Oh man. We're on a pretty solid do watch streak. Will this best the most positive week that I will probably ever get to experience? Yes. Without a doubt.

My Bloody Valentine is a film that originally cost 2.3 million Canadian dollars to make, which in 1981 was probably the equivalent of 3 beavers and at least half a moose if you were good at bargaining. It is one of my top 10 favorite films of all time and I love almost every second of this movie, except when it ends. The ending is always sad because I won't get to see more people die. This movie is about murder, and the absolute best kind. Senseless, gory, stupid, pointless, bonkers murder.

This is one of those movies you have to just take as a whole and with a big dumb smile on your face the entire time. It is the epitome of earnest schlock. There is nothing in this movie that's intelligent, no fancy sound design, no great special effects, no acting worth its salt, and hell, there are even way bloodier movies with way more over the top deaths. This movie, applied to basically anything else, would be boring. But it isn't. This movie is perfect.

wut

You heard me. My Bloody Valentine is the perfect film. Now I don't mean that it is the best film possible, and I certainly don't mean that this movie is art. Art and perfection are very, VERY different things. What it the film is, when you strip away the surface, is a perfectly realized slasher film that at no point treats you like an idiot.

Okay, that really doesn't explain much. Which is fine. This review isn't going to follow the normal questions again because this is one of my favorite movies - I've seen it before today, actually, multiple times - and I want to talk to you about it. I rank this shit up there with Star Wars. The good ones. Not the prequels.

What do you mean "doesn't insult your intelligence?"

I never said that. I said doesn't treat you like an idiot. Basically the same, though.

You see, most slasher films that people remember, the ones that we draw innumerable tropes from, they are not smart movies. The genre isn't really known for being the home of brilliant films. Its a genre where people get murdered. Kind of the point, you know? But, what slashers tend to do, in order to give a more mass audience appeal, is make you hate the characters.

There are plenty of ways to do it, but ultimately you end up with a character that the audience hates, and when that character dies they get a sort of relief from it. Which is fine; it makes money, people get some satisfaction, but its ignoring the whole point of a slasher flick. I'm not going to watch it for being smart, I'm not going to watch it for anything intelligent. I'm watching a slasher film to experience the sweet, sweet joy of murder!!!!!!!!!

Wait, I'm still confused?

Good! Trust me this is going to lead somewhere, pay attention.

Now, what MBV goes with is not the typical cast of characters. There's no jock, there's no slut, there's no nerd, nothing. The characters are divided in to two groups; boys and girls. The boys are all miners. The girls are all romantic interests. Yes that's sort of sexist. This movie was made in 1981 and filmed in a small town in Canada. Please do not look to this film to be the bastion of the rights of women. Also don't watch this film if you're expecting black people. Its Canada in the 80s.

Leaving out the typical, by then trite cast of murder victims means that all of the characters basically just become people. There's a fat one with a girlfriend and a mustache, there's the main character and Harvey Dent in a love triangle, there's the weird bartender, fat guy's funny friend, shifty kid, whatever! They're a bunch of dude bros and their girlfriends. Its basically a giant, well groomed, much more polite frat.

How does this make it any better of a movie, though?

Simple. When you get right down to it, a slasher film is a movie about a crazed murderer of some kind killing a bunch of people and then some of those people overcoming it. A slasher film is NOT about a crazed murderer killing a bunch of outdated stereotypes.

The cast of My Bloody Fuck Abbreviations is a cast portraying human beings, and so when the murder starts, you sort of actually care about them. It makes it more exciting and brings you more in to the movie when you see what amounts to real people having to struggle and overcome this problem. There's this thing called tension, and it doesn't feel artificial at all because it isn't being forced on you by a poorly written script. Also, the fact that the characters are basically real people makes the terrible acting that much better since its constantly relieving tension from the film.

Wait, so its bad?

Yes and no!

The acting in this movie is awful. The sheriff alone has enough ham to put Bill Shatner out of business, and the rest of the cast and crew are so wooden in the best possible way. Lines are delivered awkwardly, dialogue is timed just a few paces off, and the physical expression of the majority of actors is terrible. They act like people just out of college, and its fantastic.

Its perfect bad acting. You can tell that the person is trying, but not quite succeeding, and the timing produces this sort of weird, wonderful world of slightly off dialogue, where from time to time someone forgets to not have a Canadian accent, despite the fact that the movie is set in Canada. Every character has this problem, and you really end up being totally unable to take their characters seriously. So at some point in the film you stop. You just learn to roll with it. And that's where the fun begins.

Fun? Oh you mean murders.

Yes. The murders are dumb. I'm going to list them. Don't read this list. Spoilers.

First a lady is trying to sleep with a man in a mining outfit. He gets all excited when she has him touch her boob, then he grabs her by the shoulders and shoves her on to a pickaxe. This seems like an opening teaser, but in fact that girl's heart is used to warn the town, which makes no sense but who cares.

Then the lady who is trying to organize the town's valentine's day dance, which is the driving element of the plot, get killed, has her heart removed, and is shoved in to a dryer which is apparently set to dry for an infinite amount of time. In the unrated version that I watched, they show her rolling around half-spilled out of the dryer for several shots and you can't not laugh.

Third dude dies when he tries to prank the kids who are having the dance party after all because fuck the police. He sets up a fake miner suit behind a door to scare the kids, then the REAL killer pops out after he opens the door 4 times. At the party, the killer pushes a kid's face in to boiling water full of hot-dogs, shoves the body in a fridge, rips the kids heart out, and has it cook with the hot dogs. Then he finds his way over to the showers at the mining place, sets of an elaborate series of loud machinery nobody hears for whatever who cares about plot holes, picks the girl up by her head and shoves her on the shower pipe. Its really more of a pipe than a shower head. You'll get it when you watch it.

Then a bunch of people go down in to the mine. The first couple dies after he shoves a massive drill through the both of them while they are making out. Yes there are massive issues with how he did that without them noticing, I really don't think you should care either. Then the fat character - who by the way is neither a loser nor comic relief for once in cinema history - is shot twice in the brain with a nail gun and stumbles back towards the main group. The funny guy runs off and is of course murdered because duh. He's hung from way high up in the mines and his body is separated from his neck and falls down the shaft as the group is climb up.

The last person to die is the fat guy's girlfriend. Her death is so wonky in the weirdest way you have to really see it. So here's a clip of every murder in the movie.. Its not in order, but she's the one who takes the pickaxe to the womb. I can't tell what it is, I think its just how sudden that swing is, but its just so dumb I can't help but laugh.

That's a lot of murder man. Isn't that sort of fucked up?

Ha! No. You see, My Bloody Valentine does exactly what a slasher is supposed to do. It takes the line, crosses it and comes right back around. Its not believable in the slightest, the motivations for actions are dumb, the murders are silly, the villain design is actually pretty rad, but the twist that its just the dude who looks like Harvey Dent just confuses a whole bunch of things about the film. So you just sort of roll with it. You lean back, and take it all in stride.

Its not a bad movie in the traditional way. Its not poorly made, its not terribly acted, and the special effects are actually pretty cool. Its a decently made movie, but it has the elements of bad movies that make them great while still having a budget. There's every ridiculous death, there's the weird fashion choices - Canadians in the 1980s apparently knew hipster fashion several decades early - the hamtastic acting, the bullshit ending. It doesn't feel like its trying to trick you out of your money either, which is the feeling from a lot of films. It actually feels...kind of innocent.

I suppose my love for this movie is due to my total disinterest in being marketed to. I'm not dumb enough to think that movies are made to appeal to people who like bad films. They're easy to see, and it removes the feeling of purity that comes from a film that honestly tries and fails. That sort of honesty can't be manufactured, and My Bloody Valentine has it.

Its like a puppy with only one leg mangling a cat. You feel bad for the puppy because I mean shit man, it only has one leg. And its just trying so hard to murder that cat, but it keeps falling over on its side that you laugh, and every time you do it gives its tail a little wag so you can't help but love that goddamn puppy. So you do, and then it gets remade in 2009 because I dunno, I guess they were literally so parched for ideas by then they went back to a poorly remembered B-grade Canadian slasher film and said "fuck it we can make this."

I don't want my puppy in 3D damnit.

Um. What just happened.

This review makes a lot more sense when you're running on nicotine and a lack of sleep.

DONE

It's My You Know Already - Fucking hell that title is long. Birdemic - Balls. My Bloody Valentine - Succulent Murder

NOT DONE

Adaptation - Trap me in your sweet, sweet cage.

Fan Request Friday

You guys have until Noon Tomorrow! Vote! No list this time, I need to post this shit.

How would you guys feel about a livestream?