My Bloody Valentine (1981) - Bloody is the word (for the eighties, anyway)

‘My Bloody Valentine.’ A slasher.  There’s not an awful lot more to say.  If you’ve grown up over recent years and are generally interested in the genre, you’ll find that this little offering from 1981 is pretty tame in comparison to what’s released today.  However, back when ‘video nasties’ were just taking off, this was pretty strong stuff!

A small-time mining town in America has a legend (don’t they all?) – this one tells of a miner who went berserk years ago on Valentine’s day and killed a bunch of people.  Now, several years later – guess what – it looks like he’s back.

Normally, this is where I say that the cast is made up of oversexed, annoyingly attractive teenagers.  But not this time.  Here we have oversexed, annoying UGLY teenagers.  Don’t ask me why (and I promise you that I’m no oil painting!) but this must be the ugliest group of leading actors every assembled to be chopped up by a nut-job with a gas mask and pick axe.  I guess we can blame it on the eighties.  Or the lack of budget needed to bring bigger (and more physically attractive) stars on board.

Yes, one by one our facially-challenged heroes are chopped up in various hideous ways.  Nothing too new there, apart from the fact that the death scenes seem a little more violent for the time than your average Friday 13th film.  Notice I don’t say ‘gruesome’ – only violent.  I mentioned the budget earlier and it seems like they didn’t really have enough money for expert make-up and prosthetics needed for the gore.  I suppose it’s the way it’s filmed that makes it so violent.  There seems like there’s a real sense of nastiness in the deaths.

Not that you’ll care much about those getting sliced and diced.  They really are pretty irritating.  If Jar-Jar Binks was a little less computer-generated and a little more eighties then those are the people getting murdered here.

Perhaps one thing that the film does have going for it is that you don’t actually know who’s under the gas mask.  In that was it’s more akin to the ‘Scream’ franchise in as much as like a who-done-it.

There’s not much new here (especially nearly forty years later!), but if you’re into the slasher genre in general and like to see where this type of film found its roots, then give this a try.  The gore isn’t really there and the violence – although strong for the time – has also diminished, the mystery element may make it worth an hour and a half of your time.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights