My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Directed by: George Mihalka
Starring: Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, Neil Affleck, Keith Knight, Cynthia Dale, Alf Humphreys and Don Francks
Genre: Horror / Slasher
Rated: R
On Valentine’s Day twenty years ago the small mining town of Valentine’s Bluff was rocked when a tragic cave-in trapped five miners. When search and rescue finally uncovers the men, there is only one survivor, Harry Warden. Deeming the mine collapse to be the fault of his supervisors who had left early that evening to attend the Valentine’s Day Dance, Harry murders them both the following year. Harry was committed to Eastfield Mental Hospital and the town did not have another Valentine’s celebration for two decades. Now, in 1981, Harry has become little more than a legend and the town has decided to have a Valentine’s Day Dance once again. However, someone isn’t happy about this and will do anything to keep it from happening. Is Harry Warden back in town or is someone else following in his footsteps?
Despite the praise this slasher gets in the horror community, this has never been one that I’ve loved. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining – it is, but I find it lacking somehow. The basic storyline is fine and the premise held a lot of potential, but for me it didn’t quite get there.
I feel one of the biggest drawbacks of this movie is the characters. They’re not unlikable, but they don’t really have much personality or development either. Many characters fall to the killer’s pick axe without the viewer even knowing their names. The plot centers on the love triangle between Sarah, Axel and TJ, with both of the boys vying for the role of her love interest. They’re so caught up in fighting each other for that spot that they do not seem to care what Sarah wants at all. Frankly, neither guy deserves her; she’d be better off alone. Sarah herself is fairly bland, only starting to get a personality in the third act when she needs to support her friend and get them both to safety. The sheriff is so worried about causing a panic in town that he doesn’t mention the trail of murders to anyone, allowing the main group of twenty-somethings the ignorance of thinking it would be safe to throw a party after the Mayor cancels the dance.
The kills are creative and brutal. The special effects are well done – the standout definitely being the corpse in the dryer. The setting of the mine in the final act provides the perfect creepy atmosphere for a stalk-and-slash with the dim lighting and claustrophobic tunnels. The viewer is just as lost as the characters in the maze of unlit underground passages, unable to determine the best mode of escape. Unfortunately, the tension isn’t really there as we follow the dwindling group, because, as mentioned above, there is nothing interesting or compelling about any of them.
There is little to no nudity – just a close up of a girl’s breasts clad in a lacy bra and a bunch of dudes showering. I did like that the movie promoted safe sex by having a male character pull out a condom as he and his girlfriend prepare to make love. Aside from the nameless girl in the opening sequence, the women aren’t obviously objectified, and actually work together and support each other. Toward the end of the film, Sarah takes charge and guides her distraught friend through the mines in hopes of leading her to safety. We don’t see enough of girls helping girls in these flicks and we should change that.
This is not a bad little slasher film by any means, but it’s not one of the most entertaining either. It has the slower pace of Halloween or BlackChristmas and the gore of Friday the 13th, but ultimately does not have the likeable characters or quality writing that made those films the classics they are. It is a solid entry into the slasher subgenre, and many in the horror fandom love it, but for me it is simply average.
6/10
My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)
Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Starring: Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith, Tom Atkins, Kevin Tighe
Genre: Horror / Slasher
Rated: R
In 1999 there was a collapse in the Hanniger Mine trapping six men. The only survivor found by Search and Rescue was Harry Warden, who had snapped and killed the other five men so he wouldn’t run out of air. Found in a coma, Harry is transported to the local hospital, where he wakes up and begins a killing spree ending in his death. Ten years later, someone has taken up Harry’s pick axe and the murders have started again. Is Harry Warden truly dead and buried? Has he come back or is it someone else entirely?
If you know me you know I’m not typically into remakes – mostly because they’re usually done on films that are perfect as is and still hold up to this day. However, in this case I felt that the original held promise that it didn’t live up to and a remake could change that. This movie had a chance to make something great – it had a good cast, a solid storyline to work off of and a decent budget – but they blew it.
The characters were something I’d really hoped would be improved upon. As stated above, the original characters were very bland and lifeless, not really inspiring the viewer to care for them. This flick took these characters and turned them into assholes. TJ is now Tom, who, after nearly being murdered during Harry’s massacre, left town for a few years to get away from this experience. He returns after his father dies to take care of the estate and determine what to do with the mine. Once there he learns Sarah, his girlfriend from ten years prior, is now married to the Sheriff, Axel. The love triangle is still very much part of the story, and this time I care even less about it.
Tom is the only character I give a damn about, and, no, it’s not just because he’s played by Jensen Ackles. The minute he returns to town he’s treated like a pariah. Everyone in town believes his mistake in the mine ten years ago caused the cave-in and thus the murder spree of Harry Warden. Also, he’s deliberating on selling off the mine which is the town’s livelihood. It’s obvious he’s carried the events of the past around with him and that he doesn’t want to be back at all. With the way the townspeople treat him, why should he care at all about them? Sell off the mine and take the money to live a nice life far away from there.
Tom is still hung up on Sarah, and I cannot understand why. They had no chemistry in the scenes where they were supposed to be a couple. Also Sarah blames him for her walking into the mine during Harry’s murders (even though he was getting something out of his truck) and states she got with Axel because “he was there for me” during that horrific incident – the one that nearly led to Tom’s death, but whatever.
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| He only stared death in the face while she ran, no big deal. |
She is resentful of Tom leaving, and I do understand her hurt, but at the same time, if she was acting like he didn’t do enough to protect her I don’t blame him at all for leaving. The entire town hates him and his girlfriend is now hero worshiping Axel. I would have left too.
Axel is an absolute piece of garbage. Not only was he trying to get with Sarah while she was with Tom, he also treats her like crap now that she’s his wife. He’s jealous and possessive when Sarah has one conversation with Tom. He screams in Tom’s face that she’s “my wife, the one I have sex with!” in the middle of a hospital. Yet he’s cheating on Sarah with Megan, her employee at the grocery store that barely looks over eighteen while he’s in his late twenties to early thirties. Gross Axel, not only are you cheating scum, you’re predatory trash as well.
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| Apparently the actress was about 26, but she looks barely out of high school. |
Other than the main three, the side characters are all equally unlikable. Megan is proudly sleeping with her boss’s husband, Ben and the retired Sheriff Burke have some shady secrets, the deputies are rather useless, and everyone else is just knife fodder. Also, what was the point of Sarah and Axel’s child? He is in literally two scenes and has no lines. He and his nanny could have been scrapped in exchange for a plot that made any damn sense.
While this version does hold on to the basic premise of the original film, it veers off into a mess. Yes, it is Valentine’s Day (or close to it), it’s the anniversary of a prior murder spree, and there’s the love triangle, but that and the original character names are all that remains. There is a party scene at the mine but it is very brief and just serves as exposition for the later events. Many people are killed at random that have nothing to do with the original party massacre or Harry Warden. These deaths were pointless and could easily have been cut without the film losing anything.
Another area that was decent in the original but could have easily been improved upon is the gore effects. The original did well with what they had, but their budget was limited and modern effects could have brought an upgrade. Instead, the effects were far worse in many respects due to terrible CGI. I get that a lot had to be done that way due to the 3D gimmick, but it looked awful – the girl’s head that was split in half by a shovel was obviously computer generated, and laughably bad.
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| Seriously, what is this? |
The kills in general were okay, the best ones being ripped from the original (i.e. corpse in the dryer). The brutality is still there but the CGI blood ruins it for me.
Where the original lacked nudity this version has it in abundance. Both male and female characters appear in the nude. We get middle aged man butt (Trust me, there is only one man in this film who the female viewers want to see naked, and it sure wasn’t that guy!)
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| My apologies, Jensen. |
and full frontal from the character of Irene – who is naked for at least ten minutes, from the sex scene to chasing her dickhead partner into the parking lot with a gun, to being chased and cornered by the killer. Not only do we get all that, but there are multiple scenes were the police are watching the video tapes made by her creepy old-man lover and many pictures of her naked corpse. There is also a very pervy close up of the character Megan in her panties, and a crotch shot of her underwear again as she climbs through a window in a mini skirt. Again, this girl looked barely legal to me, and the exploitative shots of her are very uncomfortable.
The women in this film are treated like trash. The men see them as objects to possess, use and cast aside as they please. The only “friends” Sarah has are Irene, who she seems to have grown very distant from over the past decade, and Megan, her employee that is banging her husband. While the original had girls supporting girls, there is barely any female interaction, and when there is it is catty and awful (Sarah and Megan) or an employer / employee relationship (Sarah and the Nanny). Irene is the stereotypical “slut” of the film and she is, of course, punished for her promiscuity. Even the female motel owner, a little person, was extremely sexualized (did we need to focus on her breasts? Really?),
and, I feel, also exploited for her size, having her be flung up and tacked to the ceiling like a rag doll. She has a total of maybe two minutes of screen time and all it consists of is her boobs, her flirting with Tom, and her demise. She seemed like she could have been a fun character, but ultimately added nothing to the story except to pad the body count.
This film tried to take the elements from the original that worked and ride on those successes, but couldn’t make them work within the context of this story. The tense, claustrophobic atmosphere of the mine is not utilized to its full potential. The original was actually shot in real mines and had to use the lighting already installed, making the scenes darker and creepier. This version has well lit tunnels and tries desperately to recreate the creepiest scenes from the original, such as the mining outfits dropping from the ceiling, the dryer corpse, etc. The mining uniforms dropping from the ceiling surrounding someone was built up in the original, in this film it was completely random. I find it hard to believe a grown woman can fit inside a normal household dryer, never mind the corpse cooking so thoroughly in the maybe ten minutes between the character’s death and the discovery of her body. (The body in the original was in a much larger dryer overnight.) The killer smashing a few lights in the mine during the final confrontation was intimidating. That action being extended to around ten lights – and the lighting still being bright as ever in the scene – could not recapture the tension of its predecessor. The final showdown even taking place in the mine at all seemed forced because that was where the original ended, not because it made sense.
I have so many questions. How did the killer get from the office door to the back alley in two minutes then carve out the victim’s heart, display it in a chocolate box, write on the wall in the victim’s blood and get the hell out of dodge in the next five that it took Sarah and Axel to arrive? For that matter, how did the killer know which vehicle in the motel parking lot belonged to the naked bald jackass or when he would be coming out to drive away? How did the retired Sheriff know there was a killer in Sarah’s house? Why would you waste time calling the police on the landline when a killer is after you and you could just hit the store’s alarm button? Why did the Valentine box only start dripping blood once it was in Axel’s hands? Does this director have a cage fetish? (There’s A LOT of cage imagery – the bed springs, the mining cage and the security grates on the grocery store’s office window.)
Why did I subject myself to this? Who knows!
This poor attempt at a reboot, squandered any potential it could have had by taking the, rather tame by comparison, source material and turning it into an exploitative piece of garbage. They had the cast, they had the budget, they could have made something great. Instead they took a quaint little early ‘80s slasher that managed to avoid a lot of the typical tropes, and add everything this subgenre is criticized for. It’s like they took a look at the original and said, “You know what this needs? More naked chicks, awful characters, crappy CGI effects and some blatant misogyny! Also cages because they get me hot!”
I know I am in the minority for disliking this remake, but I honestly cannot understand why anyone would enjoy it. I was excited to watch this because I heard so many in the horror community raving about how great it is. Did we watch the same movie? This remake did not do justice to the original, in fact it stamped out everything that worked in its predecessor, replacing it with bad CGI, soft-core porn, and characters that all deserved to bite it. There are plenty of movies that share these elements and don’t bastardize prior, superior films, nor take themselves as seriously as this flick does. Stick with the flawed original. Maybe someone will get this story right someday.
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| Next time, please listen to Sidney ^^ |
4/10
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