch that certainly before I would watch this again. But then it switches over to old footage of the hotel. They’re like, oh, old footage of the hotel or whatever. It doesn’t matter. You know? The guy is kinda the guy that gets killed is kinda making fun, and that’s you know, one of them jumps out of the screen order, but they they run out after it’s happened. Jan is freaking out and nobody else is.   And Jan says what happened, and the rest of them act like she’s kind of crazy. Every single one of them Was there. 

Todd:  Saw 

Craig:  Yeah. What happened. And it’s not like there was anything going on to distract them. It’s not like you had a perfect view of what was going on, And now you’re acting like she’s just Craig? Like, you’re like, oh, well, maybe it was just electricity. Jumping out of the movie screen? Like, what? 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  Oh my god. It’s so like, they don’t react to all that. I I could I just couldn’t get over that. Like, they’re not even Sad that he’s dead. Like, even if they could even if they could come up with some rational explanation, you know, like, Oh, well, it probably wasn’t that ghost that we all saw clear as day. Maybe it was just electricity. Well, he’s still dead. Yeah.   He’s your friend. 

Todd:  Fred is gone. Okay. Moving right along. It’s hard to feel any emotions At this movie, when the actors themselves aren’t feeling any emotion, and when all this stuff sort of happens, and it’s It’s all matter of factly happening. Everything’s in broad daylight, which isn’t that spooky. And, you know, we’ve talked about before movies that are really Successful at creating a horrific tone, and it’s almost even spookier when it happens, like, in broad daylight in a suburban area. Right. You know? A place that seems safe.   But this, it just seems like they couldn’t afford lights, so they just had to shoot everything with available sunlight because none of this stuff is It’s it’s not scary. It’s not shot in a suspenseful way. It’s just things just suddenly happen. It looks cheap, And it’s shot cheap, and the acting is unconvincing. And the reaction and everything that follows in the plot almost doesn’t even acknowledge what just happened. It’s just let’s move right along to the next event. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  And so it’s impossible to get invested in it. You know? It’s impossible to to to care at the slightest. And it’s And it’s not even that fun, really. 

Craig:  No. And it seemed you’re right. Like, it had to have just been they must have had $5 Todd shoot this whole movie because after Spud dies and, like, there’s like, everybody kinda Flits off, and then Carol is left by herself. And she’s just, like, sitting on a swing, and she says, poor Spud. Like, that’s the most sympathy that he gets. So then Tom and Leslie go off and they find this old house. Like, I don’t know what it’s supposed like, a servant’s quarters or a boat house. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be.   But they walk inside, and Leslie walks in first, and she gets tangled up in a net and Struggles in this net for, like, 5 minutes. Like, this is supposed to be, like, a horrific scene. Like, she’s Screaming and struggling, and she’s just rolling around on the floor in this fishing net. Like Calm down, Leslie. Like, we will get you out of the net. 

Todd:  This This is extremely half assed attempt to make it look supernatural, where there’s a close-up shot of her leg and and and almost like an evil dead tree style A rope that Uh-huh. Kind of ties itself around her leg, but that’s it. It’s just like this quick little shot of that and nothing else. 

Craig:  Well and it it’s and it’s supposed to I I guess it’s supposed to be, like, cutting her, and, like, you kinda get little glimpses of how the net is cutting her. But then when he finally just literally pulls it off her, like 

Todd:  Like, it was just a blanket laying over 

Craig:  the top of her, and he pulls it back. Then she she looks fine. Like 

Todd:  Well 

Craig:  God. And then they get attacked by a table cloth monster. 

Todd:  Yeah. She walks over to this little table on the floor, and suddenly this thing jumps out of it. And Again, it’s a guy in a under a black sheet with a little bit more net draped over him, like, grabbing her. But but, also, you’re thinking, Where is this movie going? 

Craig:  What are these random great. 

Todd:  Things that aren’t even in the hotel coming out of nowhere? It’s like It’s like walking through a haunted house. Yeah. This is random stuff just happens, and there’s no continuity between it. It just it doesn’t make any sense. And then she gets away from it, and then it comes sinks back into the table, and they walk over and the, you know, the table is solid again. Oh, that was weird. Again Yeah. They move on. 

Craig:  Well, they move on, but so much is left unexplained. Like, I don’t know. Like, Jan and Rick. By the way, like, Jane ran off into the woods all upset, and then the next time we see her, she’s just walking along with Spud, and she’s totally over it. She’s fine. They hear after from the beach. And so they start walking towards the beach, and then they see all these bushes Shaking. And and and then they start running and, like, I I don’t know what they’re running from. 

Todd:  They’re trying. It’s trying so hard. Like, there are just, like, maybe 2 shots of this sort of Evil Dead style camera moving really fast through the woods. Like, it’s coming at them, and they turn around as though it is. And they just, like, separate to make way for the camera to go back between them. Yeah. And then they have this exact same shot again where now they’re running apparently in the opposite direction, And the camera comes sweeping towards them. They turn around, and they separate, and the camera blows right past them again.   Like, what is going on? Is this monster just, like, doing loop de loops around them? Again, Or that, like, really bad reversal work. 

Craig:  It’s all just and this, you know, for the next, At least 10 minutes. I mean, that’s all it is. It’s just these random things that are happening that are supposed to be spooky. Like, they show up at the crash site and, like, they’re all the time looking in mirrors, and there’s, like, ghosts lingering in the background. And at the crash site, Why there would be a full size mirror at a plane crash site, I have no idea, but, there is. And Rick looks into it, and the dead pilot’s, like, pointing at a gun at him through the mirror. But he turns around, and there’s nobody there. And he looks back, and the pilot’s there.   And it it’s just all like, the island’s haunted. Like, okay. We get it. 

Todd:  Like The whole island is haunted. 

Craig:  What is the what is the point? Yeah. Like, Is something going to happen? 

Todd:  Carol’s alone in the house. Some arm comes into the frame. She wanders into the house. This is another house, I guess. And she Yeah. Yeah. There’s, like, a third house. There’s no sense of geography here.   Does she just No. Just know she’s in some other house. It must be nearby. And it opens up a snowstorm. There’s like a blast of snow coming through, And it’s this is like a 10 minute long sequence where it’s nothing but her stumbling against what’s apparently horrible winds Inside this living room with snow blowing in and blowing around her. This 

Craig:  And and, like, there’s, like, the sound of children screaming in the background. 

Todd:  Yeah. And then there’s nothing, and she’s outside. 

Craig:  And then she looks back inside, and I feel like she sees what is supposed to be like a figurine of her in a snow globe, which in and of itself kind of sounds like a cool kind of Creepy idea. But, again, it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s just so random. 

Todd:  Yeah. It doesn’t connect to anything. Like, what and and Still never. By the end of the movie, I still have no idea why that all happened. No. They all converge back into the the hotel. No one Todd the house, I guess. Yeah.   Because they think that somebody is still in there. Do they 

Craig:  Todd Tom? Right? They’re they’re looking for Tom. Leslie comes and says, you have to come help me. Something happened to Todd. And they go back into the house, and Rick goes to go through a door, but it just opens up onto, like, some giant cliff. And so, like, he’s hanging on the door. And, again, I don’t know if this is supposed to be supernatural. I didn’t see any cliffs around where they were. 

Todd:  Well, I 

Craig:  don’t know what’s going on. They’re like, oh, well, Tom must have gone over the cliff, So they leave. 

Todd:  Fully no. No. Then the guy from the fun park, one of the thugs from the fun park, and he’s got his chain. And I’m like, Where did this guy come from, and why is he here? And did he really care to follow them all the way to this island that they accidentally shipwrecked onto? Like, how does he know they’re on this island? Was he following behind them? Is this island actually that easy to get to? Like, I I had no idea. Or was this some supernatural thing? Like, they’re seeing their their worst fears? 

Craig:  That’s what I thought. I thought it must be the island playing tricks on them because it was Completely implausible that these guys would have followed them and shown up. Like, how could they possibly have? It doesn’t even make any sense. But, no, as it turns out, it really is them. And he starts fighting them, and he, like I don’t know. He gets Rick and Jan out of the way, and then he goes and he punches Leslie in the gut, and his arm goes all the way through her. And it turns out that she is a zombie now. 

Todd:  Yeah. Like Half of her face is in this weird silver makeup, and her hair is Spiked up with gel. 

Craig:  And it was my favorite because so now okay. So she kills the big carnival guy, And then Rick then throws the same fishing net over her again. And once again, she acts like she’s He’s like, I I don’t like she’s been chained up Houdini style or something like, ah. 

Todd:  Fishing net is her kryptonite. Zombie or something. 

Craig:  And then he smoke bombs her, like, bug bombs her. Like, I didn’t even understand what happened. He throws some smoking, Yeah. He throws some smoking thing in the house and closes the door. And so she’s screaming, and they run away. And they end up well, first of all, Jan runs and she falls in a hole and they pull her out, and then they run and they end up on the beach. And Jan says 

Clip:  This is a nightmare. Just awful. 

Craig:  And I thought, yes, Jan. You’re right. This is just awful. 

Todd:  So true. Then they end up back in the hotel. They’re running from something, who knows what, because we can’t see anything. And they’re in the bar room, and for no apparent reason, suddenly, this arm with a machete burst through the wall behind the bar. I was like, what is this? And it turns out, am I mistaken, that this was also one of the thugs? Yep. And another guy from the fun fair comes through the window. But Then through the ceiling comes zombie Leslie, and she grabs 1 of these guys and pulls him up. 

Craig:  Oh, god. This is hilarious Because they tried to make it an effect where she was supposed to be turning his head all the way around. But, like, they clearly couldn’t do anything, so they just had to Shoot it to where, like, she would turn it as far as she could, and then it would cut away, and then it would be, like, on the other side. Like, he just Turned his head to the there’s no twisting of the neck. Nothing. Like, yeah. 

Todd:  He’s such a cheap looking 

Craig:  They’re like, we’ll do we’ll do some Tricky camerawork here. And 

Todd:  and really slow too. It’s like this is not even it’s not like a quick twist. This is like a at least 2 minutes of her twisting his head slowly around. Camera cuts away. Oh, his head’s on the back, twisting more. Camera cuts away. It’s a full twist. And then 1 full twist isn’t good enough.   I think they thought this effect was so good. They had to do it a 2nd time Mhmm. Because it was 2 full twist. And this guy whose head should, I guess, be off by now. 

Craig:  Yo. Totally. 

Todd:  Yeah. He just flops backwards. So then she chases them down, and Jan gets stuck on the banister. At the end of the banister is this, like, carved duck element. 

Craig:  It kinda looks like the Mary Poppins, her, her umbrella. 

Todd:  It grabs, 

Craig:  and it bites, and it just hangs on. Yeah. Like so she’s just stuck there. And 

Todd:  Leslie comes to get her, and Rick shoots Leslie. 

Craig:  And cuts 1 arm off. Like, he goes to dismember her, and he gets 1 arm cut off, and then Jan’s like, what about me? Rick, stop. So he does. He shoulda kept Going. She should’ve kept going because in 5 minutes, they’re gonna get hit rewind and her arms They can’t get enough 

Todd:  of that effect. You sort of feel like the filmmaker, like, discovered this for the first time. You know, if I could play things backwards, it’ll look like things are mysteriously moving the way they shouldn’t. Oh, they say he also hacks the duck off, and so the duck head falls to the floor, and it’s got some green goo coming out of it. You know, this is so funny that for a movie called Bloody New Year, there’s almost no blood in this movie. 

Craig:  Yeah. And, you know, the as I was watching it, what it reminded me the most of was an after school special. Like, that’s what it felt like. Like, that’s how it felt like it was shot. Like, you know how A lot a lot of times, those after school specials could be pretty dark, like, if they were about drugs or something and, like, Helen Hunt was, like, Jumping out of a window and dying or something because she was on drugs. Like, they would be dark like that, or sometimes they would be Like, oh, it’s the scary one. And this felt like one of those. I don’t even know what this movie was rated.   What was it rated? Do you know? 

Todd:  It’s rated r. It’s surprised it’s rated at all. 

Craig:  I can’t imagine why. Like, I don’t recall there being really any bad language. There’s very little blood at all. All of the effects look super fake. 

Todd:  I don’t know. It might have been, you know, back in the day, early eighties and Mid eighties. 

Craig:  89? You’re right. It’s 87. 87. Yeah. So That’s pretty late. 

Todd:  They were pretty It was Bad. Really touched me about these, though. I’m sure this appeared on the video nasties list. 

Craig:  Probably. Who knows? 

Todd:  Yeah. No. It’s this doesn’t deserve the r rating at all. Tom shows up again. Rick and Carol leave, and they decide to wander around in the woods. And his idea is, well, If these guys have come here, they must have come here by boat. And so they must have a boat we can use and we can get off the island. So they go wandering through the woods, And they come across a 3rd crash site.   How did this plane have 3 crash sites? I don’t know. The one they stumbled across the 1st time, the 1 in the burned down house, and then this 1, which is by a camp an encampment. 

Craig:  Well right. Like, you would assume there’s only 1, but they look Totally different every time they go to it. Yeah. And and this part bothered me too because okay. So Tom shows up. They thought he was dead, but he’s not. But, like, he’s, like, out of it. I don’t know.   Like, he’s in shock or something. And so, they’re like, we have to find the boat. We have to find the boat. And Tom is kind of out of it. And so, Jan’s like, well, I’ll stay with him. You guys go find the boat and then come back and get us. That makes no sense. 

Todd:  Yeah. Like Why don’t we just all go find the boat? 

Craig:  Right. What a tremendous waste of time. Yeah. Like, just all of you go find the boat and go. Like Uh-huh. Okay. Found it. It’s like It’s not 

Todd:  like Tom is that incapacitated either. What is he? Just has a bit of a headache or something? Right. 

Craig:  Or just freaking leave him there. Who cares? You didn’t care about anybody else who died. Leave all day. 

Todd:  Well, we find We hear again through the radio that is set up at this Encampment site. Again, it’s probably this ancient broadcast coming through that talks about operation mirror. It’s Mayday. Mayday. Operation mirror. Instrument failure. Our position is 6 North 3 West. Altitude unknown.   And she holds up a mirror. I know where do these mirrors even come from. She holds up a giant piece of mirror from the ground against this crashed plane. And, again, behind her, this pilot materializes. But then when she turns around, he’s actually there. And Rick kind of comes up behind him. I’m not sure if he actually does anything, but It doesn’t matter because the pilot just explodes into dust. And then there’s this sort of Indiana Jones and the last crusadish type shot of him on the ground as dust being blown away until there’s nothing left. 

Craig:  That was so random. Like, the his head just Exploded out of nowhere. Like, what? Mhmm. What is happening? Just no explanation. Yeah. No you you just, Oh, well, his head exploded, and then he disappeared. 

Todd:  Something creepy happened. Yeah. It’s a movie built of what are some creepy things we could do, and let’s just Stack them 1 right after the other in this movie with a very tenuous thread linking them. And they find a boat. They see a little boat floating on the way. And so, Then back, meanwhile, Todd gonna start going weird on Jan. He’s lying at her lap, and he’s talking. And he’s like, I always liked you, Jan, But then, 

Craig:  you were always Rick’s girl. Mhmm. Suddenly, his voice changes, 

Todd:  and, he starts going after her. So Jan basically stands in 1 place, you know, kinda prowls around while he’s kind of half chasing her. It’s it’s terribly shot. It’s Again, none of this stuff is convincing, let alone suspenseful. 

Craig:  The only thing that I liked about this part, he chases her, and he chases her into an elevator. And it’s one of those old, Like you always see in movies in these old houses, the elevators that don’t have a door, they just have kinda like a cage door. He, like, grabs at her through the cage door and kinda pulls her out, and she’s struggling. But then she finally hits the button, and it starts going up, And it cuts his arm off. And then the only effect that I kind of liked was she’s standing in the elevator with her back kind of up against the back wall, and then arms, very Freddy Krueger style, come through the back wall as though it’s latex. And I think that it was latex or some sort of or some sort of plastic, But, like, whereas in Nightmare on Elm Street, it stretches beautifully and, like, it just, you know, is the perfect Silhouette of Freddie or whatever. This plastic, whatever it is, when it stretches, like, you see the stretch marks, like, When you blow up a balloon too far or something. And so it doesn’t look nearly as cool, but 

Todd:  at least they tried. It’s like they stretch the plastic, You know, where the rubber or whatever as far as it would go to make the wall, and then they spray painted it the color of the wall so that it was opaque. Right. But then when they start to stretch it, You start seeing cracks in this until you can almost practically see through it, except it’s dark on the other side, so you can’t. But you’re right. It just looks like somebody’s stretching a balloon. So the effect is almost totally lost, but the idea is that she’s being pulled into the wall of this elevator. And when Rick And, the other girl finally show up.   They, see her go into like, they see the last bits of her being absorbed into the wall. Again, it’s all these things, but none of it’s very cohesive. 1 guy just gets killed. A bunch of people just get materialized to and then disappear, and then this woman gets subsumed into the house. It’s really unclear to us what the ultimate goal of this haunting or these spirits are. You know? What are they trying to do for the to these people? You know, what’s their mission? 

Craig:  Well and even oh, so okay. So then another one of the fair guys wakes up and chases them around, and there’s a big kitchen sequence where everything in the kitchen freaks out and kills the fair guy, and things are flying around Matilda style. And but then they do the rewind trick, and so everything, you You know, it goes back to normal. And then Leslie well, they end up in the ballroom, and ghosts appear and, like, do, like, announcements, and one of them is Leslie, I think. And Leslie here in the last 10 minutes of the movie gives us the exposition. 

Clip:  There was an experiment. An experiment went terribly wrong. The government demanded to send up a plane on New Year’s Eve, a plane carrying a device that could change the structure of time and matter. This device could 

Craig:  And all of the dead people come back and are chasing them around the game room, and they end up cornering them in the game room. The only ones left at this point are Carol and Rick, and they’re, like, on the The billiards table and the it’s, like, spinning around and these ghosts are all around them. And then all of a sudden, they just get dumped out onto the lawn, Like, nothing happened. 

Todd:  Yeah. And so then they stand up, and they look in they look in, and the the room looks just like it was before. And, like, the literal look on their faces, Well, that was weird. And Rick just said very flatly, come on. We could still make the boat. Oh my god. So they run to the shore, and they go to the boat. But then as they’re on the boat getting ready to go, Rick turns around, and Jan, is standing, at a distance in the rocks on the shore calling out for him.   Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. So, you know, being an idiot, he gets off the boat and walks back onto the shore, gets his legs stuck in this quicksand, I guess, and Todd sinking to his head. Yeah. At which point, one of these thugs who has since turned into a zombie Stands over him, and we hear something fire up. And I was like, don’t tell me they’re gonna bring a chainsaw into this movie at this Boy, like, they’ve shored almost everything they could. The only thing missing is a chainsaw.   But no. It’s it’s an outboard motor. 

Craig:  Yeah. Uh-huh. 

Todd:  And, and, he fires it up, and, you know, the spinning rotor comes closer and closer to this guy’s face. And that’s it. I guess we hear his screaming. Again, there’s no blood. There’s not even blood splattering on anything. There’s not a gross sound of grinding or anything. We just get this now from this reaction shot of Jan far off on the boat that something bad has happened. And then, after that reaction shot of Carol, she gets Sucked down into the boat, and that’s the end of her.   And the next shot we see is of, again, this party from the 1959. And big surprise, here are all of the party that we have seen in a conga line coming by the camera like they’re now part of the party. Right. Except for Carol. And the camera pans over to that mirror that we had seen earlier, and Carol is on the other side of the mirror banging and Banging and banging on it like she’s trapped. Like, she can’t even get 

Craig:  Todd a 

Todd:  party or something. 

Craig:  Well, it says though they’re, like, in a Time loop or something, and it says, though, she is the one who grabs the girl and pulled her into the mirror from the first scene, or at least that’s the implication that I got. Okay. And then that’s the end. Like, I felt like they were trying to be clever. Like, oh, look. We looped back around. We’re right back where we started, but, God. Who cares? 

Todd:  It could have been a really clever prem. I mean, the premise actually wasn’t too bad. This notion that there is an island or whatever under this time loop because of some government experiment gone awry, it’s a nice idea, and some people stumble across it, but it’s so disjointed. It doesn’t have any internal cohesion. Like, why are there zombies? Why are there killer nets? Why is there a a table monster? You know? Right. Why are some of these things killing them? Some of them are appearing and being helpful and walking away, and some of them are just appearing in the mirror and doing nothing else, and others are appearing in the mirror reaching their arms out and exploding. You know, like, it it what things are coming out of movie screens. It’s just a big mess.   It’s like somebody sat down and looked at the scripts of 30 movies that horror movies that came before and picked, oh, there’s a good scene. There’s a good scene. There’s a good scene. Let’s just string all this together. And then let’s really let’s film it, like, really poorly, flatly with actors who can’t act and terrible dialogue, and, Let’s strip all the suspense out of it. And, yeah, bloody New Year. 

Craig:  Yeah. I I just can’t really think of anything good to say about it. It It wasn’t entertaining. You know? The the characters weren’t endearing. The acting wasn’t good. The the dialogue was terrible. The plot was disjointed. Like 

Todd:  It’s an ugly movie to watch too. It’s it’s muddy. 

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty much just crap. It’s So unremarkable that I couldn’t find anything about it. Like, I was trying to research and find fun facts and behind the scenes things. I couldn’t find anything. Nothing. If it’s a movie that’s kind of been lost Todd history, I certainly understand why. 

Todd:  The movie’s in its own time loop. 

Craig:  Yeah. I feel like the only reason that Anybody even knows about it or would stumble across it is because it has New Year’s in the title. And so if people like us are looking for a New Year’s movie to watch. They’re like, oh, well, Bloody New Year. We’ll watch that. And then it’s in Set in July, 

Todd:  but it has an awesome cover. That’s the other thing. That’s the only other thing that’s saved it. This probably got it rented, by really, really disappointed people back in the eighties. You know, I looked I was Trying to find something about this, I actually clicked through all of the actors and actresses on IMDB, trying to see if any of them did anything. And most of them, no. But Mark Powley, the guy who was Rick, has been a steadily working actor since this up to now. Yeah.   Mostly in Britain. So a lot of stuff I haven’t I don’t know or I didn’t recognize a lot of television and stuff like that, but that guy that guy’s not doing too bad. Susan Acheson, who played Leslie, Has had a fair amount of success again up until more recently, just, doing random things here and there. And, the guy, Steve Wilshire, who played Ace, he was one of the you you know his name is Ace because it’s paint on the back of his jacket, but he was one of the thugs from the 

Craig:  Oh, right. 

Todd:  He has been an extremely active stuntman in a lot of movies 

Craig:  Makes sense. 

Todd:  Since this. So yeah. But this movie didn’t make any of their careers. That’s for sure. 

Craig:  Oh, gosh. No. And it was the director’s last movie. I saw that, and maybe for good reason. 

Todd:  Yeah. He should’ve gone back to, like, In Seminoid 2 or something like that. Yeah. Well, happy New Year all the same. We do not recommend that you watch this movie? It’s not even so bad. It’s good. It it’s just even fall into that category. It’s just a slog.   But coming up this year, we do hope to find some much better movies that are much more worth your time. We’re totally gonna review those here in 2019. I think Craig and I also decided we’re gonna do some requests, this month for the rest of the month. So, if you haven’t put in your request, yet and you’ve been itching for us to do a particular film that you love, please, go to our Facebook page or go to our website, 2 guys.redfortynet.com. Leave us a comment on either of those places, and let us know what movie you’d like us to do. And we’ll put that on the docket for this month and possibly next month as well. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.   Until next time. I’m Todd, and I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.