Bloody New Year
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Bloody New Year (alternatively titled Time Warp Terror) is a 1987 British horror film directed by Norman J. Warren and starring Suzy Aitchison, Nikki Brooks, Colin Heywood, Mark Powley, Catherine Roman, and Julian Ronnie. The film's plot concerns a group of British teenagers trapped in a haunted hotel on a remote island.
Plot
In 1959, a group of partygoers celebrate New Year's Eve at the Grand Island Hotel before mysteriously disappearing. Decades later, young couples Lesley and Tom, and Janet and Rick, together with their friend, Spud, are spending the day at a seaside funfair when they notice an American tourist named Carol being terrorised by local hooligans. The group outwit the hooligans and rescue Carol. To escape the pursuing hooligans, they take a boat out to sea, only to run aground and be left stranded on Grand Island. They stumble across the hotel, now seemingly deserted; the lobby is adorned with Christmas decorations, despite the fact that it is July.
Spud looks for a towel for Carol, who is shivering and damp. While he is gone, the apparition of a maid enters and gives Carol a towel. Meanwhile, Spud hears music coming from the empty ballroom. He sees a duo performing on stage only for them to vanish before his eyes. In one of the guestrooms, Janet and Rick swap their ruined clothes for 1950s attire, but Janet is suddenly startled by the apparition of a woman that she sees in a mirror. While searching for the building's circuit breakers, Lesley and Tom are disturbed by fireworks that inexplicably ignite.
Later, the group find the hotel's empty theatre, which is screening the film Fiend Without a Face. Rick, convinced that someone is staging an elaborate prank, tries to turn off the projector but inadvertently plays a promotional reel for the hotel showing partygoers in front of the entrance. A figure bursts out of the screen, kills Spud, and vanishes. Trying to find a way off the island, the survivors separate and are each plagued by supernatural occurrences: Lesley and Tom find a cottage near the shore, where Lesley is attacked by a monstrous figure that disappears after Tom spears it; Janet and Rick hear disembodied voices in the woods and see a plane crash into a nearby building; and Carol is suddenly caught in a snowstorm inside the hotel.
Lesley summons the group to the cottage to find Tom. There, they are attacked by the hooligans, who have followed the group to the island in another boat. One of them kills Lesley by impaling her through the abdomen, upon which she transforms into a zombie and throws the hooligan to his death. Back at the hotel, the disfigured Lesley kills another of the hooligans by twisting his head off, while Janet is attacked by a banister carving that comes to life. Rick takes an old shotgun and shoots Lesley, apparently killing her.
An injured Tom returns to the hotel and is cared for by Janet. Rick and Carol search for the hooligans' boat and discover another plane crash site. Tom transforms into a zombie and attacks Janet. She flees into a lift but is pursued by Tom, who is seemingly killed when the rising platform traps and severs his arm. Meanwhile, Janet is engulfed by a featureless figure that absorbs her into the walls of the lift. Elsewhere, Carol and Rick witness a series of apparitions and poltergeist activities, and the last of the hooligans is killed in the kitchen after falling into a large vat. Carol and Rick flee to the ballroom, where they are greeted by a woman resembling the zombified Lesley. She tells them that they are trapped in a time warp created when an aircraft carrying an experimental cloaking device crashed on the island on New Year's Eve, 1959.
Carol and Rick flee the hotel, pursued by their friends and the hooligans – all now resurrected as zombies. They make it to the shoreline and Carol manages to board the hooligans' boat, but Rick is trapped in quicksand and killed by one of the zombified hooligans. Carol is pulled under water and re-emerges behind a mirror in the ballroom, where she sees her friends join the New Years' Eve party. As the picture fades to black, a woman's scream is heard.
Cast
- Suzy Aitchison as Lesley
- Nikki Brooks as Janet
- Colin Heywood as Spud
- Mark Powley as Rick
- Catherine Roman as Carol
- Julian Ronnie as Tom
- Steve Emerson as Dad
- Steve Wilsher as Ace
- Jon Glentoran as The Bear
- David Lyn as Interviewer
Musicians Chas Cronk and Tony Fernandez (representing Cronk's band Cry No More) appear as singers at the Grand Island Hotel. Steve Emerson was also the film's stunt coordinator.
