One night when I was a wee lad, I walked home from the movie theater to find the house empty. I went inside, sat down, started to take off my coat.

I stopped in mid-sleeve. Something had made a noise in the attic. Or possibly the basement or the closet across the room. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it sounded sort of like a tall man breathing through a mining respirator and holding a human heart.

I spent half hour trying to shake off that feeling, couldn’t do it, kept my coat and shoes on in case I had to flee. Who wants to be caught shoeless before a gasping man in a miner’s suit who’s holding a human heart?

Not me, that’s who.

I wasn’t always a sissy little fraidy cat. But the movie I had seen had stamped my eyeballs with a series of horrific images. The title was “My Bloody Valentine” and it wasn’t a romantic comedy. No, this was one of those 80′s flicks that compensated for a thin and hastily assembled plot by submerging the viewer in cascades of blood.

And hearts; let’s not forget the hearts. Human hearts, bluish and swollen instead of symmetrical and constructed of red paper, were everywhere. The deranged killer was stalking romantics in a mining town and taking their hearts to push his message. His message being: You people infuriate me. Stop kissing and stuff when I’m trying to deal with my psychological problems, which will be revealed in the final scene and which will be so stunning, you will not notice right away that dozen or so holes in that particular story.

“My Bloody Valentine” was one of those movies that proved to be fantastic in spite of the fact that it was made by Canadians on a $500 budget and some donations from a pig farm. Such movies are rare and this was a one.

Which is why I’m back here spouting the same old message: go see the original before you slap down ten bucks to watch the spanking new remade version, which will have a much larger budget, glossier camera work and little else. Remakes almost never capture the magic of the first – the exception being The Shining in 1997, which on a creepy factor scale is five buckets of piss in your pants higher than the original.

The original “My Bloody Valentine” is a movie that you will laugh at all the way through. You will elbow your friends and say things like: “As IF he’s going in there! Man, I would never go in there like that! What a stupid movie!”

And then later, when your friends are gone, you will sit in your favorite chair wearing your favorite shoes and favorite coat. In case you have to flee from the gasping man with the mask and the human heart in the closet.

Or possibly, the attic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.