DVD REVIEW: MY BLOODY VALENTINE SPECIAL EDITION

BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE
STUDIO: Lions Gate
MSRP: $19.98
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 91 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
    * Brand-new Unrated version
    * Bloodlust: My Bloody Valentine and the Rise of the Slasher Film featurette
    * Bloodlines: An Interactive Horror Film History
    * Deleted Scenes
    * Heaps of Lionsgate trailers

The Pitch

“Those holiday slasher movies sure have been making a lot of cash. What say we do one of our own?”

“I got it! How about a movie about a psycho who comes back on New Year’s Eve to kill everyone!”

“Na, there’s already Terror Train. And New Year’s Evil.”

“Prom Night?”

“That’s a movie already!”

“Graduation Day?”

“That’s one, too!”

“Mother’s Day?”

*glare*

“Ah, right. Well, how about Valentine’s Day?”

“…GENIUS!”

The Humans

Cast: Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, Neil Affleck, a gaggle of silly Canadians

Director: George Mihalka

The Nutshell

A
group of twenty-somethings living in a hick Canadian town (called
Valentine Bluffs) work hard all day in a mine and have fun with their
women at night. They’re rugged, hard-edged blue collar workers who hang
out in a junkyard, live to drink and fight, and inevitably squeal with
glee when they hear news of a Valentine’s Day dance that’s in the works
for the town.

But there’s a problem! It seems that 20 years ago
on Valentine’s Day a group of miners were trapped underground by a
methane gas explosion, because everyone else was off at the dance. When
the other workers finally got around to rescuing them 6 weeks later
there was only one guy left, Harry Warden, who had survived by eating
all his co-workers. He was put in an asylum but escaped the next year
to cut out the hearts of those responsible, during yet another dance.
(This town goes APESHIT for dances.)

Warden was returned to the institution, the dances ceased, and all was well in Canada.

But now that the dances have started up again, the Mayor gets a nice little package in the mail…

COULD THE KILLER HAVE RETURNED???

The Lowdown

My Bloody Valentine is not very well known outside of its cult following, and that’s probably because it’s such a mediocre film. It steals from Halloween
pretty liberally and does nothing interesting within the basic slasher framework. In fact,
despite having watched it during my childhood, I didn’t remember much
of it.

You, as the seasoned horror fan, will immediately know
where it’s going. You’ll see the killer a mile away, know which one’s
the final girl, and laugh when characters say that they’ll be right
back. You’ll see the Sheriff trying to be this film’s Loomis but
failing miserably. You’ll know when the first person “killer cam” is
actually a friend playing a prank.

Most of the story focuses on a love triangle, which might have had
potential if these weren’t the most uninteresting characters around.
None of them are particularly likeable- they all just bitch about
things half the time and act all goofy (and, well, Canadian) the other
half.

But there’s one caveat.

The new unrated cut adds
absolute heaps of gore to the film. Every single kill had apparently been cut
down by the MPAA, and now that it’s back, you can see that the
filmmakers were going for a much harder-edged film. It’s incredibly
brutal at times, and considering this came out before the majority of
the gorier slasher films, it’s interesting to think what might
have happened if it was released in its true form.

Unfortunately
the print is scratched for these extra scenes and the color’s all off. But look on the bright
side- anytime the film starts to look crappy you can bet you’re about
to be shocked by some blood and guts!

Don’t even bother watching the theatrical cut.

So while it’s a fun enough film, there are just too many superior slasher flicks out there to watch- including, apparently, the remake.

The Package

First,
a word of warning. This disc HATES to be played. More often than not,
if you put it in a dvd player it will scream and yell and curse at you
for making it work. I tried it on 6 different dvd players and only
two of them didn’t sound like a chainsaw revving up. If some zombies had broken
down the door that second I could have decapitated them just by
wielding the dvd player and hitting the eject button. It’s not just me, either, apparently it’s a widespread problem with certain players.

But if you find one that will play it there’s a small bit of extras.

Of course the biggest treat is the unrated cut of the film, which by itself makes it worth it for fans. The 20-minute featurette
details a bit of the history of the film (that ain’t that far off from
my jokey pitch above!), and then devolves into a commercial for My
Bloody Valentine 3D. Can’t blame them for marketing, I guess.

The
deleted scenes are the ones that were excised from the film
and can be seen as part of the feature, but it’s nice to have them by
themselves to show the best bits off to friends. There’s also a nifty
little “Interactive Horror Film History” that unfortunately reads like it was written
by a fanboy’s horror blog, even if the info is correct. Plus, there’s a
ton of Lions Gate trailers, of course.

All of this in a pretty cool-looking dvd case that’s wrapped in a slipcover with the same exact art. Hate when they do that.