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The Reluctant Austinite flips at BNAT X for MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D!!!
Hey folks, Harry here... The greatest surprise and bit of awesome for me at BNAT X was MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D. When the film was offered to me, I almost didn't accept it because they wouldn't show it to me early - and I had ZERO word of mouth. But the folks at Lionsgate swore to me that it was awesome. Ok, their funeral, I thought. Besides, I didn't have a horror film this year otherwise, I had a perfect programming slot for it. And HOLY SHIT! This film isn't genius or brilliant or terrificly original, but it knows exactly what it wants to do. And that's entertain the hell out of ya by playing with the tried and true convictions of the slasher genre and a new superior level of 3D technology... which delivered the gore better than I have ever seen in 3D before. Absolutely awesome! Here's a genre fan that worked for eons in a great alternative Video store in Louisville and his take on MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D...
The Reluctant Austinite here. Last week I very willingly traveled to the coolest city on Earth to attend the coolest movie geek gathering in the Milky Way galaxy, Butt-Numb-A-Thon X. This was my seventh voyage to BNAT. I missed the first couple, and one year I chose to use my vacation week to attend Fantastic Fest instead.
As an admitted addict of the schlock horror genre, I got a woodie when Harry announced to the crowd that the following trailers would set up the next feature and the first trailer was for the original 1981 "My Bloody Valentine." I knew at that moment we were either seeing the re-make of "Friday the 13th" or the re-make of "My Bloody Valentine," and there seemed to be a running theme of Real 3-D features at this year's BNAT, making the later seem most appropriate.
Now let's get this out of the way first: The Canadian 1981 "My Bloody Valentine" is no masterpiece of the genre. It's no "Halloween" It's no "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Hell, it's not even "Terror Train," "The Funhouse" or "Hell Night." At best, it sits on the shelf with other follow-the-leader slasher flicks of the time like "Prom Night" and "Final Exam." In my opinion, this makes it perfect fodder for the re-make grind mill.
It takes a special kind of ineptitude to take a piece of exploitation crap like "Prom Night" and make an even worse PG-13 piece of milquetoast like the recent re-make, but bigger disappointments and much horror fan scorn have come from those films that tried to re-imagine the sacred cows of the genre. Gus Van Sant's "Psycho," Rob Zombie's "Halloween" and Marcus Nispel's "Texas Chainsaw" were doomed from the start. It just wasn't possible to improve on the original and anything less just wasn't worth the effort. Don't even get me started on "The Fog."
However, "My Bloody Valentine" gives the filmmaker a lot of wiggle room, and here director Patrick Lussier wiggles his ass off. This potential bottom row disaster proves to be a tremendous amount of fun for the horror fanatic. Unlike "Prom Night," which decided to scale back on the gore and appeal to the Hannah Montana crowd, this flick immediately covers the screen (and the audience by simulation) in blood and guts.
I kid you not. This is the film I wanted to see as a youngster sneaking into the theater to see "Friday the 13th 3-D." That lackluster sequel just gave me a headache, as the technology at the time was only used to boost sales for crappy films like "Jaws 3-D," "Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" and "Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn" (which was one of the trailers we saw at BNAT). The Real 3-D technology used to bring "My Bloody Valentine" back to life takes the concept of "stooging" to a whole new level. One of the first gags in the movie has a pick axe being jammed through the back of some poor sap's head, tearing out his eyeball on the way through and shoving it in the audience's face. Ouch. Screams and laughs ensue.
The story serves as a sequel to the original as much as a re-make. The original psycho in a miner suit, Harry Warden, is one of the only survivors of a mine explosion and collapse that survives by killing off his co-workers with a pick axe so they won't suck up the remaining air. He's rescued, but has gone insane in the process, escaping the hospital and leaving a bloody trail of bodies in his wake. This is all happens in the pre-credit sequence, and Harry cuts loose on a stereo-typical band of beer drinking teenagers before being gunned down by Man-God cop, Tom Atkins.
Stop there. Tom Atkins. THE Tom Atkins. I have a horror geek man crush on Tom Atkins, but who can blame me? Who else could play a doughy middle-aged doctor that bangs a 19 year old babe and likely every other babe in the hospital in "Halloween III"? Who else could pick up a hitch-hiking Jamie Lee Curtis, tell her he's weird and get to bang her 30 minutes later in "The Fog"? From "Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo" to "The Ninth Configuration" to "Escape From New York" to "Night of the Creeps" to "Maniac Cop" and "Bruiser," Tom Atkins has more genre street cred than any other character actor alive outside of Dick Miller, and he's terrific here.
Atkins thinks he has buried Harry Warden forever, but 10 years later the nightmare returns for more bloody hearts delivered in candy boxes. One of the teenagers who survived Harry's bloodbath is now nearly 30 and has spent most of his 20s in a mental hospital due to the trauma he experienced. When he returns to Valentine Bluff to resolve some family business with the mine, the bloody miner reappears and starts throwing his pick axe at the screen. An old flame and a romantic triangle involving the town sheriff are part of the plot, but who cares when the creepy heavy-breathing miner is literally gouging out our eyeballs with his pick axe?
Outside of Tom Atkins, none of the actors are going to win any accolades, although Jamie King tries valiantly to be sympathetic as the heroine and focus of affection in the story's love triangle. This ain't "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Nobody is expecting Oscar worthy acting or screenwriting, and nobody is going to get either. What you will get is a movie that could have easily been made and released in 1983 pumped up with the kind of in-your-face 3-D that Jason Vorhees would have traded his treasured hockey mask for, giving him the ability to not only slaughter the brainless horny teens in the film, but also to reach out from the screen and crush the skulls of those in the audience.
"My Bloody Valentine 3-D" was a breath of wretched, acrid decaying flesh amid the dramatically heavier films of BNAT, and I think audiences might get their eyeballs happily poked like a room full of Fulci victims when the film opens in mid January.
Until next time, I float through space like an Unidentified Flying Oddball.
The Reluctant Austinite out.
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and this one will be too. I could tell who the killer was in the original 10 minutes in, and I was only 11 years old!!
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Your name pretty much sums it up buddy
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Suck me.
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in my situation the answer is no, but if I lived in a city and this was playing nearby I would see it
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it's even playing in Jacksonville at all
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If you have a couple of friends to go with you, I would say it would absolutely be worth the trip to see, so long as it was in 3D. The 3D is truly wonderful.
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The reviewer said it serves as a sequel as much as a remake and then goes on and describes the plot of the remake which is pretty much the exact plot of the original. SPOLIER! The reviewer does realize that the killer in the original wasn't Harry Warden, but a survivor of his rampage who watched his parents get killed. The only difference I can see in the overall plot is that we see Warden's rampage in a prologue instead of a flashback near the end of the movie.
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Maybe I saw it when I was really young, but I personally thought it was a great second tier slasher flick. I liked it more than Terror Train or Hell Night. It clearly isn't in the same league as Halloween or a few other holy grail of 70s and 80s slasher flick (although I don't really think Halloween is really a slasher flick). I would put it on the next level though.
I felt although flawed, it wasn't as fomulaic as a lot of the slasher movies in the 80s and at least some of the leads had more character development than "hot couple who have sex before they get killed" or "geek who gets blown off by hot chick before he gets killed" or "bitch who does a lot of bitchy things before she is killed" which was as deep as most of the slasher flicks of the era would go in character development (especially the Friday the 13th franchise). -
past your run-of-the-mill horror flick.The characters and plot are fairly routine and you'll probably have little problem figuring out the killer's identity (well, you'll at least be able to narrow it down a bit)... but, it's still a helluva lot of fun!! Plus, you get the ass-kicking duo of Tom Atkins and (LOST fans rejoice!) Kevin Tighe!!Definitely one of the highlights of BNAT for me.
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*achievement unlocked*
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do you know if the Imax theaters in Jacksonville are equipped for these 3D movies?
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man im psyched for this. im up in nova scotia, canada where the original was filmed. a real-d theatre was just installed this year, and i cant wait to see this for my first digital 3D experience!
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I remember getting an issue of Fangoria back in 1981 and seeing shots from the original film that were NOT in there...including the miner knocking out some guy's eyeball with a pick-axe. Wonder if the remake includes the classic body-in-a-clothes-dryer scene, lol.
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Represent!
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Looks like a fun time
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kicking ass in horror remakes. that's how we roll. now...when do we hear the buzz on a supernatural movie???
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Damn, just from watching the trailer, I thought that was the girl from "Superbad" who Jonah Hill was mackin' on. Miss King, you have fallen mightily. To think she was once in "Pearl Harbor" (actually, that's probably nothing to phone home about).Great writeup just the same. I'll be checking my brain at the theatre door and giving this one a look. Sounds like a massive hoot.
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The scene in "Halloween 3", were he is forced to watch the young boy's head turn into spiders, snakes, and insects....wow.
The way he closed his eyes and clenched his fist, you could just feel the emotion, the shock, terror, anger, all rolled up in that moment. What an actor....two more days to halloween, silver shamrock -
There are a ton of Horror films being released in the early part of '09:
The Unborn
My Bloody Valentine 3-D
Possession
Underworld 3
The Uninvited &
Afterdark Horrorfest
all are set to hit theaters in January alone.
Februrary brings us:
Coraline &
Friday the 13th
with Push having paranormal elements and therefore slightly edging into the realm of Horror.
That's 16 Horror type films being released in the first 8 weeks of the new year. If I've done my math correctly (and my abacus hasn't failed me yet) that is two Horror films per week.
That's great news for Horror fans (except for the inevitable suck of the pg-13 rated films), but is it smart for studios?
Hey Hollywood money numbskulls. Why don't you make the months of September and OCTOBER top heavy with Horror films? You know, since that's Halloween time.
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Lion's Gate is releasing a 2-disc special edition of the original movie on Jan. 13th that is supposed to restore the missing 9 minutes of cut footage. And, yes, Resolute, I worked for Wild & Woolly Video for a long time. Even though I've moved on to other things, I'm sure Todd will stock the "My Bloody Valentine: Special Edition" dvd when it comes out. With Harry's blessing, I may occasionally represent the Ville on this site should I see something Cool worthy.
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It had a great atmosphere and was A LOT better than any of the Friday the 13th films. And yes this is a clear remake, not a sequel as this douchebag said. Still, Tom Atkins!
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Okay, Jesus! My memory of the original is fuzzier than yours. Maybe this is just a re-make. That makes me a douchebag? I actually like the atmosphere of "Terror Train" better; the foggy, bleak snow-covered countryside was creepy. The train setting was claustrophobic, and Ben Johnson gave a great performance as the conductor. It also had Jamie Lee Curtis! And yeah, it's better than any of the Friday the 13th films, except "The Final Chapter." Now go ahead with your silly insults if you must. This is important stuff we're dealing with here!
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There is no reason to fight or insult each other over whether "Terror Train" is better than "My Bloody Valentine" or not. Just as long as we all agree that they both are better than "Graduation Day". Now that was a piece of shit.
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As a horror fan, there's only one movie I'm looking forward to in the next few months and that's "The Unborn". The trailer looks fantastic. I just hope the movie lives up to it.
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You're right there. Graduation Day was PAINFUL. And Reluctant Austinite, I'm sorry for the silly "douchebag" remark, I just thought if you were going to talk like you knew what you were talking about, it might be best if you knew what you were talking about. Did you think Harry Warden was the killer in the original or not? He wasn't, as someone else has mentioned. In any case, I like the original for a lot of reasons, but mostly I think the mine is a GREAT location for a slasher and they used it well.
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Thanks for the heads-up, much appreciated!
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Spacehunter is an awesome movie! It has Ernie Hudson, jailbait Molly Ringwald and a great villain played by Michael Ironside. "I lied."
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SPACEHUNTER was B movie gold.
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what's appealing about this flick besides the 3d? That's the only reason I'm seeing it. Good horror is so hard to find these days.
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Anyone agree that Jensen Ackles would make a great John Mclaine in a reboot, or continuation of Die Hard (assuming Mr Willis has had enough)??? A Supernatural movie would be pretty nice too!
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He's one of the main reasons Supernatural is great. Great writting and a big set of balls doesn't hurt the show either.
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