My Bloody Valentine

My Bloody Valentine

my bloody valentine still

Happy Valentine’s Day! February 14th is coming, and that means curling up with a loved one to watch a group of miners and their girlfriends get pickaxed to bits by a crazed killer in retaliation for an incident that happened on Valentine’s Day 20 years ago. Or at least, that’s how WE celebrate the holiday. How about you?

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My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Episode 247, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two guys And a Chainsaw. I’m Todd

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, you know Craig, in as many years as we’ve been doing this podcast and coming up close to our 250th episode. Most of our listeners know that, when it comes time for holiday seasons, we try to find horror movies that fit.

We like to do these themed movies around the holidays. And I tell you what every single time February 14th comes and goes. I look back and go crap. Why have we not done my bloody Valentine yet? Yeah,

Craig: I know. It’s weird. Like we’re, we’re kind of big dorks about our holiday themes. It’s it’s, it’s pretty shocking.

I’m pretty sure this is our first Valentine’s day episode.

Todd: There aren’t that many to choose from as far as I know. I mean, we’re all, I always say that. And then we’re kind of surprised when we go looking, but this one is very much definitely geared towards Valentine’s day and we’re doing the 1981 version, not the, my bloody Valentine 3d remake that was done.

What, like a decade ago, something like that. Because of course we like to do the originals and this movie really came on the heels of a lot of holiday theme movies. In fact, that’s what the producers had in mind actually a year before this was Friday the 13th, right? Yeah. And then there was, you know, black Christmas and prom night and, or actually I think it was released this very same year.

These very same producers did a happy birthday to me, which, uh, we’ll have to do also. I remember seeing that one on the shelves and, uh, wanting to see it never did and thought. I don’t know. Well, we do it for your birthday or my birthday. How are we gonna, I don’t know. It will

Craig: flip a coin

Todd: so stupid, but anyway, this movie is apparently Quentin Tarantino’s. Favorite slasher film. Didn’t do that well on release. I mean it wasn’t horrible. I think it had a budget of about $2.3 million and it made 5.6 million. But considering that Friday, the 13th, the year before also released by paramount made like three times that much, they considered it a disappointment.

And so when they were approached for a sequel, It just didn’t happen. Um, and again, it wasn’t until 2009, I think somewhere

Craig: around there. I don’t know. I mean, the director didn’t even pitch a sequel until like 2000 something. Right. Like, I’m pretty sure they didn’t pitch it

Todd: until way late. It’s true. But the movie kind of sets itself up.

I mean, it, it ends in a way that it has to SQL, could be made and I’m sure they had that in mind and clearly didn’t go anywhere at the time. Yeah. Nor did it many years later. Yeah.

Craig: I saw the remake. Did you know

Todd: how was it? Uh,

Craig: I remember it being okay. And that’s about all I remember about it. It was, you know, it’s one of those movies that I saw once I thought it was okay.

I was never compelled to see it again. It had a lot of really beautiful people in it, and I remember it being kind of. Twisty. And so I was, I had not seen this original, the sitting down to watch this for the podcast was the first time I had seen this. And because I had remembered the first one being kind of twisty, I expected this one to be twisty too.

And it was. Kind of, but there’s just kind of like, you know, one kind of twist at the end that, I mean, if you’re not terribly dense, you can kind of figure out, I guess, I don’t know. I guess I’m terribly dense because I didn’t know, by the end who the killer was, I had suspicions. And then when it. Was revealed.

I was like, Oh yeah,

that works

Todd: pinned on two guys. And then as the movie went on, I thought, okay, maybe it’s not him. Or maybe it is him. And I was bouncing back and forth. And one of the other, you know, killer ended up being one of those two guys. So I can’t take a lot of credit for that 50, 50, um, proposition there. I, you know, I think you do a little more research for these before going into the movie than I tend to do.

I don’t know how much research you did for this movie before you went in. But, um, I always that afterwards we both go in and we read up a lot more about it. And one of my go-to is, is Roger Ebert. Yeah. I like to see if he reviewed the movie at that time. And he and gene Siskel on their television program indeed reviewed this movie and.

It’s a riot because they just hate everything about it. And what they really hate is that this time, 1981, that this was just another formulaic slasher movie to them.

Craig: Yeah. Was it only two years ago that we were praising a movie called Halloween. We thought it was kind of nice. Had some style and whip to it.

This movie is about the seventh direct

Todd: rip off of Halloween and new year’s

Craig: Eve or prom night, Friday, the 13th terror train. We’re all on the same formula. Something terrible happens 20 years ago, 10 years ago, then there’s a party and all the teenagers get together in the same place. They all train or the old deserted mind or something.

And the buzzard maniac comes down on him with a knife or a pickax or something. It’s. First of all it’s disgusting. Secondly, it’s so appallingly lacking in imagination. You would think that they could at least come up with a new discussing angle. Yeah. I’m sitting there. Why

Todd: these people get involved in these films?

I mean, what are the women think who are getting pickaxes thrown at them? What do they think they’re contributing to art? And I also, as you rattled off that list of names, I’m thinking of all those hours, we’ve both logged in movie theaters, slumped over in our seats, just shaking our heads. Well, I wish this trend will really end.

Not teenagers in this movie, actually, they’re adults in this movie, which is I couldn’t for

Craig: the life of me, figure out how old these people were supposed to be. In my, in my notes, I kept referring to them as the kids, because like, that’s their stereotypical, like they’re the kids of the slasher movie, but some of them look like they’re in their forties.

So no idea.

Todd: Well, they’re like adults that act like 13 year olds, the way that some of the drama between, you know, there’s a little love triangle angle in here and stuff like that. And I was kind of rolling my eyes at some of this stuff, how silly and overly dramatic these people were towards each other.

Craig: And it’s really stupid on the one hand, but on another hand, I feel like it’s and not to get too deep about it, but like, it almost seemed a little bit cultural because it’s like these people live in this tiny mining town where it seems like the mine is where you’re going to work. If you’re a

Todd: dude. Yeah.

And I liked that about

Craig: this. Yeah, I did too. I kind of understood the dynamic. Like it seemed to me like most of these men and I guess the, the women that follow them around, it almost seems like they’re kind of suspended in time in their lives. So, you know, like they graduate high school and then they work in the mine.

That’s just it. So maybe there’s not a whole lot of opportunity for mature growth and maturation, right? Like they’re just kind of suspended there, you

Todd: know, point. And I’m glad you brought that up because that was one of the things, you know, both you and I have spent a considerable amount of our lives and childhoods in small Midwestern.

Town that is in many ways, culturally, not unlike this place. And I thought that the representation of it at times it was a little bit of a Groaner. Like there’s one point in which these guys all get together in a junkyard and they’re hanging out in the junkyard and they’re like grilling meat on somebody’s radiator of their car and playing karma.

That’s uh, I don’t know who’s who wrote that in, but that’s a little

Craig: silly, I don’t know. It’s quaint like  and you’re right. Like, no, in my Midwestern hometown, I don’t believe that people stand around a car engine to heat up their sandwiches, but there definitely is. You know, kind of a small town culture where people congregate, you know, in fields or on old farms or whatever, like that’s what kids do.

Or when I was their age, I don’t know if they still do. Maybe they’re just on their phones now. I don’t know. But yeah, that, I mean, just kind of getting together and hanging out and drinking. Like you, that was, that was very typical of my high school experience.

Todd: Yeah. I mean, and this was filmed in Nova Scotia and a town, apparently that is full of mines, like abandoned mines,

Craig: this story that they filmed it in this actual small mining town and the small mining town was so excited by the prospect of.

Uh, movie filming in their town. They thought it was going to draw in tourism. Like it was going to stimulate their economy and they were so excited about it, that they spent like $50,000 to totally clean up. Their mind to make it look as good as it could. And the whole reason that the induction team had chosen this place was because of the look of the mine.

They wanted it to look, you know, kind of run down and the town spent all this money to clean it up. And then the production company came in and spent even more money. Like $75,000 to put it back the way it was before

Todd: I’m going to get black. Breguet dirt. Devin’s crazy, right.

Craig: Oh, I love it. That’s such a great story.

Todd: Great story. But yeah, works. I mean, for me, the setting worked and maybe because I’m familiar with these people, I thought there were some, there were some silly moments, like I mentioned about the junkyard scene where it’s a little over the top, but. Honestly, like you said, the relationship between these people kind of suspended from before the bar that they go to, you know, the kind of dive bar where it seems like everybody gathers the characters in here and the kinds of things that a small town like this gets excited about, you know, every small town has their festival or two a that’s just cute and quaint.

And this one, this town is Valentine’s. Bluff. It makes a big deal. A lot of Valentine’s day, I loved this. I thought all of this stuff was actually kind of nice and set it apart a little bit from those other horror movies where you don’t see much of the relationship between the characters. It’s just like, Oh, these, these are a whole bunch of couples and young people that got together and they’re at a summer camp and then they get killed.

The setting drew me in and the mine. Setting really drew me in like the descent, you know, I’m, I’m watching this movie and half of it, I’m thinking, just being down there in that mind is scary. It’s deepest as they are, especially toward the end of the movie where they’re running away and they got to go through all this crazy stuff.

Sometimes just the. The fact that they have to crawl through these difficult passages that could collapse on them. These dangerous sections of the mind that have been closed off. At one point, they have to climb a ladder. That’s just in a shaft that’s I don’t know what miles deep or something, and I could not handle that.

All of that kind of work. I mean, it doesn’t work. Don’t get me wrong to the same level of the descent. But, um, it was present in there and always kind of in the back of my mind, that little bit of claustrophobia and that worked for me too. I appreciated

Craig: that. Yeah. And I appreciate the fact that they, they filmed this.

In minds, the, these were real minds that they filmed it in and they even had to be careful with the type of lighting equipment that they used, because there really was a legitimate threat of like methane explosions. Crazy. And that’s cool. It looks cool. It didn’t give me descent vibes just because the descent was so claustrophobic and this is actually very open.

Like the shafts are quite large and they get into some areas where it’s, you know, these huge underground rooms and caverns or whatever. So I didn’t get that claustrophobic feel, but the realism of it. Was cool. Yeah. And I liked that, that scene that you’re talking about when they’re climbing the ladder. I don’t know that I would have appreciated that this much, Todd let’s travel down memory lane second to the delight.

Of our listeners who will have no idea what we’re talking about. Did

Todd: this last during ghost keeper, when we were trying to kill time, tell me about that trip to Nova Scotia.

Craig: Me Todd and I went to the same university and we both participated in performances, musical and theatrical performances. And one of our main performance spaces was an auditorium, which was run by a dear friend of ours. Randy. And in that auditorium on the stage, I’m sure that all, you know, theaters are like this, but at one point I was in another play in an adjoining theater.

Um, but I had a lot of downtime and so I was just exploring lot. And I explored the tunnels underneath the university, but that’s a story for another podcast. This story is about how one time I gave myself the courage to climb the ladder into the flies above the auditorium.

Todd: You know what I’m saying? I know the ladder you’re talking about and you would make, and

Craig: like it had, it had bars like all around it.

So like, I guess to maybe potentially catch you if you fell backwards or something, but it was so high. And I remember getting hit half way up looking down and be like, what am I do? This is a nightmare. But considering that, that was maybe two, three stories maybe. Um, and, and thinking about these, I was so annoyed with this one girl who was.

Freaking out the whole time that they were climbing up this ladder,

the shut up, just keep climbing in the back of my mind. I’m like I get it because I didn’t tell him this. It is scary as hell.

Todd: Oh, I’ve done this too. I, you know, I was renovating a building once and we had, um, a multi-level of scaffolding out in front. And by the time I got close to the top and I was just cheerfully climbing and I realized where I was and how little was around me.

And how far I had to go to the ground. I was doing exactly what she did. My arm was like grip and lift around Nepal. I’m like, Oh shit, what do I do now?

I’m not, you know, Heights are just not my friend in those types of situations. I’m not a fan of Heights. So, but you know, the cinematography. Is quite good. And for the fact that they filmed all this down in this dark mind, a lot of these horror movies that we watch, there’s just so much darkness. You just can’t see what’s going on or appreciate it.

They did a really good job. I think of lighting this in, in shooting this in a way that you could see what was going on, but it still had tons of Atmos. I mean, yeah. The movie starts out in the middle, which is great. There are these very cantilevered shots and this angle kind of coming up at them. They’re really off-kilter of these two people who are going through the mind and we don’t see who they are because they’re, you know, in head to toe, like not just mine gear, but they have what’s this like a face mask kind of gas mask kind of oxygen mask.

Yeah, I guess with these glass, you know, it’s kind of a cross between the old timey, uh, goggles that Wright, biplane pilots used to wear. Right. But then connected to just a mouth thing, like a cane and fricking bathroom with a hose, with a hose. And the sounds, the Darth Vader sounds coming from it just they’re breathing with a helmet and then these full body suits, they’re like Hasbro black hazmat suits, essentially gloves on boots.

And they’re just walking in there, they’re carrying axes and they get to this deep. Part of the mine and they turn around and face each other. And your first twist of the movie is a, one of them starts disrobing. And it turns out as a woman, a

Craig: beautiful woman with no top on, like, why doesn’t she have a shirt on underneath?

I mean, she’s not totally topless. She has a bra on, but I just have. Beautiful woman with heart tattoo on breast

Todd: and lots of habits. My favorite part

Craig: about this scene. It’s like she takes off her mask and kind of disrobed to the waist. And then she’s like kind of being seductive with the other guy. And she goes to take off his mask, but he won’t let her.

And so she’s like stroking his face and then she starts fondling his face hose the most Justin way you can possibly imagine. And I thought that it was so. Funny. Like she was like strongly and slowly jerking off his face. Oh my God.

Todd: So funny getting heavier. Right. And the guy has

The guy had stabbed an ax to the wall. Like it’s an ax with the back end of it. Yeah. Pick ax. Then they’re con she’s a kind of, I think kind of about to take his mask off or whatever. And then it’s quite sudden that suddenly you realize he’s pushed her up against the wall over the point of that pickax, because all you see is kind of scream and the point of the pickax come out of her chest, right.

Where that. Heart tattoo is that was a effective opening scene.

Craig: Good opening. I liked it. It left me with questions. Is this girl, why does nobody noticed that she’s missing later? Like why

Todd: did they come this far down just to make out

Craig: right. But. You’re right. I thought it was a great opening. Um, and then we get into the main point of the movie and it’s like two days before Valentine’s day and we meet all these miners.

These guys are our main characters and there’s a shower scene. Like, so I guess they come out of the mind. And this may be true. I don’t know. I’ve never worked in a mine. I’ve never toured a mine, but like, it’s kind of a whole facility. Like they’ve got like a rec room and they’ve got like a shower room, probably

Todd: true.

It’s all above ground.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they come out of the mines and they’re all covered. It never says what kind of mind this is. People suppose that it’s a coal mine, which would make sense. It’s fine. It doesn’t really matter, but they come out and they’re all dirty. And so they all shower together.

There’s

Todd: lots of byplay

Craig: it’s so right. It’s so silly. Like it

Todd: is pretty

Craig: silly. I. For my own reasons avoided the communal showers in high school. But I can’t imagine that there were really like this. I mean, these are grown men again, again, they’re cut. I mean, they do this every day and again, they may be kind of suspended in like late adolescents, high school age, or whatever, as far as their maturity goes, but like there

Todd: goofing around,

Craig: messing around and like, Like touching each other and pushing each other around and snap and towels and stuff.

I’m like, do you guys do this every day? It’s this really amusing all the time I read it, that all of these dudes were really. Naked. And I thought what a lost opportunity, because we only see them from the chest up.

Todd: Well, there’s no nudity in this movie, which blew me away. I couldn’t believe. Not only did they have all these naked guys, but they had a bunch of beautiful girls.

None of whom I think were wearing bras. I noticed that, but. Not a single boob. And again, like we said, last week, we don’t care, you know, ultimately, but it’s just kind of shocking for an early eighties horror movie. That’s trying to check all the boxes, you know, and compete with Friday the 13th. Right.

Craig: That’s something else that’s interesting about this movie is that it is rated R and in fact, they had to edit it. Heavily to get an R rating. And it’s not that graphic, like you said, there’s no nudity. I don’t even remember there being a ton of swearing. Now, some of the death scenes are somewhat graphic, but certainly not more so than other movies of the time.

Apparently there had been a lot of backlash against the graphic violence in Friday the 13th. And. Right before the release of this movie, or right before they sent it to the NPAA John Lennon had been killed and there had been a lot of scrutiny about violence in film. So they had to cut seemingly everything.

Like I didn’t read about this until after I had watched a movie. And when I was watching the movie, I noticed because it’s obvious. That every kill scene, Luke, the quality of the footage changes drastically. So any, any time there’s graphic violence on the screen, it’s a significantly different and significantly lesser quality.

I read after that, they had made them cut all that. And I thought, well, no wonder the movie tanked. They cut off all of the good stuff. Like if I had watched this and. All of those scenes had been absent. I would have thought it was a piece of shit.

Todd: In fact, I read one of the contemporary reviews and it was basically trashing the movie saying, Oh, it’s just like all those other movies that are coming out now, but at least they had the good taste to have most of the violence happen off screen.

And I’m like, yeah, well, you know, you insert the three minutes of footage. I think it’s two and a half minutes of footage was restored. The director originally said that like nine minutes. Had to be cut from the movie to gain MPA approval, but then later on, uh, Lionsgate licensed the film from paramount to release a special edition DV, a Blu-ray I think just to prepare for their, my bloody Valentine 3d coming out in 2009.

And when they did that, they actually restored about two and a half minutes actually. And that’s what we saw. So those little restored bits were from prints and not found in the original negative. So that’s why they, you know, were changed in, but it’s good for us because we can see what was missing. And it turns out that.

The director admitted later, he said they restored almost everything. As far as the, the Gore and stuff goes and the extra six minutes or whatever, um, was just like additional scenes between the characters, nothing gory, nothing bloody. And he said, this film is now I think, what does he say? 85% of what it’s supposed to be.

And 90% of how scary it’s supposed

Craig: to be. I don’t know. Yeah, there, there was one scene that was too far deteriorated for them. To put back in, which is unfortunate because we see the aftermath of it and it’s very, it’s gruesome. But the thing that bothers me about that now is that people who saw this originally really missed out because not only why, yeah, I’m going into a horror film, I want to see the carnage.

That’s one thing, but the special effects are really quite well done. I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re practical effects and it’s very, very obvious that. You know, in places they were using dummies and things, but I don’t care. I like that stuff. And just the notion of it being completely absent. I mean, without it.

You could show this on TV in the afternoon. Yeah.

Todd: A hundred percent. Right? There’s not even, I think there was one F-bomb in the movie. You blew up that out and you’ve got a PG movie and to be fair, those, okay. So we’re talking about the unedited version that we saw compared to even compared to a lot of the contemporary stuff at this time, these are pretty brutal scenes.

The kills are creative and we’ll be going through them in a moment I promise, but the kills are creative and they’re pretty brutal and extended. And at least one of them turned my stomach a bit. At least one of them was like, okay, that’s really disturbing. So it actually had that going for it. Yeah. Uh, so it’s a, it’s a real shame, you know, as a horror movie that it did, it got, you know, neutered in that way.

Craig: And I made a lot of the guys showering. It’s not important. I just thought it was such a silly scene, but it establishes, you know, all these guys basically who are going to be falling around. The only significant thing that happens in there is that one guy makes a joke about the fact that, okay, so there’s one, this main guy named TJ.

Who apparently has been gone for reasons that we don’t know initially, but it’s so stupid. Who cares? Like I tried to, well, he tried to escape his small town life and go off to the West coast or something, but he failed miserably. Like I have no idea, you know, what he was trying to do. I hope he wasn’t trying to be an actor because he’s.

Ugly.

Todd: Let me, let me put out a theory that I haven’t read anywhere online, but I was thinking about during the whole movie, I was like of all of these hardcore heavy miners TG seems like the least quote, unquote, manly of the group. At one point he has like a scarf tied around his neck and I thought. Maybe what they were trying to imply is that he went out to the West coast to escape his very conservative, not so liberal town and try to make it in a big city where he might be more accepted.

Is that a big stretch

or was it just, I mean, I thought it was quite noticeable. His delivery, everything kind of about him was a

Craig: little, I don’t

Todd: know. Uh, I mean he has a girlfriend or a girlfriend that he left behind named Sarah, uh, and Sarah. The thing that we hear about in the shower here is that he left and since then Axel has, uh, taken Sarah they’re dating.

And that’s pretty much it, I guess, just kind of in the early throws of dating. And so when TJ comes back, he’s kind of pissed and there’s a little bit of this triangle, this kind of love story between the three of them, but it’s, it’s really

Craig: silly. It was so convoluted. It was so stupid and unnecessary.

Like it was just unnecessary plot complications. Like nobody cares about this stupid law triangle. They, they work it so

Todd: hard. They do. But I think I’ll argue that they did it for a reason because later in the story, the two of them are forced to kind of be together to kind of help save the day.

Craig: I appreciated that, that when they both realized that Sarah was in danger, they.

Through their differences aside and they worked together to try to help their friends. Great, fine. I know it, I mean, it’s so typical and cliched and like there were scenes throughout the movie where like at first, you know, Axel, first of all is a very attractive man. He’s very tall masculine. Very good looking.

Whereas TJ, I thought was. Kind of ugly

Todd: axle. He is working hard. This man has tons of credits, not just working, but directing. He was in scanners before this. And now it seems like he’s been doing a lot of work in animation. He was working on the Simpsons. Rug rats

Craig: doing like back behind the scenes production

Todd: stuff or voicing directing many episodes.

Wow, good for him. Yeah. And I think he kind of started on the Simpsons, like in the literal animation, like he was an in-between or something like that and kind of got into directing. So yeah, he’s, he’s still working. It’s kind of cool. I liked

Craig: the actor. In fact, like I couldn’t tell what the movie, I think that the movie wanted us to want Sarah to get back with TJ.

Like, you know, they they’re like these star crossed lovers who had hit a bump in the road, but now they’re gonna get back together. I like to axle. I thought he was a cool guy. I thought that she was kind of a dope for even. You know, this guy, TJ, they have this whole scene where first of all, he abducted her from her

Todd: job.

Oh, TJ.

Craig: And he takes her to like their spot, which. Is this beautiful scenic spot near this sea. I don’t know water

Todd: be a Lake there in Nova Scotia. Right. And we’re not supposed to know that.

Craig: Give me a chance. You still want me to go away? I will. I have to tell you that. I love you. I want you back. What was I supposed to know that Jessie?

I honestly didn’t think you were ever coming back

here. Then he kisses her and she’s receptive to it. And so like, then it’s the whole lot, like who is she going to pick? And like, TJ even like throws it in Axel’s face and like tries to force her to choose between them publicly. And she’s like, you’re a right. Dick Goff

Todd: so clunky, right? Because on the one hand, she seems to be like, you know, TJ don’t do this, but on the other hand, she’s perfectly willing to submit to his charms or whatever, not really charms, but you know, his come-ons and his anger and whatever.

And, and then even between axle and TJ, it’s not even always clear where they are. Dan did, or the intensity of how they feel about this. You know, they have these sort of casual conversations, like, Oh, we got something we need to talk about don’t we? Yeah, I guess we do. And then they have these like intense anger at each other for just a, he looked at her, you know, well,

Craig: and their friends even comment on it.

Like you guys are going to have to work this out. And at some point, TJ is like, I just don’t know what to do. I actually really liked the guy, but I, you know, like we’re in competition for this girl. Like, it’s so sad. Stupid and high school and juvenile, but, you know, I suppose if you were in the throws of it, it would be upsetting.

There’s even one point it’s right after the confrontation, where after TJ and Sarah have kissed and they’re all at this Valentine’s day party, which we should probably get to pretty soon, but then all of a sudden Axel’s being really kind of aggressive and rough. With her, which I didn’t like

Todd: he was kind of a Dick sometimes.

I wouldn’t say he was a great guy.

Craig: Well, he was getting the short end of the stick. He had this girlfriend and then the old boyfriend comes back and she’s being interested. Like, I’d be pissed too. There’s this whole confrontation. And she basically tells them that they’re both dicks and to knock it off and axle goes outside.

And like, it was, I don’t know if it’s out of character, but I actually kind of appreciate it. Like he went outside, he’s drunk, but he goes outside and he just. Sits down on a crate and cries. Thank you. Big Bush guy, you know, is crying about losing his girl. And I actually felt sympathy for him. I. I wanted to give him a hug,

Todd: did want to hug TJ. I know. Yeah. I didn’t really feel for that guy

Craig: either the whole. Okay. So the whole story is, and I feel like it’s fine that we’re getting to it so late because it’s

Todd: so simple. It is a lot of stuff happens, but the story is simple. Yes. They’re throwing

Craig: a Valentine’s day dance.

Everybody’s excited about it. The kids are excited about it. The town’s excited about it. The whole town is decorated. They’re decorating this dance hall, but then the police officer has the talk with the lady who’s in charge of the decorating committee. And she’s like, it’s so exciting. The first dance in 20 years.

And he’s like, well, move let’s maybe not talk about that. And then we get a flashback. The reason that this is the first Valentine’s dance in 20 years is because 20 years ago they had a Valentine’s day dance as they had traditionally every year. And everybody was super excited about it. So excited about it, that the people in the mine, there were two supervisors.

And they were waiting for the last crew to come up and they were so excited about the dance that they just couldn’t wait. And so they left and they didn’t check the methane levels. And there was an explosion that trapped five minors in the mine. They went through a rescue process, but when they finally reached the men.

I don’t know, a week, two weeks later, something like that, only one of them had survived and he had survived by eating the rest of them and he was totally crazy. His name was Harry Morgan, so they institutionalized him and he was institutionalized for a year, but then he was released and he came back the next year to the Valentine’s day dance.

And. Killed those two supervisors and warned the town that if they ever through a Valentine’s day dance again, he would come back and kill people. And so now they’re throwing this Valentine’s day dance and all of a sudden these, these heart shaped boxes keep showing up. And it is it’s kitschy. And I really

Todd: like it to commit.

You’re making a Valentine’s movie. You got to have as much one-time stuff as possible.

Craig: It’s it’s funny because it’s consistent. Like it happens throughout the movie. Like people keep getting these boxes and the chief of police gets the first one or the mayor. I think it’s the mayor. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

Yeah. Gets it. And there’s a human heart in it. Presumably from that girl that we saw get killed in the opening scene and this just keeps happening and the mayor and the chief and police decide that they have to shut down the Valentine’s day dance. And before they do that, there are more kills. The sweet, old lady.

Gets killed. And gosh, I don’t want to rush through the kill scenes cause they’re

Todd: great.

Craig: Yeah. They’re fantastic. The one where she gets killed she’s in a laundry mat, I guess that she owns that she owns it. It’s all decorated for Valentine’s day, by the way, pretty

Todd: overly decorated for a laundromat. Don’t shit.

That’s a little,

Craig: it’s a little lower top, but it’s atmospheric. I like it. And all of these boxes also come with a poem that rhymes. I I’m making this up, but I loved that. They like had a poet on the writing team and they wrote all these poems. So they all come with a poem. And so like she reads her poem and then she hears somebody in like the minor is there and he’s always in his full, minor regalia.

I don’t remember how he kills her. He pickaxes most people when the police chief finds her, he finds. The box or something. And then he notices that like a lot of the Valentine’s day decorations are hanging upside down, which is weird and he notices a weird smell and he’s just looking around. And then out of one of the dryers pops her body, which looks like a dead body.

That’s been in an industrial dryer for hours. Like it’s all. Yeah. Burned and nasty, like it’s, it looks so

Todd: good. Her heart’s been cut out and there in its place is a little heart shaped Valentine that he, he had, he pulls out and reads. It happened once it

Craig: happened twice. Cancel a dancer. It’ll happen thrice.

Right, right. It’s so silly. I love it. And also the other thing. It’s that these kids, these 40 year old kids hang out at this bar with the creepiest bartender ever in the whole

Todd: world named happy, who

Craig: just recites like folklore poems at them in a really angry way.

Todd: Well, the he’s the, the gas station attendant.

He’s the character of the gas station at 10 minute and all these movies. Who’s warning those kids not to do it, but they do it anyway. This time of year,

Craig: bad things coming. My word to here, you were the 14th value

Todd: your life. He’s where we get the flashback from. And then again, later when the is canceled, they’re all back at the bar going well, we’ve still got to do something like we can’t just have the dance canceled.

Maybe we can throw a party. Instead. TJ has ideas to do it at the mine. His father is the owner of the mine. Forget about having a party at all tomorrow

Craig: night. You’ll be sorry, not path piss on Harry warden and that damn old legend. We’re going to have ourselves apart. Don’t you go down a note? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Oh God. Comedy. Gold so funny. And so then he decides that he’s going to teach those little buggers a lesson, and he goes out to the mine and breaks in and like sets up something to scare them. Like he sets up like a minor dummy behind a door so that when you open the door, it pulls a rope which causes the minors.

Pick ax. It’s like lunged at you. Like it doesn’t look dangerous, but it certainly would scare somebody. But then he tests it 26, five times

Todd: cackling, happily with himself after each

Craig: open. And then the last time you like starts to walk away cackling himself and he’s like, Oh, hold on. I better check it one more time.

And then he goes back to check it. And the actual miner is there. And kills him another great kill shot where right. The pickax, the guy puts it up through the bar guy’s chin and it comes out of his eye socket with the eyeball impaled on the end of it. And it’s all practical and it’s grainy because it was originally cut.

But. Oh, it looks so good. I just thought it was great. I loved all these kills. I loved all the effects.

Todd: Absolutely. If you want to know how many ways you can get penetrated with a kick Axe, this movie has your answer for sure. Then they all, you know, all the kids and loads of extra, probably from the town suddenly pile into that, the rec room of the, of the mine.

Yeah. And they’re all bringing their food and stuff. And for once we see an actual thrown together party, as opposed to say night of the demons where the holiday parties being thrown, supposedly makeshift in this little room and they’ve brought decorations, look them up and stuff. I was actually surprised that we didn’t.

You know, Valentine’s hearts and things hanging

Craig: everywhere, right? No, no. I’ve been to this party where you show up in some of bad, you know, like just some like conference room and you just sit and drink. Like I’ve been to that part. My favorite part, there are so many good parts. What my favorite parts of this movie is, there’s this one guy, he’s this cute guy.

He doesn’t have any part other than this part, but he come like, he he’s like. Apparently he shaved and that impresses one of his friends and he was like, Oh, well I want to be fresh faced for the ladies or something. I don’t even remember what he says, but like they make a point out of the fact that he’s fresh faced and young.

And then he’s like, hold on a second. I have the munchies. He goes into the back and there is an enormous pot of boiling. Hotdog

the that’s the food that they have at the party and the enormous pot of Jaya, hot dogs that he’s just standing over. And then the minor grabs him by the back of the neck and puts his. Face in the VAT of the boiling hot dogs and drowns him in it. And I never, in my life thought that I would see death by hotdog water.

And it just, I was, it was so funny to

Todd: me. It was especially funny the followup, because later on in the party, we see two girls who are in there chatting, poured hot dogs out, and I’m thinking, okay, what’s the gag. What’s the gag. And eyeball is the head in there. And she pulls out a heart and it’s all cooked.

Yeah. She’s like, Ooh, gross. They’re like, Aw, that must be something that a Howard Howard, the goofy guy. Would do. And the, the dude who says this is opening up the fridge to get a six pack of beer, but his back is to the fridge and he just absolutely reaches in to get it and unbeknownst to all of them, but we can all see clearly is the rest of his body.

His whole corpse is sitting there in the fridge, perfectly lit. And then the door shuts. And I was like, Oh, that’s a cool gag. I thought

Craig: it was so funny that the boiling hot dog. I, I, I couldn’t get over that. That’s so funny. My grandmother boiled hot dogs who boiled hot dogs,

I don’t know, different time. But that guy that you were talking about that opened the refrigerator. The reason that he’s there is because he was getting beer because he had been making out with this chick Sylvia in a different part of the, the mind, like the, the showers. And, and like the locker room outside the showers and everything was going great or whatever, but she told him to go get some beers.

So he did while he was gone, the minor terrorizes her, I didn’t really understand this setup, but it looked cool. Nonetheless, apparently their gear that they wear in the mines, like their suits that they wear are suspended on this. Big aerial system above the locker room and to release them, they just have to pull a rope and then they fall down or whatever.

I don’t get it, but it looked cool. Cinematically.

Todd: I was thinking at this moment, if I were putting a haunted house together, And I have done that. Yeah. This would be one of the rooms where these, you know, she’s kind of stumbling around and she’s kind of confused and she’s bumping into these clothes, which are going up and down kind of swinging around.

And then the minor grabs her, picks her up, runs into the shower where he has already turned on all of the hot water. And I thought, Oh, is he just going to like sculpt her to death or something? I thought he’s going to hang her up on a hook, but he takes her in there. And impales her through the mat while the back of the head and out the mouth.

On one of these pipes that is basically a shower head there aren’t proper shower heads. They’re just sort of pipes. That was a really disturbing scene. The way it was shot, it was kind of POV from him. So as soon as he picks her up, you’re just seeing her face looking straight at you and the camera screaming, very distressed.

Oh God, her acting was great. You know, by the way, this actress, even though she was, had a very small role in this movie, her name is Helen UDI and she has a ton. Of acting credits. She has been in so many movies and so much television, including she was a regular of, she was, I guess, Myra being on Dr. Quinn medicine woman.

Now she’s doing all of those budget horror movies. It’s like it for a year, but she was pretty and God, that was incredibly good. And then the aftermath, which, you know, we get to see an extended cut is, uh, Johnny comes back in with his beer and he finds her and she’s. Still there hanging and the water is coming out of her mouth.

It’s really good. Really good.

Craig: Another thing that I liked about the movie too, is that he does find her and eventually somebody finds the body in the refrigerator too. So all of the kids, the remaining kids who are still at the party freak out and leave. Like, I’m like, well, that’s, that’s an easy way to narrow it down.

There had been a group of kids, I think about six of them, including Sarah, who had decided to go down into the mine just for shits and grants.

Todd: I’m like, yeah. Right. Huh.

Craig: Well, I mean, I kind of get it. Like they wanted to ride in the train car. I would take our ride in the train car.

Todd: I’ve toured a mind. We sat in the train car and they took us back into near somewhere in Arizona.

I think. That was fun. I was a kid. I remember that being cool, but we all had to wear hard hats and you know, all these miners are just fine. Just taking these women down there.

Craig: No, they’re not supposed to TJ warns. That means like the, you know, the rule, no women in the mind, they take them down.

Todd: No, that’s hilarious.

The rule is no women in the mind. I think the rule should be no non miners in the mind.

Craig: Right? Or maybe no drunk kids in the mind, like,

Todd: yeah. And they’re led down there by Hollis. Who’s kind of this bigger guy has got a mustache and glasses on. He was my favorite. Oh, he was fun. This guy also, dude, has a ton of work behind him, including a movie we’ve done.

Do you remember unknown, unknown origin about the crazy rat that runs around. Yes, he is the trap salesman. He’s the guy who comes in and sells them those traps.

Craig: So funny. I liked him. He was the thing that I liked about him was this cast. It’s not a cast full of models. Many of them are very attractive. But some of them are just normal looking people.

And Hollis is one of those people. Who’s very normal looking. However, he’s a cool guy. Everybody likes him. There’s one point when TJ and axle get in a fight and Hollis, single handedly breaks them up. Like he, he seems like the coolest of them. That’s true. That’d be the one that I wouldn’t, I would most want to be friends with, but anyway, they’re down there and they’re looking around and.

I think we see that the minor is down there too, or at least there’s suggestion and one couple veers off from them. Like they’re going to make out and meet up with them later or whatever. And that’s the one kill scene that we don’t see. We do see the

Todd: aftermath. She says, Hey Hollis, we’re going to meet you in 10 minutes over at the main shaft.

And I was like, yeah, I think they’re heading straight for the main shaft. Right?

Craig: Well, that’s 10 minutes. Like, I mean, I, I guess. No, your strengths and weaknesses.

And who am I kidding? 10 minutes. That sounds about right. Anyway,

Todd: it always seems longer than it is

Craig: like this movie, but they, we don’t see them killed, but we see the aftermath of it later. They are both impaled within an enormous drill and they filmed the scene. And apparently it was very elaborate with the minor drilling this thing into them while they were getting it on. Uh, it’s unfortunate that it’s lost.

I would have loved to have seen it, but even the aftermath, uh, is pretty gruesome. And then they’re all down there with the minor and they get picked off one by one pretty much. And TJ and axle get down there too. The only thing that frustrated me about this was that they keep. Finding each other and then intentionally splitting off from each other again.

Todd: So stupid always makes no sense, but TJ and axle, this is what I said earlier. They decide that they’ve got to band together and go down there. Cause they’re like, Sarah’s down there. And it’s like, yeah, you know, a whole bunch of your other friends are down there too. So, you know, but anyway, Sarah is down there, so we got to get down there and they go into this elevator and I’m just marveling at how awesome the scenery is.

In these, these shots. It’s great. And the music too is quite good. I dunno, the music was just was great. And, uh, we’ve done a couple movies, also, the musician Paul’s Zaza. Uh, he did prom night before this ghost keeper, which we just recently did and talked about the music there, curtains and popcorn. As well as some non horror movies like Porky’s and a Christmas story, you know, he worked closely with Bob Clark and in a lot of the, actually these Canadian productions around this, this time, the music of the cast and the crew, you go even through some of these actors profiles.

And you’ll see that they’ve worked on a lot of the same projects, particularly around this time. And since then, so, um, it’s I guess, a smaller circle or especially was back then when Canada was really a place to, to shoot movies and to some degree still is. Yeah, I love the music in this movie. I thought it was perfect.

Honestly, they

Craig: put a lot of attention into it. I mean, they, they had a plan. They wanted every kill to have kind of its own musical motif and they wanted it. To have songs that they could put on a soundtrack that would potentially gain traction on the radio, but they ran out of money. So that never happened.

They, they threw some stuff together. Like there’s a cool kind of folky song over the

Todd: end credits. That was a nice surprise. I couldn’t,

Craig: I, I kinda, I liked it

in a place known that the Spanish

German began every woman and man always time.

But anyway, they’re all down there. They start getting picked off. Hollis gets a nail gun to the head twice. Yeah. And still stumbles around for awhile and stumbles until he finds the rest of his group. And they’re all horrified. Peggy Patty, Patty. Is that her name? Yeah, the annoying lady. Like she’s just paralyzed with fear, but it’s so obnoxious because she’s just holding them all back.

She eventually ends up getting. Pick axed and the gut Howard dies off screen. I think this is when they are climbing up the ladder in the shaft. I think it was like a blink and you miss it kind of thing. And I did, what I know is that his body drops down right next to them in a noose. But then I guess the force of the drop causes

Todd: his head to pop off.

Yeah. Yeah. He doesn’t, it doesn’t make physical sense, but I think that was the idea. Yeah. And at

Craig: this point it really just seems like the minor is kind of tormenting them. So we still got TJ and axle and Sarah, I think those are the only ones that are left. At one point axle tells them to go ahead. It sounds like he gets attacked behind them and they look back and they were on like this bridge over this water and they see bubbles coming up and there.

And TJ is like, there’s nothing I can do for him. That’s 60 feet deep, like he’s gone. So he’s gone. They continue going forward. And then TJ tells Sarah to go ahead. And then we hear something happened to him, like a cave in or something, and then he’s gone. And so then Sarah’s by herself and she’s getting chased by the miner and then TJ miraculously reappears.

And there’s. The minor is following them, like right behind them. They can see him. TJ starts the tr the mine train going back up. They all jump on it. And TJ in the minor are fighting on the train. So it was cool. I wish it had been a little cooler, like it’s so cool in theory,

Todd: but

Craig: fight choreography. Wasn’t that?

Todd: Yeah. It’s not like a Indiana Jones on the runaway mind car ride going through there, which is kind of what they were going for a little bit, you know, it’s that classic climb across the train cars until you get to the end and you have to stand and fight, and then they fight a little bit, but they end up knocking each other off.

Then they have to kind of finish their fight in the hallway where. Almost star Wars style when they’re having this shootout. And then they have to go into the garbage dump as TJ is fighting off the guy and Sarah’s behind him. He’s like points to a passage to like go in there. It’s the do not enter part of the, yeah.

Oh God. And then they have they’re backed in there and that’s kind of where they have their final fights. And I thought that this fight scene was really cool because it was very claustrophobic. It’s in this cramped space, but also because it’s do not enter area, we know it’s dangerous. And as they’re swinging the pickax and stuff around they’re knocking supports down and knocking bricks and things away, it’s pretty intense.

I thought for a lower budget movie, it was, it was effective.

Craig: Anyway. Oh, yeah, it was fine. And Sarah helps out, you know, in the fight a little bit, but what ends up happening is there’s a cave-in and the miner gets pinned under the caveman. And so TJ and Sarah go out, the police have all arrived at this point,

Todd: not before Sarah had managed to rip the mask off of the miner.

Oh, right, right. And we see that it’s axle and we get. You’re like, Oh, it’s excellent. And of course immediately what goes through your head is why is it axle?

Craig: Because TJ, TJ asks on screen why? And then we’re immediately answered with a

Todd: flashback. It’s so stupid, but fine. You know, I guess we could have waited for the explanation later cause we do get it again, but.

Basically Axel was a kid. Um, and it, his dad was one of the two supervisors, I guess, who were killed when, um, Harry warden had come back that year later and murdered them and he saw it happen quite gruesomely. I might add while he was curled up under the bed, blood splattered on his face and everything.

So, uh, yeah, so he was mentally crazy. Yeah,

Craig: it was crazy. He was just biding his time.

Todd: This is the thing, like I thought the TG, right. I thought that Jay at one point might be the killer because of the way he was kind of disappearing and coming back. And he was a little weird, but then Axel, at one point I thought he might be the killer too.

So when the both of them ended up together with the girls and they were each kind of disappearing for weird reasons, I had kind of input implicated one or the other, and then I thought it would be something, you know, cool. Like their motivation is, well, maybe at the, about the girl, maybe there’s something a little bit more to this love triangle.

We don’t really know yet, but no, he’s just crazy. So,

Craig: yeah, and, and I was really tipped off when Axel died off screen ceremoniously, unceremoniously, and we didn’t see like die off screen. That’s one thing, but we don’t even see the aftermath suspicious. Um, so I was curious, there was actually a part of me that was hoping that it was just going to be straight forward, that it was just going to be that Harry, whatever his name was like, he escaped from the mental institution and he’s back and he’s killing people and that’s all there is to it.

But I don’t know, it was a cute twist. And the cops come in, they’re trying to dig us. And they, they find his arm and his fingers are moving like he’s alive. And Sarah runs back in and she’s like, I have to say

right. Y um, But like, she reaches down, like she’s going to like caress his hand or whatever. And we see that under the rocks, he’s sawing his arm off.

Todd: So our knife,

Craig: you know, and he does, and then he jumps up and he’s like, ha ha. I got away. I’ll be back. With what are

you like way down in the shaft? It was like all of a sudden he’s just loony too, but it was really funny and that’s just. It like that’s the ed, like he runs away down the shaft and that is the end. And then the credits roll with that fun folk song that is very much tied to the events of the movie. Oh, I liked it.

I don’t know. You know, honestly, even as far as slasher movies go, I don’t think this one’s great. Like it’s all right. It’s fine. It has. Some interesting elements. I did like the kills and it was fun that it was like, so Valentine’s day theme, but nothing aside from the special effects that were mostly cut.

From the original release. There wasn’t anything that I was like, Oh man, this is so good. Like it was fairly standard fare, but it was, it was fun anyway

Todd: for a paint by numbers, kind of slasher, like, you know, so many of these at this time were Friday the 13th, the burning, we did intruder, you know, this one.

All kinds of the same, right? They follow exactly that same formula that Roger Ebert filled out. But I thought this one had enough of these interesting elements. The mine, the town was a lot more authentic and real to me. That’s true. Then the locations are in most of these and then just the kitschy ness.

The deliberate kitchenettes of making this as Valentine’s easy as possible. And he’s carving their hearts out and putting them in heart shaped boxes to give to people. I mean, that was kind of charming. And then, like you said, with the uncut version, God, you got to see the uncut version. You can’t watch the cut version.

It loses half of its entertainment value. The kills are great. And like you said, the practical effects are a cut above, you know, many of them. Uh, at this time. And so put all that together and I can see why paramount at the time, thought this might be a bit of a hit for what it was amongst this. Sub genre of films that they were aiming for.

So it’s for me, is going to stand out in this sub genre of films that we go through early eighties, late seventies of these slasher films that follow the same formula. At least the foremost is slightly different here and it’s different enough and entertaining enough in the movies competently done enough.

And some cases, you know, just flat out beautiful and, and also disturbing that, uh, I, I mean, I agree with you. It’s not a great movie on, you know, compared to the rest of cinema, but right. In that narrow area, it really stands out and I’m so glad we watched it. And now I’m kind of curious to see the remake.

Craig: Yeah, it’s just, okay.

Todd: Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us online to 2guys.red40 net.com. You can also search for our Facebook page. Shoot us a note there, or drop us a message on Twitter. If you liked this movie and you want to tell us about it, please let us know.

And also if you have requests for films that you’d like to do in the future until next time, I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

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