MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981)

REVIEW / MOVIE\ FROM CANADA COMES A VALENTINE WE CAN ALL DO WITHOUT\ "MY BLOODY VALENTINE" - A FILM DIRECTED BY GEORGE MIHALKA. WRITTEN\ BY JOHN BEAIRD. STARRING PAUL KELMAN, LORI HALLIER AND NEIL AFFLECK.\ A PARAMOUNT PICTURES RELEASE. AT THE CINEMA\ 57 AND SUBURBS. RATED R.

Boston Globe - February 17, 1981

Author: Michael Blowen Globe Staff

"My Bloody Valentine," a Canadian import, should be wrapped in red crepe paper, tied with a big red bow and marked return to sender. It's a gruesome greeting card for which the sentiment might read:

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

In movies like this

there's nothing new.

The story takes place in Valentine Bluffs, the little town with a big heart. It's a pleasant mining village on the Atlantic seacoast. The residents are conventional citizens who drink beer on Friday night and go to church on Sunday. They live a simple life. But Valentine Bluff, like every other hamlet in these slice and dice movies, is steeped in gore lore.

It seems that 20 years earlier, two mine superintendents decided to head off to the St. Valentine's Day Dance without checking the gas level in the shafts. Five men were asphyxiated and the survivor, Harry Warden, subsisted on their remains. Poor Harry. After a year in the state mental hospital, this reluctant cannibal returns to Valentine Bluff and, with the skill of a veteran miner, hacks out the hearts of the two superintendents with a pick axe. He places the hearts in a frilly, heart-shaped box and delivers them to the townspeople with a warning to stop the St. Valentine's Day Dance.

After 19 years, the townspeople decide to bury the past and hold the dance again. Shame, shame. Obviously, these country folk haven't seen "Prom Night," "Terror Train," "Friday, the 13th," "Silent Scream" or " Halloween ." They don't realize that slice-and-dice vengeance has a longer half-life than nuclear fallout.

They begin to get the message when the mayor receives a box of candy with a real heart inside and the owner of the town's laundromat is found spun dry in one of her own machines.

Film fans who relish the sight of blood dripping from the sides of a candy box; who delight in being "grossed out" by rib cages pried open with an axe or, for some unimaginable reason, rejoice in seeing a human heart boiling in water with a dozen hot dogs, might like receiving "My Bloody Valentine."

However, the direction, acting and production values are so inept that you begin rooting for the killer. Valentine Bluffs would be a much nicer town without the vile little teenagers that the killer bludgeons to death.

This Valentine's Day massacre is one that we could do without.