My Bloody Valentine 3D

Review by Dustin Rowles

You won't find a lot of folks who will argue that the 1980s were a Golden Age of cinema.

The dramas were as cheesy as the comedies, and barely anything (even some of the "great films" of the decade) holds up well today.

Sure, there were a couple of Star Wars movies (holdovers from the 1970s), Kubrick was still going strong, Hughes was delivering and both the Die Hard and Indiana Jones franchises were born.

But all in all, the 1980s and its big hair and synth-pop soundtracks kind of blew...

All except the horror genre, that is.

In the 1960s, it was all psychological horror and the 1970s were about atmospherics - but if you actually wanted to have a good time at a horror movie, there was no better decade to watch than the 1980s.

Limited by their budgets, horror filmmakers had to trade heavily in creativity, and it wasn't the directors or the actors who were the big stars of the decade... it was the make up artists.

Rick Baker, Tom Savini and Stan Winston - to name but a few.

You didn't go see a horror movie back then to be psychologically tormented, you didn't go to be completely grossed out and you certainly didn't go to watch some gal get the shit beat out of her over and over again.

You went because the boogeyman would come out of nowhere.

You would jump out of your seat and then you would laugh your ass off watching some poor teenager's dismembered head roll down a flight of stairs permanently affixed with fellatio mouth.

1980s slasher films weren't good, but they sure as hell were entertaining.

And they beat the semen encrusted pants off today's sterile remakes, which rely heavily on the nihilism and are short on the splat-tacular laughs.

Most of them are dull and the ones that aren't just make you sick.

They are uninspiring.

I don't imagine there are a lot of teenagers growing up today who want to be horror movie directors or make up artists, which is kind of a shame.

But then there is My Bloody Valentine 3D, a movie that is monumentally awful. That said, it is the most fun I have had at a horror movie since the last Final Destination flick.

What is particularly troubling about My Bloody Valentine, however, is that I can't tell if the director (Patrick Lussier of White Noise 2: The Light and Dracula 2000 fame) is either a genius or spectacularly incompetent.

The result, here, is the same: Horrendous acting, unbelievably awful plotting and some f**king awesome death scenes which are thick on the blood.

That is the 1980s way, y'all!

You know you are watching a special kind of movie when a white crowd is yelling at the screen.

The typical audience reaction : A bunch of teenagers laughing their fool heads off for 90 minutes and walking out, exclaiming "Worst Movie Ever!".

In other words, My Bloody Valentine 3D is suck-tastic.

The body count is huge, the gore is off the hook and the plot is hilariously nonsensical.

My Bloody Valentine opens ten years ago in a small coal town. Tom Hanniger (Jensen "Oh my f**kin god awful" Ackles) mistakenly forgets to bleed the lines in a coal mine and six men are trapped inside.

One man, Harry Warden, uses a pick axe to kill off the other five so that he has got enough air to survive.

Once rescued, Harry Warden is in a coma but wakes a year later and goes on a hospital killing spree, before returning to the coal mine and fantastically murdering a group of teenagers.

Only Tom, Axel (Dawson Creek's Kerr Smith), Tom's girlfriend, Sarah (Jaime King, who as a brunette is a dead ringer for Kimberly Williams) and Irene (Betsy Rue) survive before the police arrive and shoot Harry Warden dead.

Or did they? Cut to ten years later...

Tom (who has been mysteriously absent) returns to sell the coal mine after the death of his father. Sarah (the love of his life) is now married to Axel, who is the town sheriff (and who is also having an affair with a teenager that resulted in a pregnancy) and Irene is the town slut.

Guess who dies first?

If you said the slut - and if you correctly guessed that she ran buck naked through a parking lot and that a large chested midget lady got a pick axe up through the neck seconds before the town slut was poked full of holes - then you, sir, grew up in the 1980s!

Indeed, on the anniversary of the Valentine's Day Massacre, either Harry Warden (in full on coal miner gear) has returned from the dead, or someone has stolen is M.O, which is to brutally swing that pick axe into the soft parts of the body - the eyeballs, below the chin, the neck, or even up through the taint.

Failing that, a nice shovel into the mouth and out the back of the head will do fine, thank you very much.

And who is the prime suspect? Well, Tom, of course.

Or maybe it's the sheriff, who certainly has motive. Or hell - maybe Harry Warden really is still alive.

Ah, but who the hell cares! Just as long as he keeps that pick axe in motion for 90 minutes, all is good.

And there is nary a dead spot in My Bloody Valentine. It is a full throttle series of jump scares and death scenes, punctuated occasionally by some of the worst acting you will ever see on the big screen.

Was it intentionally bad, or was it the product of a lot of untalented actors? Beats the hell out of me (though, with Ackles and Ker Smith, I would lean toward the latter).

But it doesn't matter.

I haven't seen acting so spot on awful since Kevin Bacon's Wild Things. And miraculously, the "whodunit" at the centre of the movie actually manages to remain a mystery until the final minutes - you may guess the real identity of the killer early on, but there are enough red herrings to raise doubt until the bitter end.

And what about the "Real D" 3D effects? Ummm, cool.

In fact, it adds to the gloriously cheesy experience - the format is ideal for horror flicks. With a 3D animated film (which is what most CGI films will be screened in from here on out), it is going to be an immersive, visual treat. It will be fun to watch.

But with horror films - it actually adds a lot more to the experience.

It puts you closer to the business end of a pick axe. And when you jump out of your seat, you won't jump forward, that's for sure.

Sure, it is gimmicky as hell, but then again the entire movie is beyond preposterous.

As far as horror movies go, this is a label that you don't attach to slasher flicks anymore, My Bloody Valentine 3D is a mother f**king crowd pleaser.

4 out of 5

My Bloody Valentine 3D
Australian release: 12th February, 2009
Official Site: My Bloody Valentine 3D
Cast: Jensen Ackles, Kerr Smith, Jaime King, Melyssa Ford, Edi Gathegi
Director: Patrick Lussier

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