New Year's Evil

New Year's Evil is a 1980 American slasher film written and directed by Emmett Alston, co-written by Leonard Neubauer, and starring Kip Niven, Roz Kelly, and Chris Wallace. The plot follows a Los Angeles punk rock and new wave show host who receives a series of phone calls during a televised New Year's Eve bash from a killer warning of impending murders that he plans to exact as the New Year dawns on each time zone. Plot One New Year's Eve, popular punk rock/new wave DJ Diane Sullivan (known as "Blaze" among her fans) is hosting a late-night countdown celebration of music and partying, televised live from a Hollywood hotel and simulcast on local radio. All is going well until Diane receives a phone call from an odd-sounding stranger, who claims his name is Evil. He announces his intention to murder one "naughty girl" at the stroke of midnight in each US time zone; he warns that Diane, located in the Pacific Time Zone, will be the last victim. Meanwhile, Diane's son Derek arrives at the studio, but is mostly ignored by his mother; he begins behaving erratically throughout the night as he watches the show on television. The studio crew takes safety measures and heightens security, but a string of murders begins to occur across Los Angeles; a nurse at a sanitarium is found dead shortly after midnight strikes in the Eastern Time Zone, and two women are found dead near a liquor store after midnight in the Central Time Zone. The killer uses a radio/cassette recorder to tape the sounds of his victims as he murders them and calls back the station each time, replaying the tapes over the phone to prove that he is serious. While the killer searches for a victim to kill for the stroke of midnight in the Mountain Time Zone, he inadvertently angers a gang of bikers, who chase him into a drive-in theater. He murders one of the bikers, steals a couple's car to avoid being recognized, and drives off with the girl still in the backseat, intending to make her his next victim, but she manages to escape. Eventually the killer manages to sneak into the hotel, which by now has been completely locked down by the police, and is revealed to be Diane's husband, Richard, who was previously thought to be too busy to attend. After knocking Diane out, he castigates her over her treatment of their son, perceiving her and other women's treatment of him as a slight on his character.