My Bloody Valentine
Special Edition (1981)
Directed by George Mihalka
Starring Neil Affleck, Cynthia Dale, Don Francks, Lori Hallier, Patricia Hamilton
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Release Date: January 13, 2009

Slasher movies have always been an acquired taste, but ever since I was a kid they’ve been one of my secret guilty pleasures. When I was 10 years old I first saw the original Friday the 13th late one Saturday night on a local horror movie show called “Dr. Gruesome’s Movie Morgue.” I saw a lot of the classics of the era courtesy of the good doctor, a goofy mad scientist with horn-rimmed glasses and a white mop head for a wig and his hunchbacked assistant Skeeter who wore an eyepatch and a clown wig. Once my family got cable I graduated from Dr. Gruesome (although I occasionally visited) to the USA Network’s Friday and Saturday night wee hour schlock parade USA Up All Night with alternating hosts Rhonda Shear and Gilbert Gottfried. That’s where my exposure to the vintage hack-and-slash epics of the 1970s and 1980s reached unparalleled heights with non-stop viewings of countless Friday the 13th and Halloween sequels and many others. But one that always stood out from the typical blood-drenched teen horror fare with its mature characters, dark and gritty atmosphere, and relentless murder sequences was 1981’s My Bloody Valentine, a damn fine slasher flick from the sub-genre’s heyday.