Bloody New Year (1987)

The Plan 9 from Outer Space of 80s British slasher movies, Bloody New Year can be called many things, but it can never be called dull.

After fleeing a menacing gang of gypsy bikers at a funfair, a group of teenagers/ young adults find themselves trapped on an island. Taking refuge in a hotel, they find it seemingly abandoned, and untouched since the New Year’s celebrations of 1959. But is it abandoned? Why do the group start disappearing one by one? And what are people from the past doing in the present?

Clearly made on a low budget, with little time or money for retakes, special effects or discussions on character motivation, it would be all too easy to sneer at a film like this. I suspect it is likely that director Norman J Warren had to contend with interfering producers insisting on seeing "scenes where X happens, like in Y film", hence at times the film is obviously aping the likes of The Evil Dead, Lamerbero Bava's Demons or the likes of Lucio Fulci's more delirious and disjointed zombie films. Sure the acting is lousy, the situations the characters find themselves in baffling, and their lack of reaction doubly so, and the end result is never going to knock Citizen Kane off the BFI best film list. There is an interesting idea buried somewhere in the film, involving a government time travel experiment gone wrong, an idea that, properly developed, would have lifted the film beyond a standard slasher.

However, fortunately, what we get instead, while goofy and incoherent has enough energy to be always fun, and never boring, thanks to the sheer audacity of some of the twists and turns of the story. Do not attempt to make sense of things, just sit back and enjoy the ride.



Bloody New Year by FLIXUMovies

Black Cobra (1987)

Fred “The Hammer” Williamson is a mainstay of 70s and 80s European exploitation films, and Black Cobra is a largely competent but unremarkable example of the Italian crime or Poliziotteschi genre.

The plot is lifted from Sylvester Stallone’s action thriller Cobra (so no surprises as to where the name came from) with Williamson playing Bob Malone, a maverick cop (is there any other kind in these films?) assigned to protect a fashion photographer who holds the key to identifying the head of a vicious biker gang

The other debt the film has is to Dirty Harry (as do many Italian cop films) with Malone sorting a hostage situation with a shotgun, and delivering a rip off of the famous “44 Magnum” speech. Williamson can act these macho roles in his sleep, so is not asked to do anything that he is not more than capable of.

There is little in the way of characterisation, other than a scene where Malone shows an unexpected tender side, feeding and fussing over his pet cat and the action set pieces, while lacking a real sense of threat or suspense are competently handled and exciting.

Things only really fall apart in the final 15 minutes, with a preposterous resurrection and interminably dull chase scene in a warehouse. Other than that, Black Cobra is worth a look for fans of action films, Poliziotteschi or The Hammer.

 

R.O.T.O.R. (1987)

Plenty of films are bad, but only a select few take it to a supreme level of incompetence, breaking all of the rules and logic of how to make a motion picture. R.O.T.O.R is definitely one of these, a film where the creators make baffling choice after baffling choice on nearly every level of the finished product, creating a truly unhinged world where anything can happen.

Made in 1987, this was presumably put together to cash in on the contemporary success of Robocop and the still recent success of The Terminator. The Dallas Police Department has decided that the only thing that stands between them and the end of civilisation is an army of mechanised law enforcers. Their dedicated robotics department is working on a prototype, R.O.T.O.R. (Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research), but when this unfinished creation is accidentally activated, it goes on a murderous vendetta against one woman. Can the machine’s creator, Dr Coldyron (pronounced Cold-Iron) stop it before a bloodbath occurs?

Now if all of that sounds like a straightforward, albeit derivative, film, then that is because I have left out the details, and the details are what make this so brilliant. A few of my favourites include:

1. Every one of the scientists involved knew that the robot could either be a success or a genocidal maniac – but they still went ahead with it anyway

2. Despite it being many years from completion, the robot already has a locker with a perfectly fitting uniform already there for him. 

3. The police headquarters parking lot looks like a used car showroom, with a shiny new motorbike, ready and waiting to be ridden off.

4. In case you are concerned you do not know enough about Coldyron and his morning routine the film opens with a ten MINUTE sequence, detailing his love of making coffee, riding horses, giving coffee to his horses and blowing up tree stumps before driving to work

5. Despite supposedly being years away from completing the artificial intelligence, they already have a seemingly fully cognizant droid – a sassy little sidekick called Willard, complete with police cap, a gun, and a back chatting attitude 

6. R.O.T.O.R has a moustache

Characters and plot strands come and go seemingly at random, such as Coldyron’s disappearing girlfriend, or the co-creator of R.O.T.O.R who is never mentioned until the last 20 minutes, and just happens to be a muscle bound martial arts expert. These sort of touches give the whole thing a hysterical almost dreamlike feel that is always entertaining. 

Then, there is the dialogue, which is up there with the best of the surreal stream of consciousness poetry of Ed Wood. My favourite quotes include “It's like a chainsaw set on frappe”, “Fire me and I'll make more noise than two skeletons making love in a tin coffin” and “The only difference between a hero and a villain is the amount of compensation they take for their services”. If you think I am taking these out of context for cheap laughs, then, believe me, they do not make any more sense in context.

The only truly painful bits are the attempts at ironic self-commentary through lines like “What do you think this is a bad Sci-Fi film?” and “Bet this is how Terminator started”. Thankfully, the rest of R.O.T.O.R displays a magnificent lack of self-awareness by the makers. A never give up and never think things through attitude that is almost heroic and gives this film a well-deserved places in the crapola Hall of Fame.