Libramedi
Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant
Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Gary
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
a_chinn
Quentin Tarantino has called this his all-time favorite slasher film, and it's one I'd never seen, so I went into this with fairly high expectation. Unfortunately, this film still pales when compared to John Carpenters "Halloween" or William Lustig's "Maniac." Still, it's well made and does stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the better slasher films of the 70s and 80s; "The Town that Dreaded Sundown," "The Burning," "Sleepaway Camp," "Black Christmas," and such. The story involves a coal mining town where a maniac wearing mining gear kills hapless victim with a pickax, boiling water, shower head nozzles, and other implements that all prove deadly. The film does have a decent who-done-it mystery element to it and when the mystery is revealed at the end it's not a copout and is satisfyingly done, which is a rarity for most slasher films. Overall, I wouldn't say "My Bloody Valentine" is a classic, but it is a must see for slasher film fans.
thesar-2
Don't mine him, he still hearts you.Ahhh, I miss the 80s slashers, whether they were about the holidays or not. Funny thing is, what I complain about today's endless supply of haunted house/ghost horror films, is what I liked about most of the 80s masked killer movies: clichés and A-B-C scripts. So many clichés, too predictable. And I can't get enough of them.This one, however, followed most of the formulas of the other holiday massacres, but was a little elevated in the creative kills and gore. Some of it even shocked me today, three and a half decades later, and that says a lot for how many horror movies I've seen.So we have Harry Warden who hacked up some losers who left him for dead in a mine twenty years back. Since then, the town of, ah-hem, Valentine Bluffs, is forbidden to hold their signature dance or Harry will come back to kill, for whatever reason since he's already received his revenge. Well, like most tasteless jokes, it's been 20 years, so why not have another dance?Big mistake. Huge. The killer miner is back with a new vengeance and as in the good-ole-Jaws days, the Sheriff is more concerned with keeping the town alive than the people living within it.There's not much more to say. If you love 80s slashers like I do, this is a must see. I really think they pushed the boundaries than most of the other holiday horror flicks of that time. Heck, I love the Friday the 13th franchise, but never remember them being as, um, bloody as this one.***Final thoughts: In unusual fashion for me, I saw the remake in 2009 first and then, saw this maybe 4-5 years later. I really had a good time with the reboot, especially in (finally!) effective 3D. But, this, now being only my second time seeing it, still holds up and does warm my
HEART
of 80s nostalgia.
Roman James Hoffman
Arguably since 'Black Christmas' (1974), and certainly since 'Halloween' (1978), films in the slasher genre have been distinguished by a strict set of tropes. Namely: a horrific event kept secret by the guardians of a community; the anniversary of said event sometime later; a deranged killer that typically uses a sharp object as a weapon; a group of good-looking teens who fail to heed the warnings from the guardians and are thus killed in gloriously grotesque ways; the "final girl" – the surviving member of the group, usually female. Most slashers largely follow this template and the joy of a good slasher is not to see how they avoid these genre conventions
but rather seeing how they embrace them and embellish them. However, 'My Bloody Valentine' is bitterly disappointing in that, despite its high regard among many slasher fans, it simply trots out the format related above in the blandest and most uninspiring of ways.The film begins with the community preparing for its first Valentine's Ball in 20 years; however, the mayor is keen to play down this fact as, through a weak exposition scene, we're told that a mining accident 20 years before was caused by supervising workers neglecting their duty and going to the Ball. During the accident lots of men died and one man, Harry Warden, survived through recourse to cannibalism and, the following year, took his revenge on the two supervisors by cutting out their hearts and warning the town not to have a dance ever again. At the same time the town is preparing for its revived Valentine's Ball, a young man called TJ has just returned from a failed trip out west to find that his girlfriend Sarah has taken up with his friend, Axel, in his absence. Relations are strained but everybody is looking forward to the party which is unfortunately cancelled when people start dying again and their hearts are sent to the mayor and police chief in heart-shaped boxes. Undeterred, the youngsters decide to stage their own party (at the mine, obviously) which is when the real massacre begins.The set up sounds absolutely fine, intriguing even, but in EVERY regard the movie fails in the execution. It is paced very slowly as it takes a long time for the killings to really kick in but in the meantime the limp script fails to engage us in the characters or flesh out the back-story. In fact, half-way through I began to wonder if the woeful acting is suffocating a standard script, or if half-way decent actors are doing their best with a limp script (the screenwriter John Beaird also did 'Happy Birthday to Me' the same year which also suffers from the should've been much, much better charge). Although the answer is probably both. Either way, I couldn't have cared less as the kids are offed (apart from the older guy, Hollis, for some reason) and the reveal of the killer was rendered a dud as it was basically broadcast since the middle of the film. Inextricably entwined in this web of blandness is the total lack of atmosphere, even during the climax down the mine.The sad thing about it is that the movie very easily could've been an utter classic. The mining town setting, for example, is an outstanding idea criminally left to rot; I can imagine a Dario Argento or Wes Craven utilising the mine as a complex metaphor for the labyrinthine passageways of the subconscious mind filled with all our personal and collective dark, repressed desires. Instead, the mine is utilised as
a mine. That's just weak. Even the "final girl" trope: down the mine it looks like Sarah is doing the "facing upto extreme situations" bit and then it just falls flat and she ends up watching the two guys duke it out.Like many movies in the genre, 'My Bloody Valentine' has maintained a certain notoriety in being cut extensively in regard to the graphic kills. However, even in this regard, while the kills demonstrate some modicum of cool make-up effects, they lack the all-out Tom Savini style gore that enabled 'Friday the 13th' to rise above its limitations which, combined with the utter absence of suspense, renders the kills pedestrian in my opinion.From the notoriety and good-standing the film has with slasher fans, and the setting with the mine, I really expected to like this movie but it lacks everything a good slasher should have. Watch it if, like me, you like going through the back catalogue of Golden Age slashers, but otherwise I wouldn't lose sleep over not watching it.
atinder
I have seen few times now but I seen the remake more, this is one of few times I actually liked the remake better, Yes, the remake was my first 3D movie.This wasn't bad at all, it dose seem to be a little outdated then others movies form the same time. I thought the movie was really well paced, it was not boring at and the movie didn't drag, there were decent moment of death and they not to far apart. The deaths i didn't seem to find gory but I think most of death were the same and some were off screen.I kind of knew who the killer was in this movie, to many clues and I found it really silly, why is was the killer, it's didn't really make sense, The acting was decent for slasher movie 6 out of 10