At a time when no holiday was safe from the slasher genre, one came out which stands apart...splatter with a heart. Literally.

Produced by Happy Birthday to Me gurus John Dunning and André Link and masterfully directed by George Mihalka, My Bloody Valentine musters all the ingredients of a subgenre classic: an attractive cast, a decent body count, creative kills, nasty special effects (thanks to FX vet Tom Burman)...and best of all, a truly scary killer.

Special mention should be made as well of the exceptional atmosphere, both of the earnest small town (filmed in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia), and in the mine where some of the action takes place.

Unfortunately, like a number of other films released during the same period, Valentine didn't fare well with the censors. After encouraging Valentine to revel in its gory bliss, distributor Paramount then lost the strength of its convictions and cut a good deal of the bloody bits prior to a February 1981 release. Nevertheless, this little Canadian terror delivers all the right chills.

In the town of Valentine Bluffs (tagline: 'The Little Town with the Big Heart'), a man and a woman are together in a coal mine. The woman takes off the miner garb she's wearing and caresses the guy (who's still wearing his work mask). The guy takes notice of a heart tatooed above her breast. Suddenly, he grabs her and impales her on his pickax, killing her.

The coal mine is where many of the men in town work. Everyone is excited because the community is holding it's first Valentine's Day dance in twenty years. Mayor Hanniger (Larry Reynolds), is thrilled as well.

But he tells Mabel (Patricia Hamilton), the organizer, that they should forget it's the first one in two decades. He says they should "put all that other business to rest." Knowing that some people are nervous about the dance, Howard (Alf Humphreys), the town joker, plays a prank on them by pretending to be injured.

The Mayor is of course not amused. He gets into a police car with Chief Jake Newby (Don Francks), and as they're driving, he opens a box of chocolates which he's received.

Inside is a note, which reads:

He also finds a human heart in the box. They drive back to the town to investigate and to make sure it isn't a practical joke. The medical examiner tells them that the heart is real and it belonged to a girl in her early 30's.

The young people are hanging out at the local bar called The Cage. The bartender, Happy (Jack Van Evera), tells them that this is a dangerous time and the town is cursed. He tells the story about the last dance, twenty years ago. Everyone was there, except seven miners working underground.

Two supervisors had already finished their work, but anxious to go the party, they left before the other five were safely out. They also failed to check the methane gas levels. Because of this oversight, a lantern that one of the five men was holding caused a huge explosion.

The miners were buried alive, while the two men responsible partied. For six weeks, rescuers tried to find survivors, but they could only reach one, Harry Warden. They found him eating the severed arm of one of his coworkers. Harry went insane after the accident and spent the next year in a mental hospital.

After he was released, he killed the two supervisors with a pickax and cut out their hearts. He then stuffed them into heart-shaped candy boxes and left them at that year's Valentine's dance with a warning that the town should never again hold a party on the 14th of February.

The story goes that every year on that day, he comes back to town to kill anyone who does not heed his threat. The bar patrons laugh at the story. Meanwhile, T.J. (Paul Kelman), is jealous because his ex-girlfriend Sarah (Lori Hallier) is now seeing Axel (Neil Affleck). The two men try to discuss the situation, but Axel refuses to give her up.

That night, while Mabel is alone in the laundromat she owns, the killer strikes. He plunges his pickax into her chest. The next day, Chief Newby calls the sanitarium where Harry Warden was committed, but there's no record of his ever being there.

The chief goes to see Mabel at the laundromat to tell her about his concerns. Her charred body falls out of one of the dryers. In the cavity wound in her chest, they find a heart-shaped card which reads:

It happened once
It happened twice
Cancel the dance
Or it'll happen thrice.

Axel is now catching on to the fact that T.J. is trying to win Sarah back, and he is becoming increasingly agitated. T.J. takes Sarah to a romantic spot they used to frequent and they rekindle their affection for each other.

Back at the bar, everyone is upset because of the cancellation of the dance. But T.J. comes up with a plan to have the party in the mine.

The bartender again warns them, but T.J. is adament. He then comes up with an elaborate prank to scare them. In a shack above the mine, he sets up a Harry Warden dummy, complete with a pickax.

When someone opens the door, the arm swings up and the pickax will scare people away. He tests the gag a couple of times. During the final test, the real killer is in the shack. The old man is struck in his chest and dragged away.

Saturday the 14th arrives. Valentine's Day. The party is underway in the recreation room above the mine. One of the revelers, Dave (Carl Marotte), goes into the kitchen.

As he's looking into a huge pot of boiling hot dogs, Dave is taken surprise by the deathly miner who comes from behind and forces the poor young guy's head into the scalding, flesh-peeling water.

The devilish killer then puts the victim's heart into the pot. For safe keeping, Dave's body is stuffed into the refrigerator.

The soap opera angle continues as Axel and T.J. get into a fight over Sarah, ending with Axel storming off. John (Rob Stein) and Sylvia (Helen Udy), go off into another area to have sex. When John leaves to get a beer, Sylvia becomes concerned when he doesn't return right away.

As she is searching for him, the killer terrifies her by dropping all the uniforms which are hung above, on her. Then he appears and picks her up. He takes her into the shower and kills her. John finds her body when he returns and flips out.

Meanwhile, some of the girls want to go down into the mine, which they've never been to. Patty (Cynthia Dale), convinces her boyfriend Hollis (Keith Knight) to take them down. T.J. tries talk them out of it, since women aren't allowed. But the group goes anyway, and Sarah joins them.

They take a couple of sixpacks and get into the coal cart which takes them deep underground. At the party, the bodies have been discovered. Believing that Harry Warden is back, T.J. and Axel put aside their differences and head down into the mine to warn the others.

At the station house, the chief receives a bloody human heart, with a note telling him

You didn't stop the party!

Mike (Tom Kovacs) and Harriet (Terry Waterland), are off together in an isolated area of the mine. They're killed (off camera), and Hollis finds the bodies. Before he can tell the others, someone approaches him. He's blinded by the stranger's searchlight and is shot in the head with a screw gun.

Hollis struggles to make it to the rest of the group, then drops dead in front of Sarah, Patty, and Howard. The three see the killer in the distance, and they frantically try to escape. Howard runs off by himself and leaves the two women behind.

Axel and T.J. find them and try to find a way out, but the control panel for the coal cart is busted. The four find a ladder and start to climb up, but Howard's body falls from above. Believing that Harry Warden is at the top of the ladder, Sarah, Patty, Axel and T.J. climb back down.

While trying to find another exit, Axel apparently falls into some water below them. T.J. seperates from the girls, and as the two women are looking for a way out, the killer plunges his pickax into Patty's chest.

Sarah finds T.J. just as the police appear above the mine. T.J. rigs the control panel to work and the coal cart starts working again. As it is moving up, the killer chases them.

They get off with "Harry Warden" in pursuit. In a struggle with him, T.J. is able to pull off his mask, and finds out that the killer has been Axel all along.

In a flashback, we see that Axel's father was one of the supervisors killed by Harry. At the time, young Axel was hiding under a bed and saw the murder happen.

Back in the present, T.J. pushes Axel into some rubble, trapping him underneath. Finally the police arrive. Tensions begin to subside when suddenly someone announces that Axel is alive underneath the rocky carnage! But before they can all feel secure, they notice that Axel (now missing one arm due to the cave in) has escaped.

Through the rubble and away in the distance, Axel limps away. As everyone looks on in horror, he yells:

At the end of the day, the producers of Cronenberg's Rabid must have been confident they made the right choice by believing in Valentine (as well as hiring the clearly talented Mihalka). A surefire slasher gem.