My Bloody Valentine | Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier | Why am I craving Moosehead beer suddenly?

My Bloody Valentine | Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier | Holds up quite nicely compared to some of its contemporaries

DVDs:

My Bloody Valentine

	My Bloody Valentine Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier Paramount, 2002 average customer review:based on 100 reviews view larger image
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Why am I craving Moosehead beer suddenly?

Looks like quite a few folks here don't like "My Bloody Valentine", you got a handful of reviewers talking about the lousy acting, and another bunch talking about the lame effects, and you have more folks just claiming "Bloody Valentine" is just a rip-off of "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th".....and I gotta ask so what's your point? Sure the acting and script may not be on par with "Shakespeare in Love", but for a B-movie, the acting was just fine. The special effects may not be great, but I will take what is presented here over the cartoony CGI effects presented in most horror films today. As far as being a rip-off...really when is the last time you saw an original story for a horror film? This same story has worked in horror films since the 1960's. If anything almost every slasher flick after Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" has basically been a rip-off. If you are a fan of 80's horror, "Bloody Valentine" is well worth buying, it's like "Prom Night", "Madman", "Hell Night" and the scores of other 80's horror flicks that were so much fun, and are still fun to watch today. If nothing else, it's great to play a drinking game with "Bloody Valentine"....every time you see someone drink a Moosehead beer or see a sign for Moosehead beer, you drink. Guaranteed the acting will not bother you...but you may have to visit the ER because of alcohol poisoning by the end of the film.

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Holds up quite nicely compared to some of its contemporaries

My Bloody Valentine (George Mihalka, 1981)

The early-eighties teen slasher flick became something of an institution, and with the small number of classics were released a great number of forgettable pieces of utter dreck (do you remember Final Exam? Of course you don't). I ate them up, long before I was of legal age to see them in the theater, thanks to my parents being somewhat forward-thinking and having HBO early on. One of my friends was utterly obsessed with this movie, so naturally, I watched it the earliest chance I got. I then pretty much forgot about it, unless listening to the band who took their name from the film, for well over two decades.

Fast forward to 2005, and I get a chance to see it again, which I jump at. And despite its obvious attempt to be one of the genre's classics (they posit Harry Warden as Canada's answer to Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers), the film holds up remarkably well in comparison to most of the other films in this particular subgenre.

Harry Warden, as you find out relatively early in the film, was the sole survivor of a mine disaster in 1960, this disaster being caused by the negligence of his superiors. On Valentines' Day 1961, during the town's annual Valentines' Dance, Warden murdered the two supervisors responsible for the cave-in, after which he was confined to a nearby mental facility for life... or is it all an urban legend? Fast-forward twenty years, and the town is looking to revive the tradition of the annual Valentines' Dance, which was stopped, for obvious reasons, after 1961. (Whether Harry is real or not, the murders did occur.) Someone's not happy about it, and so the bodies start flying.

What distinguishes My Bloody Valentine from the rest of the pack, aside from being arguably the first slasher flick to deal in close-ups of relevant body parts (it being Valentine's Day, you can guess which) is the loving attention paid to camerawork. Especially twenty-four years later, the plot seems quite well-used and the characters are, for the most part, nothing other than cardboard cutouts, yet Mihalka (who's gone on to some semblance of success as a TV director) still directs the film's climax with an eye for detail that makes it truly suspenseful in places. This is not an easy thing to do when the revelation of the killer and the audience guessing-game of who's going to survive is pretty firmly settled within the movie's first half-hour. It's not great cinema by any means, but it's a worthwhile way to kill an hour and a half.

Mihalka, according to IMDB, approached Paramount in 2001 with a completed script for a sequel. It was perfect timing. Paramount turned him down. Mull over, for a few moments, what might have been. ** ½

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3.25 STARS: "Roses are red, violets are blue, one is dead and so are you!"-The Killer

The movie "My Bloody Valentine" is a solid 80s slasher flick and certainly a product of the greatest of holiday horror movies known as "Halloween". This movie has been dumped on pretty good, but all in all, this flick does have some merit. In fact, I would argue that this film is the greatest Valentine's Day movie of all-time. If you are an avid slasher flick fan like me, you should definitely pick this one up.

The movie's plot centers around a group of mine workers in a small town. A legend about a pick axe wielding Harry Warden has kept this little town from having a Valentine's Day dance for 20 years, but the town decides it is time to put the past in the past. However, it becomes apparent that someone does not want the dance to take place and he don't mind showing it. His signature is to wrap bloody human hearts in a heart shaped Valentine's Day candy box...not bad! This movie is not without suspense as the killer's identity is somewhat unknown until the end of the movie. However, the audience is able to narrow it down to three people: the mysterious Harry Warden, Axle or T.J., the little town's prodigal son who returns to reclaim his ex-girlfriend.

Nevertheless, the local 20 something year old's are determined to have a Valentine's Day party even if they can't have a dance and people start getting killed by a man in a miner's suit. He is exceptionally cruel with some of his killings. This is a typical 80s slasher flick that became prevalent after Halloween and aside from Halloween I and II, this might be the best of the "holiday" slasher flicks. Certainly "My Bloody Valentine" is considerably better than "Silent Night Deadly Night" and "April Fool's Day".

I must admit that the acting in this film is rather poor, but what 80s slasher flick does have good acting? The love story theme in this movie is very lame as well, but the killing scenes are pretty good. Moreover, there is an unmistakably 80s slasher feel to this movie which I love along with a nice creepy atmosphere generated by the brutal Canadian winter and the coal mine of which some of this movie takes place. This use of setting and the easily recognizable 80s slasher atmosphere make this holiday slasher one of the finest of its kind. While not a classic by any means, I still recommend this film to die-hard horror movie fans like myself. I own this DVD and watch it occasionally. It's really good around Valentine's Day. A little over THREE STARS for this horror flick which might be a little more than this slasher flick deserves, but it has that 80s classic slasher flick feel to it, and I guess it has a soft spot in my heart because of that! You should have a great time around Valentine's Day with this slasher. However, it would be nice if they would re-release this DVD uncut in its original form.

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