My Bloody Valentine [Blu-ray] [1981] [US Import]

I finally got to see the new cut of My Bloody Valentine as 3 mins of gore have been re-instated in the movie in the Lionsgate re-released DVD of this classic. If you are wondering where the rest of the 6 missing minutes are as there was 9 minutes of gore removed. Sadly it turns out the film was ruined and those scenes are unfortunately detorerated beyond repair so that the reason why they haven't included them on the new DVD but most of the gore is back and makes the forgotten classic a more remembered one. Don't go thinking that the remake follows the story of this one as the remake is based very loosely and different in many ways. However if you just want to see this for the classic it is then read on...

The inhabitants of Valentine Bluffs are planning their annual Valentine's Day dance but this year they are warned not to otherwise people will die. Naturally the young adults don't listen and the bodies start to pile up one after another in various gruesome and gory ways. I loved this film as it shows some innovativeness with the way the forewarned adults are killed, some deaths that had never been used and shown during the horrors of the 80's movies are shown and done well right here on the screen as the mystery of the miner slowly unfolds. This has the right to become a cult horror classic as this was one of the great horror movies to come out of Paramount studios at that time First Friday the 13th then My Bloody Valentine and since then the friday the 13th sequels and now Friday the 13th remake. The acting in this is good and makes you wonder whatever happened to the principal stars of this film as they seem to have disappeared into thin air. Shame I'd like to see Neil Affleck and Paul Kelman again in another movie. They drove the movie as friends/now rivals Axel and Tom (who was called TJ in this but you can tell he was Tom. There are the occasional plothole in this which the analiser of movies will probably post up on a site but me I don't care, it's a movie plain and simple. My philosophy is that if they didn't write it in the script the reason why a character did a certain thing then who gives a damn. My Bloody valentine has been released with all the gore and it's both a great horror to watch and also a classic by horror standards nowadays so get to see it as soon as you can or watch it over Valentine's day and scare your gf to death and plz "Be my bloody valentine"

One more word: If you see the DVD with the hand drawing a heart in blood on a window, be warned this is the heavily edited MPAA version and none of the gore will be seen. Get the version by Lionsgate with the miner on the front holding a bloody heart shaped chocolate box as this is the one that has the gore in all of it's reinstated glory, but you must choose the extended cut on the menu in order to see it.
"Sarah, be my bloody valentine."

Wow, this is a really great looking BD. For those who don't know: After many years this movie can now be seen in it's original unrated Version, sure you will notice that the new integrated scenes are not of the same quality, but what the hell, now they are here and this moves My Bloody Valentine from a sleeping pill to a really good slasher movie. Important for us here in Europe: The BD is codefree, so come and get some of this great 80's feeling again.

In the small mining town of Valentine Bluffs, two foremen leave early to get to the town's Valentine's Day dance. Five workers remained in the mine when a methane gas explosion traps the five in a shaft, six weeks later a rescue team find that there's only one survivor. Harry Warden has survived by eating his coworkers and appears to have lost his mind. After spending a year in a mental hospital, Harry returns to town and takes his revenge by brutally murdering the guilty foremen. He ripped out their hearts and put them in Valentine's candy boxes, along with a warning that if a Valentine's party is ever held in Valentine Bluffs again, the murders would continue.

20 years later and with Harry Warden being nothing but a distant memory, the town is getting ready for their first Valentine's Day party since the killings. It isn't long before a maniac dressed in mining gear is killing the townsfolk, in a similar brutal fashion to those 20 years earlier. Has Harry Warden kept his promise to return and kill anybody celebrating the 14th of February?

The mostly Canadian cast do a really good job, Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier and Neil Affleck are all believable enough as the main stars and the three involved in the film's love triangle. Keith Knight is the most likable of the group, he plays the slightly robust coworker with the bushy moustache. George Mihalka directs confidently and keeps the movie going at a great pace. The atmosphere is great, they filmed it in a real town and in a real mine thousands of feet under ground. The special effects that were unseen until this 2009 release are excellent and really realistic, it's a shame that such excellent work was unseen for nearly 30 years. Quentin Tarantino stated this is his all time favourite slasher film.

Lionsgate's 2009 special edition on blu-ray looks fantastic, and best of all it's region free. From the opening scene down in the dark, grimy mine I was instantly impressed by how clean and detailed the picture was. I was impressed by how nice the Paramount region 2 bare bones dvd looked, but this blu-ray looks far better than I could ever have imagined a low budget Canadian slasher film from 1981 could look. Virtually all the speckles and dirt has been removed, there's very little grain even in the darkest scenes, the blacks are really dark and inky and the colours are vibrant and much more visually pleasing. If it wasn't for the fact it's so obviously the early 80's, the film could pass as a pretty recent film. 10 out of 10 for the picture quality.

Despite how brilliant the film now looks, it wasn't the main reason I decided I had to get the region 1 special edition. I really wanted to see the added "gore" scenes that had previously been cut out, I wasn't disappointed. I'm not exaggerating when I say that every death scene in the film had been cut, now all the death scenes are bloody and brutal and the film finally lives up to it's name. There's pickaxes being pushed through torso's and one through the face with the pickaxe coming out through the eye socket. The launderette scene is extended and much more gruesome, the shower room scene is much longer and is now a much more taut scene. Nail gun to the face, a body in a noose whose head gets ripped off from it's shoulders leaving the decapitated head swinging in the noose and an important scene with an arm being hacked off with a knife. The two rumours for the film being so heavily cut are that Paramount came in for alot of criticism the year earlier for Friday The 13th and decided to tone it down, the second being that John Lennon was killed shortly before the film's release and according to Mihalka, there was a major backlash against movie violence in the wake of his death. Either way, there's no doubting that the film is much better with the gore back in.

There's not as many extras as I had hoped for, but that was secondary to the improved picture quality and reinstated gore anyway. There's a 20 minute documentary about slasher films leading up to My Bloody Valentine, for some reason half way through it becomes all about the recent remake and the last 10 minutes seems like it should have been an extra on the remake. All of the cut scenes are here as extras with optional introductions by a member of the cast or crew before each scene is shown. Bloodlines is an interactive horror film history with notes about all the different sub genres of horror films, and a trailer. Decent extras but i'd have personally loved a commentary.

My Bloody Valentine is just about the best of all the Halloween and Friday The 13th "Knock offs" from the early to mid 80's. Better than Sleepaway Camp, Happy Birthday To Me, The Burning. Prom Night, Madman and most of the Halloween or Friday sequels. All films I own and love, but i've always had a soft spot for My Bloody Valentine. If you're a fan of My Bloody Valentine and have always liked it like I did, but thought it was rather tame compared to most of the other slasher film's of the time, this version shows it was just as gruesome as the others and is an absolute must own. A big upgrade from the Paramount region 2 release, and the front cover is a million times better. The cover with the hand and the blood heart is horrendous, the new version has the killer in his mining gear holding a heart shaped candy box and looks brilliant.