Working in a Coal Mine

Finally a 3-D movie transports us back to the 80’s Slasher Flick.
by
Morgan P Salvo
3 ½ stars.


3D is the perfect way to remake an 80’s slasher flick. My Bloody Valentine in3-D rules! With newer, higher-tech 3D glasses, soon as your eyes adjust everything starts looking more realistic. It’s a mess-with-your-mind effect. The initial scenes cause a voyeuristic wax museum feel then soon become hyper-realistic. Sitting around a diner counter, actor Kevin Tighe looked so real I expected him to walk up, shake my hand and say, “Hey Salvo, how ya likin’ the movie so far?”
Other things get more noticeable too - smeary blood spattered wall, people’s complexions, fog on windshields, hell even tire treads stand out. Mainly gore has never looked more eye-popping gruesome, especially when someone’s ribcage is split open. Okay, enough about 3D, let’s talk about the movie itself. It’s a pumped up remake of the drearily hacked together 1981 flick of the same name and it’s a gazillion times better. The original was so dark that you couldn’t even see what’s going on. Well that’s all been changed. There’s nothing you don’t see in MBV 3-D.
We get the folk lore and dirty secrets of Harmony, Pennsylvania, its disastrous coal mine murders, and the boogey man legend of miner/killer Harry Warden. He kills his victims on Valentines’ Day (or thereabouts) and gives some special people hearts he has yanked out of other special peoples’ chests, delivered in a nice candy gram. There’s also the requisite soap opera love triangle between the sheriff (Kerr Smith), his wife (Jamie King) and the dude she still loves (Jensen Ackles) who returns to town after 10 years. But all this is mere filler. It’s all about waiting to see if that pick axe is gonna land in your forehead or not.
Chuckin’ the pick axe really works in 3-D. Those natural reflexes kick in and you find yourself ducking from the object hurled towards your vision. Pulling out all the stops, a shotgun points right at your face, guts and blood whiz by your head, bloody pick-axe drips blood in front of your nose—you get the idea. It’s the “House of Horror” carnival ride you’ve never had.
Where Bloody Valentine really succeeds is in its build up of suspense to scare the bejeezuz outta ya. What distinguishes this from all the lame remake slasher flicks of late is that it really captures the spirit of the 70s-80s genre and just powerhouses it with superb special effects. Not slacking on the gore or nudity, everything is plucked directly from the slasher handbook. A heartfelt quote is, “You can always go back to the place where it all went wrong”. Yes, with this movie I truly I felt transported back in time.
There is one brutal slaughter after another. It was like a smorgasbord in variations on the pick axe death theme. I counted at least five pick axes to the head and a few other grisly deaths to boot (one includes a shovel). The motel scene alone is worth the price of admission for its tension, nudity, and gore.
Surprisingly they chose pretty good actors for this. Everyone stays in character whether being mad, sinister, good, stupid, heroic, etc. Most importantly, everyone does a bang up job being scared.
Director/editor Lussiter (Prophecy 3, Dracula 2000) plays this one off with all the right hooks, coming off like a veteran 80s slasher film maker. The foreboding over-amplified music and stretched out synthesizer strings heightens the suspense. Even in the predictable realm of the scare tactic world, MBV still manages to make us squirm by prolonging the time till the next attack. Relentlessly exceeding the limit it goes above and beyond how much time it usually takes to build suspense. Nail biters beware!
MBV has a lame-ass twist to the mystery of who the real killer might be and an extremely dumb ending but I didn’t go to get my intellectual stimulus—I went in for the pick-axe roller coaster ride and I got what I deserved; every bloody minute of it.

My Bloody Valentine in 3D
Starring Jamie King, Jensen Ackles , Kerr Smith Kevin Tighe, Tom Atkins
Directed by Patrick Lussiter