New Year's Evil

New Year's Evil (1980)

Don't Dare Make New Year's Resolutions... Unless You Plan To Live!

During a live punk-rock New Year's Eve TV programme, the presenter gets a phone call from a psycho calling himself "Evil" saying that when New Year's strikes in each US time zone, he will murder someone.

Date of release
1980-12-26
TMDB
4.9 / 10 (113)
Runtime
1h 26m
Genres
Horror, Thriller
Director
Emmett Alston

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $500K

New Year's Evil is a 1980 American slasher film directed by Emmett Alston, and starring Kip Niven, Roz Kelly, and Chris Wallace. The plot follows a Los Angeles punk rock and new wave show host who receives a series of phone calls during a televised New Year's Eve bash from a killer warning of impending murders that he plans to exact as the New Year dawns on each time zone.

Production

The Cannon Group had a waiver to make the film during the 1980 actors strike. Kip Niven was cast in the role of Richard Sullivan, of which he commented: "I've played bad guys before—like one of the three vigilante motorcycle cops in Clint Eastwood's Magnum Force—but this movie gave me my first leading part and the first sustained villain role that lets me pull the stops out... I could work while many others couldn't."

For many cast and crew members, New Year's Evil was their first feature film: Niven, Chris Wallace, Grant Cramer, Thomas E. Ackerman, Teri Copley, Taaffe O'Connell, and Julie Purcell.

Shadow, a long-haired touring rock band from Kennewick, Washington heard about a casting call for a new wave punk band to play live in a film, cut their hair and auditioned, landing the role of the featured band, out of fifty bands.

Principal photography mainly took place in and around Los Angeles, California. The shoot began in Los Angeles, on October 15, 1980 and was completed in 18 days, on time for the film to release two months later for the New Year's holiday. According to Thomas E.

The end credits give "Special Thanks to Bill 'Godfather of Rock and Roll' Gazzarri."

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