Bloody New Year

You know, I often give these boxes a lot of flack - rightfully so, might I add, I'm by no means apologizing for that - but I have to say that of all the taglines we've covered on this blog, "Should old acquaintance be forgot? Or just brutally murdered" might be the best. There's just something stunningly hilarious about that. "Bloody New Year" is yet another horror movie based around a holiday, as was common for a long while, and, as usual, they tried to fit the name of the holiday into a stupid name for the movie. Much like "My Bloody Valentine" or "Christmas Evil", these movies could never resist the urge to come up with the absolute stupidest titles possible instead of giving it something decent and unique.

And the cover here is...I mean....it's comical. It's not even scary. It's on the laughable side of Tales from the Crypt, honestly. That skull doesn't invoke fear, it invokes riotious laughter. Look at his dumb ass eyes. He's genuinely thrilled people showed up to his party! And he should be, because the skeleton across the hall, Marty, always has the bigger parties, but this year, Richard here decided he was going to win that fight, and win it he did. Good for you, Richie Boy.

Bloody New Year (also known as Time Warp Terror and Horror Hotel) is a 1987 British supernatural horror film. First of all, I wanna say that I personally love alliterative titles, so "Time Warp Terror" and "Horror Hotel" are amazing, even if they sound like they're part of a kid friendly series of easy to read chapter books with a horror theme. The plot concerns a group of teenagers who are trapped in a haunted hotel on a remote island. And while it dealt with issues such as censorship for its gore, valid criticism from reviewers and an overall hokey tone reminiscent of a Scooby Doo episode, the process of making the movie was apparently so bad that even the director, Norman Warren commented negatively on the film, stating that his experiences on Bloody New Year put him off making any more films. So, in essence, this movie really is a killer...a killer of careers that is.

And for what it's worth, the box for this whole thing isn't terrible. It's actually probably one of the more focused designs we've come across on this blog. The problem is it's just plain ugly. While it lacks the usual screenshot collage generally presented on the back of these things, and while the front looks like a Halloween decoration from Party City, it's still somehow just kind of dull and uninspired.

Remember, being the best at the worst of something still means you're in the worst list to begin with. Not exactly something to be proud of.

This multicolored vomit tone they've affixed onto the back of this, with an image that I almost guarantee doesn't have anything to do with the picture itself, is so stunningly average that it begs the question...is it even worth it to try? Would you have just been better off having the screenshots? Or maybe, like some other boxes we've seen on this blog, a black background and some white text? That almost seems like a better alternative.

This particular release we're looking at hails from Academy Entertainment, who, during the course of their life between the years of 1985 to 1994 released a total of 181 VHS tapes. Imagine that. That's 181 likely terrible box arts. Maybe we should change focus on this blog and instead start honing in on every single title released under a specific banner, just to see how the work either holds up or changes over the time of their lifespan. That could be interesting. As goofy as the front of the box is, I actually can't bring myself to make fun of it because, hey, at least it did something. Most of these use awful artists renders of either moments from the film or completely nonexistant things from the film just to entice the person seeing it on the shelf, but this one went out of their way to produce a real photo with a real prop, and for that I have to give them kudos. It's sad when someone in this line of work goes the extra mile, because the bar is set so low that you can tell they cared at least the tiniest bit.

Overall "Bloody New Year" is far from the worst, or even one of the worst, boxes presented on this blog. It's kind of ugly. sure, but overall it's actually fairly coherent and it isn't just a mishmash of mismatched screenshots or poorly rendered artists interpretations. It's also got a really neat visual concept that isn't pulled off terribly, and that's always refreshing to see. If anything, it's perhaps one of the most competant examples we've come across thusfar. Hell, even the movie itself doesn't sound too bad, as an idea, but if the director hates it then it can't be very good, so who knows.

All in all, Bloody New Year is really one of the only true horror movies based around an actual scary holiday...the recongition of the passage of time. And no matter how much we run away, we can't escape. Time marches on and death comes for us all.

God I'm depressed.