My Bloody Valentine

(1981) ***

It’s 1980 and the denizens of Valentine Bluffs eschew a twenty-year moratorium on holding their annual Valentine’s Day dance. It seems that in 1960 the supervisors of a local mine left their posts in order to attend the town’s popular dance. Due largely to the negligence of the partying supervisors, a methane explosion in the mine took the lives of a group of miners. Following a 6-week excavation the town was stunned to learn that one miner, Harry Warden, managed to survive – it’s implied that cannibalism might why and Harry is placed in an asylum never to be heard from again, or so they all thought. A year after being pulled from the rubble Harry escaped from the insane asylum and retaliated by murdering two supervisors on Valentine’s Day with a warning to the town that more deaths would follow should they ever hold the annual Valentine’s Day dance again.


Aw, this isn't chocolate, this sucks!

As the town busily makes preparations to have their first Valentine’s Dance in decades, people begin dying again and Harry’s calling card, a human heart in a box is discovered, appearing to suggest that Harry is back for more murder should dance preparations continue. The mayor, making a rare wise decision for a horror movie mayor, agrees to call off the party. However, these idiots


We're idiots

insist on having a party and decide to move festivities to the bowels of the mine shaft (how romantic). No sooner do they settle in than someone dressed in scary miner fatigues begins a new killing spree. Is Harry back?


Time to die!

You know, at the end of the day My Bloody Valentine is not bad for a 1980s slasher movie. Yes the premise is silly and the killer does things that no human being would ever be able to do (a common 80s staple), but the killer’s costume is truly creepy and the deaths are inventive. The big reveal at the conclusion is of the ho-hum variety but you won’t care, it’s a fun ride.