Bloody New Year - Bear

- should old acquaintance be forgot...or just brutally murdered?

'Bloody New Year' was filmed in and around Barry Island funfair in Wales. Written by Frazier Pearce, and directed by the cult British horror director Norman J Warren, who gave the world 'Inseminoid' and 'Alien Prey' among others, it had a very limited budget, and a script involving time-travel, ghosts, military experiments and zombies that even the cast and crew found difficult to make sense of occasionally... :)

Myself and Steve Wilsher had become involved when we were asked by Steve Emerson, who we'd worked with on 'The Pyrates' for the BBC, whether we'd like to come and do a couple of small parts in a film he was working on. He was looking for a couple of actors who could handle 'action' and knew that Steve and I could do fights and falls and worked well together. It was quite fun to do, running around the funfair (except for the entire day spent on the Waltzer which, frankly, I could have done without) and stalking the 'teen' cast through the spooky hotel, all the while doing our own 'stunts' including somersaulting in through first floor windows, being catapulted off fairground rides and trucks and finally having my head twisted off by June Whitfield's daughter (actually a terrific actress in her own right, Suzy Aitchison).

One amusing footnote to this is that I've been told the film attained a certain notoriety for being placed on to the BBFC's 'video nasties' list, alongside 'The Exorcist', 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and others. As 'Bloody New Year', despite its enthusiastic low-budget gore effects, is by modern standards quite tame it's difficult to see why. As I understand it, it was simply because someone forgot to submit it for certification in time, and in the absence of a certificate, on to the list it went! Wherther that's true or not I have no idea!

You can sometimes still find the film on the bottom shelf of video libraries or in second-hand video shops. I urge you to avert your eyes and walk on by...

"...a modest but entertaining melding of slasher films and more traditional haunted house yarns."

"No nudity or explicit gore leaves even less reason to watch it."(!)

and my own personal favourite...

"The characters in this movie are incredibly boring and they never make the right facial expressions."

The three bad guys recover from being thrown from the escaping truck

The three bad guys stare menacingly into the camera

Bear falls down the steps of the Waltzer

Bear somersaults in through the hotel window

Me, as Bear, standing with Suzy Aitcheson