My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Our film today essentially opens ‘in media splat’ as a couple of miners decked out in full gear make their way down a dark and eerie shaft. And speaking of shafts, one of those miners turns out to be a woman as she strips down to the bra and panties strata for what appears to be a sexual rendezvous of some sort. And while she encourages the other person to follow suit, he refuses as he drives his pickaxe into the wall behind her.

Undaunted, as the woman fondles his breathing tube to get him in the mood, the gas-masked miner suddenly seizes the woman and shoves her onto that embedded pick, which punctures right through her chest -- right about where her heart should be, he typed ominously...

Now, this mine in question belongs to Tom Hanniger (Reynolds), who also just happens to be mayor of the nearby town of Valentine Bluffs; a ramshackle, blink and you’ll miss it speck dug in like a tick in the middle of this desolate tundra, whose sole purpose appears to be providing housing, food, and a watering hole for those who work the Hanniger mine.

And our story will be focusing mostly on the latest generation of miners, including Hanniger’s son, T.J. (Kelman), recently returned with his prodigal tail tucked between his legs after a failed attempt to make it on his own out west (-- presumably California). 

Of course, returning to Valentine’s Bluff is a big heaping turd-burger of fail for T.J. to swallow on a daily basis, who pulled up stakes and left without a word or a backward glance at his girlfriend, Sarah (Hallier), or his best friend, Axel (Afleck), several years ago.

But now he’s back, forced to work at the mine by his old man -- and not a cushy office job either, essentially living the life he tried desperately to get away from. And to top all of that off, Axel is both his foreman and Sarah’s new beau; and Axel knows damn well T.J. still pines for Sarah and will brook none of that, explaining the roiling hostility between these two men. 

At this juncture one should also point out that Valentine’s Bluff and its denizens also harbor a dark and sinister secret. Seems about twenty years ago on Valentine’s Day, the entire town had turned out for the annual holiday dance at the union hall. Well, all except for about ten miners, who planned on attending the shindig once their shift ended.

But then the two shift-managers cut out early to get to the party, forgetting to check the methane levels in the mine, which were dangerously high. Thus, tragically, an innocent spark detonated half the mine, burying eight miners alive. And as the legend goes, it took nearly three weeks to dig them out. And so, by the time they reached them the rescuers found only one survivor, Harry Warden (Cowper), who had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive in this makeshift tomb.

Certified insane, Warden was confined to a mental hospital until he escaped the following Valentine’s Day, when he returned home and butchered the two careless stewards responsible for the cave-in, taking their hearts with his pick and leaving them as warning to the town to cancel the Valentine’s Day Dance and to never hold one again or he would resume his killing spree. Luckily, Warden was soon apprehended and sent back to the hospital, but the town, sufficiently rattled, took his warning to -- forgive me, heart, and never held a Valentine’s Day dance again.

But now, spearheaded by a woman named Mabel (Hamilton), seems the town elders have decided it’s been long enough and have given her the go-ahead to carryout the town’s first social event in nearly two decades.

Making up most of her decorating committee are the younger townsfolk, including Sarah and most of her friends. This makes sense since their generation has never experienced anything fun in this morose, one-lung town and are far enough removed from Warden’s rampage that he’s essentially become a harmless boogeyman; an urban legend.

Still, there are others who think this is a terrible mistake; most specifically a surly bartender misnamed Happy (Evera), who takes every opportunity to remind these foolhardy whippersnappers of who they’re messing with, repeating the legend of Harry Warden over and over again, and doesn’t take too kindly when they just laugh him off.

Thus, with the dance a mere two days away, people are antsy and anxious but preparations seem to be going smoothly enough until mayor Hanniger receives a box of chocolates from a secret admirer, opens it, and makes a grisly discovery: instead of chocolate, he finds a bloody heart and a threatening limerick warning him to cancel the dance or else there will be more displaced organs to contend with. 

And once the town coroner confirms the heart to be human -- most likely the victim’s from the opening coda, the mayor assumes it’s the work of Harry Warden and, surprise surprise, especially for this kind of flick, he immediately closes the beaches -- No. Wait. Sorry, I mean, he immediately pulls the plug on the dance.

He leaves it to police chief Newby (Francks) to break the bad news to Mabel, whom Newby is sort of sweet on. But when Newby enters the laundromat Mabel runs, he can’t find her. However, the place smells rancid, and Newby traces the odor to the running dryers and starts opening them. 

Suddenly, one breaks open on its own, revealing Mabel’s fully-cooked corpse, stuffed inside by the same killer, that slowly tumbles around until the spin cycle is complete!

Later examination will discover her heart, too, is missing. And while they can’t confirm if Harry Warden is still in custody or not thanks to the most unhelpful file clerk of ever, they decide to prevent a panic, claim Mabel died of a sudden heart attack, and use that as an excuse to cancel the dance over her “untimely death.”

Meanwhile, upon hearing the bad news, T.J., in his effort to help win Sarah back, rallies his friends, saying they can still have a Valentine’s party at the canteen out at the mine works. All he has to do is swipe the keys from his old man. And so, a sizable chunk of killer cannon fodder heads out to the mine to hold a clandestine dance -- well, more of a giant booze-can, but, whatever.

Anyhoo, little do they realize but the killer is onto their plan, is none too happy about it judging by the number of dismembered hearts he leaves lying around, and is already at the mine waiting to pick them off one by one. But is this really Harry Warden back for revenge? Or is it someone else looking to settle some old scores…

At the dawn of the 1970s, lured by the siren call of tax-shelter incentives by the Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC), many small to mid-range Canadian distributors expanded their operations into producing features as people were literally falling out of the woodwork with money to burn, wanting to make a movie -- any movie.

Now, after spending several days researching and trying to understand Canadian tax-shelter law, from what little I could understand, the biggest problem with the way the CDFC had this set up was that several producers, like Mel Brook's main characters in The Producers (1967), bilked the system and actually made more money when their films bombed.

Thus, the less spent on the production meant more money in the bank, resulting in some pretty dire product. And while this kind of financing lent itself toward making cheap exploitation pictures, this wayward business model kinda explains why Canada never really had their own version of an American International, or New World, or a Cannon Films -- though it did come very close with the Montreal based Cinépix Productions.

When John Dunning and Andre Link co-founded Cinepix in 1962, their original goal was to give the stagnating Canadian film industry a much needed kick-in-the-ass jumpstart -- and maybe knock down a few social taboos, concerning what you could and couldn't get away with on screen while they were at, by distributing films like Mermaids of Tiburon (1962) and The Pink Pussycat (1963).

John Dunning (left), Andre Link (right).

Dunning, who took over the family’s small exhibition business at the age of 17 when his father died, handled the creative side of production while Link tended to the business and financing, which netted Cinépix’s first feature film, Valérie (1969), an erotic comedy about a nun who leaves her convent to explore the burgeoning hippy scene, becomes a prostitute, and falls in love.

Said Dunning (The Terror Trap, March, 2011) “By 1968, we had been buying all these films and my partner André Link (who had come in and helped me with the distribution because I didn’t know anything about it) and I were sitting around and we thought, Instead of buying some of these horrible, drug-ridden prostitute films, why don’t we make one in Quebec? So we got together with Denis Heroux, who was coming out of film school from the University of Montreal. He was a professor at that time, I think. He said he would like to direct it and the three of us got together with a French screenwriter (Louis Gauthier) and we wrote Valerie.”

The film was a huge hit domestically, grossing over $1-million on a $90,000 budget, and officially launched a whole new genre: Maple Syrup Porn, of which Cinépix excelled at making, including The Columbus of Sex (1969), Sex Isn’t a Sin (1970), Virgin Lovers (1970), and A Very Private Party (1971).

Of course, this kind of bawdy product wasn’t exactly what the CDFC had in mind when they first dangled that financial carrot, which meant Cinepix was constantly butting heads with the government's oversight committee on these federally subsidized features over the alleged soft-core syrup-sleaze they were peddling.

And so, Dunning and Link started to diversify and kinda phased out of sexploitation films and started embracing action, horror and schlock with The Possession of Virginia (alias Satan’s Sabbath, 1972). They brought in some new talent with Don Carmody and Ivan Reitman, who had produced and directed Cannibal Girls (1973), which Cinepix picked up for distribution, netting them Death Weekend (1976), East End Hustle (1976), and Blackout (1978). Needless to say, the CDFC was neither amused or appeased by this genre shuffle.

And then things really came to loggerheads with Cinepix’s backing of David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975). Originally hired on to work on the sex films, doing some second-unit work on Loving and Laughing (1971), Cronenberg eventually convinced his new bosses to let him take a crack at something slightly more horrific.

“André and I were both impressed with Cronenberg,” said Dunning (The Terror Trap). “He’d made some films at school at that point, but he was basically into architecture. I mean, his films were very architectural, with angles and buildings and things. But he certainly had possibilities and he had a vivid imagination. David had an interesting idea that no one had ever explored. He had evolved something about how horror can exist inside the person, not some monsters running around and killing. The killers were inside you. So we tied in with him and he had a script for The Parasite Murders. We liked it. We had a possibility, but we were taking a risk with a first time director.”

Released in the States as They Came from Within, Shivers was a frightfully and wonderfully perverse story of a high-rise infested with a sexually transmitted killer slug, which had the CDFC ready to string-up the producers and commit the director into the nearest insane asylum, igniting a holy war between Dunning and the Canadian government that was fought out in the trades, editorials, pamphlets, and the floor of Parliament itself, which eventually led to some radical policy changes by the CDFC.

Said Dunning, “The literary establishment rebelled at the fact that [tax] money was going to make these kinds of films. They weren’t interested in the success of the film, they were interested in the Canadian quality or whatever they called it. We used to say, 'throw a Mountie in it, and the Canadian flag, and it’s a ‘cultural triumph.’ A lot of crappy films ended up being made -- in the name of what? Canadian identity?! We never really understood it. We thought we were in the movie business to make successful films and bring Canadian people into the theaters.”

But as Cinepix rode out this storm, they backed Cronenberg’s follow up feature, Rabid (alias Rage, 1977), which saw a young woman become a pseudo-vampire after some plastic surgery goes awry -- played by the girl Behind the Green Door (1972) herself, Marilyn Chambers, whose victims become a ravenous horde of infectious zombies.

“There wasn’t a script at first, recalled Dunning. “We conceived the idea. David was working on something called The Mosquito. He was out at my place at Riviere Beaudette and he stayed there for the summer, working on the script. We’d talk about it, scene by scene, and put them together. The Mosquito was about somebody who sucked blood. David had the idea that it would become a sexual thing, with the prosthetic under her armpit. The premise and writing was a cooperative effort, but David was doing the heavy lifting.”

And while Cinepix scored modest box-office hits with these body-horror classics, oddly enough, the studio’s biggest money maker of all time wound up being a comical, clean-cut, coming of age tale released the very next year with Reitman’s summer camp romp, Meatballs (1978), which also officially launched Bill Murray’s film career.

Picked up by Paramount and released in the States, Meatballs would gross nearly $46-million in ticket sales. But it was too little, too clean, too late for the CDFC, making it one of the last subsidized films Cinepix would be involved in. But fear not, for salvation would soon come from south of the border.

See, around this same time, Peter Simpson and his Toronto based Simcon Limited had just struck a deal with Paul Lynch to finance and shoot his film, Prom Night (1980) -- a teenage murder mystery -- in Canada, hoping to cash in on the scares and financial success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). And when it was completed, the film ignited a bidding war between Paramount and AVCO-Embassy. And while AVCO-Embassy won that battle, they kinda lost the war as Paramount had a back-up plan, and had the last laugh, really, when they picked up Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980) -- a grisly take on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, instead.

Both films did inexplicably well at the box-office, igniting a brand new genre that literally exploded over the next few years, as independent studios quickly rallied to make more teenage body count movies, colloquially known as Slasher movies, to cash in on this new niche market that was just waiting to be exploited -- including Dunning and Link.

See, while the major American studios would acknowledge these cheap and sordid horror films were making them money, they wouldn’t dare actually make one. But! They sure as hell would distribute them. And that’s how Dunning, Link and Cinepix wound up working with Columbia Pictures for the oddball slasher, Happy Birthday to Me (1981), which promised six of the most bizarre murders you'd ever see but only delivered on maybe … three of them, on a modest budget of $3.5-million.

However, unknown to Columbia, after their film was well into production, Dunning and Link were secretly funneling some of that front money into another project for Paramount, who agreed to distribute the other film if Cinepix could have it done and delivered in less than six months for a premiere date on Valentine’s Day, 1981.

Strangely enough, Cinepix’s meaner, grittier, and far superior slasher movie, My Bloody Valentine (1981), actually began life as a comedy. Sort of. See, while still well in the pre-production stages, Dunning was having some major problems with the tone of humor for their proposed “Hospital Comedy.” And while this script would eventually be filmed and released as the rather obnoxious Stitches (1985), it was quickly tabled back in 1980 when a repertory theater owner named Steven Miller approached Dunning with the barest of outlines for a horror film called The Secret, which was set in a mining town around Valentine’s Day.

Dunning loved the idea and quickly made a deal with Frank Mancuso Jr. at Paramount, who also handled the Friday the 13th franchise, who dictated the release date and title change as part of the terms. Now all they needed was a script. And a director. Cast. And a crew. And a place to shoot.

Envisioned as a visceral tale in the Grand Guignol tradition, John Beaird is the credited screenwriter for My Bloody Valentine, though many production tales make it sound more like a rowdy roundtable discussion and one-upmanship on how to “creatively” kill-off people, with Dunning constantly pushing them to make it as gross and grisly as possible with Beaird fleshing it out from there.

“One of the things I told the producers right off the top was that I’m not doing a beer commercial,” said My Bloody Valentine director, George Mihalka (Filmmakers Commentary). “My violence is not beauty shots, it’s ugly and mean and nasty. And wounds hurt.”

Mihalka was a recent hire by Cinepix, who approached him with a two-picture deal after the success of his coming of age film, Pick-Up Summer (alias Pinball Summer, 1980). “George was a trooper,” said Dunning (The Terror Trap). “There’s another guy who was passionate about his film. He worked his ass off and he wasn’t working for the wages. He was working because he wanted to make a really good movie. George was a good man. I’d go to the floor for him anytime.”

“I was working on Stitches with a few people from the National Lampoon -- Michel Choquette, who used to be the editor for Lampoon, and his partner Mike Paseornek,” said Mihalka (The Terror Trap, January, 2005). “We were working on the script but unfortunately, the screenplay wasn't ready. In Canada at the time, they had all these tax shelters and so on to finance films. And you had to have it ready at a certain time. Due to other engagements that Michel had, we couldn't get the script ready in time to the liking of John and André.” And so, Dunning offered him the horror film instead.

Said Mihalka, “Being young at the time, wanting to make a career in directing, I said sure. I looked at the outline and it seemed pretty interesting compared to a lot of the other slashers of the era.”

And when you consider the location of a small mining town and the rustic characters involved, Mihalka was soon determined to make the film a working class horror movie instead of the usual prep-school or summer camp trappings. “At the time, the formula was a couple of cheap bungalows -- usually in some sleepy suburbia. They were often characterless suburban teenagers, all interchangeable. We wanted to set this in some place where there is a slight hint of social consciousness. This was really the first film in that era where teenagers are actually talking about the fact that there's no future left. There's no jobs, there's no future. Not a lot of hope. It was, in a strange way, the first of a Generation X mentality. I think that's why it still resonates after all these years.”

In fact, the film hit its first production snag when it chose to shoot on location at the Princess Colliery Mines near the town of Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. “The script called for a mining town and it needed to be in a town that had seen better days and Sydney Mines, at that time, was going through tough times,” said Jordan Bonaparte (Cape Breton Post, February 13, 2017). “There were mine closures, the economy was poor and people were losing their jobs -- it had a drab vibe, so it was perfect for what they were looking for and they loved how rundown, rough and dangerous it was.”

The mine had been shut down since 1975 due to environmental issues and the resulting economic collapse, and was chosen for filming due to its dreary, isolated location and the rundown condition of the disused buildings and equipment.

However, unbeknownst to the production crew, once they found out they had been selected, the people of Sydney Mines took it upon themselves to raise $50,000 to spruce things up considerably, much to the consternation of Mihalka. Said Bonaparte, “So, they went down and cleaned it all up and when the production team returned they were horrified to find that their rough and rugged mine had been turned into a clean and colorful Disneyland-like set.”

Thus, the production had to spend an additional $75,000 to return the location to its original shabby and ominous state. Mihalka also brought his rather sizable cast out to the location a week before shooting started so they could acclimate themselves in the small town culture. (Production stories abound of nightly bar fights with the locals.)

Of course, shooting in the mine itself was another logistical nightmare, as it took forever to transport the cast, crew and equipment 800ft. below ground. And on top of that, due to the methane levels in the tunnels, the lighting had to be carefully monitored as the number of bulbs used was constantly limited and any stray spark from the equipment could’ve spelled disaster.

In fact, one day of shooting was scrapped when the location manager was informed some high winds were creating a vacuum that was stirring up all the coal dust and methane in the mine, forcing the evacuation of 130-people -- fifteen folks at a time.

“We'd go down into the mine and then we'd have a 'methane morning' -- which meant everybody out,” recalled Mihalka. “And the mine would remain closed until the methane gas would clear. If you read about it, there's constant coal mining explosions in China, the Ukraine, in Russia and places where coal mining is still a viable industry. There's constant tragedies. And the Princess Colliery mine was no exception. In 1938, there was a nasty mine-cart accident that killed 22 miners. Which lends an added creepiness to the fact that we shot right there. It was quite scary working like that because at a certain point, it becomes extremely dangerous. I mean, you can die.” 

Shot under these trying conditions, one can really appreciate what Mihalka and cinematographer Rodney Gibbons managed to pull off, utilizing and exploiting their location rather brilliantly to add to the ever-looming and eerie atmosphere of dread and decay -- something that's already dead but just doesn't know it yet and won't quite give up the ghost. 

Apparently, during shooting, the true identity of the killer was kept a secret from the cast because Mihalka liked the idea of the mystery being real among the actors. However, as one watches the film, it becomes fairly obvious as the bodies start piling up that the killer was either T.J. or Axel.

Sure, they try to throw you off the scent with the possibility of it actually being Harry Warden but it doesn’t quite jive. And like a lot of movies in this subgenre, it has a bad habit of knocking off all the red herrings as soon as they’re introduced, eliminating a good chunk of suspects. 

I mean, just ask Happy, who beat everyone out to the mine to teach them kids a lesson and rig up a few surprises. Only the surprise was on him as he takes a pick through the skull and is dragged off by the face into the mine proper.

Thus, the stage is set for the third act blood-bath, which kicks off at the party with a few punches thrown between Axel and T.J. over Sarah. Sarah, meanwhile, when forced to choose between them, tells them both to take a hike. And so, while those two peel off to sulk, the killer starts to thin the crowd out a bit: 

Dave (Marotte) is drowned in a pot of boiling hot-dogs; his heart removed and left in the pot while his body is stuffed in the fridge for someone to discover later. Meanwhile, in the locker room, a make-out session between John and Sylvia (Stein, Udy) is put on hold while John goes for more beer. But while he’s gone, in the film’s best and most notorious scene, the killer snatches Sylvia after terrorizing her for a bit and then forcibly impales her skull on a shower pipe, leaving her dangling with the water on.

It isn’t long before these mangled bodies are discovered nearly simultaneously, alerting everyone to the danger they’re in. And while Axel and T.J. direct a less than orderly evacuation, a quick headcount shows several people are still missing.

Seems in a thoroughly misguided effort to help cheer Sarah up, her friend Patty (Dale) convinced her boyfriend, Hollis (Knight), to give them a ride on the rail-cars down to the bottom for an impromptu tour of the mine. (Damp. Dank. Dark. And dangerous. Sounds like fun to me!) 

Thus, Sarah, Patty, Hollis, and three others -- Mike, Harriet, and Howard (Kovacs, Waterland, Humphreys) are at the bottom of the mine and have no idea of what's about to stab them.

Back up top, telling the others to alert Newby and send help, T.J. and Axel stay behind, gear-up, and then head down into the mine, where they split up to find the others (-- and sow confusion with the audience). But, they’re already too late. Mike and Harriet have been dispatched, pinned together by a massive drill-bit, and Hollis has taken several nails to the head courtesy of a pneumatic nail-gun.

This causes Howard to panic, who abandons the girls. But they are soon found by T.J. then Axel, who says while they were searching someone futched with the mine cars and the elevator, meaning the only way out is up an interminable ladder. And so they climb until a body falls from above, startling them. It’s Howard, who is violently decapitated when the rope around his neck snaps taut, spraying the girls in gore.

And so, assuming Warden is now somewhere above them, the ladder is abandoned. However, turns out there might still be another way to safety through a long abandoned mineshaft. But this proves almost as treacherous as dealing with a masked killer as Axel, bringing up the rear, falls into a deep pit of water when a guard rail gives way and apparently drowns.

Then, Patty takes a pick to the stomach, leaving Sarah and T.J. to flee from the killer, who herds them back to the mine cars that are suddenly working again. (Wait. Didn’t Axel say they were broken?) 

Alas, the slow-moving cars make for a shitty getaway vehicle and the killer easily catches up to them, leading to a pretty boss fight between the killer’s pick and T.J.’s shovel, which soon spills over into another abandoned mineshaft.

And as the fight continues, several wild swings strike the long-neglected supporting timbers, which causes a cave-in, separating the killer from the other two -- but not before the killer’s mask comes off. And it’s not Harry Warden.

We then flashback to Warden’s initial rampage, where he attacks one of the men responsible for the cave-in that turned him into a cannibal. And as he messily tears his heart out, turns out this was all witnessed by the man’s young son: Axel. 

And this traumatic experience, combined with the resumption of the dance that got his father killed, plus his crumbling relationship with Sarah, snapped a few mental wires, sending Axel on this horrific killing spree.

By this time, Newby, Hanniger, and a large posse have arrived on scene, and they quickly work to clear the shaft to get to Axel. And after removing a bunch of debris, they spot an arm protruding from the rubble that’s still moving. But as they continue to dig, on the other side, Axel, in his madness, is currently hacking his own arm off (-- the only thing keeping him pinned down). And once he’s free, he laughs maniacally, warning the others that he’ll be back to kill them all one day for what they’ve done before he disappears into the darkness, chasing the echoes of his own sanity and fading laughter.

The production of My Bloody Valentine spent nearly nine weeks in Sydney Mines, shooting day and night, with several different crews going at once, to try and beat the ever-looming release deadline. And as the rushes went back to Montreal, Dunning would send back notes, demanding more blood and gore. And once filming finally wrapped, three editors -- Gérald Vansier, Rit Wallis, Debra Karen, and a supervising editor, Jean LaFleur, worked around the clock to get an answer print assembled.

And when it was at last slapped and dashed together, Mancuso screened it, liked it a lot, and ordered another 500 prints to be struck, making it a grand total of 1100, with a plan to open it big and wide like he did for Friday the 13th.

The Los Angeles Times (February 13, 1981). 

Thus and so, My Bloody Valentine made its opening date on Saturday, February 14th, 1981 -- the day after Friday the 13th, ‘natch, where it landed, alas, with a fairly thunderous thud.

Now, I think one of the main reasons My Bloody Valentine failed to really spark at the box-office was the simple fact that it wasn’t very bloody. To be fair, this was certainly not the fault of Mihalka, and certainly not Dunning, or the FX crew, consisting of Tom Burman, Tom Hoerber and Ken Diaz.

No. The lack of any kind of payoff on My Bloody Valentine’s initial theatrical run was due to an intense backlash by the MPAA, who felt they let something sneak by with Friday the 13th and began cracking down on those looking to cash in. Trust me. The repeat business for Friday the 13th was due to the work of Tom Savini and not for the massive sock Kevin Bacon stuffed in his Speedo.

Apparently, there was a massive lawsuit pending against a major studio at the time, a mother, suing for damages, claiming her son had murdered someone while under the influence of what he’d seen in some serial slasher, which put the MPAA on edge. Also, Mark David Chapman had just murdered John Lennon the previous December, causing a backlash against perceived influential violence in the media.

Thus, when My Bloody Valentine was submitted for certification, it was threatened with an X-rating unless nearly nine minutes of graphic content were removed. “What happened was, we sent the copy of the final cut of the film down to Los Angeles for Paramount and for the MPAA,” said Mihalka. “The MPAA basically said, ‘This is an 'X' film, sorry.’ They asked for cuts.” Ah-lot of them.

Dunning also felt the film was used by a vindictive MPAA president Jack Valenti to teach Paramount a lesson. And since the release date was looming, there was no time to mess around, fudge the cuts, and resubmit, which meant all the “money shots'' wound up on the cutting room floor. “Every single one of them,” said a flabbergasted Mihalka.

“One of the goals that we set out to do, and what Tom Burman created for us, was to be able to create these special effects in one shot,” said Mihalka (The Terror Trap, 2005). “So often, what you had in those days is you'd see the arrow going towards the back of somebody, then it would cut to the front, then it would cut to the top, then it would cut to the side. It would take three or four shots to actually achieve the effect. Once you got finished with that type of multi-cut scare, we felt it took away from the creepy realism we wanted to get with My Bloody Valentine. It took away from the flow. Tom devised some inventive things, like when the miner lifts his pickaxe up under the chin of someone. Tom devised a way where you could see the pick ax hit the bottom of the chin and part of it come out through the eye socket...and have the eyeball pop out at the same time. All in one shot.”

And to make matters worse, when they did submit the film again with all the required cuts, the MPAA demanded even more trimming before it would receive an R-rating, leaving all the murder set-pieces in My Bloody Valentine a jumbled mess of haphazard editing. Even the sound-effects had to be toned down. Again, there was no time to fight this since the premiere was a mere week away; and so, Cinepix acquiesced to their demands.

Gone were shots of the pick coming through the woman’s chest in the opening sequence; Mabel's mutilated body spinning to a stop in the dryer; a scene of Warden cannibalizing a severed arm during his flashback origin; the pick going through Happ’s chin and out his left eye, and then his body being drug along the ground with his eyeball hanging out; a good chunk of Dave getting his face boiled off and the aftermath of the same; several shots of Sylvia’s physical impalement on the pipe were gone, as was the aftermath of the water spraying out of her mouth when discovered by her boyfriend; also gone was the actual impalement of Michael and Harriet with the drill-bit, leaving them just for the protagonists to discover in a brief shot; and all the lingering close-ups of the nails in Hollis’ skull.

Howard’s hanging was also shortened in the theatrical version. His decapitation was cut out completely, so it looks like his body just falls, stops short when the end of the wire is reached, sprays blood all over Patty and Sarah, and then resumes falling. This resulted with probably the most nonsensical editing of ever and kinda ruins the scene as the audience isn’t quite sure just what the hell happened. Originally, according to Mihalaka, “What we had was you could actually see his neck being squeezed and stretched and then finally the weight of the body forces the head to pop right up and off.”

Patty’s death was also rendered completely bloodless. And during the climax, all the footage of Warden ripping out Axel’s father’s heart was excised; and later, the whole scene of Axel chopping his own arm off is gone, which completely pretzels the final resolution and makes little sense at all as he stumbles away into the darkness.

And I think all of those cuts, along with the usual murk of VHS transfers, making all those low-light scenes in the mines nearly imperceptible, resulted in My Bloody Valentine being an Also Ran for the longest time as far as Cinema Slashers go. This, was too bad.

Apparently, Tom Burman and his crew pulled off some pretty spectacular gags and stunts -- some of them so effective, they made their director physically lose his lunch. But all we had as proof were some photos in Fangoria and rumors of an uncut Japanese release to make you wonder what the film really delivered. 

Thankfully, that was all resolved with the release of a restored and remastered version of My Bloody Valentine in 2009 on DVD -- all part of the build-up to the impending release of the film’s remake that same year, which restored everything mentioned above except for the actual impalement by the drill bit. That footage was apparently lost.

As it was shot, this lost scene was a bit of a callback to Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (alias Ecologia del delitto, alias Twitch of the Death Nerve, alias Carnage, alias Blood Bath, 1971), where a couple having sex are skewered by a spear and left pinned together on a bed by the killer just as they reach full climax. A scene that was also blatantly copied in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981). And we’ll let Mihalka take it from there: 

“Michael is on top of Harriet and the killer comes in and shoves this drill bit into his back, which makes him jerk and react. This makes Harriet think that Mike's begun to ‘thrust’ a little harder. Which makes Harriet open her mouth and go, ‘Oh, that's good’ -- just as he begins to bleed down into her mouth. And then as she opens her eyes and sees Mike all contorted and with blood coming out of his mouth, the miner pushes down further on the drill and -- scrunch -- now it impales her also.”

Now, I liked the film well enough when first encountered as a Movie of the Week, figuring most of the cuts were made due to broadcast standards and practices. But when later encountered on VHS, it turns out I didn’t really miss all that much. Still, I really dug the rustic setting, the blue collar nature of the victims, and loved the signature look of the killer. And then I finally saw the restored version and, great googly-moogly, that was ah-mazing.

Burman’s work was truly innovative and startlingly effective -- Sylvia’s death belongs in the Hall of Fame of such things. It’s just really too bad this was all left on the cutting room floor back in ‘81, because if it hadn’t I think Harry Warden would be mentioned in the same breath as Jason Vorhees and Leatherface. 

But even without the excised footage, most slasher fans agree, myself included, that My Bloody Valentine was pretty good as far as these things go. But once you put all that gore back in, then, damn, this film becomes the apex example of the genre as far as I’m concerned. How this film never spawned a franchise is beyond me.

Okay, one last production note before we wrap this up. Still with me? Great! Dunning also hired Paul Zaza to do the soundtrack for My Bloody Valentine. Zaza had just done the outstanding disco-heavy (and highly litigious) score for Prom Night (1980), and Dunning had hoped for enough songs to release a full soundtrack album.

Alas, money ran out, the plug got pulled, and the only thing that remained was "The Ballad of Harry Warden," written by Zaza and performed by John McDermott, that plays over the closing credits. And their end result is both haunting and memorable (Currently streaming on YouTube.)

Despite the financial setback of My Bloody Valentine, Dunning and Link kept at it. In 1997, Cinepix was bought out and placed under the Lionsgate banner, who were responsible for that aforementioned My Bloody Valentine (2009) remake, which wasn’t too bad, after buying the rights back from Paramount, who had always balked at any talk of a sequel, of which Dunning was always keen to do, due to the initial poor box-office returns. ($6-million against a $2-million budget. Friday the 13th had brought in over $60-million.)

Again, as far as I’m concerned, not the film’s fault but the MPAA’s. The remake would be the last film Dunning would produce before he passed away in 2011.

“John Dunning is the unacknowledged godfather of an entire generation of Canadian filmmakers,” said David Cronenberg, addressing the Toronto Film Critics Association in 2009. “I still consider him my movie mentor.”

Yes, Dunning, Link and Cinepix were very influential in Canadian genre cinema, but they weren’t completely alone, sharing company with the likes of Quadrant Films, Astral, and Cineplex, resulting in a slew of completely bonkers genre cinema that was as Canadian as sticking American flags everywhere to make it look like an American product to sell more tickets.

And for that, I know I will always be eternally grateful for genre flicks from up north like My Bloody Valentine. And Black Christmas (1974). And Deranged (1974). And Rituals (1977), and The Uncanny (1977), and Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century (1977). Also City on Fire (1979), Terror Train (1980), Funeral Home (1980), Hog Wild (1980), and Murder By Phone (1982); or Humongous (1982), Scanners (1981), Curtains (1983), Spasms (1983), Screwballs (1983), Def-Con 4 (1985), Rock N Roll Nightmare (1986), Killer Party (1986), Zombie Nightmare (1986) and Things (1989), which all earned a genre unto itself: Canuxploitation. So, thanks a lot, there, eh.

Originally published on February 9, 2018, at Micro-Brewed Reviews. 

My Bloody Valentine (1981) Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC) :: Famous Players :: Secret Films :: Paramount Pictures / EP: Larry Nesis / P: John Dunning, André Link, Stephen A. Miller / LP: Bob Presner / D: George Mihalka / W: Stephen A. Miller, John Beaird / C: Rodney Gibbons / E: Gérald Vansier, Rit Wallis / M: Paul Zaza / S: Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, Neil Affleck, Keith Knight, Alf Humphreys, Cynthia Dale, Helene Udy, Rob Stein, Thomas Kovacs, Terry Waterland, Carl Marotte, Patricia Hamilton, Don Francks, Larry Reynolds, Peter Cowper