Leofwine_draca 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. Christ, 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 badness/cheesiness/extremity of it all. I love the throwaway line at the end of the film to try and make sense of it all (a pilot was carrying a time-warping device which trapped the inhabitants of the island forever). Incredible stuff.

Scarecrow-88 British teens escape a near altercation with three thugs at a fun park, take a little ride on the sea, and wind up on some island when a rock puts a hole in their boat. This island has a Grand Island Hotel, seemingly a ghost resort decorated for New Years 1960. At first we the viewer are witnesses to the strange shenanigans that go unseen by our cast..a magazine, after being read, closes on it's own, or pool balls, once scattered across a billiards table returning to their proper positions. Then, a maid pops up literally out of thin air to do a little clean up before leaving the film. A movie character(..a sheik) literally leaps from a projected movie to maul one of the gang. A fishing net wraps around one victim attacking her! A table cloth turns into a monster to strangle a victim(..I swear to God, I'm not making this up!). Our cast often see the reflections of ghosts when looking into mirrors. A dead downed pilot, often hinted at rustling in the bushes, is about to speak to one of our female characters when his head explodes into a cloud of dust after being hit from behind by another fearing for her life. Plates are scattered in a kitchen on their own with our cast members trying to duck. One of the cast is turned into a zombie with a silver face, while another speaks with a demonic voice while chasing a victim who screeches in horror as she runs for her life. An elevator wall "grabs" a victim. Bushes move with the sounds of invisible people as foot prints become visible on sand chasing two of the cast. Film from a movie projector trips a victim. When one of the characters, whose turned into a zombie, is shot in the stomach with a rifle her stomach explodes. The animal wood carving of a staircase bites into a victim, with a seemingly impenetrable grip as she tries to break free. Those murdered, by whatever this crazy force on the island is, turn into zombies so you have two survivors not only fighting against the supernatural, but the walking dead popping up to terrorize them. The three thugs follow on boat to finish what was started at the fun park, with each dying in one gruesome way or another. One gets boiled in a pot, one gets his head twisted completely around not once but twice, and another is thrown through a wall.I've read that it was writer Frazer Pearce and director Norman J Warren's intent for this to be a "time warp terror tale", but to me it was just one surreal set-piece after another. The last two remaining survivors find out through one ghoul, "taken by the island", that a plane containing a device which could reshape time and matter, crash-landed resulting in the madness taking place. Anyone who enters this "time warp" are slaves to it's power. I felt myself that this explanation was merely an excuse for Warren and Pearce to embellish their wild desires for mindless carnage placing the characters in a series of oddball scenarios leaving the viewer's mouth open in shock, bewilderment, giggles & kicks. All I can say is expect the unexpected, and I dare you to try and make sense of it all.

callanvass had potential but does not deliver well its a good idea it just gets too cheesy for its own good and suffers from a dull first half and has a lackluster plot and shoddy acting and the ghosts are highly unconvincing with weak make up effects just horrid avoid. * out of 5

brandonsites1981 Teenagers seek shelter in an isolated hotel that is stuck in a time warp. They then notice weird things going on and the walls moving and that is when they start seeing ghost & zombies, who first stalk then kill the kids. Not very memorable, but with a fair amount of suspense and a better then usual premise. Rated R; Nudity, Sexual Situations, Violence.