“Dead or alive, we are all caught in this awful angry half world and we can’t escape ever, ever, ever!”

We’ve all thought it, haven’t we? “Oh God, not another one, so soon”, “It’s just enforced jollity”, “I’ve never met anyone who actually likes it”...

And before you say it, I’m not talking about Norman J Warren’s oeuvre. For here we are, at what could be considered that director’s “lost” horror film (if “lost” means “somehow on Netflix in 2024”). Pretty much disowned by him afterwards (actual quote to me in an interview: “It is okay but doesn’t really work”), Bloody New Year didn’t appear on the infamous “coffin” DVD boxset in the early 00s and never really got any attention due to its unavailability.

I wonder why? You might be asking. Well, read on, my friend. Perhaps this will help.

I’m going to start with a caveat. A lot happens in this film. And that is not a positive thing. Bloody New Year is a frenetic mish-mash of mad ideas and nods to other films, done on a shoestring budget, which never really takes time to explain itself to the viewer. So if this review seems a tad disjointed and perhaps even occasionally just a list of things that happened on-screen, rest assured that is pretty much the experience of actually watching the thing.

After a credit sequence that focuses on a New Year’s Eve dance in 1959, we fast-forward to the mid 80s, where a bunch of “teenagers” are wandering around a fairground. They fall foul of some ruffians over a girl, and things escalate wildly into a full-on life-or-death fight. There’s a lot of running about, veiled warnings from a fortune teller, breezy introductions mid-chase (“Hi guys, meet Carol!”) and eventual escape on a rowing boat. All of which showcases what we’ll be seeing over the next 90 minutes – stuff happening on-screen that is occasionally exciting, but leaving no clues for the viewer to figure out what the bloody (New Year) hell is actually going on.

Their boat has a hole in it, sinks, and the group find themselves washed up on an apparently deserted beach. Unknown to them they’re being watched by a shadowy figure. They wander ashore and find a hotel, which still has its Christmas decorations up (“But it’s July!”). They somehow all end up dressed in 1950s gear that they find, and then the horror begins. And if there was ever a case for “less might be more, Norman”, it’s this film.

People get pulled into mirrors, leap out of cinema screens, pop up at windows, hear ghostly music, see ghostly maids, see people standing behind them in the mirror, and get attacked by an assortment of sentient vacuum cleaners, hook-laden fishing nets and tablecloth monsters. And some of them die, but then aren’t dead.

Might it have something to do with the reports on the TV of an anti-radar experiment that messes with time? Ah, who cares. As Carol (Catherine Roman) says at one point: “It’s just suddenly everything seems so stupid!”

Don’t think that’s enough in the stuff-happening stakes?

Well, how’s this for stuff-happening. Lesley (Suzy Aichison) is one of the gang who appeared to die but then came back to life, and it turns out she’s now an unkillable and vengeful zombie. The spooky figure we have seen watching them is a 1950s pilot who keeps popping up and trying to tell them something. Footprints appear in the sand using an effect which has © Rentaghost stamped all over it. Doors suddenly open onto deadly drops over cliffs. Something keeps running at them through the grass in point-of-view style (hello, Evil Dead). The ruffians from the fairground pop up again, and despite the viewer’s expectation that they’re probably part of the haunting, they’re actually not – just extremely motivated nutters with nothing better to do than get in a boat and follow the gang to the island with the sole intention (one assumes) of murdering them because of a minor altercation. One room contains a full-on blizzard.

“This is a nightmare, just awful!” says one member of the group, unconsciously echoing what the audience is thinking. “I see things and I just can’t believe them!” (natch).

Lesley the vengeful zombie grabs one of the fairground nutters and twists his head around full 360 degrees before his neck snaps. She is then shot by her former friend Rick (Mark Powley), who has happened on a shotgun.

And, recognising that despite their preferred means of entrance being “exploding through walls” the funfair dudes were actually just normal people (because that’s how fairground folk enter rooms, clearly), Rick and Carol go and look for the boat their attackers must have used to follow them. Keeping up?

Because I’m not sure I am…

Meanwhile, back at the hotel poor old Janet is now getting menaced by her undead former friend, Tom, before being dragged forcibly into the walls of the hotel. After much more happenings, including a killer pinball machine (yes really), things start to get really weird.

Director Norman J Warren was probably right to partially disown this one with his faint praise. It’s a ginormous mess of a film, which cherry-picks from an assortment of better-known horror films (Evil Dead clearly a big influence, Repulsion, Nightmare On Elm Street, to name but three) and although the shock effects often bely the lack of budget, the film is such a mess, and the performances so uncommitted, that it’s a slog to sit through.