My Bloody Valentine catches my curiosity from the opening credits, as I discover it not only stars some guy, but also Neil Affleck!? Maybe he's... wait a minute... THERE'S A GUY NAMED ALF ON HERE TOO! HAHAHAHA!!! What was I saying? Oh yeah, our film opens with some chick bearing a heart tattoo on her titty getting impaled on a pick axe when she tries to jump some guy's gun, and I ain't talking a six shooter... well, unless he was unbearably potent... Elsewhere, a gang of closet homosexual miners get all lathered up together and drive their backfiring rust buckets into town for some drinkin' and partyin', egged on by some rampant banjo music... just another Tuesday night in the small mountain town of Valentine Bluffs (home of the BIG HEART). It's nearing Valentine's Day in Valentine Bluffs, and with a name like that, you know that everyone probably gets a little too into the festive spirit, even for such a paltry little holiday. And they do, as gaudy decorations litter the streets and the mayor receives a special gift from a secret admirer: a human heart in a gift wrapped candy box... I wish someone could read me like that!

While the kids of Valentine Bluffs get their hormones in an uproar and plan their annual Valentine's Day party, the old folks decide to jabber incessantly about an incident that happened on Valentine's Day "20 years ago". Said incident involved 5 men been buried alive as an excuse for them to hide out and have a big gay orgy in Las Vegas while the town labeled them as dead. Actually, the gay sex faked death angle didn't happen, instead there was one survivor found in the wreckage: the man named Harry. A mere 365 days later, Harry returned to Valentine Bluffs after a short stay in a mental institute , donning his miner's gas mask and picking up his pick axe once more. Only, this time it's not the walls of the mine he hopes to plant his tool in, but the chest cavities of the two supervisors whose neglectful actions were the cause of the cave-in. After mining the guys' life muscles from their ribcages, our renegade dirt digger slapped the hearts into candy boxes and shipped ‘em to the mayor. Hmmm, that reminds me, I still have to pick up Krissy's Valentine's gift...

Back to the present, we learn that the heart sent to the esteemed dignitary of Valentine Bluffs belongs, well, belonged to the chick with the tit tat (as opposed to a tic-tac) axed in the opening. Everyone in town thinks that Harry Warden has returned (though he'd be at least 40-some years old now) to exact his bloody revenge once more, though I'd have to pin it on TJ, the disgruntled coal miner who recently returned from a hiatus to NYC. Then again, he could just be a scapegoat... Hell, in my line of work you learn to suspect everyone! While we try to figure out who the real killer is, the fateful 14th crawls ever closer and some Scooby-Doo-like fact finding reveals that the asylum that supposedly held Harry oh so many years ago actually shows no records of such a patient ever being under their care... the plot, and my bile, thickens. As more and more people fall to the mad miner's pick axe, the school dance is canceled, leaving the miners to find another form of holiday entertainment, as they decide to hold a shindig (which sounds very painful if you think about someone digging into your shin) in spite of the dance's cancellation.

At this little festival, our main point of suspicion, TJ, gets into a heated competition/argument/display of dicks as he and his old "pal" Axel get into it over their mutual girlfriend, causing Axel to leave the party in his anger. As the party rages on (including the dismembered head in the fridge), a sextet of party-goers decide it'd be cool to take a field trip into the local mines. When a couple of bodies are discovered, it leads the party to dissipate while the group is still off in the mines. Worried for the safety of their friends, and probably in a competition to see who finds/fucks Sarah first, TJ and Axel don their mining outfits (so it's likely one of them) and head into the deep, dark, smelly, partially moistened hole... take from that what you will. While they split up and seek out the wayward gang, it looks like they're not the only ones searching, as the group gets an impromptu visit from the mad miner! Harry follows them through the twisting tunnels and creepy catacombs, until the crew runs into TJ... then they all split up again... I don't know any teens this stupid ANYWHERE in the country! Not even the inbred cretins of Alabama would do something as stupid, but then, I guess people only fall for this crap in the movies, and that's why we know movies are purely fantasy. One-by-one, Harry makes his moves, killing the group with his mining tools of death, giving us at least some miner (get it?) variation courtesy of a really large drill bit and a nail gun.

Soon enough, the majority of our cast has been mercifully disposed off, and it's not long before Axel appears to "save" the girls, being joined shortly by TJ once more. But, their escape will be harder than expected, when they discover that the elevator is in fact busted... as are all elevators in slasher movies. So, they do the slowest possible thing and attempt climbing their way out. When they reach the top of the shaft, their journey is impeded when they find one of their "well hung" friends at the top. This causes them to turn tail, climb all the way back down to the bottom of the shaft, and seek out an alternate route... yes, you're on the run from a maniac with a pick axe, you're on the verge of escape, but when you see the body of your dead friend hanging in the way, you decide to run and hide, back in the dark depths where the killer is likely hiding... Godz forbid you should simply push your pal's corpse aside, stroll out into the parking lot outside, and leave. Like I said, not even in Alabama...

While searching out this alternate route, our good friend Axel takes a wrong turn, falling into a 60 ft pit of water, apparently sinking right to the bottom with little or no struggle. Not a good night to be wearing your 130lb lead underwear obviously. Now all we have left are TJ, Sarah, and Patty. Could one of the girls be the killer? Or is it really TJ? We'll find out soon enough, as TJ and the girls get separated from each other. Patty soon fals to a stomach full of pick-axe, so I guess it can't be her. This leaves Sarah to escape and rejoin up with TJ once more. Meanwhile, outside the mine, the townsfolk of Valentine Bluffs have gathered, torches swinging and prepared for any hideous mad scientist created monsters that may stroll by looking to lay siege to something... As they enter the mine to save their young-ins, they witness as TJ and Sarah are chased by "Harry"... looks like TJ wasn't the killer after all. TJ, wielding a shovel, duels with Harry, who is armed with the trusty weapon that brought his to this dance, his pick-axe. During the melee that ensues, the mask is removed to reveal... Axel. Guess he didn't wear his lead jockeys tonight like we were apparently supposed to surmise. But, during the scuffle he does get a small cave-in dropped on him.

Yep, it was Axel. It turns out that the infamous Harry Warden (as opposed to the unkempt "hairy warden") died 5 years ago. It also turns out that Axel's poppa was one of the supervisors responsible for the accident that drove Harry to a short-lived life of murder. So, angry over his daddy's death, Axel donned the get up and made people believe Harry had returned. The rescue party arrives in time to see a freed Axel escape into the mine, singing like a ninny and threatening to return, this time with Harry as back-up when the two come back to kill everyone in Valentine Bluffs! Though, since I've yet to see a sequel, I really doubt there will be another visit from Axel and his pointy tools of pain.

Another simple slasher flick from the nightmare of the '80s, My Bloody Valentine can be summed up like this: it's a Halloween sequel that takes place in a mine, only the Shatner mask has been replaced with a gas mask, and there's no Donald Pleasance or any John Carpenter music. So, I guess it's more of a Friday the 13th sequel, only set in a mine... Nothing too spectacular to set it apart from many other genre flicks of the time, but I did think the special FX were nice and gore-soaked, though some of the most hardcore stuff wound up on the cutting room floor, sadly. Hey, I was expecting horrible and I got mediocre, so I guess Valentine's Day wasn't so bad this year after all :) Oh, well, this and the sex. Sex is almost always good... unless it involves a guy named Alf... uggh, there’s one for the “think unsexy thoughts” box.

The Moral of the Story: People who drink Moosehead beer are likely to wind up gored by a miner's pick-axe. Statistics don't lie my friends.

H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating:
- Campy '80s slasher fun for everyone! Unless you hate campy '80s slasher fun, in which case I think you should just pretend you're going to the bathroom, then escape out the window... careful though, we're on the 6th story here.

DVD Xtras: As with any Paramount horror DVD release, My Bloody Valentine gets the same red-headed stepchild treatment as the original releases of the Friday the 13th movies did: jack shit. Sure, it's nice to have a widescreen, cleaned up rendition of the movie to call my own, but we can't even get a trailer or some poster art stills?! Craptacular.

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: Friday the 13th Part 2 or The Prowler