MY BLOODY VALENTINE (Blu-ray; Lionsgate)

Mike LoManaco

Studio Name: Lionsgate
MPAA Rating: R
Disc/Transfer Information: 1080p High Definition; Widescreen 1.85:1; Region 1 (U.S.) Disc Release
Tested Audio Track: English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (tested at core DTS stream)
Director: Patrick Lussier
Starring Cast: Tom Atkins, Jaime King, Kerr Smith

GET YOUR HEART BROKEN.


LoMANACO'S PLOT ANALYSIS:

You want to know the most interesting parts, in a nutshell, of this hoopla-infused pickax gorefest? One, the inclusion of the great Tom Atkins (of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York and Halloween III: Season of the Witch fame) in another horror film; two, the possibility of an all-new Halloween mask to rival those worn by legendary horror icons Michael and Jason with a mining helmet and suit; and finally, the time devoted in this film to showing a completely naked blonde in nothing but high heeled sandals – sexy stripper-like belly button piercings and all – running around the offices of a truck stop motel, shrieking and screaming her head off as the “killer” in this brandishes a pickax…I mean, we see everything on the sexy “Irene” as she begs for mercy stark naked, eventually hiding behind the box spring of the bed she was under as our killer attempts to stab her through the springs with his ax. Horror, at least on paper, doesn’t get much better than this, folks. I could also perhaps include on this list the appearance of a freaky midget motel owner with huge fake **** who really gets hers by our ax fiend…indeed, annoying midgets who are slaughtered unmercifully by serial killers in creative ways is entertainment all by itself.

Ahhh…but what can be said about My Bloody Valentine that hasn’t already? I realize I’m a bit late to the party in watching this much talked about little flick by Lionsgate and director Pat Lussier, yet it arrived on my desk for review just this week on Blu-ray. As everyone already knows, the film was shot in both 3D and 2D versions, and both cuts are on the disc. This will be a review of the standard 2D version because I didn’t have the glasses to view the three dimensional version; the copy I received from one of my editors did not include them. Just about the entire planet Earth has most likely seen My Bloody Valentine, so let me see if I can get my facts straight here as I attempt to make some sense of its plot.

Firstly, there haven’t been many good horror films dealing with the creepy underworld of underground mines, save for little classic shockers such as The Boogens or perhaps Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift. Sure, the remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes had a good deal of its environment taking place in mines where the radioactive freaks lived, but the film didn’t really concentrate on the mines themselves…in My Bloody Valentine, we have these dark caverns almost taking on a life of their own, becoming as much a central character in the film as 112 Ocean Avenue is in The Amityville Horror. The concept of a “holiday massacre” for horror films has been done before, but Lussier tells a story here of a town named Harmony which has a rather bloody connection to Valentine’s Day. The film opens with shocking, abrupt clips of newspaper announcements and voiceovers explaining the backstory of a mining accident which put one Harry Warden in a coma, and apparently, Warden awoke from the coma to go bat **** and murder 22 people with his pickax, dressed in full miner’s clothing…helmet, breathing mask and all. In the continuing flashback sequence, we see Tom Atkins, who was sheriff of the town at the time, along with a deputy, who trap Warden in one of the mines just before he was apparently going to murder a prominent townsperson’s son. Atkins and his deputy blow Warden away, and the story was supposed to end there, as the legend had the insane Warden buried somewhere in that mine.

The film then picks up 10 years later, where the same kinds of murders are taking place once again in Harmony – the appearance of a killer, once more, dressed in mining clothes and brandishing an ax, has been slicing and dicing the local youth and anyone else that seems to be on his list. Now, Atkins has retired as sheriff and a new young gun Leo DeCaprio lookalike (Kerr Smith) has taken his place. A lot of Dawson’s Creek-style nonsense goes on here, with the sheriff’s wife being the ex of the kid who’s back in town to sell the mines because he has inherited them (who was saved from Warden 10 years prior by Atkins) and the sheriff himself having an affair with the sexy co-worker of his wife’s, a young tarty little thing that parades around in miniskirts and boy-short panties and meets the sheriff privately for mid-afternoon romps behind the wife’s back.

As body counts begin to pile up, local townspeople suspect Harry Warden has returned from the dead to finish what he started 10 years prior, but the sheriff suspects the kid who’s back in town to sell the mines is behind all these killings…and the kid suspects the same of the sheriff. Inbetween this lunacy, we are treated to a fantastic scene involving the aforementioned “Irene,” who is a blonde tramp doing some truck driver in a local truck stop motel, riding and bucking on top of him like a **** gone wild – as she looks up into the overhead mirror of the cheap motel room to admire her body and take in the orgasmic pleasure she’s experiencing. The scene is pretty wild. But even better is when the tramp runs stark naked out of the motel room after the truck driver she’s just gotten boned from, to snatch back a recorded video of their romp at the motel that he’s taped…with **** bouncing and all, Irene watches in horror as her fling is hit with an ax from inside his truck, right through his head. She’s chased by the killer dressed like a miner through the motel’s offices, where she’s finally impaled on one of the sharp ends of his ax – before this, the midget motel manager is struck by the ax murderer also, stabbed in the head and flung into the ceiling tiles. Good stuff.

One of the more interesting kills also involves Tom Atkins – but for those who haven’t seen the film yet, I won’t give it away. While it wouldn’t be difficult to continue providing an in-depth plot analysis of My Bloody Valentine, in a nutshell, the people of Harmony begin to get offed by a masked killer swinging a pickax and piling up bodies in the same fashion as Harry Warden did 10 years earlier…the new sheriff that looks like DeCaprio suspects it’s the wife’s ex who’s back in town to shut the mines and sell them (to the town’s dismay), while ex-sheriff Tom Atkins and his retirees don’t want to think it’s Warden come back from the dead somehow (because they’re convinced they shot and killed him dead in the mines those years earlier – and claim they know where they buried him to prove it)…further, there’s a sub-plot involving the sheriff and the sexy young co-worker who assists his wife at her grocery store who are having an affair, but this isn’t so much an integral part of the plot as it is a preparation buffer setting up the scene in which the masked killer gets into the sheriff’s wife’s grocery store and stalks both the wife and the young girl. And so, My Bloody Valentine boils down to a who-dun-it spiraling towards the two main suspects – the sheriff and the kid who’s there to sell the mines off. The sheriff claims the kid has been in a mental institution and can therefore be suspected of doing these Warden copycat murders; the wife’s ex, on the other hand, tells her not to trust her husband…who is telling the truth? Is there any validity to the sheriff’s claims that this kid is mentally unstable – and could be making all this up to cover his own **** in the murders? A final confrontation sequence between the sheriff, his wife and the kid takes place in the tunnels of the mines as each attempts to place the blame on the other, trying to get the sheriff’s wife to shoot the other one…but is that Harry Warden looming in the darkness of the mine, coming up behind the sheriff’s wife?

While interesting, My Bloody Valentine just wasn’t memorable to me – and I am aware of all the internet hoopla surrounding this film; the kill sequences are sometimes shocking, yet not so over-the-top as the rumors would lead you to believe – the gore isn’t nearly on the level of, say, Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror. The concept had great potential, as so many films today do but unfortunately fall flat, what with the idea of an insane killer from a creepy mine returning to butcher the people of a small town, yet I don’t know…something just didn’t satisfy, especially at the end. The suggested “mental illness” analysis regarding the entire “return-of-Harry-Warden” thing morphed into a disappointing ending, in my opinion, but it was indeed an entertaining rental. I also failed to mention earlier that much of the screenplay and action revolves around the Valentine’s Day holiday…the references to Warden’s murder spree, the giving of chocolate hearts to the sheriff by his hot young mistress, the placement of bloody human hearts in the empty chocolate heart boxes by the killer; indeed, it seemed like an attempt at resurrecting the “holiday horror” sub-genre.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE REVIEW, CONTINUED BELOW...

Mike LoManaco

MY BLOODY VALENTINE REVIEW CONTINUED...

Interestingly, director Lussier shot Valentine in unique fashions, with the typical Halloween and Friday the 13th-like murder setup sequences replaced by rapidly-occurring, quick-hit kill shots that waste no time in making their points. With most “slasher” films, there’s an eventual tension buildup, sometimes taking the POV of the killer and finally culminating with the coming murder sequence – but most of the time, we’ve learned to become totally prepared for it. Here, the kill sequences occur almost out of nowhere, where you, as the viewer expect some delay or buildup, but the masked mine killer steps out of the darkness and drives his ax into someone’s eye without hesitation, creating an almost surreal sense of action in the film. This is something I’ll get to in the video analysis section, below.

VIDEO QUALITY ANALYSIS:

Okay. As I mentioned in the beginning, I sampled the standard 2D version of My Bloody Valentine because for one, my copy didn’t come with 3D glasses, and two, after playing the 3D version for a few moments, the distortions on the screen were so heady and tactile because I wasn’t watching with glasses (or on genuine 3D-ready equipment) I needed to stop the disc and go back to switch on the 2D version. That didn’t stop me from having a good time with some of the visuals here – there are standout cheesy moments in the film where I was able to make out exactly where the 3D effects were placed (such as an eyeball coming towards me or Tom Atkin’s exploding jaw hurtling toward the screen) and while not as effective as they may have been in true 3D, they entertained in a vintage way.

Beyond the 2D/3D palate, My Bloody Valentine comes from Lionsgate – a studio moving up in the ranks from little cult vault to constant releaser – in a 1.85:1 1080p transfer on Blu-ray, which filled my rear projection screen via overscan. The picture quality was marred by a dark, colorless temperature given to the film, which renders the overall image bleak and cold. But this is not of any fault of the transfer – undoubtedly, this is the way My Bloody Valentine was made to look. There was a striking lack of rich, bold colors in the film, even in outdoor sequences, where the greens of grass and foliage appeared dull and eerily “real.” Detail levels were good, and for such a dark film that takes place, mostly, in underground mines, there was solid shadow detail.

But what struck me most about this Blu-ray transfer was the somewhat surreal, almost video-looking action that accompanied many scenes. Intentional again, no doubt, there are sequences in the film that exhibited (on Blu-ray) a look in which the characters were moving in an almost “floaty,” strangely erratic fashion that’s difficult to put into words – it wasn’t really like that “film that looks like video” effect that some LCD displays give, but more like a “superimposed” judder to the motion of characters that really didn’t look like film at all. These scenes switched back and forth between actual film-like images throughout the disc’s running time, but some of them were very startling. One in particular was early on, when the group of kids are sitting outside the mine’s entrance and they’re picked off one by one by the killer – there are moments outside the mine in which the kids appear to be moving in an extremely “non-film-like” manner. While I am a supporter and fan of the “film looks like video” effect which changes material played back on 120Hz displays, this effect, or style, in Valentine bordered on fascinating yet sometimes distracting.

AUDIO QUALITY ANALYSIS:

Even “dumbed down” to a 5.1 core DTS signal, the English 7.1 Master Audio mix accompanying Valentine was nearly demo material. The LFE on this track was startling at times, pounding at my walls with a resilience that rivals most if not all of the Blu-ray releases featuring DTS-HD Master Audio tracks. Dialogue was as sharp as the end of a pickax, with no intelligibility issues, and surround activity and direction was superb at certain times. While effects such as shotguns going off should have placed the ping of bullets all over the soundstage, they were limited, surprisingly, to the front channels. But that’s really the only negative comment I could make about the Master Audio mix on My Bloody Valentine – one standout moment came during Tom Atkin’s unfortunate demise in the film, where the flying parts of his…(well, I am not going to give too much of that one away)…are catapulted into the surround channels in such a startling fashion you could almost sense those blood and guts splashings occurred directly behind you in your living room.

There were moments during the auditioning of this soundtrack in which I found myself saying “Here…this is what high resolution audio should sound like…” and this began from the opening Master Audio logo screen – there’s a moment towards the end of the film in which a character comes talking out of the left surround channel in an echoey mine, and this effect was so shockingly real, I actually thought someone had walked into my room behind me. This was a real treat in the audio department, and I sincerely hope more studios release future titles with this kind of attention given to the high resolution tracks.

MY RECOMMENDATIONS:

Definitely in the spirit for this time of year, give it a rental spin if you haven’t seen it as of yet.

As always, thank you for reading, and please fire away with any questions or comments!

kevhed72

Ohhh, man. I thought you were reviewing the band My Bloody Valentine, not the movie....

KrazyMofo24

Do you publish your reviews anywhere?

Mike LoManaco

kevhed72 wrote: »

Ohhh, man. I thought you were reviewing the band My Bloody Valentine, not the movie....

Sorry, Kev...no, this was the horror film...:(

Mike LoManaco

KrazyMofo24 wrote: »

Do you publish your reviews anywhere?

Indeed; is there a particular reason you would like to know?

Sherardp

I saw this in 3d mode on my 126" screen, theres a scene where the axe murderer throws his axe towards the screen and it is intense. Damn near made duck but made me flinch for real. AHAHA. Decent flick.

Mike LoManaco

Sherardp wrote: »

I saw this in 3d mode on my 126" screen, theres a scene where the axe murderer throws his axe towards the screen and it is intense. Damn near made duck but made me flinch for real. AHAHA. Decent flick.

Awesome, Sherar! I wish I could have watched the 3D version...:(

danz1906

Thanks once again for a great review Mike, I will rent the Blu-ray this weekend!

concealer404

Mike LoManaco wrote: »

Indeed; is there a particular reason you would like to know?

I'd like to know as well, so i don't have to wade through pages of this forum to try to find your reviews sometimes.

Mike LoManaco

danz1906 wrote: »

Thanks once again for a great review Mike, I will rent the Blu-ray this weekend!

You are very welcome, Danz! Thanks for reading!

danz1906

Mike LoManaco wrote: »

You are very welcome, Danz! Thanks for reading!

No problem Mike,Keep em coming:D

Mike LoManaco

I'm working on one right now for the Affleck/Craven/Damon gorefest Feast on DVD; have it up soon!

Mike LoManaco

concealer404 wrote: »

I'd like to know as well, so i don't have to wade through pages of this forum to try to find your reviews sometimes.

Thanks Concealer,

I am going to talk to moderation and administration for the site regarding possibly getting a section devoted just for everyone's film reviews (separate from music) so people can just go there to find them easier.

F1nut

Mike LoManaco wrote: »

I am going to talk to moderation and administration for the site regarding possibly getting a section devoted just for everyone's film reviews (separate from music) so people can just go there to find them easier.

The last thing we need here is another section.

strider

F1nut wrote: »

The last thing we need here is another section.

Maybe not. Is there a way to put an entire section on Ignore?

George Grand

strider wrote: »

Maybe not. Is there a way to put an entire section on Ignore?

I'd love to find out. Maybe we can also pile all the newbs into one section, let them have at each other for a few months before they can get out into the general pop.

reeltrouble1

Unfortunately I was stupid enough to pay American Money to rent and watch this filthy trash. I found the audio track very weak when played on a reference system. Well in every life some rain must fall, hopefully an anvalanche will bury this one.

RT1

gtu2004

can you watch the 3D using a normal projector or LCD screen with the 3D glasses?

Mike LoManaco

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

Unfortunately I was stupid enough to pay American Money to rent and watch this filthy trash. I found the audio track very weak when played on a reference system. Well in every life some rain must fall, hopefully an anvalanche will bury this one.

RT1

That's VERY surprising regarding your findings of the audio track -- if anything, it was the element that saved this title IMO.