My Bloody Valentine is a 1981 Canadian slasher film directed by George Mihalka and written by John Beaird, from a story by Stephen Miller. The film stars Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, and Neil Affleck. It follows young adults in a mining town who plan a Valentine's Day party despite warnings tied to a local legend about a murderous miner.
Produced and shot in 1980, the film was filmed on location in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. Paramount Pictures acquired North American distribution and released it theatrically in February 1981. It grossed $5.7 million at the box office. Reviews were mixed, with some critics singling out the mine setting and cinematography and others criticizing its violence and similarities to other slasher films of the period.
The film is also known for censorship disputes: the MPAA required substantial cuts for an R rating, with several minutes of gore removed from the original release. A 2009 Lionsgate home-media release restored roughly two-and-a-half minutes of previously missing footage, though a fully uncut version remains unreleased. A remake, My Bloody Valentine 3D, was released in 2009.
Plot Mayor Hanniger of Valentine Bluffs, a Canadian mining town, reinstates the traditional Valentine's Day dance, which has been suspended for twenty years following an accident in Hanniger Mine, in which two supervisors left their posts to attend the town's annual Valentine's Day dance. Because they forgot to check methane levels in the mining tunnels, an explosion caused the tunnel to cave in, killing all the miners except for one - Harry Warden. Warden resorted to cannibalism to survive and went insane from the ordeal. The next year, he murdered the two supervisors who had left their posts the previous year, cut out their hearts, and placed them in Valentine's Day candy boxes, with a note from Harry, who was subsequently institutionalized in an insane asylum, warning the town never to hold the Valentine's Day Dance ever again or he would commit more killings.
With the dances back on, several residents become excited for the upcoming event, including Sarah Mercer and Axel Palmer, as well as Gretchen, Dave, Hollis, Patty, Sylvia, Howard, Mike, John, Tommy, and Harriet, and the mayor's son, T.J., who is embroiled in a tense love triangle with Sarah and Axel. Soon, however, Mayor Hanniger and the town's police chief, Jake Newby, receive an anonymous box of Valentine's chocolates containing a human heart, and a note warning that murders will begin if the dance proceeds. That evening, resident Mabel is murdered by a mining-geared killer in a laundromat, and her heart is removed. Newby publicly reports that she died of a heart attack to prevent panic. He contacts the mental institution where Harry Warden was incarcerated, but they have no record of him. Hanniger and Newby cancel the dance, but the town's youngsters decide to hold their own party at the mine. A bartender warns them against it, but is killed by the miner while trying to set up a dummy miner to scare the group.
At the party, the miner confronts Dave in the kitchen and kills him by shoving his face into a boiling pot of hot dogs, in which his heart is later found. Shortly after, Sylvia is impaled on a showerhead by the miner. When the others realize Dave and Sylvia have been murdered, they contact authorities, but several of the partygoers have already decided to enter the mines for fun. TJ and Axel enter the mines to rescue them. Hollis leaves to find Mike and Harriet, who have been impaled by a large drill. He is subsequently shot in the head with a nail gun by the killer, who confronts the others as Howard flees in horror. Patty, TJ, Axel, and Sarah try to climb to the top with a ladder, but Howard's corpse, tied to a rope, falls from above.
While finding their way out, Axel seemingly drowns, and Patty is killed by the miner with a pickaxe. The miner chases T.J. and Sarah, and a fight ensues. The miner is revealed to be Axel, who faked his demise. It is revealed that Axel's father was one of the supervisors killed by Harry Warden, and Axel witnessed the murder himself as a child, leaving him traumatized. T.J. hits Axel with a rock, causing the tunnel to collapse and trapping Axel as Newby and the police arrive to rescue T.J. and Sarah. Chief Newby reveals to them that Harry Warden died five years earlier. T.J. and Sarah hear a rescuer shout that Axel is still alive, and they rush back to the scene. They watch as Axel frees himself from the debris by amputating his trapped arm. He runs deeper into the mine shouting threats that he and Harry Warden will return and murder everyone in town, and mumbling about Sarah being his "bloody valentine".
Cast
Production
Development Director George Mihalka, on the strength of his earlier movie Pick-Up Summer, was approached by Cinépix, headed by André Link and John Dunning with a two-movie contract. Mihalka was asked to direct a horror-slasher story, presented to Dunning by Stephen Miller in mid-1980, and, after Mihalka agreed to direct, John Beaird was brought in to write the screenplay.
The film originally had the working title The Secret. However, the producers decided to change it to My Bloody Valentine, so to overtly reference the holiday serial killer trend with which the slasher genre was becoming increasingly popular, through films such as Black Christmas (1974), Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). At the time, the slasher sub-genre had seen further commercial success with the releases of Prom Night and Terror Train (both 1980).
Casting Paul Kelman was cast in the lead role of T.J., while Neil Affleck was cast as Axel, his former friend and coworker.
Lori Hallier was cast as Sarah, the girlfriend of Axel and ex-girlfriend of T.J. Hallier arrived to the set several weeks after the other actors, as she had prior obligations at the National Theatre School of Canada where she was studying at the time; director Mihalka, intent on casting her in the role, convinced her academic advisors to allow her to finish the semester early in order to appear in the film.
Filming Shooting on My Bloody Valentine began in September 1980, taking place around the Princess Colliery Mine in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, which had closed in 1975. Filming completed in November 1980. The budget was approximately $2.3 million. Two mines were considered for the setting, the other in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. The production company decided on the Sydney Mines location due to "the exterior [being] a dreary, cold and dusty area [with] no other buildings around it so it looked like it was totally in the middle of nowhere".
Mihalka has said since making the movie that the most difficult element of My Bloody Valentine was filming in the mines. Located underground, filming in the mine was a lengthy process, as, due to limited space in the elevators, it would take an hour to transport the cast and crew to the location. Also, due to the methane levels underground, lighting had to be carefully planned as the number of bulbs that could be safely utilised was limited. Prior to the production's arrival to the mine, the owners thoroughly cleaned the location, leaving it described as a "clean and colourful Disneyland-like set". This resulted in the production team spending an estimated $30,000 to paint portions of the mine to achieve a darker atmosphere, akin to how it had appeared in its original state. Producer Dunning referred to the shoot as "horrendous".
The crew kept the identity of the killer a secret to the cast members until the end of production, when the final scene was shot, in order to assure the actors played their parts in an ambiguous manner.
"The Ballad of Harry Warden" Although it was not credited on the film itself, the vocals for the end credits song, "The Ballad of Harry Warden", as well as other music cues heard in the film, were provided by Scottish-Canadian tenor John McDermott. In an interview with the Ghouls in the House podcast – his first and only interview on the subject – McDermott explained that he was a family friend of the film's composer, Paul Zaza, and just out of school when offered the opportunity to record vocals for the film.
Release In December 1980, Paramount Pictures acquired North American distribution for My Bloody Valentine. The film was released in the United States on February 11, 1981, and in Canada two days later.
Censorship My Bloody Valentine was heavily censored in North America upon its theatrical release. For the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to award the movie with an R-rating, cuts were requested to every death sequence in the film. Producer Dunning said the film was "cut to ribbons" in order to achieve an R-rating. Even after cutting the film to match the requirements made by the MPAA, it was again returned with an X-rating and further cuts were demanded. Stills of the trimmed footage were published in Fangoria magazine whilst the film was still in production, though the sequences were excised from the theatrical version. Even today the complete uncut version has not been released (though the 2009 DVD and Blu-ray release by Lionsgate reinstated three minutes of excised footage). The standard North American theatrical cut of the film ran approximately 90 minutes. In the United Kingdom, the film was passed for theatrical release by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) on March 30, 1981. According to the BBFC catalogue, this version ran at 90 minutes and 55 seconds.
There are two reasons that are frequently attributed to the extreme cutting of the film. It has been suggested that Paramount Pictures was keen to remove the offending footage due to the backlash they had received from releasing Friday the 13th the previous year. The second reason, that Mihalka attributes, is that the film was cut due to the murder of John Lennon in December 1980, stating that there was a major backlash against movie violence in the wake of his death.
Restoration efforts
An uncensored cut of My Bloody Valentine remained unavailable to the public for nearly thirty years after its original theatrical release. When Paramount released the film on DVD in North America for the first time in 2002, the studio claimed that the purported "missing" footage did not exist.
In 2008, Lionsgate licensed the home video rights to the film after producing a feature film remake, and in the process, acquired a copy with excised footage never before seen in the standard theatrical cut of the film. In January 2009, Lionsgate under license from Paramount released an unrated Region 1 "Special Edition" DVD and Blu-ray featuring this footage. The DVD/Blu-ray allows viewers the option to watch the standard R-rated version of the film, as well as an uncensored version in which excised violent footage is reinstated. Despite this, three scenes play in their unrated form regardless of which version is being viewed: the flashbacks of Axel's father's death, and Harry Warden with the arm. Commenting on the release, director Mihalka said: "[With this release] we have it back to 80% of the image back and 95% of the impact back".
In total, the 2009 "Special Edition" DVD/Blu-ray reinstates approximately two-and-a-half minutes of previously unreleased footage back into the film, which contradicts an earlier claim by director Mihalka that it had been trimmed by 8–9 minutes. It has been argued that the so-called uncut DVD/Blu-ray is still missing additional footage, particularly the double-impalement of Mike and Harriet which the director recalls filming. It is thought that the remaining footage appears to be composed of expository scenes, such as dialogue and other non-violence related material. This is given credence by the fact that Mihalka gave his seal of approval to this release, and a written introduction by him precedes the beginning of the special edition DVD/Blu-ray, stating that this version was the way that the film was meant to be seen.