This article is about the 1981 film. For the 2009 remake, see Valentine’s again Bloody Valentine 3D. My Bloody Valentine is a 1981 Canadian slasher film directed by George Mihalka and written by John Beaird. It stars Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, and Neil Affleck.

Conceived and produced entirely over the course of around a year, the film was shot on location in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, in the fall of 1980. My Bloody Valentine faced notable censorship, having a total of nine minutes cut by the Motion Picture Association of America due to the amount of violence and gore. Inside a mine shaft, a female miner takes off her gear in front of another miner. When the woman performs a striptease, the miner pushes her onto a mining pickaxe, killing her.

Mayor Hanniger of Valentine Bluffs, a Canadian mining town, reinstates the traditional Valentine’s Day dance, which has been suspended for twenty years. The dances stopped 20 years ago after an accident in which two supervisors left five miners in the mines to attend the dance. Mayor Hanniger and the town’s police chief Jake Newby receive an anonymous box of Valentine chocolates containing a human heart, and a note warning that murders will begin if the dance proceeds. That evening, resident Mabel is murdered by a mining-geared killer in a laundromat, and her heart is removed.

Newby publicly reports that she died of a heart attack to prevent a panic. Shortly after, Sylvia is impaled on a showerhead by the miner. When the others realize Dave and Sylvia have been murdered, they contact authorities, but several of the partygoers have already decided to enter the mines for fun. Newby rushes into the mines with police to rescue them. While finding their way out, Axel drowns and Patty is killed by the miner. The miner is revealed to be Axel, who faked his demise. A flashback shows that Axel’s father was one of the supervisors killed by Harry Warden.

As a child, Axel witnessed Harry Warden murdering his father and tearing out his heart, which traumatized him. Paul Kelman as Tom Jesse “T. You can help by adding to it. Director George Mihalka, on the strength of his earlier movie Pick-Up Summer, was approached by Cinepix Productions, headed by André Link and John Dunning with a two-movie contract.

Mihalka was asked to direct a horror-slasher story, presented to Dunning by Stephen Miller in mid-1980, and, after Mihalka agreed to direct, John Beaird was brought in to write the screenplay. Paul Kelman was cast in the lead role of T. Neil Affleck was cast as Axel, his former friend and coworker. Lori Hallier was cast as Sarah, the girlfriend of Axel and ex-girlfriend of T. Shooting on My Bloody Valentine began in September 1980, taking place around the Princess Colliery Mine in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, which had closed in 1975.

Mihalka has said since making the movie that the most difficult element of My Bloody Valentine was filming in the mines. The crew kept the identity of the killer a secret to the cast members until the end of production, when the final scene was shot, in order to assure the actors played their parts in an ambiguous manner. My Bloody Valentine was distributed by Paramount Pictures in the United States on February 11, 1981, and in Canada two days later. 5,672,031 at the United States box office.