Movies
My Bloody Valentine
“Devoid of all the signature gore effects that were designed for the film, what MY BLOODY VALENTINE is left with is simply story—something that most horror films (specifically stalk and slash horror films) are missing. Incredibly, the story is what makes the film survive.”
“For the legend they say on a Valentine’s Day is a curse that’ll live on and on.”
In the pantheon of Slasher Films—whose heyday was in full nightmare mode after the 1980 release of FRIDAY THE 13TH—one film stands apart. MY BLOODY VALENTINE was Paramount Pictures next big slasher film, rushed into production in September 1980, the filmmakers had one goal in mind; finish the film before February 14, 1981—a street date set in stone by a marketing department desperate to cash in on the trend of Holiday horrors that began as far back as BLACK CHRISTMAS and continued through HALLOWEEN, APRIL FOOLS DAY and so many others. Amazingly, with no script to be had, Director George Mihalka and writers Steven Miller and John Beaird managed to not only beat the odds, they delivered one of the most memorable stand-alone slasher films of the 1980’s. No small feat considering the time restraint. However, even with the tense shooting schedule, MY BLOODY VALENTINE’s biggest enemy turned out not to be time, but fate.
On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon to death outside the Dakota apartment building in New York City. The shockwaves were felt far and wide, especially in the editing room of MY BLOODY VALENTINE. Beseeched by a nationwide cry against senseless violence, the MPAA saddled MY BLOODY VALENTINE with an X rating and Paramount demanded cuts be made. Only a year earlier FRIDAY THE 13TH had received the same puritanical edicts, but even after its trims, the groundbreaking effects work that propelled the film to box office glory remained largely intact. Such was not the case with MY BLOODY VALENTINE. Every death scene in the film—from the most innocuous passing’s to the most elaborate gore drenched impalements—was sliced to pieces. An estimated nine minutes of footage was exorcised from the production, leaving some of the most costly and spectacular effects work completely removed from the film. Audiences who saw the theatrical cut were left with little more than quick edits, out of focus attacks and off screen eviscerations. In the end, the MPAA’s bloody fingerprints left the writing on the wall. Paramount’s next big smash hit had total box office receipts less than FRIDAY THE 13TH had made on its opening weekend. And thus the legend of MY BLOODY VALENTINE was born.
The cult of MY BLOODY VALENTINE is a strange beast. To this day, the film survives in the same truncated form that left audiences disappointed back in 1981. Yet somehow, the film has transcended that to become a beloved and respected headstone in the horror graveyard.
The story begins, in similar fashion to 1981’s THE PROWLER—with a dance—a Valentine’s Dance that provides the catalyst for an event that inadvertently causes the death of several men, working the local coal mine. The lone survivor of the cave in, Harry Warren, returns one year later to the small town of Valentine’s Bluff to exact his revenge on the attendees of the annual dance—promising that if the town was to ever hold Valentine’s Day festivities again, that he would return and kill them all. 20-years later that’s exactly what happens.
When the mayor decides to hold the first Valentine’s Dance in two decades, a masked miner suddenly begins slaughtering the townsfolk in the most brutal of fashions. But, when the sheriff calls off the annual dance, a group of locals decide to have their own party. Guess who shows up?
Devoid of all the signature gore effects that were designed for the film, what MY BLOODY VALENTINE is left with is simply story—something that most horror films (specifically stalk and slash horror films) are missing. Incredibly, the story is what makes the film survive. Set in a small mining town (and shot in a real working mine) the film bears a distinct tone and authenticity about it. The location and mood recall the rural working class reality of THE DEER HUNTER. The characters feel genuine and their situations in life never feel contrived. Sure, it’s still a slasher film by all the broadest strokes of the genre brush, but at the same time MY BLOODY VALENTINE transcends the stereotypes that typify what one would immediately use to identify it. The film doesn’t engage in rules of the genre. There is no Final Girl, there are no moralistic murders, and the killer isn’t an omnipresent boogeyman or an unstoppable force of evil. The film is grounded in 100% reality. In other words….it could have happened that way—and that sets it miles apart from the realms of HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH.
Nearly 30-years after its original butchering at the hands of the MPAA, Lionsgate and Paramount have finally decided to release MY BLOODY VALENTINE in its unexpurgated form. The DVD release of the film includes options to watch the production with the formerly trimmed footage reinserted, or to watch the theatrical version and view the cuts as deleted scenes. All in all, there is one deleted scene for every death sequence in the film (a number I won’t disclose for the sake of spoilers). The deleted scenes have not been remastered so, you’ll have no problem picking out the cuts when they appear on screen, but I would suggest that if you haven’t see the film in a while, you give it a whirl one more time in its theatrical version—if only to appreciate how well it has held up for 30-years—with very little “bloody” left in the MY BLOODY VALENTINE. The footage can also be viewed with cast and crew introductions, including one in which Director George Mihalka discusses the Lennon assassination and its effect on the films post production.
The DVD release also contains the documentary BLOODLUST: MY BLOODY VALENTINE AND THE RISE OF THE SLASHER FILM. The first half of this featurette is dedicated to the original film and it features interviews with Director Mihalka, writer John Beaird as well as cast members Neil Affleck and Helene Udy as well as several others including Going to Pieces author Adam Rockoff. The second half of the documentary is more of an extended EPK for the new MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D which hits theaters on January 16, 2009 (a street date obviously chosen due to the fact that February 13, 2009 is the intended release date for the remake of FRIDAY THE 13TH.) It features interviews with current stars Jamie King and Kerr Smith along with Director Patrick Lussier. By the way, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Original MY BLOODY VALENTINE opened in Canada (where the film was shot) on Friday the 13th of February, 1981. The film takes place between Thursday the 12th and Saturday the 14th—Valentine’s Day. In 2009, those dates once again coincide.
The final special feature on the DVD is BLOODLINES: AN INTERACTIVE HORROR FILM HISTORY. This point-and-click map, traces the twisted family tree of slasher films from their Herschell Gordon Lewis beginnings to Wes Craven’s nightmares and from Kevin Williamson’s revisions to their current HOSTEL status. It’s hardly encyclopedic and one would be better serviced by visiting innumerable websites on the subject or simply reading Adam Rockoff’s book. But still, it’s a nice and neat little introductory package about the history of the Slasher Film.
It may have taken 30-years for fans of MY BLOODY VALENTINE to finally get the blood that the film initially promised, and anyone who has ever said a bad word about remakes of beloved horror films should at least take a moment to step back and realize that if it weren’t for those remakes, original films like this would hardly ever see special edition DVDs—proof of that exists in the bare bones DVD edition of this very film, by the fine folks at Paramount back in 2002. So, pony up genre fans, another classic slasher film is finally getting the treatment it so long ago deserved!
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
Spring 2024 Horror Preview: 12 Horror Movies You Don’t Want to Miss
The ‘Scary Movie’ Spoof Franchise Is Getting a Reboot at Paramount!
‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape
“We Built Every Creature” – ‘Alien: Romulus’ Goes Heavy on the Old School Practical Effects!
You must be logged in to post a comment.