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My Bloody Valentine
[Paramount]
1981; color
Directed by George Mihalka
Starring: Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, Neil Affleck, Keith Knight & Alf Humphreys
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A completely slasheriffic slice of sinema that I hadn't watched in years, My Bloody Valentine is another early entry in the decade that hits just about every mark. Set in what would appear to be a somewhat remote Canadian mining town, Valentine Bluffs, the story concerns the legend of a miner who was trapped in a mine explosion on Valentine's Day and forced to resort to cannibalism while trapped underground for weeks awaiting rescue. The incident left him hopelessly insane, yet still together enough to acknowledge the anniversary of the event by breaking out of the asylum a year later and slaughter the two men responsible for the explosion. (They left their post early to get to the town's annual Valentine's dance and didn't check the gas levels.) Before he's dragged back off to the mental hospital, he warns the town never to have a Valentine's Day celebration again; lest he - again - come back and kill anyone involved. Fast forward 20 years (actually, we've been in the present all along, the set-up was all in flashback and happened about ten minutes into the movie), Valentine Bluffs is holding their first Valentine's dance in two decades. A few days before, someone hands the mayor a heart shaped candy box that was left for him at the station. He opens it, perhaps hoping to find a sour quince log, only to find the phoniest, most plastic looking human heart I've ever seen. No sooner does this happen than the body count begins. And did I mention the killer wears a full coal miner's outfit, complete with breathing mask and the helmet with the light on it; carries a pickaxe, his weapon of choice in almost every case; and repeats the heart-in-a-box gimmick throughout the movie to taunt the local sheriff and pre-terrorize some of his victims? The set ups for the murders are predictable but their, ahem, execution is undeniably classic. It should also be noted that, instead of horny teen couples as the main targets of said maniac miner, we have horny 20-something miners and their girlfriends. At any rate, back at the "plot" due to a sudden spike in the town's death rate—two, to be exact—the dance gets called off and all Valentine's celebrations are summarily canceled. Except for the secret party eight or ten miners and their girlfriends decide to have at the mine's mess hall. Almost as soon as four couples go down into the mine, bodies start piling up above ground. I really don't want to give away too much more because this one really is an oft-forgotten classic that's well worth revisiting. They even throw in a red herring at the end (something that was generally missing from slasher flicks, especially by the end of the '80s) which left the possibility for a sequel wide open; a sequel that sadly never happened.
—the Kommandant
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