Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

edwardrevans Partly i think it did, however on the other hand maybe it didn't. Some of the characters where killed off camera which is obviously a censorship issue which if made today probably wouldn't happen. We also had a couple of characters Howard and Sylvia who had little introduction and then promptly slaughtered.The other issue i had with My bloody valentine was the thin motive the killer had we get a brief reveal at the end but is hardly satisfying.Your common or garden slasher movie the killer has his trademark kill, here victims are dispatched using various ingenious methods, which we are not allowed to see.Now that the movie is over 30 years old it needs a re submission to the censors like others of the time and the cuts re-addressed to make the movie more complete.

Steve Pulaski NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Bethany Rose for the "Steve Pulaski Sees It." Perhaps if released in the late 1980's, or even the 1990's, George Mihalka's My Bloody Valentine would've been a film many slasher fans would've sneered at; it would've likely been a film dismissed as "more of the same" in a genre unwilling to subvert its more predictable principles to become something greater. Being released in 1981, however, when the slasher film was still a fairly new concept, My Bloody Valentine is actually a very significant for the time period. It's one of the few films of that era that didn't spawn a legion of sequels, let alone even a followup, and managed to tell its story and wrap it up without the feeling that it needed to build a cult of support and development around its pickaxe-wielding killer. It's a film that tells its story and leaves its mark.The story is set in the small town of Valentine Bluffs, which is preparing for a Valentine's Day dance, the first in man years. A working class town where most men work as coal miners, the Valentine's Day dance was a popular event in the town before a mining accident occurred twenty years before. On-the-job negligence resulted in five men being trapped underground amidst dangerous level of methane gas. While four of the miners died, one survivor named Harry Warden survived through cannibalistic acts and was eventually rescued. A year later, after never being seen again, Harry exacted revenge on the supervisors that were responsible for the accident, killing them both and slicing through their chests to extract their hearts, which he left in Valentine boxes to be found; he warned Valentine Bluffs never to hold another dance again.With Harry being locked in an asylum and a new generation of spry young kids wanting to commemorate Valentine's Day with a dance, the town complies and hosts another dance. Once again, as foreshadowed by a few of the older townspeople, murders begin happening by a man in a gas-mask wielding a pickaxe; Harry has presumably returned to avenge a town that has disobeyed his only wish.My Bloody Valentine is rather dark and methodical for a slasher film, unwilling to commit to a more light-hearted aura like many of its successors would. Its fabulously paced score of synths and melodic music, composed by Paul Zaza creates actual suspense in conjunction with Mihalka's direction, which is filled with original camera-angles. Consider the closeups we see of the murderer, and the utterly gruesome deaths we see with an unblinking eye. Mihalka was going for something completely frightening and unapologetically terrifying with the mood he creates here, and it isn't until one sees this film after watching more comical entries into the genre that they realize what a breakthrough this film was, staying true to slasher films' original roots of being frightening, atmospheric, and tense.The narrative is just believable enough to keep one watching, as it's not crafted in total randomness, and the deaths are just brutal enough to warrant some legitimate scares or jolts. Seasoned horror fans and cult followers will take note that pressures from the MPAA forced Mihalka to edit and scale-back his film significantly in the gore-department, and Mihalka's original cut, despite being filmed, has never been released to the public. An extended cut was released on DVD to coincide with the film's remake in 2009, adding three minutes to the film's original version, despite never releasing the completely untampered original.With that, My Bloody Valentine is a particularly strong slasher because, for one, it recognizes its genre and respectfully handles its scares and its material, and secondly, plays along with the tropes by making this a heavily stylized slasher in aesthetic and atmosphere. It manages to be gruesome quite often, but elegant throughout, and with such a brutal concept, it's surprising that the result is so quaint.Starring: Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, and Neil Affleck. Directed by: George Mihalka.

Dom Nickson Spoiler Alert!!! The Version I had didn't have any gore which took away my happiness of getting the film but even when I saw the gore on Youtube I was not impressed with the crappy looking gore. There was only one kill I found interesting and that was when the guy got it through the eye ball. The characters were unlikable! The script didn't make any sense at the very end. The movie was a complete drag! And I didn't care if any of them died. In my opinion I liked the remake a little bit better because it has a very interesting twist unlike this movie, you know what happened when Harry Warden was alive, and you got all the gore you could ever want. I just didn't like the 3-d because it really is an eyesore when you have to look into glasses to see. Overall I give it a 1 out of 10 for that brutal kill through the eyeball.

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.