Also known as Time Warp Terror, this movie was inspired by 1950's horror films. On this island where the kids get trapped, it's always 1959. It also has the band Cry No More all over it, lending it the perfect bit of 1980's cheese that you may be looking for. Imagine The Beyond, but for kids. That's pretty much what this is.

The final feature film directed by legendary British horror filmmaker Norman J. Warren (a long-time resident of the video nasty list),Bloody New Year is about a bunch of kids named Rick, Janet, Lesley, Spud and Tom, who save American tourist Carol from the bouncers and a ride operator of an amusement park. They end up stealing a boat and making their way to an island which has The Grand Island Hotel, a place where its always been New Year's Eve 1959.

There's even a movie theater that's showing Fiend Without a Face, which plays before Spud gets offed. Actually, just like Shakespeare, everyone dies, becomes a zombie and all end up back at the New Year's Eve party. Such is life and death in the resort areas of the U.K., I guess.

An utterly crazed, no holds barred final outing for British director Norman J. Warren, the purveyor of such schlockers as TERROR and INSEMINOID. This no-budget, virtually plot less affair is a failure as a film, but contains such individual scenes of imagination and bizarreness that it almost becomes worthwhile. Filmed in Wales, the film meanders from incident to incident as the group of badly-acting British teenagers are picked off one by one by the various evil and invisible inhabitants of the island. Also thrown into the brew is a gang of wicked thugs who cause havoc at a funfair, an American girl to make the film appeal to overseas audiences, and lots of references to '50s culture. We even see FIEND WITHOUT A FACE playing in a cinema at one point! The fashions have dated badly along with the hairstyles and pop music which turns up, and the acting of the unknowns is as wooden as you can get. Even the dialogue sounds like it is cheesy and dubbed, even though it isn't. The special effects, done on the cheap, are also very cheesy and unrealistic in the extreme. These are probably the reasons that the movie is a flop which basically scuppered Warren's interesting career, and he hasn't recovered since. I'm sure you can all feel a "but" coming...

I find it impossible to totally dislike a film which has so much madness going on in it. There's a battle at a ghost train ride. Disappearing '50s singers. A ghostly old maid who appears and disappears at will. Snooker balls which move back to the original position after a game has been played. A girl gets sucked into a mirror and is trapped there for the duration of the film. A possessed vacuum cleaner and jukebox. A sheikh jumping out of a cinema screen to electrocute someone. A flying net which attempts to strangle a girl. A slimy monster emerging from a table. Bushes which laugh. Footprints which appears and disappear in the sand from nowhere. A burnt pilot lurking in the bushes who explodes. A plane wreck on the island. A snowstorm inside a building. A thug who punches through a girl.

You want more? Railings which attack people. A scene of a man dismembering a zombie which is seemingly a tribute to The Evil Dead. A possessed boy whose arm is sliced off in a lift. A wall which grows hands and kidnaps a girl. A man thrown in a deep fat frier. Kitchen appliances which get a life of their own and kill. A severed arm which reattaches itself. A boy's head sliced apart by a boat propeller. A girl who is sucked through the bottom of a boat. The hotel in this movie makes the Overlook look like an ideal family vacation spot! Although undoubtedly a bad film, BLOODY NEW YEAR is worth watching for the incident alone and frequently made my jaw drop at the sheer quantity of it all. I love the throwaway line at the end of the film to try and make sense of things (a pilot was carrying a time-warping device which trapped the inhabitants of the island forever). Incredible stuff.

If my personal resolution for 2008 would to avoid watching worthless, crummy and totally retarded horror movies, I already would have sinned with "Bloody New Year". This is quite an incoherent and severely unsatisfying hodgepodge of potentially interesting story ideas, truly poor scripting work, horrible acting performances and a painful shortage of gore. I expected a holiday-themed slasher storyline (in the likes of "Happy Birthday to Me" or "Silent Night, Deadly Night"),but instead this film is a bizarre type of ghost story/demonic possession tale. Six hugely irritating teenagers intend to spend their summer vacation quarreling with carnival carnies and taking boat trips too far off the safe English coasts. Their boat hits a rock and the sextet washes ashore an island where everything is decorated to celebrate New Year's Eve of 1959. From this point on, a whole series of ridiculous and laughable UN-horrific events takes place, including the ghostly appearances of housemaids, murderous fishing nets coming to life, distant buzzing and laughter can be heard all over the island and the teenagers gradually turn into a bloodthirsty demons with rotting faces. There's no waterproof explanation for the events, but the script repeatedly hints that the crashing of government plane, carrying a top-secret experiment, on the 31st of December 1959 caused the island to be stuck in a time warp. Still that doesn't explain how pool tables come to life or why soup kettles develop murderous tendencies, but who cares? The island setting is atmospheric and the time warp concept is admirable (particularly with the New Year's celebration),but the overall execution is very weak. None of the characters are sympathetic, so you really don't care whether they all live or die, and there's zero tension throughout the entire film. "Bloody New Year" is overlong even with a running time of barely 90 minutes and the total absence of graphic gore & nudity are unforgivable. Damned, this is an 80's movie starring 6 dimwitted teenagers AND it's directed by UK's shlockmeister Norman J. Warren! The least I expected from the creator of such rancid nonsense as "Prey", "Inseminoid" and "Satan's Slave" was a bit more mindless violence and/or sleaze. One to avoid.