New Year’s Evil
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There aren’t too many New Year’s Eve-themed horror movies, so you can’t blame us for choosing this turkey to watch this week. Brought to you by the Globus-Golan team of schlocksters behind the late Cannon Films production powerhouse, we can’t even say it’s more than mildly interesting. But we did have a lot of fun talking about just how bad it is.
So it’s in this spirit that we lift up this first podcast as a toast to 2017 – hoping that you’ll stay safe and avoid EEEEVIIIIIL as you ring in the new year.
New Year’s Evil (1980)
Episode 63, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast
Craig: Hello? Hello. How’s it going?
Todd: I am evil. Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: And we hope you had a Merry Christmas. We have another holiday coming upon us, and that is New Year. And what better way to celebrate the New Year than to go with the New Year’s themed horror movie? In this case, we chose the aptly named New Year’s Evil. The 1980, Cannon Films movie. Craig, had you heard of this film? I don’t know. I saw the box cover art when I was, walking around Blockbuster. That that’s that’s the only thing I knew about this movie.
Craig: Yeah. I think that you had mentioned it to me at some point, but, I had never seen it. It didn’t look familiar. I don’t remember having ever seen it anywhere, and maybe there’s reason for that.
Todd: This film was made by a very notorious producing team in Hollywood, Goran and Globus, 2 Israeli cousins, who came over in 1978 and bought Canon Pictures. And if you remember all of the horrible, but lots of times pretty fun anyway movies that you’ve seen over the years, you probably remember that Canon logo, that came up after you popped in the v VHS tape. The movies the movies were all released in theaters. In fact, some of their most famous ones you definitely know, such as Delta Force, and Van Damme’s first film, Bloodsport, I believe, was produced by them. They also produced the absolutely horrible Superman 4. Somehow, in the in the midst of all the craziness, they got a Todd of the Superman license and produced that abomination and a bunch of stuff with with Sylvester Stallone, including an arm wrestling movie called Over the Top that tried to make arm wrestling really, really cool.
Craig: I actually really remember liking that movie when I was a kid.
Todd: Do you? I never saw it. I never saw it. But, pretty much every Chuck Norris movie almost every Chuck Norris movie was produced by these guys, for better or for worse. And, if you want to learn more about these guys, I highly recommend a documentary that may still be up on Netflix called Electric Boogaloo, the untold wild story of Canon films. Because they did do the Electric Boogaloo movie, which was one of their earliest and biggest hits, and then that product produced the sequel, Electric Boogaloo 2. And, you know, so so it’s it’s interesting. Oh, and breakin’. Breakin’ was another film that they did, which, was early and popular. Do you know breakin’? With breakdancing?
Craig: I don’t know it, but but I think the electric boogaloo is actually breakin’ too. I think it’s breakin’ Todd electric boogaloo. That’s right.
Todd: Because because everybody makes jokes about it all the time. Breakin’ Todd electric boogaloo. Yeah. That’s right. So breakin’ was the first one. I’m sorry. And that was really, really popular as a big hit and actually culturally significant, maybe the only culturally significant movie they made because this movie here is certainly not culturally significant. Nope. So New Year’s evil begins.
Craig: It begins with the kill. There’s it starts out and it’s it’s funny. We got into you know, we we put this I put the movie in. I didn’t know anything about it. I looked I just on IMDB, I just looked to see what year it was made, how long it was. I saw 1980 and that kinda made me excited because I, you know, I’m a kid of the eighties. I I enjoy eighties movies, so I was kind of excited about that. And then it started, and it starts with this woman getting her or doing her makeup, and her name is Diane, and she’s played by Roz Kelly, who I had never heard of before, and it wasn’t until I did a little bit of research after. The only thing that I would have ever known her from, she was Fonzie’s girlfriend, Pinky Tuscadero, on Happy Days, which I thought was pretty funny. And she appears to be, like, in entertainment or something. She’s got a, an assistant or an agent or something who’s talking to her. And I just knew from the first snips of dialogue that we had gotten ourself into something bad.
Todd: It’s pretty obvious.
Craig: Because not only was the dialogue bad, I mean, there’s there’s, it’s not even a joke. Like, it’s played very seriously, but like the, I guess the agent’s, like, nervous or something. And she’s like, oh my gosh. Take a lewd and calm down. I’m like, oh boy. Here we go. And so it’s just an establishing shot really where we kind of are introduced to her. She’s famous apparently. And we it’s established that her it’s New Year’s Eve, and she’s gonna be hosting this countdown. Apparently, she hosts, like, a new wave rock music radio show, and and she’s pretty famous. And this New Year’s Eve, she’s holding a live countdown of the year’s best new wave music. We find out that her husband, can’t be there. He’s on the other coast. They’re in California. He’s on the other coast. And it it says something about how he’s incapacitating, can’t make it. Like, he’s drunk or he’s high on coke or something. He can’t come. And then, I don’t remember if we meet him right now, but eventually, this young, blonde, good looking guy. I say young, probably twenties, somewhere in there. And we find out that he is Derek and he is, Diane’s son. And he’s coming in and and talking to her, and she’s kind of ignoring him, and he and she’s getting ready and not paying any attention to him and he’s he says
Clip: I got some good news. Oh, that’s nice, honey. Got a part in a new series. Spaceship America. Ernie. I just remembered I wanna see those press releases Yvonne has before she passes them out. Got it? Okay. It’s really a good part. You wanna get her on the phone for me, Sure, bud. Snap it up. Todd shooting next week. What? The series. My part. Look. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you tell me all about it later after the show? I’ll take you out to dinner. Okay?
Craig: And Yvonne is in her hotel room, I guess in the same building. I think all of this takes place in a hotel building. Anyway, she talks to Yvonne and she get off gets off the phone with Yvonne and suddenly, Yvonne hears a noise in her her room, and that we see that the door to her hotel room is coming open, and and she goes out to investigate. There’s nobody there. So she goes back in the bathroom where she’s been getting ready and she gets killed. Somebody grabs her and pulls her in the shower and and stabs her or cuts her throat with a switchblade, or something like that. And so that’s it. You know, we get the first establishing kill, which we’re pretty much always given. And then, basically, we end up at this like you said, there are these punk rock kids driving around, and I didn’t know what was going on there. I I I didn’t know if these were characters I should be paying attention to or if it was just kind of a side thing going on, but very eighties and played so hammy. And, like, I don’t think that it was intended to be hammy. It just came across that way, and that’s kind of the case with the whole movie. But anyway, they get there to the hotel, and we see that it’s this big party, and Diane comes out and introduces herself as Blaze. That’s her stage name. And she introduces, like I said, she says, this is the Hollywood hotline countdown of the year’s best new wave rock.
Clip: Now this is your last chance to be bad before you make those New Year’s resolutions. That’s why we call our celebration New Year’s EVA.
Craig: And it’s so funny. One of my one of the things that I thought was kind of hilarious inadvertently about this movie was she’s got all these new wave, kind of punk rock people dancing, and they’re dancing throughout the whole movie. And it is the strangest, most bizarre dancing I’ve ever seen in my life. Like, seriously, it looks like it’s out of a different movie. It looks like it’s out of a Night of the Living Dead movie. These look like zombies dancing, and I what was that all about?
Todd: Like, did you think that’s anything? I did. It was like a giant, like, mosh pit, but it was a half hearted mosh pit. They’re just kind of bouncing around and off of each other, but in, but not very quickly. The music sections were some of my favorite laugh out loud moments of the movie, where we’re constantly cutting back to for no real good reason, except it seems to highlight the 2 bands that they got Todd, perform in this movie. Made in Japan was 1, and the first one was called Shadow. And Yeah. So they’re they’re playing this this punk, new wave, whatever kind of music. The whole idea, honestly, of, like, a punk or New wave. New wave is like I don’t know. It was sort of a a very short lived version of music that tried to combine punk, which is so anti establishment and almost anti music with, like, the modern, like, glam rock. And so you ended up with this thing that just didn’t last very long. And I can’t say that what they’re playing even seems like new wave music to me. But, anyway, the idea the idea of a new wave countdown is is so anti punk. You know what I mean? That that and she’s Yeah. It’s hilarious. And she’s set up as this kind of, I guess, like, a Dick Clark American Bandstand type host. Right? Because this is happening on the New Year’s, and she’s apparently broadcasting the show. Even though she’s broadcasting it from LA, she has, like, people in all these different time zones who are also throwing their own parties, who they’re all kind of linked up to. Right? Which seemed seemed like it would become, important. I mean, it kinda does, but kinda doesn’t. But that’s sort of the last that we see about the coordination between the different shows and these different time zones going on that she’s kinda, like, lording over, but whatever. Yeah, dude. Their dancing was hilarious. And also, later on, when we cut back to them at some point in the movie, suddenly they’re playing like blues.
Craig: Yeah. It was so strange.
Todd: And and their dancing is exactly what it was for the new wave, except it’s like 10 times slower. Yeah. It’s it’s
Craig: And it’s so weird. Like, you can barely even call it dancing. Like, they’re really just flailing about. Like, there’s no rhyme or rhythm to it. Like, it’s it’s just bizarre. You know? Yeah. We lived through the whole mosh pit experience. I’ve been in a mosh pit or 2 in my life. It’s nothing like this, and this is just it’s just bizarre. Part of this countdown apparently also is that it’s being voted on live. So there’s a bank of phones, on the stage, and, there are operators there taking calls, but periodically, Blaze will take calls also. And she takes one call and it’s totally normal, nothing weird. And then the very next, call she gets, we see that it’s coming from this guy, like, in a trench coat in a, phone booth. And he he’s got, like, this voice modifier or something. I mean, reminiscent of, like, the voice modifier in Scream, but, like, way, way lower tech. So all it does is just make his voice kind of buzzy.
Clip: But let’s hear a crazy New Year to you.
Craig: Happy new year to you, Lays.
Clip: Oh. Some kind of voice you got there. Sound like the phantom.
Craig: You could call me that.
Clip: So you got a name, phantom?
Craig: Call me evil.
Clip: Evil? You bad,
Craig: No. Just evil. Oh, it’s so corny and funny. I can’t even do it justice. He says, I’m gonna commit murder at midnight. I’m gonna kill someone you know, someone close to you. And he says, I’m gonna do it at the at midnight for every time zone. So as it turns midnight in every time zone and this radio show is celebrating it, he’s gonna murder somebody supposedly, close to her. And that’s the setup for the whole movie. Now the thing that I found interesting that made this a little bit different than your typical slasher movie is that we see the killer from the very beginning. I mean, we he’s not masked at all. He’s not hidden. They don’t keep his face out of Craig. And I thought that there had to be a reason for that. And as it turns out, there there kind of is. There’s a little bit of a twist towards the end, that really I didn’t find to be very twisty at all. In fact, I totally had it figured out by the time we got there. But this just sets up I mean, we can go into some of the details of the plot, but honest to Todd, really all that happens is she’s kinda freaked out and she, wants additional police presence there and and they come. And then we cut to, an outside view of a building with a sign out front that says Crawford Sanitarium, and we see evil, break in, sneaks in when somebody’s not looking, and he comes in and he’s dressed as an orderly, and he introduces himself to this pretty nurse who he bumps into in the hall, and he introduces himself as Jeff Winters, which I I wrote down because I thought it would be important, but it’s not. It’s just an alias. Basically, he seduces her in the 5 minutes that he knows her, and then he’s got this tape recorder with him. And when, it turn when it comes to midnight, they’re, like, making out. He’s got her on a table. He presses record, and when it strikes midnight and he can hear it on the radio, he stabs her and kills her. And that basically happens, like, 4 more times with different costumes, but basically the exact same thing 4 more times. And that’s pretty much and then we get to the end of the movie. You know? Like, it’s it’s so formulaic.
Todd: It is.
Craig: It’s it’s so formulaic.
Todd: Yeah. It’s a paint by numbers kinda script. You’ve seen movies like this, much better movies exactly like this. In fact, and I had to look up I I was curious because this came out in 1980, and Roger Ebert was one of my absolute favorite, in reviewers. I I could agree with him on almost everything, and he had just such a love for film that he could even find ways to appreciate, for good reason, bad movies. Let’s just put it that way. Movies that had some heart, but, were seriously lacking in many departments. And he he reviewed this movie, and I was really interested to to to read it online. Now he didn’t say it was a good movie. You know, he gave it, like, one and a half Todd. Then this was when it came out. But he but he did say some interesting things about it. He said New Year’s Evil is an endangered species, a plain, old fashioned, gory thriller. He said it’s not very good, the plot is dumb, and the twist at the end has been borrowed from 100, if not thousands, of other movies. But as thrillers go these days, and again, he’s talking about 1980, New Year’s evil is a throwback to an older and simpler tradition, one that flourished way back in the dimly remembered past before 1978. So what what he’s basically saying in this review was was actually going through my head, is that this movie looks like an old style of movie that I used to see. And the first one that came to mind was The Taking of Pelham 123. Have you seen that? Mm-mm. It was a it it was several years before this movie, and it was a much better movie. It has a much better plot and a lot more suspense, a lot more going for it. But, in its at its core, it it’s very similar. It’s about, a Craig, some kind of crime happening, and we see both parallel the killer doing his thing and the detectives closing in on them. So we get both sides of the story kind of in parallel, and it’s really no question who the killer is. Maybe maybe his significance or his identity, you know, is in question. But but, you know, it’s not hidden as far as who he is. And so it becomes this it’s too generous to call it a cat and mouse game when we’re referring to this movie. But it’s supposed to be anyway a cat and mouse game between, how far can the killer go, and is the killer gonna screw up, and is the killer gonna make a mistake before the cops working on their other end get to them? The problem with this movie is the killer, like you said, just can just does it 4 more times in ways that there’s no way they’re gonna close in on him because they’re just these random killings all around the city. Mhmm. And and it and it’s such a short time span, 4 hours, that it’s a miracle the police can even make it to each of these crime scenes, in any amount of time to be able to start to piece together, let alone link it to this guy. You know what I mean? They’re all there are just so many plot holes and problems in it. But then on the other end, like you said, they they bring in this cop that she had requested. And he’s a detective who does almost literally nothing except Mhmm. Lock down the building at some point and talk to her. That’s really about it. Oh, it tells her to keep the him on the line a little longer so that they can trace the phone call, which you think is leading up Todd
Craig: point of call.
Todd: Yeah. Right? You think it’s leading up to one of those scenes where they tensely keep, you know, the killer on the line and see how how long they could keep him Todd. But no, that’s really not even a thing.
Craig: Right.
Todd: But but it is it it reminded me of one of those earlier kind of movies in that it just went straightforward with this plot, and it almost seemed like a TV movie to me. Did it feel like that to you? Just totally.
Craig: It felt like it yeah. Yeah. And it felt like a TV movie from the seventies or eighties. Yes. Or if you’re gonna compare it to something today, it would be like a bad episode of a bad crime procedural, like Criminal Minds or something. And I don’t the being kind of a throwback, you know, I don’t know if it was intentionally a throwback or if it was just kind of coming at the last, you know, of of these types of movies. But, yeah, I mean, I can see that. It it it almost feels like it makes attempts to be Hitchcockian as far as Hitchcock’s thrillers, were concerned. But it just it just it just falls flat. The thing is, it’s not terrible. And I almost wish that it was because then it would be more fun to watch and more fun to talk about. It’s just, like, it’s not good. It’s not so bad. I mean, there are parts of it like the dancing that are so bad, it’s funny and you can laugh out loud. But beyond that, it plays it pretty straight, and it’s just, you know, I was I was checking my phone. I was looking at Facebook. I’m like, like, it was just it’s and it’s not even so much that it was boring. I mean, things keep happening. It’s not like there’s big lulls in the action or anything. It’s just, yeah, seen it, seen it, seen it.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Like we said, you know, there’s there’s more kill scenes. And they it it it’s all cut back and forth. Every time, you know, the kill scenes are juxtaposed against the party scenes. And every time he kills somebody, he calls the radio station back, and tells them, you know, where he’s left the bodies and stuff. So the police can find the bodies like that pretty quickly. The second kill is he puts on a mustache, which I guess makes him look sexy, and then he goes into a disco.
Todd: Maybe at this time.
Craig: Yeah. Right. I mean, he he he’s not a bad looking man. He’s tall and athletic. He reminded me a lot of Bruce Jenner, pre Caitlyn Jenner.
Todd: Oh, yes. Yes.
Craig: Like, young young Bruce Jenner. so he picks up a girl in the bar, and she’s pretty and ditzy and, like, he’s gonna get her out of there. He says he I I thought it was so funny. He’s he’s pretending to be, like, a Hollywood agent or something, and he says he’s gonna take her to a party at Estrada’s house. Eric Estrada.
Todd: Eric Estrada.
Craig: Oh, gosh. I thought that was so funny.
Clip: I got this business thing I have to attend. There’s a big party up at Estrada’s place, Kind of a command performance. He’s a client of mine. Oh, are you an agent? No. No. I’m a business manager. I handle investments, that sort of thing. Pay Pay’s okay, but, there’s no bed of roses. Some of these picture people are real prima donnas. Hey. I got an idea. Why don’t you come along? I think you’d really enjoy yourself. Well, I no. I don’t. Come on. I could introduce you to some very interesting people. At least I wouldn’t get crushed to death.
Craig: And and she brings her, roommate along, which wasn’t part of his plan, and he’s running low on time. He doesn’t know how things are gonna work out. They end up stopping at a liquor store. He sends the, roommate in, and then he suffocates the 1 girl with a a plastic bag. And then when the other girl comes back out, the car is gone, and she sees one of the girl’s shoes, and then she sees another shoe, like, down the alleyway, and then she sees, a piece of of her friend’s dress hanging out of the dumpster. And there’s blood on the shoes. She knows something’s wrong. So she lifts up the dumpster lid, and in the blackness, he, the I didn’t expect this at all. The killer’s in there and I think he lights a lighter to illuminate his face. And I found that to be the only effective scare of
Clip: the whole
Craig: movie. That was really the only part that I thought was actually somewhat frightening.
Todd: Yeah. I agree. I I I noted that as this was the best jump scare in the film, and and it was it was pretty creepy. Of course, it’s a little silly that if he’s gonna leap out at her from a dumpster, that he’s gonna light up a lighter so she can dramatically see his face first. But Right. But for the film, it looked pretty Todd, and that gives you actually the image that’s on the cover of the movie. It’s his face from that perspective kind of eerily lit from below, except in in the cover, of course. He’s he’s got a switchblade thrust out, and he’s breaking through a calendar. But, you know, that that brings to mind something else, and that is that you can tell this is an eighties movie by a few things. 1, of course, is the new wave music. B is sort of the haircut. Mhmm. C is we’re coming out off of the seventies pretty quickly. And, like you said, there are references to quaaludes. There’s, when he suffocates her in the car, he is offering her pot, and he’s got it in a big plastic bag, and he asked her to smell it, you know, and so she kind of puts her head into the bag to smell it, and he puts that bag over. I thought, okay. Well, that’s kind clever. But the other thing is the constant and almost annoyingly constant use of Switchblades in this movie.
Craig: Like Yes. Everybody has a switchblade.
Todd: I think you could have this great drinking game with this movie if every time somebody brandishes a Switchblade in any way, shape, or form, take a drink and you will be totally plastered by the end.
Clip: Oh,
Todd: yeah. Even even even in the beginning where we have the pointless, scenario of the punks cruising around town, and it turns out that they’re going to that hotel, to join the the New Wave party. They come up, and they just start surrounding a police officer who who just stands there like no police officer is trained to do and just take his abuse from the punks. And at one point, a punk holds up, what looks like a switchblade in his face to which the officer makes a facial expression, but absolutely no movement. And, then flips it open, and it turns out it’s one of those Switchblade combs. We’re just so scared about, dude. I mean, there’s so many freaking switchblades in this movie.
Craig: I know. I I wrote that too. I’m like, in all caps, I’m like, what is with all the flipping Switchblades?
Todd: Because it was it
Craig: was I went through the eighties. We didn’t really all have Switchblades. I I swear.
Todd: No. We didn’t. But we thought they were edgy and cool. Remember? I mean, didn’t everybody you know?
Craig: They were a tough guy. Yeah.
Todd: Yeah. Switchblade combs.
Craig: Yeah. And the toy ones. Gosh. The things our parents used to let play with. We’d they’d never get away with that today. So so he kills those 2, and then, then he dresses up as a priest and, is driving around and gets in a tangle with some bikers, which is so random. And so then the bikers are chasing him, and he ends up at a, drive in movie theater where we find this young couple, like, just groping each other. We we get some boobs in the movie. Not at all a big surprise, late seventies, early eighties. Gotta get some boobies in there. The the biker guys find him in there, and he kills one of them, and then he kicks the guy, the make out guy, out of the car, but keeps the girl in there. And he’s, like, taunting her with the switchblade, and, she’s in the back seat crying and the dialogue is so awkward.
Clip: Listen, mister. If it’s money you want, I don’t have have any. Just $33 in this garment ring.
Craig: I I
Clip: don’t want your money. Leave. I’ll do anything you want. You can even get it on if you want to. I won’t make any kind of fuss.
Craig: Oh my Todd. This is so weird. This makes me uncomfortable. I I don’t like this. But then I guess the bikers kinda somebody stops him again. Maybe it’s a couple of drunks that get out of the car
Todd: so we can’t go. He’s driving down the highway, and it’s a big highway with a large shoulder. And for no good reason, he first of all, he’s driving way too slowly. And the second thing is for no good reason as these drunks are stumbling around on the shoulder, he slowly veers off and towards them. It it’s such a staged scene that it it’s supposed to be like, oh, he almost accidentally hits them if they’re crossing the road. But the problem is, I I guess, as actors, they didn’t get far enough across the Todd, so the car had to adjust to meet them.
Craig: Yeah. Todd didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense. First of all, why he wouldn’t have just gone around them. There were only 2 of them.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And secondly, he’s he’s a crazy murderer. Like, just run him down. Like Yeah. What difference does it make?
Todd: Or or get or just back the car up and continue along your way. You’re better off in a car anyway.
Craig: Right. But anyway, so when he stops the car, the girl girl gets out and and runs, and he goes and chases her. But then the cops show show up. Like, I guess the drunks, like, flag the cops down or something. And, right as he’s he’s found the girl, she’s hiding under something in a park and but, the cops, show up and so he has to run away. So he doesn’t get that kill, but he makes his way to the hotel, which we’ve known from the beginning was gonna be his end game, which is why that made this whole middle section so frustrating. Like, you’ve already told us where the plot is going, so it almost feels like a waste of time. You know, just get there. Yeah. So that’s all of his kills, and I’ve wrapped those up really quickly because I just didn’t wanna spend a whole bunch of time on it. It just didn’t seem worth it. All of that. Then there’s this sub plot going on, which, again, I don’t like this movie, but there are some things going on here that I’m like, what? Okay. So throughout all of this, every once in a while, like, it’s always going back and forth to the to the DJ Blaze, and she’s always talking to the cops, but it’s always the same. It’s always exactly the same. Meanwhile, the son, Derek, who we just met in the beginning, is sitting up in his mom’s hotel room, and like she calls him at some point, and she’s asking him like these asinine questions, and like she’s worried about him, and then as soon as he says, I’ve got something important I need to tell you, she says, oh, wait, sorry, I gotta go. Like it’s
Todd: the most contrived,
Craig: stupid conversation ever. Yeah. Todd. It was just so bad. I can’t say that the performances were terrible. I think it’s just the writing was so bad that they just didn’t have anything to do with it. Yeah. So when he hangs up the phone with her, he, like, picks up, like, I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought it was like a scarf. It’s like red and gossamer and it turns out it’s like pantyhose, I guess, or tights. And, like, he’s sniffing them, and then he takes, like, and then he takes a Switchblade because everybody’s got one, and and he cuts it, and he puts it down over his face. So he’s got this red pantyhose over his face. And I’m like, what is happening? What is
Todd: going on here?
Craig: Like, I know I had no idea what was going on. And it was so confusing because we already know that there’s a crazy psycho killer out there and we know that it’s not Derek. Like somehow if the killer had been in shadows or something, I would’ve been thinking, I don’t know how he’s doing this, but it must be him somehow or I don’t know. And then at one point, he goes down to the studio where he hears his mom and the cops talking, but he doesn’t reveal himself. And not only is he wearing the pantyhose over his head still, but he’s also got those awesome, like, headband sunglasses, like that like that guy, like, LeVar Burton used to wear on, Star Trek.
Todd: Yeah. It just it’s like, what? This look he looks like he’s just slowly coming unhinged in the weirdest way. Right.
Craig: But but it it seems so disconnected from the rest of the plot that I I I just had my hands in the air, like, I have no idea what is going on. Now eventually I figured it out because once the killer gets back into the, hotel and we see that he’s going to be he puts on this goofy mask. Was that mask some sort of reference to something or was it just a generic mask?
Todd: Oh, you know what? It looks like a Laurel and Hardy mask. Yeah. Like Hardy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you’re right. It was goofy. At first, I thought it was one of those Nixon masks, but it wasn’t. It doesn’t matter. It was goofy. Anyway, the killer is in the room with her, and I knew, I just it clicked in my head, he’s gonna take off that mask and she is not going to react badly because she’s gonna know him, whoever this is, and then immediately, it clicked in my mind. It’s her husband. It’s it’s the the absent husband that they made a point of explaining why he wasn’t there in the beginning. I I’m kind of irritated with myself that I didn’t figure it out sooner.
Clip: Oh, okay.
Craig: Because in hindsight, it was so obvious. And then I don’t know. How did you feel about the his motivation?
Todd: There were
Craig: And his character, I guess.
Todd: You know, his motivation was a little muddled. It seemed like they were trying to make this kind of, a Freudian type deal, especially with the sun. You know, with the sun part being added into it. And here is my theory behind what they were thinking about. I think it, especially as it turns out at the end of the movie, even though father and son weren’t in cahoots, father and son seem to have a similar attitude toward their mother, but in a different way. But I’m I really wasn’t even clear of his motivation except that they just didn’t get along, and he couldn’t he couldn’t take it. Once he corners her in the elevator, we get an extremely long scene where he can lay all this out for her while she has almost no reaction at all except cowering in the corner. And the stuff that he says to her is just basically, like, after they split up, he got really frustrated, he couldn’t do anything, or he couldn’t get money. What one of the questions was continually lingering when my mind was why did he kill Todd in the beginning of the movie?
Clip: Ladies are not very nice people. They are manipulative and deceitful and immoral, and very, very selfish. See, that’s why Yvonne was first.
Craig: You killed Yvonne? Yes.
Clip: Because you and she have been short changing me for years. I have had to beg her through you for every cent I ever got. My allowance. Oh, yes. It is. See you? You castrated me. That is not nice.
Todd: It was it was all kinda mild to me.
Craig: It’s it’s obvious that he’s just a crazy person. Oh, okay. Well, it makes sense now that the son is crazy because, you know, his dad is crazy. Maybe it runs in the family. Okay. That makes sense. Basically, the the sense that I got from it was just that he felt emasculated by her, because she was so successful and so famous, and he wasn’t. He just felt emasculated. And then he had also convinced himself that she was, unfaithful. And he said something I don’t know. He said, I know how you are. I see how you flirt with other men or something. And he says, and no. He says, Derek has told me how you are around other men. And then he said something, and I almost I didn’t rewind it because it he says something like, and Derek told me how you even try to turn him on. So yeah. Really? So, like, like, Derek has this, like, edible thing going on. Like Yeah. Gross. I felt like that was
Todd: that was pointed to in the movie. Yeah. With the whole pantyhose and stuff. But it’s also happening. Well, it’s so half hearted that it’s unclear. Like, we don’t see her flirting with guys in in the show.
Craig: No. Not really. I mean, her persona is really seductive, but, I mean, that’s her persona. No. We I mean, yes, we see that she kind of ignores her husband and son, but no, we don’t get any real suggestion that his suspicions are real or true.
Todd: Yeah. We we don’t get any sympathy for either character because there’s not enough information given to us. We don’t get to know these characters well enough. Like, we don’t see her as a terrible, horrible, emasculating woman or whatever that means. And we we see her as a terrible mother, but it’s in such a corny way. Again, like you said, all she does is just ignore him the minute She’s all very concerned about him until he says he wants to tell her something important, and then she’s like, oh, well, I need to go now. It’s so unbelievable. And you’re right. His dialogue with her in this l s elevator seems to want to lay it all out. He even flat out says, you emasculated Todd, I think, which is something nobody would say.
Craig: Right.
Todd: So Right. Even that just I just I just couldn’t follow it at all. I couldn’t pin down except that he’s just mad at her because he’s an ex husband and he’s a crazy guy.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think that that’s it. I don’t think that there’s supposed to be anything more to it, but because there’s nothing more to it, it’s just again, it’s just meh. Like, whatever. Okay. So okay. So then he’s been, like, messing with the elevators, and he, like, chains her underneath the elevator. And I guess he his plan is he’s going to then take the elevator or send the elevator all the way up to the top floor and then drop it.
Todd: Was that, like, a reference to dropping the ball on New Year’s Eve? Like, he was gonna drop her at midnight? Because it wasn’t clear. I didn’t even think of that. Yeah. I mean, I thought that was the coolest part of the movie actually was I was like, wow, that’s really unique. And they actually filmed, you know, somebody was dangling underneath an elevator as we saw it go up the shaft really fast. I thought, wow. That’s really cool.
Craig: Agreed. As far as imagery and as far as original ideas go, yeah. I’ve never seen that before, and that would be incredibly frightening to be in that situation. But what happens is, the police catch him before he’s able to drop it, and we don’t ever see her get out, but she does somehow because she’s still alive at the end. And basically, like, if and again, it’s it’s just it’s super anticlimactic. Like, the police show they find him. They’ve been looking for him because they think that he’s in the the hotel building because they found a knocked out guard. That was another thing. The way that he gets in is he distracts this guard and then knocks him out. Steals his clothes. And it’s so funny because the 2 actors, the one who plays the guard and the one who plays the killer are completely different body shapes.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But when but when he puts on the uniform, it fits perfect.
Todd: And and
Craig: it’s I mean, there’s not much more to tell. I mean, he puts that goofy mask back on. They chase him up to the roof, and, the detective gets up there with him and, he does he quote Shakespeare?
Todd: It must be. It comes out of the blue just like everything else.
Clip: Put your hands on top of your head.
Craig: To die, to sleep no more, And by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the 1,000 natural shocks that flesh is into.
Todd: It was meant to sound like a really significant scene, but I think it had the the content of what he quoted had absolutely no significance to what was going on.
Craig: So he jumps off the building. That’s it. I mean, like, the police get him up there, and he jumps off the building, and we see a shot of what is clearly a mannequin being thrown off a building. Yeah. And then he’s dead down on the floor or on the ground. And when we cut back to his body on the ground, the son, Derek, is, like, crying over him. And when he gets up and walks away, he still got the mask in his hand. Blaze, Diane gets, rolled out on a gurney, and they put her in an ambulance. And, the guy who’s in the back of the ambulance with her says to the guy in the front, alright. Let’s go. And we see that the ambulance driver is dead in the floor of the passenger side, and Derek is driving the the ambulance with the mask on. Presumably, he’s now gonna pick up his dad’s work. See, and I didn’t know. You said that you didn’t think that this father and son were in cahoots. I kinda got the impression that maybe they were. You didn’t think so?
Todd: Well, if they were, I felt like there would be a scene or something where the son would get the father into the building or at least retroactively we’d learn Right. That somehow the son facilitated some of this. But it just seems like father is doing all of this completely independently. He doesn’t try to make contact with the son, he doesn’t ask where the son is, he doesn’t do anything, he has no interaction with him at all, and that’s why I thought, no. I don’t think they really were in cahoots, but I felt like the movie was trying to make some kind of connection, like, they both had similar issues. I mean, obviously, the movie is setting us up for this moment. The movie is trying to give us some reason for this twist at the end. You know, the son hates mom too, But I I felt like that was a completely independent thing. It’s just that the 2 of them had talked, the 2 of them completely agree that they hated mom. But then wouldn’t it make more sense for the son who already has more access
Craig: to mom Yeah.
Todd: To just kinda deal with it at midnight instead of the father? Like that would have been maybe a better twist slightly if it had included that.
Craig: I don’t know. I mean, he says the only thing okay. So we know that they’ve talked badly about her in the past. And at one point, when she blows him off, he says, I had a
Todd: I
Craig: I didn’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if he kinda knew about it, and then he backed out or I I don’t know. It really doesn’t matter. It Oh. It’s so stupid. So maybe
Todd: so maybe he’s going through his own mental, seesawing back and forth whether he’s gonna go through with it or not. And so dad ends up having to come break in and kinda do it to to finish the job because son’s not going to. Do you think? I mean, that’s giving this movie a lot of credit. That that would be a a kind explanation.
Craig: Yeah. It’s good enough for me. I don’t care. There’s really I don’t really feel like there’s a whole lot more to say in this movie. There were some weird things that happened that I just I don’t like, at one point, like, after one of the kills, like, after the dumpster kill, they played the Friday 13th. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Cock. Cock. Cock. I mean, I don’t think that it was the exact same, but it was so close. I’m like, wait, what? What is happening?
Todd: Am I in the wrong movie?
Craig: And I I feel like I read that there were a couple of other instances of things like that from other movies. I don’t know if that was supposed to be homage or if it was just blatant stealing. I don’t know. But beyond that, you know, I gotta say, I you know, I say this all the time. I am a horror movie completist. I will watch just about anything, that I can get my hands on. And I had really never heard anything about this movie. And and usually these types of movies at least have some sort of cult following.
Todd: And I
Craig: don’t get the impression that this one even does. And I understand why because it’s just barely even worth a mention, you know? There’s just there’s just really nothing all that redeemable about it. And it’s I don’t know. I I feel like the the concept isn’t terrible, so maybe if it had been executed better, I I don’t know. What are what are your thoughts?
Todd: Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about just some of the laughable parts of this movie, the parts where you will laugh with friends, at the goofiness of it, because you’re right. It is a pretty paint by numbers type film, and it is competently made. I mean, the lighting is good and the cinematography is fine. Again, it has a cinematography of kind of an early to mid eighties TV movie. It has that feel to it. But the acting is so all over the place. I I really feel like Diane’s acting is pretty good
Craig: It’s not bad.
Todd: For what, again, for what they had to deal with, the guy who played Richard, the dad, his he he’s Kip Niven, and Kip Niven was in a ton of stuff. He was in a ton of TV, before this movie, and then he was in several movies after this. He was working in in law and or he had parts in law and order come later, in 1990, and guess what? He is in Kansas City now because he’s from the Kansas City area. And right now, he’s he apparently, for for decades, has been very active on stage and in musicals, and he moved back to Kansas City sometime in 1995 and has been very active in the local acting scene. In fact, I’ve been to enough shows in Kansas City that I’m wondering if I haven’t seen him in a show, or 2, there. I mean,
Craig: he was Interesting.
Todd: Even just this Christmas, he’s playing in a show at Crown Center. And I just bring all this up because Kansas City is pretty near to us, and it’s right out in the middle of Yeah. Of of the United States, very far from LA and Hollywood. And the kid, the the person who played the son is Grant Craig, and Grant Cramer, had a long running stint on, The Young and the Restless back in 86, and, did, just some kind of movies off and on. He was Mark Tobacco in Killer Clowns from Outer Space. So Yeah. I saw that too. We will probably be talking about him, sometime later, but this was his very first film. Apparently, somebody thought enough of this or at least he met some of the right people on this set that he was able to move up and do some things.
Craig: Yeah. I I I, you know, I was looking to see their their acting credits and whatnot, and I saw his. And the very top credit on his IMDB page is a killer clown sequel that’s apparently been announced, and that kinda made me a little bit giddy.
Todd: Yeah. That would that should be good. Killer clowns are in the in the news now too. Right? So or had been
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Fairly recently. Yeah. It it is a shame. I I you can see where this this whole film looked great on paper as a thriller. Probably the script even looked alright. And and then you put people in here who are, at least at the time, were maybe weren’t well known, but were kind of up and coming Todd, And then you get a very paint by numbers movie. I thought there were so many goofy like, the sanitarium scene was like a parody of a sanitarium. You just had a bunch of people gosh. Like, in what looked like a living room, all dressed in white and acting like like if you told a a 10 year Todd, act like a crazy person, you know, who’d just be kind of Right. Bouncing around the room, like, acting like a monkey or something like that. That was how everybody in the San Antonio was.
Craig: I actually found that pretty distasteful.
Todd: Yes. Oh, yes.
Craig: I I I wasn’t a fan of that.
Todd: No. No. No. It’s it’s bad. And then the shot that was totally unnecessary, but I thought called attention to itself all the more when they’re when he’s going up for his second kill and he has the 2 ladies in the car and they park at the at the gas station, and he sends the 1 woman in to get cigarettes so that he can murder this woman. When she goes in, there is actually a scene of her buying them from the clerk. And it’s a totally unnecessary scene. You don’t need to see this happen because she pops in, she buys them. It’s, like, 10 seconds long, and then she leaves, and we never see the clerk. I thought, oh, well, the clerk’s gonna discover the body or something like that. There’s none of this. But the performance by the clerk in this scene is so sincere that you have to rewind it and go back and watch it again. Maybe you were you were looking at your phone at this point, but this clerk treats this scene like it is his big break. He’s not just casually selling her cigarettes. He, like, has this look of concern on his face. And he he may even ask her, are you alright? And she’s like, yeah, I’m fine. And she walks out and and as she walks out, he turns and stares at her as she goes away. It’s so hilarious.
Craig: That’s funny. And then I thought I didn’t notice.
Todd: Oh my gosh, dude. It was so funny. And then the the bit where he’s chasing her through the woods, which we already talked about is pretty ridiculous. And they end up at these bleachers, which must be in, like, a park. It may must be bleachers Yeah. Like a baseball field or something like that. But he’s doing that whole deal, and it’s supposed to seem intimidating where he’s creeping past the bleachers. And as he does it, he’s tapping a switchblade tap tap tap on the Todd. Mhmm. And then he goes down. It’s tap tap tap on the second bleacher, which he’s in a big open park looking for this woman. This this would not, in the very least bit, be intimidating unless it were in a tiny room where everything was dark, and you’re trying to give sound cues to her as to where where you might be and be someone ominously threatening. But for all he knows, she could have long torn through the trees on the other side of the park by now. So the fact that he’s going by and and dramatically tapping these bleachers as he goes by is it it’s just it’s so silly. Again, it’s pulled out I know. Better movie and placed in a scene where it doesn’t belong.
Craig: Yeah. I didn’t even understand why he was doing that. Like, at first, I thought, like, he was, like, trying to check for a different sound. Like, if one of them sounded different, maybe she was under that one. I guess he was just trying to be intimidating, but you’re right. I mean, she from where she was, she could see him. It’s not like it’s not like she didn’t know he was stopping. Oh, jeez.
Todd: Hey, dude. When you talk about acting, do you remember the shot with a psychologist? No. This was the same scene in which the kid was creeping up on them, with his new wave glasses on. And it’s, again, it’s really shoehorned in there, and they’re just trying to provide a quick explanation for why they believe that the killer is on their way to kill her. And that is, the detective brings in a psychologist from out of nowhere, who is, I guess, the police, you know, psychologist or the person that they have. And the psychologist goes through a bit of explanation, but his performance in this is so over the top and hilarious. He sounds like like a radio announcer. Another guy in this movie who was who who was getting his big break and playing it up for all that it was worth and just felt like his voice was the thing that was gonna take him into Hollywood.
Clip: This is doctor Reid, our consulting psychologist. It was his decision. We definitely have to consider and prepare for the one possibility that he’ll be right here at midnight Pacific Standard Time. Why? Because he has a compulsion to kill on the hour. It’s a sequential drama with miss Sullivan as the link, and it’s building step by step to a grand climax with his ultimate victim, you. Killing a named personality at the stroke of midnight New Year’s Eve would satisfy his egotistical desire for attention. Make him bigger than the son of Sam or the zodiac killer. All those psychopaths have a need to be big in the media.
Craig: That’s funny. Oh, no. I wasn’t even paying attention. I was so distracted by the kid in the pantyhose. Oh, man.
Todd: So there are some really funny moments in this movie where you are gonna laugh out Todd, but the problem with it is is you’re not gonna pay attention long enough to actually catch those.
Craig: Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t have finished this. This you know, you’ve said it before. I’ll say it this time. If we weren’t watching it to talk about it, I would not have sat through this whole movie. I would have turned it off. It just it it it I don’t know. It did not move me in any positive way at all.
Todd: Yet it’s available on Blu ray now.
Craig: Yeah. I saw that. It’s also available on YouTube. Don’t waste your money.
Todd: That’s right. That’s right. Any final thoughts, Craig?
Craig: Yeah. Have a happy New Year, and and keep it happy by not watching this movie.
Todd: Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. You can find us on iTunes and on Stitcher and on Google Play. You can also find us on social media. We have a Facebook page and also Google Plus page. If you enjoyed this film or like us didn’t enjoy this film, leave a comment. We can all laugh about it and tell us what movie you’d like us to watch in the future. Until then, I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.