Happy New Years!!!! Bloody New Year

Greeting and salutations as we tackle another helping of Phantoms of the Year Day 3. As it is indeed New Year's Eve, it is only fitting and proper that our movie for tonight is actually occurring on New Year's Eve unlike Life Blood's blatant excuse to put models in cotton teddies. I know that sounds odd, a heterosexual man complaining of such viewing but dammit folks that was a really bad film. With that in mind, what say we catch up with some pesky teens that plan to get liquored up and explore one another sexually, all the way releasing some mutant hell beast bent on destroying the world? This is Bloody New Year.

Peggy Sue and Charlie Bodell are startled!

Five teens kill time before sailing away at the Fun Fair in Wales... I have no idea why they are in Wales but how cares? Our in-depth background on everyone is they are having a weekend to celebrate the New Year when a young American get bothered by the weakest carnie punks ever and the older gent of the three looks like the bartender of the Winchester via Shaun of the Dead. After the daring rescue and very mild fisticuffs with the carnies our preppy bunch got sailing when they encounter coral reef which in my opinion was accidental during the shoot and they just added to the movie. Washed to shore, these plucky preppies make their way to the famous Grand Island Hotel that is all the rave in Wales. With no one about, they pair off, start exploring, diddle each others brains out and swipe dry clothing. Strange goings on in our haunted hotel as our director tries to go Kubrickian on us and give us cheesy haunted effects like magazines closing themselves up, fireworks going off and the death defying possessed vacuum cleaner ambled for toes.

They're upset being greasers is outdated.

The kids slowly realize that all the 1950's apparel, decor and random blurts of music might mean that nobody has been to this hotel in ages and something odd may have occurred. This by the way starts shedding light to the place is cursed PAST THE HALF HOUR MARK!!!! Up until this point it has been exploring, heavy petting (as heavy as the English can allow themselves) and poorly constrewn dialogue. Finding a 1950's film Fiend Without a Face would have been far more enjoyable to watch versus the movie I am enduring. To say the film drags on until about the 37 minute mark and finally one of the cast gets attacked, throttled and murdered by a ghost from the projector. With our hapless teens splitting up the party, it is a safe bet that death is on the rise but there is so much filler of staring aimlessly, pointless dialogue how weird everything is and LESS VACATING THE ISLAND!!!

Will there be survivors?? Does anyone get any more chances to hook up? Are they having a happy New Year?

A few comments on the movie now.

British director Norman J. Warren (Her Private Hell, Satan's Slave, Terror, Spaced Out, Alien Prey, Inseminoid and Gunpowder) clearly grew up with a steady diet of Hammer movies like many of us did, but this lad chose to try to top Hammer's gothic time period pieces with a touch of cold and grim tones set in modern-day as well as the future. With a paltry shoestring budget, our director channeled Sam Raimi's Evil Dead, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and added a dash of Fulchi's Zombi and set it to boiling point... by that I mean it was left on the stove too long, caused a house fire and everyone died violently.

Ambitious to a fault, it almost seems like no footage hit the cutting floor, the editing was unusual and the cast of unknowns are flubbing lines and tripping over themselves. Some well timed sight gags and jump scares and the makeup for the ghouls is pretty fair but overall this felt forced. An A for effort but solid D- minus for execution. Best thing said about this movie... I am done watching it.

Deborah was under the tanning bed too long.