I have these suggestions for your seventh entry:
- To All a Goodnight (a killer dressed as Santa movie that also predated Silent Night, Deadly Night)
- Elves (a bizarre post-Gremlins flick that combines Nazi occultism with the Christmas elves)
- Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (a Finnish black comedy that satires the image of Santa Clause and the commercialization of the holiday season)
- Better Watch Out (go into it blind so you're not spoiled by the big twist at the halfway point)
Already been kinda spoiled to
Elves thanks to the RLM hack frauds, and the twist in
Better Watch Out was previously spoiled due to some internet troon's seethe piece about muh incels which basically ran down the entire movie in relation to drumpf and the usual boogiemen. Will probably add
Rare Exports to the lineup if nothing better manifests between now and December
Anyway, got my collection of snacks together so may as well start
MY BLOODY VALENTINE
Premise: Thanks to some asshole boogieman, a generic small town has a taboo on celebrating Valentines Day, and when the typical bunch of slasher youths decide to break this taboo they wind up getting picked off by some nigga in a gas mask with a pickaxe.
Execution: We start out in a decrepit looking mine as we follow two miners in phenomenally uncomfortable looking full body suits and gas masks which I guess will serve as the slasher costume for this flick. Not a bad look by any means for a killer. Quickly one strips off, revealing one to be an allegedly hot blonde chick with either a heart or a strawberry tattoo on her tit, who starts stripping off the other miner while fondling his gas mask hose until said miner randomly impales her through the back with his pickaxe. Kind of an overacted death but the effects were ok.
Cut to indeterminate amount of time later and a full mining shift is finishing up, giving us our nudity quota in the form of hairy men in the shower soaping themselves up and reminding eachother how straight they all are, before they all depart to banjo music. Gotta say the setting/sets of the mine look pretty damn good thus far. Back in town which is bedecked with signage for a "Valentine Dance" they inflict themselves on the female side of the cast, led by Comic Relief Miner who is about half a scene away from starting to annoy me as we are introduced to what I fear to be our lead, a greasy lookin Cuck who likes to stare creepily at his Ex and her superior new Aryan miner boyfriend. We get an old Man and old Lady exposit over how hyped they are about the upcoming dance, only for the Comic Relief Miner to outlive his welcome less than 10 minutes into the movie at them. Apparently the old man is Cuck's father who owns the mine and is also the mayor, and we meet Sheriff Pipesmoker who makes eyes at Old Lady who excuses herself to get her wrinkly back blown out in the next room by him.
Ten minutes in and Mayor Dad receives a Valentine chocolate box with a threatening note and containing a bloody heart, which causes something of a poorly shot underreaction to the promise of mass murder at the upcoming dance, which the actor seems to play off as him reacting to being told the Town Hall toilets are all backed up again. Later at the local bar, and the town's Crazy Ralph Bartender is holding court within, ominously foretelling doom and murder and the usual while the miners and their sidepieces sneer from the side, and our hero The Cuck continues to stare creepily at his Ex. We get a narrated flashback from Crazy Ralph over why there is a taboo on the Valentines Day dance. Apparently during the last such dance a couple decades before, some evil mining supervisors left their shift early to twerk it up on the dance floor, unwittingly leaving five miners down below during a methane leak, causing them to be buried alive with only one being dug out alive......and we get a random cut to said miner staring like a tweaker at the camera and screaming like a retard. Said retard is promptly hired as town boogieman who spends the next 20 years coming back to town each year to make sure nobody is celebrating Valentines Day. Comic Relief Miner is obnoxious at him, and as I note we are still less than 15 minutes through the movie I sincerely hope he gets killed in the next five minutes because this shit is gonna be miserable if he survives the rest of the runtime.
Cuck seethes at Ex and we cut back to the old people who are trying to find out if the boogieman is back in town. Said Boogieman is busy stalking Old Lady in her laundromat from before who seems unable to hear his annoyingly loud gas mask breathing until he finally jumps her, and she manages to hold him off for a frankly embarrassingly long time until he finally gets a killhit on her....offscreen. Cue more shots of annoying miners, this time at a junkyard which just further adds to the long list of wasted locations. Cuck and Aryan bicker about the ex in a way that makes them both even less likable, before we thankfully return back to the old people who are still trying to find details on where the boogieman is in the psychiatric system as they argue with a random bureaucrat before Sheriff heads off to lay down his Pipe with the Old Lady, only to find her in a somewhat less fuckable state, her now heartless corpse having been spinning in a hot dryer all night.
Back in the mine and the relationship melodrama between Cuck and Aryan continues to burn tepid, though atleast we have yet to see Comic Relief Miner for a while, though the increasingly Canadian accents of the cast are more than making up for his absence. In the laundromat, Mayor Dad lights up a cigar in a way that is unintentionally hilarious as the roasted body of Old Lady is wheeled out, and for absolutely no reason whatsoever Sheriff decides to cover up this death for fear of state police getting involved and possibly panicking people...fuck this is stupid....and they decide to run with the story that the mutilated carcass that unironically looks like it just came out one of the better
Hellraiser movies and smells like a burning outhouse actually just suffered a teeny lil heart attack and everything is fine. They do atleast cancel the dance, only for annoying miners and annoying sidepieces to get pissy, and Cuck randomly decides to abduct his Ex which works perfectly at getting her back into his greasy pants and christ this scene literally feels like a shitty canadian soap opera, melodramatic music and all.
Later that night and Ex is being stalked by someone until she runs into Sheriff who is unsubtly searching for the killer, and back in the bar we witness the horrifying return of Comic Relief Miner who has the idea of a Valentines Day party, which Cuck suggests they hold down the mine because he is a fucking asshole like the rest of the characters in this scene......and literally just as I write this the Crazy Ralph Bartender calls them assholes too, so its nice I am not alone in this, before unsubtly hoping they all get killed which is also nice to hear. Sadly he then goes to set up a scarecrow effigy of the killer at the mine, which results in the actual killer nailing him through the face and out the eye, and dragging his body back towards the mine....dang that was a genuinely good kill even if its setup was hilariously contrived.
The miners and their sidepieces all break into the mine's rec room to party with cheap beer and 7/11 snacks, and as we head to the halfway point and the previous kill I am hoping the movie will rapidly start to improve now all the asshole characters have entered the designated killing grounds. My prayers seem to be answered as random asshole miner no.8 has his face shoved into a pot of boiling hotdogs by the killer, thus kicking off the real festivities. Sheriff's pipe-sense is tingling and he decides to go check out the mine, only to find a bunch of dogs chewing at another heart in another box outside the police station with another note bitching about the party. Back at said party and we get our 17th Cuck vs Aryan scene which finally devolves into limp fisticuffs, before Aryan storms out defeated, as Ex whines at Cuck to just stop this shit as she just doesn't care anymore. You and me both skank, but atleast now shit is getting good.
The film shockingly than diverts to well executed black comedy, as the now corpse-free pot of boiling hotdogs is being served out by some of the sidepieces who while talking about how much they fucking hate Comic Relief Miner fish a bigass blob of flesh in the pot which they assume to be a prank as they keep serving up the hotdogs. Meanwhile sidepiece no.3 has the good fortune to be the centrepiece of the next kill, which makes full use of the mine setting (
in this case the previously established showers and equipment room) as I hoped back at the start of the movie and yeah shit has
drastically improved to the point it feels like a different movie now. Shame the first 45 minutes of setup was mostly godawful because this shit is fucking great. Miner no.3 arrives to try and get his dick wet, only to discover the corpse and understandably freak out given how it was posed.
To my extreme joy Comic Relief Miner suggests he and the two other most prominent miners (
fat miner and wop miner) and their sidepieces and Ex go down into the mine itself and ride on the carts like a roller coaster, meaning I shall soon see him die horribly in hopefully a well executed manner. Cuck randomly declares "NO WOMEN IN THE MINE" before cucking out of stopping them, meaning I get to see these fucking assholes die as I had dreamed in the first half. As they head further inside they start splitting up to go and rawdog in the dark, and cut to the rec room where the rest of the cast have discovered the bodies and cheese it aside from Aryan and Cuck who go down to rescue the ones in the mine. Back underground and characters are finally treating Comic Relief Miner like the repulsive vermin he is as we hear the killer drawing close. The sheriff is informed by fleeing kids about the corpse shindig at the mine, and we cut back inside where the Cuck finds the main group and tells them in his godawful canadian accent that there's a killer loose before he randomly vanishes.
Fat miner finds wop miner and his sidepiece impaled by a giant drill, which sadly took place offscreen, and realises how fucked his porky ass is just long enough for the killer to get creative with a nail gun, causing him to stumble off into the dark with a couple rivets in his skull just long enough to scare the fuck out the rest of them, and seeing the killer Comic Relief Miner abandons Fat Miner's Sidepiece and Ex to hightail it out of there, and we get a short but confusing cat fight between the two for poorly explained reasons until they are rescued by Aryan while Fat Miner's Sidepiece endlessly whines about leaving Fat Miner's corpse there as they reunite with Cuck again and start heading for the exit....which has been sabotaged, forcing them to use the ladder, resulting in yet more whining from Fat Miner's sidepiece, until the moment is salvaged by Comic Relief Miner's hanged corpse dropping into frame out of nowhere, the shock of the drop ripping the head clean off which surprisingly does not result in Fat Miner's Sidepiece losing her grip, but instead results in the characters randomly choosing to climb back down....ok I have no idea why but whatever. Shits good now.
As we hit the last 15 minutes they all head back to the mining carts through the sump room, with Aryan randomly making a sound like he got kicked in the nards before falling in the water offscreen, seemingly drowning in either a fakeout or a poorly executed kill, and as cuck vanishes yet again we hear the killer's breathing. Fat Miner's Sidepiece gets a pickaxe to the gut in a shot that makes clear how many different kinds of cameras were used to film this movie as Ex now alone runs....well more like strolls... off into the mine before finding Cuck again and miraculously not being remotely suspicious of this hilariously suspicious greaseball, while up above the Mayor, Sheriff, and cops appear and start heading down into the mine. Starting up the mining carts, Cuck and Ex are able to jump on, but so does the killer as the cops head down the other way, causing a somewhat anaemic fight scene to happen between Cuck and Killer which isnt helped by the slow pace and wide shots, and which eventually proceeds into an abandoned mine shaft, and after losing his mask the killer turns out to be.....Aryan I guess. We get another flashback and it turns out his daddy was one of the evil mine supervisors killed in the last flashback by the OG killer, which he witnessed and which drove him mad and...yeah this is a dumb plot twist poorly executed but whatever, the movie is almost over. Distracted by the flashback he gets sucker punched with a boulder by Cuck which results in a cave in on top of him, while Cuck and Ex escape and find the cops, and Sheriff informs him the OG killer is long dead which wraps up that tangent.
Going to check out the cave in, the cops and miners dig up Aryan's still moving arm under a pile of rubble, which the Ex gets emotional about and reaches out for, only for it to grab her as we cut to Aryan slicing the arm off on the other side of the pile of rubble, and after they pull his bloody severed arm out he randomly starts screaming a cringe monologue about how he will return for his revenge and how Ex was his bloody valentine before he randomly starts singing about the OG killer and....ok thats it movie over.
Characters: Literally every character under the age of 40 is completely and utterly insufferable, wheras the movie's roster of old people are decently likable and enjoyable to watch on screen even if they are just as retarded. Alas this movie spends far more time with the miners which further puts the movie in the red in terms of enjoyability. Best character is probably Mayor Dad as he seems to be the one with the most life about him and he is not as big a retard as the Sheriff.
Scares: Poorly executed for the first half, significantly improved once the scenes in the mine start. There is a decided lack of tension in the first half as the killer's scenes are shot and scored too clumsily and telegraphed too obviously to be effective, but once that halfway point goes by the director gets a whole lot better at ratcheting up the tension and executing kills with decent setup and shock. Best scare would be sidechick no.3's death in the shower due to how it steadily but efficiently ratchets up the tension until the bloody payoff.
Kills: Somewhat clunky at first, but the effects are very good when we do get a decent kill which thankfully ramps up in the second half with some finely executed and varied kills. Best Kill is again the shower kill due to how all out the movie goes with it.
Final Verdict: Unfortunately this movie was crippled by a first half which was just plain bad as a slasher and as a movie in general, which is kinda heartbreaking as the second half goes out of its way make up for it with some of the best kills in the genre and some great tension and scares. I guess you could call this an object lesson in why its important even in slasher movies to make the characters likable or at the very least enjoyable before they all start getting slaughtered, because if they are fucking annoying assholes then they can taint even the best executed payoff. Or perhaps a lesson in ensuring one's movie is given a good editor as I suspect a whole lot of B roll was added in for filler, and whole lot of A grade material was either cut or mangled in the editing room, and it becomes increasingly apparent by the end that this movie's raw footage was repeatedly thrown in a blender and only vaguely edited into a somewhat coherent film. The potential for a truly solid slasher was all there with a perfectly acceptable if cliche story premise, a genuinely good slasher getup and some phenomenal sets and settings, and some phenomenal kills and gore which compete with the best in the genre. However the shoddily executed first half, poor editing, and generally annoying as hell characters and acting all add up to a gigantic fucking millstone round the neck of the movie that just cant be ignored.
Would I Watch Again?: The second half? sure. The first half however is just miserable to wade through.
Tomorrow I wrap this shit up with
BLACK CHRISTMAS
