It’s Romance Week at MovieJawn! All week long we’re getting all mushy about love in the movies!

by Nikk Nelson, Staff Writer, Cinematic Maniac

1981’s My Bloody Valentine, turning 40 today, is often overlooked in conversations about that decade’s slasher craze, perhaps because, despite the setup of its ending, it produced zero sequels and was a very modest box office success. Even growing up the horror nerd I was, I didn’t see this film until adulthood. I don’t remember its box art on any videostore shelves and my older brother, who was almost always the conduit by which I heard of anything horror, never mentioned it. And it’s really a shame. It is objectively one of the best slasher films ever made. As I sat down to re-watch it for this review, my Prime Video trivia told me it’s Quentin Tarantino’s favorite slasher film of all time. It’s easy to see why. First, the film is shot incredibly well. I feel like a hallmark of slasher movies, especially as time went on, was a ‘slapped together at the last minute’ aesthetic. Scripts were loose, to say it kindly. Characters were walking/talking archetypes with little to no development or arc. Most of the films are a race to the sex and the kills with little to no regard for things like camera angles or mise-en-scene. Not My Bloody Valentine. 

It’s directed very adeptly and works to build a mood and tone in how its shot—complimenting a solid script with an entertaining double twist just in the opening scene. The plot is simple but effective. Valentine Bluffs, a sleepy coal mining town, is haunted by the memory of Harry Warden, a miner who, due to the negligence of his supervisors, is caught in an explosion with a handful of his co-workers. In the subsequent weeks it takes to mount a rescue, Harry is found to be the only survivor, having resorted to cannibalism in order to stay alive. A year later, on Valentine’s Day, Harry murders the two supervisors responsible for the incident. Since then, Valentine Bluffs became sort of like the town in Footloose (1984), except instead of dancing it’s Valentine’s Day. But this year, goddammit, the townsfolk are going to celebrate. Problem is, Harry Warden is back and up to his old tricks. 

Since this film was made so early in the deluge of slasher films, it’s difficult to say ‘it hits all the right notes’ versus ‘it wrote the song’. You’ve got the bartender prophet of doom. A bunch of attractive young people lead to their demise via an insatiable desire to party. Gruesome kills. Percussive gore. Ironic sight gags like signs that read, ‘Safety First!’ The acting is amateur, which is to be expected, and not everything in the script works. The ending twist, for example, could have been executed much more effectively. That being said, I cared about all of the characters and there were even a couple of deaths I found to be genuinely upsetting. This is rare for slasher movies, especially later ones, where characters were written for the explicit purpose of being loathed by the audience so the deaths are ultimately celebrated, casting the killer in more of a heroic role.

As a massive fan of the franchise, I couldn’t help but compare it to Friday the 13th (1980). My Bloody Valentine is the better movie. It’s shot, directed, written, cast, and acted in a noticeably superior way. Tom Savini would be the only reason you could argue otherwise. So, I find its lack of success, and especially its lack of sequels, to be very perplexing. Released less than a year after Friday the 13th, distributed by the same company, Paramount, My Bloody Valentine took in just over five million dollars at the box office versus the haul of over fifty million for Friday the 13th. I have to wonder if it was all just a matter of timing. Had it been released before Friday the 13th, would it have been a different story? Would it have been released without Friday the 13th at all? At the end of the day, it’s undeniable that the film, in fitting theme, was made with love and perhaps with the impending release of a deluxe version bluray from Shout! Factory, it will finally find a much wider audience. 

The 2009 remake, My Bloody Valentine 3D, can jump in front of a fucking truck. How dare you misuse Tom Atkins. That man is a national treasure and you put him in this garbage film? First of all, it’s blatantly obvious this was just another ‘we have no creativity or original ideas, at least not ones we’re willing to take a chance on financially, so let’s find a successful slasher movie from the 80’s, remake it in 3D, get one of the guys in Supernatural to star in it and call it a day’ polished turds that was the state of horror in the aughts.

The script is awful. I wanted all of the characters to die, especially writer Todd Farmer as Frank the Trucker. Farmer wrote himself into a sex scene with the incredible Betsy Rue, who gets the only credit I give anyone in this movie for performing an extended chase/death scene stark naked. Most if not all of the blood and gore is CGI. All of the CGI/3D effects are fucking awful. The whole movie looks like stock photos directed it. I’m actually going to spoil the ending because you can’t really spoil mayonnaise in the sauna: the Supernatural guy did it. WHAT A TWIST, RIGHT?! This is one of the laziest movies I’ve ever seen and if all that wasn’t bad enough, it went on to gross a hundred million dollars at the box office because movie theaters are fucking terrible and for far too long have given us shit like this and said, ‘What? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna not go to the movies this weekend? Give us $60, not counting concessions, and shut the fuck up.’ The legacy of the original film deserved so much more respect. They had a chance to, finally, make a great direct sequel and chose to do the exact opposite of that and everything else decent in this world.