Valentine’s Day is a time for love, romance, and for one Canadian slasher movie, gory revenge. My Bloody Valentine is a film set in a blue collar mining town where disaster struck on the night of the Valentine’s Day dance. Two mine supervisors left work early to attend the dance without doing safety checks, resulting in five miners being trapped after an explosion. Harry Warden (Peter Cowper), the lone survivor, had a psychotic break and killed the supervisors, then promised to kill more if the dance was ever held again.

The movie takes place 20 years later when the mayor has finally reinstated the dance, much to the delight of the young mine workers and their significant others. Most of the film is centered around a love triangle involving T.J. (Paul Kelman), who just returned to town, his ex-girlfriend Sarah (Lori Hallier), and her new boyfriend, Axel (Neil Affleck). As the young adults plan their dance, new murders are committed by the masked miner leading up to their big night. The third act is a tense cat and mouse game inside the mine as the love triangle and other characters like Hollis (Keith Knight), Patty (Cynthia Dale), and Howard (Alf Humphreys) are stalked by the killer.

My Bloody Valentine premiered 45 years ago on February 11, 1981, in the US and two days later in Canada. In 1980, Canadian production and distribution company Cinépix approached director George Mihalka to helm a horror-slasher movie, and brought in writer John Beaird to pen the script. The movie was originally titled The Secret, but given the success of holiday themed slashers like Halloween, Black Christmas, and Friday the 13th, it was changed to reference Valentine’s Day.

The Princess Colliery Mine in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia was chosen as the location of Hanniger Mine because there weren’t many buildings nearby, giving it an isolated appearance. Filming inside the mine was an arduous process 2,700 feet below ground and took an hour to transport the cast and crew down into the set. Lighting was an issue because of concerns over methane levels, so they could only use a specific number of lightbulbs to keep everyone safe. Because the owners had cleaned up the mine prior to filming, the crew had to paint sections of the mine and dress it to make it look even darker and more hazardous.

Another obstacle the filmmakers faced was censorship over the gory violence. The MPAA informed them that cuts needed to be made to the death scenes if they wanted to secure an R-rating. Once the movie was edited per their request, the MPAA still returned it with an X-rating and demanded more cuts. Later, producer John Dunning lamented that the movie had been cut too much, and an unrated version became available on the DVD and Blu-ray releases (though it is still missing some footage).

My Bloody Valentine earned mixed reviews upon its release with some criticizing the level gore and low production value, while others praised it as a good example of the slasher genre. The movie has since become a cult hit among horror fans. A remake was released in 2009, Neca sold a Harry Warden action figure in 2021, the miner has been in comics, and the cast appear at fan conventions.