“Happy f&*king Valentine’s Day.”
An old theatrical gimmick is given new life in a Valentine’s Day gorefest. Expect much to be thrust at you towards the screen as Harry Warden returns to the small town of Harmony to extract his revenge.
A mine accident occurs because the mine owner’s son Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles) forgets to bleed some lines. Five miners are trapped in the mine. However when the rescue crews finally make it to the trapped men they find four corpses and the survivor Harry Warden (Richard John Walters) had killed the others to reserve his oxygen.
Warden slips into a coma, but awakens a year after the accident and slaughters everyone at the hospital. Hanninger and a group of his friends, Axel (Kerr Smith), his girlfriend Irene (Betsy Rue), and Hanninger’s girlfriend Sarah (Jaime King) included, are partying in an abandoned mine shaft. Warden shows up in full miner’s garb and slaughters many of the teens with an axe.
Axel, Irene, and Sarah get away and Sheriff Burke (Tom Atkins) arrives just in time to keep Warden from killing Tom. Ten more years pass and Tom returns to Harmony, he left without a word and has been estranged from his friends and family. His father has died and he has inherited the mine.
Things have changed much in those ten years. Alex is town sheriff and has married Sarah and they have a son. Alex is also having an affair with Megan (Megan Boone), a girl who works at Sarah’s grocery store, and has just found out that she’s pregnant. Tom meets up with Ben (Kevin Tighe), who still works at the mine, and wants to speedily sign the papers selling the mine and get out of town.
Unhappily, he’ll have to wait till Monday and goes to the local dive of a motel when he sees Irene humping a truck driver in the room next door to his. Tom is not the only one to return to Harmony as a killer in a miner’s outfit is also back and swinging a pickaxe (in thrilling 3D).
Jason did it so why not Harry Warden? 3D and horror movies are no strangers. The aforementioned Friday the 13th tried the gag and Vincent Price took audiences to the House of Wax back in the 1950s. My Bloody Valentine is a remake of the 1981 slasher that famously ran afoul of the MPAA rating system.
If anything we can thank the remake for getting the uncut version of that film out, though it seems a little tame in comparison. I don’t think this film had much trouble from the MPAA, but it does lay on the gore much more than the original.
When Harry chops his way through Harmony General Hospital, killing 22 men, women, and children, he creates a bloody mess and it’s done up with some nasty FX. Not to mention the amount of grue that flies towards the screen to take advantage of the 3D aspect of the movie.
I enjoyed the film, but fans of the original might take some umbrage to the plot changes. I got sorta confused at the beginning, okay it was a year in a coma and then ten years later, right? The redo also doesn’t really play up the Valentine’s angle. It was much emphasized that the cave-in was on the titular holiday and get associated with the massacre so much that the town didn’t celebrate it anymore.
That emphasis really isn’t in the new film, or I missed it. Jensen Ackles takes some time off Supernatural to play a different character as the villain appears to be pursuing him instead of vice versa. The cast is youthened over the original one as is the habit of current remakes. All in all it was a fun ride and the 3D is a cool addition.
My Bloody Valentine is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Disc one features the 3D version on one side and the 2D version on the other side. You also get four pairs of glasses. Special features include a commentary by director Patrick Lussier and co-writer Todd Farmer.
There’s also the 2 minute theatrical trailer and trailers for other Lionsgate releases. Disc two features the 7 minute “Deep Inside My Bloody Valentine” making of, the 5 minute “Sex, Blood, and Screams” adds more on the FX, 14 deleted and extended scenes, an alternate ending, and a 2 minute gag reel.
My Bloody Valentine works well in 3D and offers some jump scares and guts. The redo may mess with the characters enough that fans of the original might not like the tampering. I’ll give it one star for each D.
My Bloody Valentine 3D is now available at Amazon . It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a June 8th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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