A Trip Through Valentine Bluffs, Horror’s Most Charming Town
-
‘Blink Twice’ Trailer – Director Zoë Kravitz Invites You to a ‘Pussy Island’ Murder Party This Summer
-
“Them: The Scare” Exclusive Clip – The Legendary Pam Grier Stars in Prime Video’s Horror Series
-
New ‘Infested’ Exclusive Clip Will Make You Intensely Afraid of Bathroom Drains
-
‘Atlas’ Trailer – The Algorithm Told Netflix You Want to Watch Jennifer Lopez Pilot a Robot Killing Machine
It may have a death curse, but I still want to move there.
With a population of under 4,000, you could say that everyone probably knows your name in Valentine Bluffs, the setting of 1981 slasher film My Bloody Valentine. A real town in Nova Scotia, Canada was transformed into the small mining town with a dark past for the film, and I’ve got a feeling the real one isn’t quite as magical as its fictional counterpart.
After revisiting the two My Bloody Valentine films this past weekend, original and remake, I had a conversation with my girlfriend wherein we compared and contrasted the 1981 classic and its super fun/super gory 2009 makeover. My personal preference, I told her, was the original film, and I realized that my affinity for 1981 over 2009 primarily boiled down to one aspect in particular: the setting, and the overall atmosphere that “Valentine Bluffs” brings to one of the most unique and wholly individual slasher films of the ’80s.
Not only did the My Bloody Valentine remake change the town name from Valentine Bluffs to Harmony, but it also scrubbed away the small town realism that makes the original film such a charming slasher to this day. The town in the ’09 version never quite feels *real*; the town isn’t as much of a character, so to speak, as it is in the ’81 version.
Come to think of it, fictional towns in movies just overall aren’t what they used to be. One of the most beloved, certainly in the horror space, is of course Kingston Falls, the setting of Joe Dante’s Gremlins. Cozy, lived in and well established as a world unto itself, Kingston Falls is a masterclass in creating a fictional movie town; so too, if you ask me, is Valentine Bluffs.
The first hour of My Bloody Valentine (1981) is arguably more enjoyable than the down-in-the-mines final act, which is rare for the slasher sub-genre – after all, it’s often not until the body count really starts to rise that slasher movies begin to hit their stride. That’s all thanks to how much fun it is to simply hang out in Valentine Bluffs with its residents, most of whom are employees of the town’s Hanniger Mining Company. Valentine Bluffs advertises itself as “the little town with a big heart,” and that heart beats at the core of My Bloody Valentine.
We meet up with the ill-fated characters as they’re preparing for the town’s Valentine’s Dance at the U.C.M.B Hall, which is just two days away at the start of the film. The town, playing up its wonderfully on-the-nose name, is littered with reds and pinks; so heavy is the Valentine’s cheer that you’ll even spot a heart on a trash can outside a clothing shop!
Mabel’s decorating committee did one hell of a job that year, that’s for sure.
What really helps flesh Valentine Bluffs out is the fact that we’re taken inside a handful of locations throughout the film, including The Cage, the local watering hole that’s basically a second home to the young miners, the abandoned car park where they hang out after the bar shuts down for the night, and Madame Mabel’s Launderette, where the lovely owner unfortunately finds herself melted alive inside one of her own drying machines.
All of these locations *feel* real, and so too do the lovable characters we meet along the way. Take Mabel, for example. On paper, she’s merely a victim for the masked maniac doing the killing, but the film allows all of its characters to have their own little side stories. Sure, most of the spotlight is on former BFFs Axel Palmer and T.J. Hanniger, who are vying for the heart of the same girl, but it’s ancillary characters like Mabel who really bring to life the local flavor of Valentine Bluffs – same goes for characters like Murray and Mrs. Deagle in Gremlins.
In fact, one of my favorite little things about My Bloody Valentine is a low-key side story about Mabel’s crush on Chief Newby, which is as sweet as it is tragic.
There’s a history to all of the characters in the original My Bloody Valentine, and that personal and shared history bolsters the belief that Valentine Bluffs, even though we know it doesn’t really exist, is actually a real town that we’re invited to hang out in for a little bit. And for me, it’s hanging out in Valentine Bluffs that keeps me coming back year after year.
I know it’s fake, but Valentine Bluffs is still real to me.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
You must be logged in to post a comment.