The F*cking Black Sheep: Bloody New Year (1987)

THE BLACK SHEEP is an ongoing column featuring different takes on films that either the writer HATED, but that the majority of film fans LOVED, or that the writer LOVED, but that most others LOATH. We’re hoping this column will promote constructive and geek fueled discussion. Dig in!

BLOODY NEW YEAR (1987)

DIRECTED BY NORMAN J. WARREN

Say now, who’s ready for a BLOODY NEW YEAR?

Well, on the eve of ushering not only a new calendar year but a fresh new decade as well, we’ve got just the celebratory treat for y’all. Now, we’re fully aware of the dearth of legitimately unnerving New Year’s Eve horror flicks, and certainly defer to the most sterling examples of TERROR TRAIN, NEW YEAR’S EVIL and even NEW YEAR, NEW YOU (a recent entry) as the best of the limited bunch. However, there’s a F*cking Black Sheep of a chintzy, cheesy, truly bizarre and ultra-freaky British NYE horror-show that deserves far more eyeballs than it’s received since its release in 1987, and even more praise from those who may have seen but forgotten about this lost holiday-horror import. We’ll do our part to rectify such when we examine why BLOODY NEW YEAR is a F*cking Black Sheep below!

Directed by Norman J. Warren (TERROR, INSEMINOID), BLOODY NEW YEAR (aka TERROR TIME WARP) was shot on location in Butlin’s Barry Island in Wales. The story kicks off with a trip to the local boardwalk, where two couples – Tom (Julian Ronnie) and Lesley (Suzy Aitchison), Janet (Nikki Brooks) and Rick (Mark Powley) and their sidekick Spud (Colin Heywood) enjoy a jolly good time. That is, until they spot some ruffians harassing a tourist named Carol (Catherine Roman), which prompts the quintet to rescue the tormented girl. They subdue the hooligans before hopping a small boat, which takes them to the secluded Grand Island Hotel. Upon entry, the teens notice the place adorned with Christmas and New Year’s regalia from the year 1959, despite it being July, almost as if stuck in time. As soon as they enter, the kids notice all sorts of eerily inexplicable phenomena. The vacuum begins operating on its own, a TV newsfeed continues to broadcast from 1959, a movie theater inside the hotel plays FIEND WITHOUT A FACE to an empty crowd until a pellucid character lunges off the screen and aggressively attacks Spud in front of the rest.

As the quintet searches for answers, the head-scratching insanity increases. Each guest begins seeing ghastly apparitions that appear and disappear in a snap. They hear strange noises and ghostly voices that lead them to nowhere. A boating net suddenly accosts Janet, followed by a monstrous figure that leaps out and then vanishes when Tom spears the unidentifiable beast in the naval. Later, the hotel elevator melts a victim through its metal door, and a piece of wooden furniture adorning the staircase comes to life with murderous intent. Plates begin to fly across the kitchen on their own, and a large boiler begins to roil as it sucks a human victim and drains its blood into an adjacent sink. Hell, at one point Carol returns to her hotel room only to be caught in a WEIRD SCIENCE like snowstorm that nearly takes her life.

What I love about the flick so far is just how hard it is to define, categorize, or even tell what the hell is really going on. Is it a haunted house flick? A zombie joint? A time-travelling sci-fi tale? Well, it turns out to be all three! We’re assaulted by a flood of unsettlingly surreal imagery, done with cheap and silly practical FX that calls to mind a fun early Herschell Gordon Lewis movie. But listen, the shite only gets more bizarre from here. At one point Leslie is morphed into a zombie, but instead of killing her friends, she uses her decrepit façade and flesh-parched demeanor to terrorize the hooligans from the beginning of the film, who show up at the Grand Island Hotel at the midway point to avenge the abduction of Carol. Yo, zombified Leslie straight-up twists one dude’s neck 540 degrees until gory spinal flood leaks from his brainstem. Shite’s sick in a way that Linda Blair would damn near blush at!

Before we get to the wickedly colorful and highly violent Fulci-esque finale, it’s time for the inevitable exposition scene to clue us all in as to WTF is going on. Apparently, a government experiment to control time and space went horrible awry two decades earlier, resulting in a plane crash on the Grand Island that left the time-travel cloaking device in ruins. As a result, the place has become a strange purgatorial hell, where the dead and living have commingled among the same realm since 1959. Even odder, if you die on the island, you reanimate as a deformed ghoul with a penchant for murder. So what we end up with is an isolated island setting that plays like a haunted house flick in the interiors and a traditional zombie flick in the exteriors, with the middle ground a breeding place for the genuinely odd and unsettling amalgamation of both.

As for the aforesaid finale, there’s been little effort to hide the fact that Warren made this movie as an affectionate ode to Fulci’s THE BEYOND. Obvious nods to SHOCKWAVES and EVIL DEAD are apparent as well, but in the final 10 minutes of BLOODY NEW YEAR, we’re treated to a resplendent display of neon greens, blues and pinks that conjure thoughts of halcyon-day Italian horror mastery. Who cares if the story makes sense by this point, as the only real requirement for a horror movie is to frighten and make a viewer uncomfortable. Take THE SHINING, which this movie also sly nods to in the final shot, as the perfect example of a movie that makes no sense but is still absolutely mortifying. Along similar lines, I love how BLOODY NEW YEAR leaves your head spinning with confusion while leaving your heart pounding with anticipation.

What cements BLOODY NEW YEAR as a F*cking Black Sheep nobody talks about is the fact it was never given a proper cinematic release in its native UK. Worse yet, the film got released straight to VHS in the U.S. in October of 1987. Between this sad fate and its alternate title, most to many failed to catch the flick when it initially dropped on the nascent home-video market. And yet, the entire film is available to view on Youtube, as is the director’s commentary by Norman Warren, who does not shy away from voicing his displeasure with the production. He’s particularly hard on the music choices in the film, which are composed by post-punk/new wave band called Cry No More. I actually dig the tunes, but agree they don’t always work with the macabre imagery their predominantly set to.

Look, for a quasi-New Year’s horror movie, and a British one at that, BLOODY NEW YEAR is the best one you’ve likely never heard about. It uses the Xmas decorations as a nostalgic backdrop to channel the frozen 1959 timeframe, but really excels in its bizarre blend of haunted-house and gore-sodden zombie tenets. The tonal surrealism adds to the feverish display, making us never quite sure of what we’re watching or what to expect in each successive scene. That’s a hell of a feat for any horror flick, so for one made in the UK to also incorporate the New Year holiday, the treat is all the sweeter. For a legit F*cking Black Sheep, do wise and have yourself a BLOODY NEW YEAR this turn of the calendar!

GET BLOODY NEW YEAR ON BLU-RAY HERE