Shockingly, many of your universe's critics fail to appreciate Mr. Warren's swan song. For example, reviewer lighoff writes, "It's hard to explain how stupid and meaningless was this movie." Reviewer lordzedd-3 writes, "It's garbage and I give it the LUMP OF COAL." And reviewer Randomgirl111 writes, "The writing is disgraceful, the visuals are cheap, even by 80s standards, the music is a broken orchestra and the characters give me headaches. I highly recommend you skip this. Probably the worst horror film I've ever watched."
Read on for the truth about Bloody New Year...
The film begins with black-and-white footage of a New Year’s Eve party in a ballroom at the end of 1959. The festivities unwind behind the opening credits while a song called “Recipe for Romance” by Cry No More plays—a song that sounds like a merging of 1980s and 1950s pop music, indicating themes of merging decades that will play out in the film. At the end of the 1959 footage, a group of young people forms a conga line and dances out of the ballroom. One young woman remains in the ballroom as the footage dissolves from black-and-white to color. In a shocking sequence, the young woman looks at a full-length mirror; then she is pulled into the mirror by her reflection.
The film cuts to the summer of 1987, where a group of young people vacations on a beach in Barry Island, Wales. Finished with the beach, they ride the rides at the local fun fair. Two of the young men get involved in an altercation because two thugs are bothering an American woman named Carol on the Tilt-A-Whirl (perhaps a common occurrence at Welsh fun fairs).
Meanwhile, Lesley and her friend Janet visit a Tarot reader, but the psychic is unable to finish Lesley’s reading because the others, chased by carnies, interrupt. After the young people leave, the psychic looks at her crystal ball, which has a crack and leaks dark fluid. Of course, the psychic screams at this prediction of terror to come.
Still being chased by carnies, Rick and Tom hide in a dark haunted house (aka ghost train), prompting Rick to quip, “I never thought I’d be scared in one of these places.”
The trip through the ghastly displays of the ghost train is interrupted when one of the young people, perhaps implausibly, drives his Jeep through the wall of the ride, even though the Jeep is towing a small sailboat. In the end, the six young people safely drive out of the fun fair and toss all the carnies into roadside beach toy stands.
Later, the group takes the sailboat out on the water. Almost immediately, the young man named Spud steers the boat across some rocks, causing a leak and forcing the group to find shelter on a nearby island. “There’s water all over the floor,” Tom complains.
“You know I can’t swim,” says Lesley, so everyone abandons the boat and wades to shore.
Suspensefully, the group is watched by someone hiding in the forest above the beach.
As the young people follow a path through the forest, they find a cow skull, rusty barbed wire, and the landing gear of a crashed airplane before they reach an inn, the Grand Island Hotel. They enter to find it abandoned and decorated for a New Year’s party, presumably the party shown in the monochrome footage at the beginning of the film.
Of course, the group immediately splits up. Rick and Janet go upstairs to look for people (and, pointedly, dry shoes) while Tom (who wears a wet Members Only jacket) and Lesley enter a back room decorated with Merry Christmas signs and streamers. “They’ve gone crazy,” Lesley says. “Look at this!”
“They’ve been watching too many late night movies,” Tom says, earning a laugh from Lesley even without explaining his inexplicable statement. The couple, showing a perhaps understandable amount of privilege, open bottles of brandy and pour some drinks.
When she opens a window to get more light, Lesley screams—one of the carnies from the fun fair is at the window, but he quickly runs away.
In the film’s first supernatural scene, a ghost maid fades into existence and enters the room where Carol sits shivering. The ghost offers her a blanket. “Don’t worry about the others,” the maid says cryptically. “They’re all being taken care of.”
Meanwhile, Janet, taking advantage of her own privilege even more than Tom and Lesley, takes a bubble bath in one of the abandoned hotel rooms. Rick scares her by coming up behind her in the bath and they kiss, not noticing that a shower hose has snaked its way into the tub. After their tryst, both of them exploit their privilege even further by putting on clothes they find in the hotel room. “I’m sure this is just fancy dress for parties,” Rick explains. “That would explain the Christmas stuff too. Special ‘Christmas Fifties Weeks.’” (He does not, unfortunately, explain this leap in logic.)
Creepily, Rick and Janet end up groping each other on the bed while a young woman’s ghost looks on from inside the mirror. (To be clear, “creepily,” of course, refers both to the ghost and the groping.)
Spud, on his own, finds the hotel ballroom. It is dark but a duo of guitar players is on stage, singing another song that merges 1950s and 1980s music. As Spud approaches the two singers, they vanish in front of his eyes. “I’ve got to get out of this place,” he says. And he does, walking out the ballroom door.
Tom and Lesley end up in a game room playing snooker or billiards or pool or some similar game. They leave the room to look for a fuse box, not noticing that the billiard balls move of their own accord, resetting the table. Spooky!
Tom and Lesley find the door to the basement, but instead of finding the fuse box they begin necking on an old mattress. Lesley initiates the makeout session, but Tom is less interested, stopping her advances and, somewhat confusingly, setting off a box of fireworks in a corner. Also spooky!
All three couples reunite in the hotel lobby. Spud sums up the mood: “I can’t believe this place. It’s completely weird!”
His statement is confirmed immediately when a rogue vacuum cleaner rushes down the hallway toward them, only to fall down the stairs. Even spookier! (Or perhaps just an indication that electrical power has returned to the hotel.)
Unbeknownst to the young people, a TV has turned on in a back room. Helpfully, the TV is tuned to an old panel program about a remarkable scientific experiment. The host says, “Professor Kaplan, you were describing for us your experimental anti-radar device which you launched in the opening hours of 1960.”
“Bending light,” an antagonistic panel member explains. “Making a plane invisible! It’s interfering with light! With time itself! Playing God. Very, very dangerous.”
Understandably, the others all dress in fifties garb (including pomade) found in the abandoned rooms. As they gather at a bar downstairs, Carol summarizes their situation with her typical American directness: “You guys, this must be one of the craziest days in my life. We just met at a fun fair, we crashed up a perfectly innocent ghost train, and now we’re stuck in a time warp!” (Interestingly, she does not mention wrecking a sailboat and almost dying in the sea.) Everyone laughs at her succinct summary.
They hear a noise and they all decide to investigate, tromping down the hall to the hotel’s movie theater, which is showing the classic science-fiction film Fiend Without a Face from 1958. As the climactic scene with the visible brain monsters is shown onscreen, Rick finds the projection booth, but nobody is there. When the film ends, a new film begins: documentary footage of the very hotel they are in. In a wonderfully effective shot, someone from the documentary footage dressed in a sheik’s costume jumps out of the screen to strangle Spud!
The sheik scratches Spud’s cheek, then rises into the air, flies through the window into the projection booth and then the projector. At the same time, the celluloid film of Fiend Without a Face wraps around Rick’s legs, tripping him, but he is easily able to rip the film away, as it is just film. But, back in the cinema auditorium, Spud is dead from the scratches on his cheek.
Lesley and Tom go outside to explore the island and find help. As they walk through empty fields, they discuss how Spud died, possibly from some kind of electric shock. Tom says, “It was dark. We’ve all had a jumpy day.”
They find some houses that are as abandoned as the hotel. Lesley breaks a door down, only to be attacked by a fishing net studded with fishhooks, a situation that appears almost comical at first but becomes serious as the hooks shred her skin. Then a rope wraps itself around her legs. Tom, sensibly, grabs a hatchet and chops at the net, freeing her. Then she is attacked by a green monster disguising itself as a tablecloth.
Tom beats back the monster with a harpoon, and it retreats into the table, but he is soon attacked himself by an unseen assailant.
Meanwhile, Rick and Janet walk through the forest and hear people laughing, though they don’t see anybody. They soon realize, based on the rustling bushes, that it is actually the trees and bushes laughing at them. Again, spooky!
They retreat to the beach, where the footprints of invisible people appear and disappear. Rick finds a glass snifter on the beach. As he picks it up, he hears laughter again, so he and Janet run back to the forest, where they hear an invisible airplane fly directly over them, then scream to the ground, resulting in a real, visible explosion. Investigating, the couple finds another abandoned house with the wreckage of a visible plan inside. Rick also sees the ghost pilot reaching for him in a reflective piece of glass.
Carol, meanwhile, follows the ghost maid to yet another house, this one with a fire burning in the fireplace and, unfortunately for Carol, a blizzard blasting from the sitting room. In yet another of the film’s breathtaking images, we watch as Carol stumbles around a snowy suburban room.
After some more mysterious occurrences, Rick, Janet, Lesley, and Carol encounter one of the carnies who have chased them all the way from the fun fair. Saying nothing, the carnie attacks Rick. They get into a fistfight reminiscent of one in an old Western (perhaps cementing the time warp theme), as they take turns punching each other and stumbling backward. Bizarrely, Lesley interrupts the fistfight, revealing she is a ghost with white scars on her face. She picks up the carnie and throws him through the wall, where he expires by falling down a cliff.
Ghost-Lesley turns on her friends but they contain her in the house using a net, a smoke bomb, and a rake. Janet, panicking, runs through the forest, only to fall into a hidden pit. Rick and Carol pull her out of the hole, which never appears or is mentioned again.
Rick, Carol, and Janet run back to the beach and take shelter under some rocks. “This is a nightmare,” Janet says. “It’s awful!”
“I can’t believe what’s happening,” Rick adds. “I see things and I just can’t believe them.”
“Maybe if we stay here and be quiet, they’ll leave us alone.”
“You must be crazy to think that’ll happen,” Carol says. “Whatever’s out there won’t let anyone go!”
Rick says, rather coldly, “At least we’ve got a better chance than the others. We know there’s something wrong.”
After some rocks slide down from above them, Carol has a thought: “Those guys from the fun fair. There were three of them!”
“You’re right,” Rick agrees. “We’ve got to get back to the hotel!” So the three young people return through the forest and lock themselves into the hotel. Unfortunately, they soon hear Lesley’s voice from outside begging them to let her inside. Sensibly, they refuse. When the women check out the hotel bar, however, they are interrupted by one of the carnies smashing through the back of the bar with a machete. Fortunately, Carol simply renders him unconscious by breaking a bottle over his head.
Another carny jumps through a window into the hotel (on the second floor, interestingly) to attack Janet, but he is killed by the ghost of Lesley, who appears from the ceiling to twist his head around multiple times, breaking his neck. Then Lesley turns her attention to Janet, who is momentarily immobilized when the decoration atop the staircase banister grabs her hand.
Rick appears with a shotgun. He shoots Lesley once and confetti blasts out of the wound in her abdomen. Then he shoots her twice, which kills the ghost. Resourcefully, he uses the butt of the shotgun to sever Lesley’s right arm, just in case her ghost is not in fact dead.
Ever sensible, the group realizes that the carnies must have a boat, so they attempt to leave the hotel but are interrupted by an injured and catatonic Tom, whom they drag back into the hotel and deposit him on a sofa. Janet stays with Tom while Rick and Carol leave to return to the beach and find the hypothetical boat. They are distracted again by the ghost of the pilot. They follow the ghost to the wreckage of the doomed experimental plane. The ghost appears, but when Rick hits him with a stick he explodes into dust, so they return to their mission of finding the carnies’ boat, which they stumble upon almost immediately.
Back at the hotel, Janet is shocked to learn that Tom is in fact a ghost or possibly possessed. He attacks her but she fights back by throwing a Christmas tree on top of him, a surprisingly effective maneuver. She runs to the cage elevator, and when Tom grabs her through the bars she rides the elevator up to the next floor, severing Tom’s left arm.
Rick and Carol return to the hotel yet again, though not before Janet is attacked by hands that emerge from the wall of the elevator, pulling her to her death.
After a suspenseful sequence in the kitchen where Rick and Carol lock themselves in a pantry to escape flying knives, among other things, time begins to reverse itself. The kitchen implements return to their places…and, elsewhere, Lesley’s arm reattaches itself to her body. Rick and Carol run to the ballroom, where the show from 1959 is beginning. A hostess appears onstage. “Let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, of why we are here. We are here to let in the new year in the good old traditional way. Goodbye 1959, hello 1960!” She transforms into Lesley to tell them, “I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves, because we’re here for a long time. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll let you into a little secret. We’re here forever!”
After Rick asks why there are here, Lesley replies helpfully, “There was an experiment. An experiment that went terribly wrong. The government in their wisdom sent 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 shatter time itself, and the pilot crashed the plane here…here on Grand Island, and left us in time forever. Dead…or alive? We are all caught in this awful angry half-world, and we can’t escape…ever…ever…ever!”
In the climax, Rick and Carol make their way through the hotel as it and its undead denizens, including the carnies now, try to kill them. In the game room, Rick rolls over an animated pool table, avoiding a ping pong table at the same time, to rescue Carol by slamming a golf putter into a carny’s head. The undead gather around the survivors, inviting Rick and Carol to join them in their existence between life and death and time. Finally, Rick and Carol are thrown out of the game room, through a window, and onto the lawn outside.
Of course, the survivors run back to the beach. They get in the carnies’ tiny rowboat, but Rick returns to the sand (perhaps in a reference to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) when he sees Janet calling for him. Of course, her appearance is simply a ruse, as Rick is sucked into quicksand on the beach, and then beheaded by a carny wielding an outboard motor (which really would have been more useful on the boat). Even Carol is not spared by the time warp, as she is pulled through the bottom of the boat and then imprisoned behind the mirror in the ballroom.
The End
Together, Bloody New Year and Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (also 1987) may be considered the high point of 1980s horror movie creativity. Both films' greatest strength is their ability to use a familiar cinematic narrative to string together ingenious supernatural sequences of pure nightmare. Never before and never again would cinema allow viewers to shiver together while watching such items as vacuum cleaners, pinball machines, chalkboards, tablecloths, rowboats, fishing nets, etc. menace helpless young adults. It is truly a shame that Norman J. Warren would not direct a feature film after this (though he would direct shorts and would live until 2021). Bloody New Year is a fitting apex for Mr. Warren's cinematic career.
One final comment: Bloody New Year appears to be the most high-profile film produced by a production company with the excellent name Cinema and Theater Seating, Ltd.