My Bloody Valentine is a 1981 horror slasher flick written by John Beaird and directed by George Mihalka. It is a film that really scratches all of the main metaphorical horror-related itches for fans of gore and slashers. It has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it in high school. It resonated with the angsty teenager in me because I was somewhat of an anti-fun kid and was very skeptical about the nature of certain holidays. The main target of my holiday skepticism was Valentine’s Day; I thought it was a superficial holiday created to sell gift cards and cheap chocolates. So naturally, when I first saw the disembowelment, murder, and impalements that My Bloody Valentine is chock full of, I was instantly hooked and greeted the film with genuine delight.
MBV Follows the story of a group of young adults throwing a Valentine’s Day party in a mining town. As the plot progresses, we learn that twenty years prior, a mining explosion killed a group of miners and left one half-alive; the sole survivor eventually discovered amongst the rubble gnawing at his own flesh. He was deemed mentally handicapped and allegedly sent to a mental asylum. Quickly, we learn the miner has returned to plague the group and hinder their plans to enjoy the Valentine’s Day party, which was a long-standing tradition for the town prior to the incident.
MBV does a lot of things right. As the film opens, we’re greeted by a winded, wheezing miner walking around a mine where he discovers a female miner removing her coal dusted clothes. She notices his presence and performs a light-hearted strip tease, only enticing him to impale her with his pickaxe as the trademark 80s synthesizer sound blares. It was an awesome way to begin a slasher. Promptly after this intro, the movie establishes the unique legend of the antagonist Harry Warden early on. It introduces us to our cast of victims and sets the stage for a gathering of most of the characters bunched together in a centralized location, that location being above the very mine where the incident occurred twenty years prior. All this happens within the first 25 minutes, so the movie opens strong and wastes no time setting the stage. I appreciate this because I often feel that slashers tend to stumble around and spend too much time world-building rather than getting to what we are mostly all here for: the gore, the scares, and the deaths.
Musically, the movie moved me magnificently. I consider the 70s and 80s to be the pinnacle of horror film score composition because the often campy (and in my opinion, charming) practical gore effects depicted on-screen during this era, paired with simple synthesizer chords and melodies, create a genuinely creepy and almost disheveled atmosphere that compliments the subject matter of a gory slasher flick. MBV executes this flawlessly.
Ultimately, My Bloody Valentine delivers exactly what the title promises. It’s Valentine’s Day, and dear lord, is it bloody. It has some of the coolest kill scenes I can recall. There are impalements on showerheads, protruding from the corpse with water flowing like a corporate office courtyard fountain; there are severed human hearts gift wrapped in candy boxes with ghoulish poems inside and left for people to find. Also included are plenty of unique mining equipment-related deaths, which is appreciated because I can only witness so many kitchen-knife murders before growing tired of them. Mining is the name of the game, and the tools of the trade, including drill bits, mine shaft rail cars, and pickaxes, all play a gruesome role throughout the entirety of the movie. In fact, the film was so gory that it had nine entire minutes of gore cut upon its initial release. Eventually, decades later, an uncut version was released.
For any fan of gore, horror, or slashers, this is an absolute non-negotiable, must-watch. This February 14th, cuddle up next to your significant other for a nice Valentine’s Day movie because nothing says, “Happy Valentine’s Day, babe,” like a deranged lunatic in a mining mask drowning a guy in boiling hotdog water.