My Bloody Valentine On Dish Network Pay Per View

So you won"t have the 3D aspect that made My Bloody Valentine somewhat forgivable, that is unless you buy the DVD (which comes with 4 free pairs of 3D glasses). But trust me when I tell you that the 3D on the DVD nowhere near compares to the Real-D technology that you get when you see a 3D movie in the theater. I saw this flick when it was released back in January, and it was a passable horror flick (and I"m a huge horror fan so my standards are high.)

The movie is available now on Dish Network Pay-Per-View and it"s a 24 hour rental, though most likely you"re not going to watch this more than once. It"s also available in 1080P, so if you have a high-definition TV, and a Dish HD receiver or Plus HD DVR receiver, make sure to watch this in all it"s hi-def glory. The movie is a remake of the Canadian slasher import from 1981. The original has become somewhat of a cult hit over the years, despite being chopped and edited heavily by the MPAA.

It is considered today to be one of the horror classics (maybe not so much so as Halloween, for example, but it"s still on a few lists). The new film begins with a cave-in at a mine that leaves six miners trapped. One of the miners, a man by the name of Harry Warden, survives by killing the other five with a pickaxe, and when rescue crews find him he tries to escape and is injured. As a result, Harry Warden goes into a coma.

Tom Hanniger, the son of the mine owner, is deemed responsible for the cave-in because he forgot to vent the methane lines. We then jump to the following year on Valentine"s Day, when Harry Warden wakes up from his coma and goes on a killing spree. He spares young Tom"s life, and Tom leaves town as a result. Ten years later, Tom returns to town after his father dies and he inherits the mine. He hopes to sell the mine, though the townspeople do not appreciate his decision and incidentally blame him for all the deaths that occurred years earlier. Not long after Tom has returned, the killings start up again and bodies are piling up.

We begin to see that Tom is slowly losing his mind, but is he the killer? Or could the killer be the husband of Tom"s ex-girlfriend Sarah, who is also the town sheriff? Or is Harry Warden, believed to be dead, back from the grave? Jensen Ackles plays Tom, and he gave a ho-hum performance, which, until the end of the movie, left a lot to be desired. I understand Ackles is a big hit on his CW show "Supernatural," but as actor he"s nothing to write home about. He"s kind of bland, and maybe that"s what he was going for here, but I wasn"t impressed. His "Supernatural" costar Jared Padalecki fared so much better in the Friday the 13th remake that was released a month after this. Jaime King played Tom"s old girlfriend, and Kerr Smith played the other man of the side of the love triangle "" Sarah"s husband Axel.

Smith has been around for a while, and back in 2000 he acted in the first of one of my favorite horror series, Final Destination (coincidentally, the fourth Destination movie gets released August 28th, and I couldn"t be more excited about that!) The highlight of this movie was easily Betsy Rue. Playing the requisite doomed blonde, Rue only has about two scenes but she definitely makes her time in the movie memorable. She is completely nude for about 10 minutes straight "" running from the killer, fighting off the killer, etc. It was completely over-the-top and hilarious and one can only imagine how comfortable Rue must be as an actress to have agreed to this. She obviously doesn"t take herself too seriously and went for broke and it worked here. Brava to her. Overall, My Bloody Valentine was a fun but slightly forgettable exercise in slasher fare.

Compared to all the "torture porn" in horror we have been subjected to the last several years (take the Saw and Hostel series for example, which I despise), it is nice to see horror getting back to its fun, slasher routes. And before you ask how a slasher can be fun, I will tell you this - as a horror movie buff, I do NOT find it entertaining to watch somebody slowly be disemboweled for an hour. I much prefer horror movies in the vein of Scream and Final Destination, which poke fun at themselves as well as being thrilling. As long as we get more of those I"ll be a happy camper (though I"m not planning to set up camp at Crystal Lake anytime soon, I"ve seen enough Friday the 13th movies to know better).

By: Frank Bilotta