Review #152: My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009)

Cast/Notable Credits:
Patrick Lussier (Director): The Prophecy 3 (2000), Dracula 2000 (2000), Dracula 2 (2003), Dracula 3 (2005), White Noise 2 (2007)

Jamie King (Sarah): Pearl Harbor (2001), Bulletproof Monk (2003), White Chicks (2004), Sin City (2005), Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005), They Wait (2007), The Spirit (2008)

Jensen Ackles (Tom Hanniger): Smallville & Supernatural T.V. series

Kerr Smith (Axel Palmer): Final Destination

Betsy Rue (Irene): Deep in the Valley (2008)

Edi Gathegi (Deputy Martin): Crank (2006), Death Sentence (2007), Twilight

Tom Atkins (Burke): Halloween 3, The Fog (1980), Escape from NY (1981), Creepshow (1982), Night of the Creeps (1986), Maniac Cop (1988), Striking Distance (1993)

Kevin Tighe (Ben): Eight Men Out (1988), K-9 (1989), Another 48hrs (1990), What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Lost & Emergency! T.V. series

Megan Boone (Megan)

Marc Macaulay (Riggs): Edward Scissorhands (1990), Passenger 57 (1992), Bad Boys (1995), Fair Game (1995), Contact (1997), Wild Things 1 (1998) & 2 (2004), The Punisher (2004), Transporter 2 (2005), Red Eye (2005), Miami Vice (2006), Premonition (2007), Feast 2 (2008), Marley & Me (2008)

Richard John Walters (Harry Warden/The Miner): The Island (2005)

Bingo O’Malley (Officer Hinch): Creepshow (1982), Diabolique (1996)

Todd Farmer (Frank/co-writer): Jason X

Trailer:

Original MBV (1981) Link:

Plot:

On Valentine’s Day in the small mining community of Harmony, an accident happens at the mine as it collapses leaving six men to be trapped in the mine for several days. When rescuers finally reach the men, all but one is dead. The lone survivor is a man named Harry Warden who was left in a comma.

The police discover that the dead miners did not die from the mine’s collapse, but rather from the pick axe of Harry Warden. Harry became psychotic and delusional trapped in the mine and killed his fellow co-workers to preserve oxygen. After an investigation the cause of the accident is tracked down to the son of the mine’s owner, Tom Hanniger. Tom neglected to “blow out” the mine’s lines for safety, which lead to an explosion and the collapse of the mine.

One year later Harry awakens from his comma at the hospital and slaughters the staff and heads for the mining tunnels at the Hanniger Mines. Harry arrives to find that the mines are acting as a party site to a bunch of local teenagers. Tom Hanniger is present along with his girlfriend, Sarah, her friends Axel and Irene.

While partying down in the mining tunnels, Harry Warden shows up and starts
slaughtering the local teens. Tom and company survive the encounter as the police show up just in time to shoot Harry and chase him deeper into the mines. Harry is presumed dead, but his body is never found. In the end, 22 people are left dead in the massacre.

After a ten years hiatus from the town and in the wake of his father’s death, Tom returns to town (on the eve of Valentine’s Day) to sell the family’s business. Dead bodies begin to pile up as whispers of Harry Warden’s return buzz around the community. A dreadful miner disguised in black and wielding a pick axe sets his eyes on revenge. Harry Warden returns…and is in 3-D!

Villain:

My Bloody Valentine’s features a lesser known classic villain, Harry Warden. Warden does not have the lengthy sequels like others under his belt (yet) as he marks his second appearance on the big screen…the first is the original MBV…but he still is a bad dude who deserves to be more iconic.

Harry is a revenge seeking miner who is entrenched in black, wears an evil old time gas mask and a miner’s helmet with a light on the top. Harry loves to swing his miner’s pick axe at his victims using any point of entry on the body to impale them.

Cast:

The cast of MBV centers around three key members, Tom, Sarah and Axel. Jensen Ackles (Pictured left) plays the lead role of Tom Hanniger. Tom screws up big time as he is at fault for the original mining accident which created the monster in Harry Warden. He knows it and the town knows it as he is not the most popular person on the block.

Haunted with guilt and struck with depression Tom skips town to help ease his mind and put the past behind him. Ten years later he returns to sell his father’s mine, but finds himself in the middle of a revenge plot of a psychotic miner.

Jamie King (Pictured below) plays the role of Sarah, Tom’s girlfriend back in the good ole’ days…she and Tom were “meant to be with each other”. After the massacre, Tom left and she found herself finding comfort in the arms of Axel as they cope with what had happened to them.

Sarah takes over her family’s business running the town’s local grocery store and settles down to marry Axel and pop out a little one with him. Tom’s return rekindle’s a long lost love fire between them as she is emotionally torn between her husband and the “one who got away”…or left.

The third leg of the cast’s tri-pod goes to Axel, played by Kerr Smith (Pictured right). Axel is…basically a self loving prick. Axel grows up to be the county’s sheriff and the cheating husband of Sarah. Axel is high on himself and has a huge ego…God’s gift to women type of ego. He never liked Tom and held a grudge against him blaming him for the accident.

SFX/Gore:

MBV came out and sold itself on one big principle…being a horror movie in 3-D. It worked! I was a little skeptical at the 3-D part at first because of the recent wave of 3-D movies. To me, it was Hollywood just selling another gimmick to the audience.

After all, the biggest horror 3-D movies in the past were Jaws 3 and Friday the 13th Part 3…and those effects were just plain goofy. Anyone who has seen Jaws 3 can agree with me that the fake cardboard shark coming at the audience at the end of the movie was just horrible. You know…that sequence where Jaws attacks the underwater control station. The scene took like 3 hours to get over as Louis Gossett Jr. and company look horrified as the cardboard shark moves slowly toward them. Yeah…it sucked.

To say the least, I wasn’t too sure on how MBV would pull this off and look on screen. The end result was pretty darn good. I was surprised with it. Even watching the movie in 2-D held up pretty well. I could tell which parts they wanted for the 3-D look, but it wasn’t done as bad as I thought it would. Still if you can watch it…see it in 3-D. The DVD set comes with 4 pairs of 3-D glasses. F*ck Yeah!

As for the real important part of the movie…the gore…MBV came through for genre fans. It was a great tribute to classic slasher movies. It’s a remake worthy to its cause. Harry Warden used his miner’s pick like a beast in the film slashing and hacking away at all body parts…especially the head.

My favorite death: The Ceiling Midget. *** Highlight to Read *** First of all…there’s a midget in the film. Score one for the home team! Midgets are freakin’ awesome! Okay before I get any more excited, I better move on…there’s a female midget who runs a motel in the film.

After Harry chases a naked chick around the motel grounds, she hides in the office manager’s room underneath the bed as Harry looks around the room for her. They both hear the midget chick manager coming in so Harry hides in the closet and the naked chick lays underneath the bed silent.

The midget chick finds Harry hiding in the closet and he swings his pick axe like a golf swing up through her skull and stakes her into the ceiling. She just hangs there from the ceiling like a light. It was f*ckin’ cool. *** End.

A lot of the other deaths in the film were pretty brutal in nature. I have no problem with that. If you do score the Special Edition of the film on DVD check out the special feature on the deaths and gore. That feature covers the fake dead body props and how they achieved the looks on film. It’s a great 5-10 minute documentary.

TNA:

Yeah…a horror film that actually involves one of its key ingredients (TNA) to it. Unlike many of the recent remakes…excluding Halloween and Friday the 13th…MBV comes through with the gratuitous booby shot in the film. This shot is complementary of Betsy Rue (Pictured left)…and it’s not a quick glimpse…it’s a good long sequence.

The scene starts with her riding a truck driver…which by the way happens to be the co-writer of the film, Todd Farmer. How the hell did he pull that one off? He just happens to get a cameo…which involves the film’s only sex scene. Todd’s got to be a clever, clever man for that…or the director loves him. Did he walk into the staff meeting like:

“Hey I added a new scene last night. And um…it happens to um…be a sex scene. Long story short, Besty is f*ckin’ me and then chases me to my truck naked where I get killed. So great. Then I rewrote a couple other scenes. Cool. Let me know if you don’t like em’. I’ll be in my office.”

I think I need to write more Hollywood scripts if I could get cameo scenes like that. Anyways, Betsy is riding the co-writer pretty hard for a while then he starts to get dress and leave. He picks up a video camera which was recording the event and they argue about it and he takes off.

She doesn’t bother to get dress and follows him to his truck naked where he ends up dying and she is chased around the motel grounds naked by Harry Warden. That’s just some great stuff there. Rack Grade: B

T.Gun’s Take:

My Bloody Valentine is a remake of an old 80’s slasher flick of the same name. They both have similar premises, storylines and one bad *ss killer named Harry Warden. I loved the original movie dearly. It was soo campy and true to the genre.

Did the remake do any justice for the original? Hell yeah. I’m glad to see that people are starting to get the right idea when remaking these classics. It seems that each one is getting better and better as they come along.

The MBV remake does give the horror fans a great deal of blood, guts, and TNA. The film did pretty well on having the audience feel and relate to the characters. They did a good emphasis on trying to make that emotional bond with the audience. However there wasn’t much prize winning writing outside of that, but that’s okay…it’s a horror film.

MBV throws a little suspense into the movie as it throws in a little “who dunnit” murder mystery into the mysterious legacy of Harry Warden. Has Harry returned from the dead or is someone else behind the murders? If you haven’t seen the original, it had the same type of twist to the movie. *** HUGE SPOILER – Highlight to read *** Someone else uses the Harry Warden mystique to carry out the murders. In this remake that someone happens to be Tom Hanniger. Tom has become mentally disturbed over the years and has a mental breakdown that leads him to a delusional state where he sees Harry killing people but doesn’t realize that he is actually the one carrying out the murders. *** End.

There were a couple of spooky moments in the film, which naturally is produced by the 3-D film making and the overall presence of being in a mine shaft. On the topic on mine shafts, I do have to admit that I was a little disappointed with their roles in the film. In the original, a great deal of the murders and end take place in the mines. In the remake…for me…it seemed that it lost some of its mining roots.

If you add up the times spent in the mines, the films maybe equivalent, but the final showdown hardly takes place in the mine shafts and many of the deaths don’t take place in them. I thought that the story line strayed away from them a little bit, and I was a little disappointed in that.

One other minor/major thing I hated was the fact that the town of Harmony wasn’t in Canada. The original took place in butt-f*ck-middle of nowhere, New Brunswick, Canada making everybody Canadian and I could write “eh” at the end of everything I said. But not this one. Bummer. No more “eh”. I can’t use my French Canadian roots to their fullest. Well maybe just one more for old time’s sake…eh. Here's one of their good exports...Avril pictured below.

Overall, MBV is a good remake and a fun ride to watch. Just make sure you get the pairs of 3-D glasses and enjoy the movie as it should be. If not…the 2-D version isn’t bad either.

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on January 16, 2009 and made $51.5 million at the Box Office ($21.2 million opening weekend)
-Filmed in Pennsylvania
-First “R-rated” film to be projected in Real D (3-D filming technology)