It happened once, it happened twice. Cancel the dance, or it'll happen thrice. - Valentine heart poem
Happy Valentine's Day! The past few years, I've been wanting to review this one, but I just never got around to it. Either I was still somewhat burned out from the previous October run, couldn't find the movie itself to review, or else just let it slip past. Well, this year I decided to sit down, rewatch the film and crank this review out. I hope you enjoy it!
The film takes place in the mining town of Valentine Bluffs. For the past twenty years, the town has avoided holding the annual Valentine's Day dance they had originally had. The reason for this avoidance is Harry Warden (Peter Cowper). One Valentine's Day, he and four other miners were trapped in a methane explosion-induced cave-in when their two mine supervisors decided to leave early for the dance. After they finally got dug in after six weeks, they found Harry, the only one left, completely insane. The next year, he took his revenge on the two supervisors and vowed to continue killing if the dances continued.
In the present day, our group of miners consists of T.J. (Paul Kelman), Axel (Neil Affleck), Hollis (Keith Knight) and others are looking forward to the renewed dance along with their assorted girlfriends. T.J. and Axel are old friends, feuding somewhat over the same girl, Sarah (Lori Hallier). But, with the dance coming in a matter of days, the deaths start up again and the sheriff and mayor start to wonder if Harry Warden's back again.
When this film was first released, it had a good 9 minutes or so of footage cut out for content, due to blood and gore. When Lionsgate got the rights to make the 2009 remake, they also were able to rerelease the original with all of the gore reinstated. The working title of the film was The Secret, an apt name as the director and producers wanted to keep as much of it secret as possible.
My thoughts: This was a pretty good film. It's one of the several horror films that came out in 1981 (so many I was able to cover a whole week's worth of them a couple years ago and still have plenty left over!). The special effects were great, the acting wasn't too bad for the type of film and time period and the suspense was high. The film keeps you guessing on who the killer really is, one of my favorite types of films.
I give the film a 5 out of 5. A good story, a lot of suspense and some good makeup effects all add up to a perfect score in my book. I hope you had a good Valentine's Day, faithful readers, enjoy yourselves and have a good rest of the weekend. Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!
very good review I like how you covered pretty much everything
ReplyDeleteyou didn't mention what I told you about the movie but thats ok :)
good job on this all the same :)