The last time I saw the original My Bloody Valentine, I was a kid. To be honest, I barely remembered the film. I saw bits and pieces of it over the last few years on the now-defunct Monsters HD, but had yet to see the film in its entirety since the mid 1980s.
I finally can say that I managed to sit through this one, and there is no time like the present to sit back and watch a true horror gem come to life for the first time on Blu-ray.
My Bloody Valentine is one of those films that brought the slasher genre to life in the 1980’s. The film is about a small mining town called Valentine, in whose mines six employees were killed twenty years ago due to their supervisors’ errors. One man, Harry Warden, survived the many weeks it took for a rescue team to dig them out. Harry survived by eating his dead co-workers. After receiving some medical and psychological help, Harry comes back to town with a pick ax and starts killing those responsible for what happened in the mines. He blames the town’s Valentine’s Day dance for the reason his supervisors was so eager to shut down the mine. Now, almost twenty years later, the town has decided to put the past behind them and once again hold the dance. However, the past has come back to haunt them, and Harry has returned. The only way he will stop killing is if there is no celebration. However, a group of young adults who work in the mine decide to hold a party of their own in the mine’s rec room. Is it Harry who is waiting for them, or has a new killer emerged in his place?
I give this film credit for being just a simply-made slasher film that is effective in every way. Unlike the many slasher films of today which all seem to copy the same formula, My Bloody Valentine actually has a good story that is evenly paced and is full of characters to whom the audience can relate. The film has its moments where the acting can be somewhat ridiculous and can be serious. It seems that slasher films in the 80’s had all the same stock characters. It is really up to the actor to give those characters a new spin. However, it always seems like as much has the actors try, they still give that generic horror character performance, so you just have to go along with it and hope for the best. That is just the way all the performances in this film came off as, very generic and predictable.
Where I can give the film a lot of credit is in its production value. The film was actually shot almost entirely on location. The mines in the film are real mines. In fact, when the townspeople found out that their mines were being used for a film, they actually had the mines cleaned up. This, however, defeated the purpose the mines were chosen by the filmmakers, and they actually spent a lot of the film’s budget to get the mines back to the original shape. It is actually a very graphic horror film that really went all out and left none of the violence and graphic content behind.
If you own the DVD, the Blu-ray disc has the same features, including the film in both its original theatrical version and the uncut version. The disc also contains the featurette. “Bloodlust: My Bloody Valentine and the Rise of the Slasher Film,” and “Bloodlines: An Interactive Horror Film History.” I found this feature to be a great. It goes over all the different sub-genres of horror as well as some of the very popular horror films that are part of the genre’s history. There are also the deleted scenes with Director, Cast and Special Effects Designer introductions. The film is presented in 1080p Widescreen High Definition with its original monaural audio in Dolby digital with English and Spanish subtitles and English SDH for the hearing impaired.
My Bloody Valentine is a great horror film, and I even enjoyed the new remake just as much as I did the original. However, while I find both films to be equally as good, the original has the better ending. My only complaint about this Blu-ray disc is that if you watch it with the deleted scenes added into the original cut, the deleted footage is not presented in HD. It still has the grain from the original film and it kind of loses its appeal as a horror film when all the shots and colors don’t correctly match up. Overall, this Blu-ray disc is full of some very good features and is well worth the buy if you’re a fan of this film.
– Horror Bob
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
