In the coal mines of the small town of Valentine Bluffs, a young woman is viciously murdered when the man she's with, decked in a mining suit and gas mask, suddenly turns on her. Come Thursday, February 12th, the town is getting ready for a Valentine's Day dance that Saturday, the first one it's held in the 20 years since a horrific tragedy. A grisly reminder of said tragedy is delivered anonymously in a heart-shaped candy box to Mayor Hanniger, who unwraps it while riding with police chief, Jake Newby, to find a card with a poem reminding them of what happened before and a human heart inside the box. It's believed to be the handiwork of Harry Warden, a man who, 20 years before, became trapped in the coal mines with four other miners due to an explosion of methane gas, which was the fault of the two supervisors who left them down there in order to go to the Valentine's dance. Down there for weeks, Warden had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive and, by the time he was rescued, was completely insane. The next year, he took bloody revenge on the supervisors by butchering them with a pickaxe, tearing out their hearts, putting them in candy boxes, and leaving them at the town hall where the dance was held, leaving with them a warning for the town to never hold it again. He was placed in a mental asylum and the dance, indeed, was never held again, as the legend has it that he returns every year to make sure they heed his warning. Once it's confirmed that the heart in the box is human, Hanniger and Newby consider cancelling the dance; that same night, Mabel, a laundromat owner who's been helping organize the dance, is murdered by the same killer in a miner uniform. Newby, after contacting the institution where Warden was taken but learning that his current whereabouts are unknown and his records can't be found, finds Mabel's body the next morning. He also finds a note inside her hollowed-out chest, one that warns of more murders should the dance still go on, and it's promptly cancelled, the true reason not made public. However, the young men who work in the mines, including Mayor Hanniger's son, T.J., who's caught up in a love triangle involves his ex-girlfriend, Sarah, and his former friend, Axel, decide to have a private party that Saturday night at the mines' main building. Little do they know that the killer's bloodlust will not be denied and, come that night, he intends to make it a Valentine's Day the town won't soon forget.
You may have noticed that in the plot synopsis, I barely mentioned the soap opera-like subplot between three of the characters and that's because it's so shallow and by-the-numbers that I couldn't care less about it. Moreover, when it comes to T.J. Hanniger (Paul Kelman), the film's ostensible lead, I'm kind of on the side of the other characters. The situation is that T.J. has recently returned to Valentine Bluffs after trying to make it on his own on the west coast and failing miserably at it. During that time, his ex-girlfriend, Sarah, never heard from him and she's now going with one of his friends and fellow miners, Axel. However, T.J., despite admitting that it's his own fault, wants Sarah to come back to him and, as a result, spends most of his free time moping around, glaring at her, and picking fights with Axel. Yeah, kind of hard for me to sympathize with him when he thinks he can just waltz back into town and make Sarah his girlfriend again, as if nothing ever happened, and takes out his frustrations of not being able to do so on both her and Axel. In fact, T.J. is downright dickish in how he expects Axel to just step aside for him, telling him that Sarah really wants to go back to him, as well as when he forces Sarah to come with him to a special spot so he can try to win her back and causes her emotional torment at the party by trying to make her say that she no longer wants to be with Axel. Honestly, if it weren't for how he goes out of his way to save everybody who's in danger of falling prey to Harry Warden, particularly Sarah, in addition to what we ultimately learn about Axel, I don't think I'd care for T.J. at all. As for Sarah (Lori Hallier), I don't have much to say because her personal dilemma is given so little focus. It's clear that she's really torn between T.J. and Axel, still having feelings for the former while wishing he'd stop riding her and Axel about how things ultimately went and just accept it, but we don't get a lot of insight into it. The most we really get is a small conversation she has with Patty, that scene between her and T.J. on the bluff where she asks him why he never wrote to her and allows him to kiss her, her walking around town by herself and trying to decide what to do, and the moment at the party when she finds she doesn't really care anymore. And by the end of the film, after most of her friends are dead and she's been chased through the mines by an axe-wielding killer, none of it matters, as she then learns Axel's horrific secret.
As I've already made clear, I find Axel (Neil Affleck) to be a more sympathetic and likable person than T.J. Some may see his hooking up with Sarah during T.J.'s absence to be a shitty thing to do to a friend but, like Axel tells him, he just upped and left, no one knew when or if he was ever going to come back, Sarah never heard from him and was really hurt by it. So, Axel comforted her and it led to something else, and there's no reason for him to back off just because T.J. has come back with his tail between his legs and wants everything to go back the way it was. T.J., at one point, accuses Axel of being out to get him because of Sarah and, while there is a hint of it, in reality, T.J. is the one who's being confrontational towards him. It all comes to a head when, at the party, Axel gets a sense that Sarah may be wanting to go back with him. He, of course, is blindsided by this notion and gets upset, leading to a scuffle between him and T.J. that Hollis has to break up, and he storms out and appears sobs in frustration about how his life has gone down the toilet recently. Later, when a couple of the other partygoers are found dead, Axel tells everyone to get out and then learns that Sarah is down in the mines with a small group. He and T.J. go down there to try and save them, only for Harry Warden to kill everyone but T.J. and Sarah, apparently including Axel. However, during the final confrontation with the killer, Sarah rips his gas mask off to reveal that it actually is Axel, disguised as Warden. You then learn that Axel was the son of one of the supervisors who Warden murdered out of revenge, which he witnessed as a little kid. Apparently, the shock of seeing that, as well as getting his father's blood on him, left him dangerously disturbed and the reestablishment of the Valentine's dance, as well as possibly the tense love triangle he's been caught up in and the notion of Sarah getting back with T.J., has caused him to snap completely. He may have had genuine feelings for her but, by the end of the movie, he's so lost his mind that he tries to kill her along with everyone else. And, unlike a lot of slasher movies, this is one where the killer is not only still alive by the end of it but gets away, vowing to kill everybody in Valentine Bluffs, including Sarah, whom he asks to be his "bloody valentine."
The rest of the miners and their girlfriends have even less to them, with some of them only being memorable to me because of how they died, whereas others are just forgettable bystanders. By and large, the ones who leave the biggest impressions are Hollis (Keith Knight) and Howard (Alf Humphreys). I actually like Hollis a fair amount, as he come off as a big, lovable, laid back teddy bear of a guy, with a nice wit about him (he's kind of like if John Candy had ever been in a slasher movie), as well as quite an impressive mustache. He's also something of the voice of reason amongst his rowdy group of friends, particularly when it comes to the squabbles between T.J. and Axel, as he tells T.J. at one point that he can't really blame Axel for the way he feels and is also the one who breaks up the fight they get into during the party. He's initially hesitant to take some of the women down into the mines, given the rules, as well as knowing how risky it is, and even though he does relent, he's intent on getting them back up as quick as possible. Howard, on the other hand, is the typical jokester character you often get in these movies. He constantly mocks the story of Harry Warden, often saying, "Harry Warden did it," whenever something weird happens, ribs the local bartender when he talks about him, and startles Mayor Hanniger at one point by stumbling out of the town hall, covered in fake blood like he's just been butchered. He also proves to be a big coward late in the film, while they're down in the mines. Hollis, mortally wounded, falls into his arms from around a corner and dies, and when he sees Warden coming at them, runs off and leaves Sarah and Patty behind, despite the fact that T.J. had told him to protect them. This proves to be his undoing, as he's killed offscreen and his body hung from a rope in the elevator shaft, his head and body detaching when the rope snags. Patty (Cynthia Dale) is the rather hot girlfriend to the more oafish Hollis, whom she clearly loves and will do anything to please, including wearing a sexy dress. She also tries to give Sarah advice on how to deal with the dilemma she has with T.J. and Axel, telling her to stick with her and Hollis come the night of the dance, and goes to comfort her when she's upset after the two of them get into a fight at the party. Notably, she's the one who suggests a trip down into the mine as a way to take Sarah's mind off things. However, when Hollis is murdered, she's so devastated and upset by it that she becomes little more than dead-weight, not wanting to leave his body behind and getting freaked out in the worst place possible, when they're climbing the ladder in the elevator shaft. She's ultimately the last one to die.
Again, the other characters, aside from the older ones and the authorities, I mostly know from how they die, so I'm not going to try to talk about them all. Dave (Carl Marrotte) is a black-haired guy who gets killed in the kitchen of the mines' main building by having his head shoved in a pot of boiling water; his friend, Tommy Whitcomb (Jim Murchison), I know because he and another are fake-dancing with some cutout cupids at the hall early on, for which they're admonished by Chief Newby, and because T.J. tasks him with fetching Newby when it's learned there's a killer on the loose; John (Rob Stein) and Sylvia (Helene Udy) are a couple who decide to go make out in the building where the uniforms and showers are kept, which results in the latter getting her head impaled on one of the shower-heads, her horrified beau later finding her and barely being able to warn the others about it; and another couple, Mike (Thomas Kovacs) and Harriet (Terry Waterland), are part of the group who go down into the mines, only to separate from the others to go make out, with Hollis later finding their bodies right before he's killed himself.
Chief Jake Newby (Don Francks) is the reasonable and rather likable head of Valentine Bluffs' police department, a guy who, once he's hit with the notion that Harry Warden may be back and up to his grisly tricks again, promptly has the heart that Mayor Hanniger finds in the candy box examined to see if it's human and tries to contact the institution where Warden was taken to learn what happened to him. But, with no confirmation coming any time soon, and after he finds Mabel dead in her laundromat, a card in her corpse warning of more deaths if the Valentine's dance is held, he and Hanniger feel that there's no choice but to cancel the dance. Not wanting to cause a panic, he has Mabel's body loaded into the ambulance in back of the laundromat, giving the official cause of death as a heart attack, and doesn't tell the townspeople why they're cancelling the dance, saying that it's simply out of respect for Mabel. Come the night of the 14th, it seems like they've managed to avoid the potential bloodbath, but when Newby finds another grisly valentine outside the police station, one with a card telling that he didn't stop the party, he spends the evening trying to find said party. By the time the escaped partygoers get to him and tell him what's going on at the mines, not many of them are still alive but, regardless, he races there, along with the entire police force, to try rescue the few who are left. When he gets there after T.J. and Sarah have escaped the killer, he already knows that it's not actually Harry Warden, as he'd learned earlier that Warden's been dead for five years. But, he's just as shocked as everyone else to learn that it's Axel, although Mayor Hanniger (Larry Reynolds), upon hearing it, remembers that his father was one of the two supervisors Warden killed out of revenge. Other than being the one who suggests that the dance be cancelled, that's truly the only major role Hanniger has in the story, as the notion of him being T.J.'s father comes up just once, they only have a couple of scenes together, and he never has anything to say about the love triangle. He mainly spends the movie working with Newby to try to learn Warden's current whereabouts and to try keep the killer from murdering anyone else. Mabel (Patricia Hamilton) is the sweet, slightly elderly owner of the laundromat who helps organize the Valentine's dance and who also has something of a mutual crush on Newby. However, she has a really grisly death and Newby is the one's unfortunate enough to find her. Finally, Happy (Jack Van Evera), the local bartender, is anything but happy, as he's a very grim, serious man who tries to warn the younger people of Harry Warden and that they should not even think about having a party on the 14th. When he's ignored, he attempts to set up a prank at the mine to scare them but he's killed in quite a nasty manner while testing it out.
While we're on the subject of the cast, I have to comment about how there's so much about the characters, the acting, and the dialogue that's just so cheesy and, in some cases, downright bad. For one, the main group of characters who disbelieve the tale of Harry Warden and get preyed upon by him for it are meant to be young people and are referred to as "kids" by the older ones, even though they all look like they're in their 20's, at the youngest. I don't remember them ever being called teenagers but, if they were, the filmmakers obviously didn't know what teenagers are, and even if some of them are meant to be that young, why aren't they going to high school rather than working full-time jobs in the coal mines? The acting and dialogue are what I really have to talk about, though, as some of it is just so corny, even for a genre that's infamous for not having the best of either. One part that always gets me is when Mayor Hanniger finds the human heart in that candy box that was left for him. When he unwraps it and sees that bloody thing, instead of recoiling in horror at the sight of it and throwing it, he instead puts his head back against the seat and intones, "It can't be happening again! It can't be happening again!", as if a bad rash he once had has come back. Another doozy is when he and Chief Newby take the heart over to a coroner's office to have it analyzed and, when said coroner confirms it to be human and asks what's going on, Hanniger says, "Remember Harry Warden?" The guy's response? "God, of course, I remember! Those were terrible murders!" Not only does he say that in such a melodramatic fashion but he seems to emphasize the world "terrible" when describing the murders, just so we understand that they weren't like all those other murders that have been committed that aren't terrible. But if you want melodrama, you need look no further than Happy, the bartender. This guy never smiles, except for when he gets drunk before his death, and always talks like a messenger of doom about Harry Warden, especially when he recounts the story (the flashback to those events is also filmed in a very over-the-top way, adding to the silliness). Even Crazy Ralph from the first couple of Friday the 13ths would be telling him to lighten up. When you look at this acting, not just here but in any slasher movie, you wonder how the filmmakers could have thought that would fly. I know they were made on really low budgets, with short shooting schedules, and the directors often didn't have much experience, but didn't they realize how bad this came of and thought, "Maybe we should do another take or try another line?" Finally, I have to comment on how this movie is so clearly Canadian, given the strong accents of the actors. Whenever I hear them "aboot" and "soory," I can't help but smirk a little, even though I'm not one to talk when it comes to accents, given how I have a pretty thick southern drawl, being from Tennessee.
Okay, so acting and character isn't exactly this movie's strong suit, but it makes up for it in other places, namely the setting. The fact that it's actually named Valentine Bluffs is also a bit much but still, you always have to love these types of sleepy little towns, places where everybody knows everybody else by their first names and they're all blue-collar and working-class. The movie doesn't spend much of any time getting into the people's day-to-day lives (you don't see the inside of a single house) or, for that matter, just how seriously Harry Warden's past crimes affected it, save for in the most rudimentary way, but you still get a nice sense of community when you see the interior of the town hall as it's being decorated for the Valentine's dance, the quaint little laundromat that Mabel runs (which also has a lot of homemade decorations hanging inside), the bar where everybody goes to hang out, drink, and have fun, a junkyard that acts as another place where people go to spend their spare time, and the main building at the mines where they decide to throw their own private party once the dance is cancelled. And then, of course, you have the coal mines, which serve as both what keeps the town afloat financially and as a dark, scary maze for those who become trapped down there. Once Harry Warden gets going and starts slaughtering everybody, nowhere in that mine is safe, as he could be anywhere in those dark passages and rooms, waiting to get you, and as long as he's on the grounds as a whole, innocuous places like where the uniforms are kept and the showers aren't safe either. Even without a killer, the mine itself is quite hazardous, full of potentially explosive methane gas, a sump with stretches of water that are 60 feet deep, an elevator shaft that, once it's sabotaged, can only be escaped by climbing a tall, treacherous ladder, and the overall possibility of a cave-in, which is what ultimately stops the slaughter.
Cinematography-wise, the movie is fairly standard in how it looks (it is has that kind of soft look to it that a lot of slasher movies tended to, only not as prevalent), though what I always remember about it is how you virtually never see any sunlight or blue skies, save for on the edges of the horizon in certain scenes. The sky is always gray and overcast, undoubtedly just a result of shooting in Canada in the fall rather than anything intentional on the filmmakers' part, and it gives the film a kind of gloomy, depressing vibe even before the pall of Harry Warden descends over the town once again. Once that does happen, and the Valentine's dance is cancelled, you get a small montage of the place looking completely dead, with a shot of a cutout heart decoration being blown across the ground, emphasizing how his return has impacted the town, even if the townspeople aren't aware of the murders yet. Besides that, I've always felt this is one movie that perfectly captures how Valentine's Day often looks and feels. Maybe it's different where you live but, here, that day is, more often than not, cold and depressing-looking, with the sun usually never managing to peek out from behind the thick clouds that cover the sky (which is how the whole month of February often looks anyway). So, intentional or not, I applaud this movie for accurately capturing the look of this supposed day of love. And while we're on the subject of the movie's look, I have to comment on the sequences down in the mines, which I think strike a nice balance of keeping everything dark enough to give off an effective mood but still keeping it to where I can tell, for the most part, what's going on. Trust me, after watching a couple of movies where the extended sequences in mineshafts are often overly dark, this makes for a nice breath of fresh air (granted, the mines in those movies are long-abandoned, while this one is still working, but you get what I mean).
Stylistically, George Mihalka's direction is pretty straightforward for the most part, save for a few key moments, one of which is the first kill at the very beginning. When the woman there gets impaled on the blade of a pickaxe, the camera does a very tight zoom-in on her screaming mouth, stops there for a second, and then goes on into her mouth until it's completely black and the movie's title then comes up. The flashbacks to what happened to Harry Warden and the revenge he took on the two supervisors are filmed in a very overdone, melodramatic matter, with a hint of slow-motion, an echoing effect on the sounds, and showy, dream-like camerawork that includes close-ups on faces and gliding-like tracking shots and push-ins. I guess it's meant to give it an otherworldly, kind of fairy tale quality, but it comes across as little more than corny to me. And finally, there are moments during some of the kills that are shot in an interesting way, like a low-angle upshot of Dave's head when he gets shoved into the pot of boiling water and a look through Sylvia's POV when she's grabbed by her head, picked up, and carried to her death.
The way the film handles the killer is one that I've always found to be interesting. Often, slasher movies are either whodunits or they just go ahead and establish who the killer is from the beginning, like Maniac and The Burning; My Bloody Valentine is unique in that it kind of does both. Up until the ending, you're expecting it to be Harry Warden, given the impact of his grisly crimes in the past and how he's become a local legend, basically cursing the town to never hold another Valentine's dance, lest they want him to come calling again. But then, you learn that the killer is actually Axel, who was driven mad when Warden killed his father right in front of him when he was a kid, while Warden himself has been dead for five years. It's akin to what would later be done in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, where throughout the whole movie, you think it's Jason, back from the dead, but at the end, it's revealed to have been Roy, the paramedic, who'd lost his mind upon seeing his son hacked to bits. It gives the whole thing an interesting, urban legend take, with this notion that the real man who started it all may be long gone but the memory of what he did still lingers to the point where any disturbed person can take on his persona and continue his gruesome legacy. As a result, Harry Warden becomes an immortal symbol, which is infinitely more far-reaching than one loan killer ever could be. This idea is driven home by the song, The Ballad of Harry Warden, that plays over the ending credits, which talks about how the town will be forever cursed by all that's happened, that February the 14th has become a day that everyone dreads, and that they all spend it in solemn remembrance and regret.
Outside of the major pantheon, like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger, there aren't many slasher movie villains who can be described as truly iconic in their look. The guy in Prom Night certainly doesn't fit the bill, as he's just dressed completely in black, with a ski mask; the killer in Terror Train is interesting in how he keeps switching masks but only the most diehard horror fans will probably remember them; Cropsy in The Burning is certainly memorable for his charred, melted face, as is the soldier uniform-clad killer in The Prowler, but they're far from iconic. Out of all of these more obscure villains, Harry Warden's miner outfit is the one that I think a lot of people would recognize, especially given the boost the character and this film, as a whole, got from the fairly high-profile remake in 2009. It's definitely one of the most striking visages of a killer, with how he's dressed in dark blue coveralls, wearing the gas mask with the nozzle down across his front, to an air tank on his belt, and the miner's headlamp on top of his head, while usually wielding a pickaxe as a weapon, but, what's more, it further adds to Warden's symbolic status. Like Michael Myers' blank, white mask and Jason's hockey mask, the featureless gas mask, with its dark goggles, dehumanizes the killer and makes him a blank slate, and since he's completely covered up from head-to-toe, it reinforces the notion that anybody could take on Warden's persona. His modus operandi of ripping out people's hearts and leaving them in heart-shaped, Valentine candy boxes, along with little pink cards that warn them of further violence in rhyme, puts a gruesome twist on such a saccharine tradition and is also as memorable as it is sick. While he may never quite make it into the big leagues of horror villainy, Warden's look and methods do still leave an impression after you see him in action.
My Bloody Valentine is one of the early examples of a slasher movie that really incurred the wrath of the MPAA when it was released in the United States, which has been attributed to the backlash that Paramount received when Friday the 13th was released with relatively little cutting the previous year and also because of the then recent murder of John Lennon. Every kill got cut to some extent, to the point where producer John Dunning described the movie as being "cut to ribbons" by the time it was all said and done. Lionsgate's 2009 DVD release restores about three minutes' worth of deleted footage, all of which is previously excised gore effects, and it gives you the option of watching it as part of the movie or by itself (though the choice should be obvious, I strongly recommend watching the uncut version, as the complete kills are far more impressive, despite how the picture quality noticeably shifts). As it is, it's still not everything that was deleted but, by most accounts, it appears that the rest is just expository material that was removed for the usual reason of improving the flow and pacing; plus, George Mihalka himself has said that the uncut edition on that DVD is how he meant for the movie to be seen. In any case, it's a shame that audiences back in 1981 didn't get to see the kills in all their glory, because they're very impressive, given the low budget (some of them give Tom Savini a run for his money), and it's possible the movie may be remembered even more fondly than it is had it not been so censored. The gore effects include a woman getting impaled on a pickaxe, with the blade coming through the top of her chest; the trapped Harry Warden eating his fellow miners' body parts in order to survive; gruesome close-ups of a man getting hacked in the chest and his heart ripped out; close, detailed shots of another removed heart; Mabel's hideously roasted body being found spinning in one of the driers of her laundromat, with a card tucked in a big hole in her chest; Happy getting a pickaxe up through his chin and out his left eye, getting dragged along the ground, and ultimately being hung up with the miners' uniforms; Dave getting his head shoved into a pot of boiling water and his flesh scalded off, with his body later hidden in a big freezer; Sylvia getting impaled through the back of her head on one of the mine's shower-heads; Mike and Harriet being found impaled together (the actual kill isn't shown, though Mihalka says that he remembers filming it); Hollis getting shot in the head a couple of times with a nail-gun; Howard's body getting hung and his head detaching from it (the effect of his head hanging in mid-air, though, could have looked better); Patty getting stabbed in the torso with a pickaxe; and Axel cutting his own hand off in order to escape.
While the movie delivers the goods in terms of the kills, if you're one of those people who likes to have a lot of sex and nudity to go with your gore, you'd better look elsewhere (like the remake; whoo, boy, that one scene). This is one of the less sleazy of the 80's slasher trend, as you don't see any real nudity, aside from the opening where the woman strips down to where she's wearing a bra and when the miners are showering in the scene after that, and while the younger characters definitely have sex on their minds, with John pulling out a condom at one point, the farthest that they get with it is fully clothed making out. While it doesn't matter to me personally (I can just see some of you reading that and going, "Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure," but it's the truth), I was actually surprised because you usually get at least one set of bare breasts in these movies but nope, not a one. So, if you want some skin, you'd best watch just about any of the Friday the 13ths, especially The Final Chapter and the unrated version of Jason Goes to Hell, The Burning, or Don't Answer the Phone, among others (though be prepared to feel like you need to take a shower after watching the latter).
The movie begins with the opening credits playing over a couple of people dressed in mining outfits and wearing gas masks, as well as carrying pickaxes, making their way into the depths of the mine. They go in quite deep, past the mining cars and some fallen boards, until they reach one particular spot. The one person looks around and then turns to see the other removing the top of the uniform, revealing herself to be a sexy woman, and when she takes off the gas mask, she's seen to be very beautiful, with long, blonde hair. Her still uniformed lover walks up to her and plants her axe in the wall next to her, as she unzips the front of coveralls and caresses his flesh underneath. She puts her hands on either side of his masked head, as if about to remove it, but he shakes his head and whispers, "No." Content with the way things are for now, she continues to caress the sides of his head and neck, running her hands down his air hose in a suggestive way. He, in turn, touches her left breast and rubs it, only for his already-labored breathing to suddenly intensify when he notices the tattoo of a heart above it. This seems to set him off for some reason, as she leans in and he shoves her back, impaling her on the blade of the pickaxe still stuck in the wall, and pushes until the blade goes completely through her and rips out of her chest. As she screams in pain, the camera does a very quick and tight zoom in to her open mouth (again, this is one of the few instances where George Mihalka's direction gets a little showy) and then pushes in until it's completely black, which is when the title comes up.
Following a little bit of business of setting up the town, the mines, and some of the characters, as well as giving the first hint of something hanging over the town, the next major scene is when, after Mayor Hanniger, Chief Newby, and Mabel check on preparations for the upcoming Valentine's dance at the town hall, Howard, having just pulled a prank that involved covering himself in fake blood, rushes outside to give a box of Valentine's candy to Hanniger. The mayor is surprised by this and asks who sent it, but Howard tells him it was already there. Both Mabel and Newby insist that it's not their handiwork but Hanniger decides to take it anyway, seeing it as a way to get off the diet his wife has him on. In the next cut, he and Newby are driving along the road in the latter's patrol truck, and as he prepares to dig into the chocolates he expects to find inside the box, Newby hands him the small card underneath the lid, asking him to see who sent it. Opening it, he finds this rhyme: "From the heart, comes a warning filled with bloody good cheer, remember what happened, as the 14th draws near." Realizing what it might mean, he takes off the small paper covering beneath the lid and is aghast to see a bloody human heart underneath it. Newby pulls over to the side upon getting a look at the gruesome valentine himself and, with his lights flashing and his sirens wailing, puts the vehicle in reverse, turns around, and heads back down the road.
Meanwhile, at the town bar, as most of the miners are sitting around, drinking and having fun, and T.J. does nothing but nope, Happy the bartender is spouting his gospel about Harry Warden, intoning, "It's a bad time, this time of year, bad thing's coming, my words you hear. Beware the 14th, if you value your life..." Some of the younger people moan about him once again telling the story but one of the girls says that she likes "fairy tales." Happy insists that it's no fairy tale and that she's a fool if she doesn't take it seriously. His saying this causes Axel, who's playing a knife game with Hollis, to accidentally stab his finger, who quite T.J. as he watches nearby. Happy then begins holding court, saying that the town is accursed and starts the story, which happened 20 years ago. The movie then flashbacks to the night of the Valentine's dance back then, which had been a tradition for over a hundred years. As Happy explains that seven miners out at the mines were the only ones not attending the dance, we see five of them down in the tunnels, while their two supervisors wait for them up top. Eager to get to the party, they decide to leave before the men show up. Having failed to check the methane levels in the tunnels, there's a sudden explosion that rocks the place and seals the miners in, with the rest of the townspeople, including the supervisors, continuing to part at the hall, unaware of what's happened. After six weeks of digging, the volunteers finally broke through, with Happy himself claiming to be the one who found the crazed Harry Warden, who's suddenly seen yelling madly at the camera. Following a brief shot showing how he survived by munching on one of his comrades' arms, Happy explains that Warden spent the next year in the state mental hospital, coming back to town the following Valentine's Day and taking revenge on the two negligent supervisors. He's shown having one of the men down on the floor of his bedroom, stabbing him in the chest with his pickaxe and removing his heart, turning a heart cutout on the wall upside down. Happy says that he stuffed both of the men's hearts in candy boxes and left them at the town hall, blood oozing out of their sides, along with a note warning the town to never hold the dance again. Warden is then shown wandering the town streets, his axe dripping with blood, as Happy says that he comes back every year, waiting for someone to defy his warning. The flashback ends and Happy warns them not to have the dance or else, they may not live to see daylight. Howard then pops up from the other side of the bar and blows a raspberry in Happy's face, making everyone else laugh but getting him irritated, as he warns them that they're going to be sorry for not listening to him.
At the more advanced crime lab of another police department, Hanniger and Newby wait for the results on the examination of the heart, with Newby calling the mental asylum in Eastfield where Harry Warden was sent to try to track him down. Hanging up the phone, he tells Hanniger that he'll have to call again the morning, as the administration office is closed at night and the nurse that's on duty can't help him. Newby says that he hopes it's just a sick joke being played by the kids, with Hanniger adding that he wants them strung up if it does turn out to be a joke. That's when the coroner comes in with the heart, telling them that it is a human heart, specifically that of a young woman who was about 30 years old. He then asks what they're doing with the heart, saying that it looks as if it were ripped out by a butcher, and Hanniger brings up Warden. The coroner then questions whether or not Warden is still locked up in Eastfield and Newby says that they'll know in the morning. He, however, is pretty sure that the heart means that Warden has returned.
Back in Valentine Bluffs, the killer creeps towards Mabel's laundromat and watches her fiddling with some decorations through the window, breathing heavily in his gas mask. When she goes into the next room where the driers are, he follows her, and, after watching her duck into a room on the opposite end that's separated by some drapes, he opens the door and walks in. Glancing at how the room is decorated with hearts, cutout cupids, and other such things, with a flier on the wall advertising the dance, he places a candy box on the table and hides in the doorway to the connecting room. Mabel comes back in with a cup of tea and, seeing the box, she eagerly approaches it, thinking it may be from Newby, and unwraps it. Opening it up, she takes out the heart-shaped card and finds that it reads, "Roses are red, violets are blue, one is dead, and so are you!" Once she's done reading, the lights go out and the killer charges at her from around the corner, breathing heavily. He stomps toward her as she backs away, flinging the drier doors open to try to slow him down, before falling to the floor. He takes out his pickaxe and is about to stab her, when she gets back up and tries to run into the next room. The killer grabs her by the hair, pulls her back in to the floor, holds her down, and brings the axe down on her. The next morning, Newby is still trying to figure out what happened to Warden, with the woman he's talking to telling him that she has no records of him whatsoever. She explains that a lot could have happened in 20 years and that if Warden was committed, then he's simply no longer there, meaning he either could have been transferred, released, or is dead. Newby emphatically tells her that she's going to have to let him know for sure what happened to Warden and she admits that she hasn't yet checked the microfilms over in central file. She tells him that checking them will take several days and Newby says he'll be waiting for the call. Upon Newby hanging up, Hanniger says that he's sure it's Warden and suggests cancelling the dance.
Later, Newby heads over to Mabel's laundromat, walking through the door and calling for her, saying that they have a problem with the dance. Not getting an answer, he walks up to the side of the driers and calls again. He takes a sniff and grimaces, before walking to the back room and looking in, again calling for Mabel. Finding no sign of her, he again sniffs, apparently smelling something awful, and notices that the heart decoration on one of the washing machines on the opposite of the room is turned upside down. Taking it, he looks and sees that the decorations on the wall above the driers are turned the same way. He takes one of them down and, continuing to smell a foul odor, walks over to one of the two running driers and opens it. Finding nothing but clothes inside, he smells them but sees that they smell fine and puts them on the table. That's when the drier next to it suddenly opens and Mabel's charred corpse flops over the edge of the opening. Newby watches in horror as her body continues spinning around, grimacing and gagging before managing to hit the "off-button" on the machine. Following a scene in the mines where T.J. and Axel very nearly come to blows, we go back to the laundromat, as Mabel's body is about to be taken away, with Newby and Hanniger standing nearby, the latter commenting on the smell and saying that it's just like it was 20 years ago. He then asks Newby to call in help from another town but he declines, saying that doing so will cause a panic that could potentially destroy Valentine Bluffs for good. Just as the paramedics are about to take Mabel away, Newby stops them and tells them to bring the ambulance around back and load her up there so no one will see it. He also reminds them that the official cause of death will be a heart attack and nothing more. He's about to pull the cover back over her, when he sees something. Grimacing, he removes a small, heart-shaped card from the hole in her chest where her real heart was removed. Sending the paramedics on, he reads the card to Hanniger, which says, "It happened once, it happened twice. Cancel the dance or it'll happen thrice." That tears it for the mayor, who orders the dance cancelled, every single Valentine decoration taken down, and the Union Hall locked up.
In the next scene, Newby is locking up the hall and telling a crowd of youngsters there that the dance has been cancelled in the light of Mabel's death and that there will be no parties either. Naturally, they protest but Newby tells them that's just the way it is. Following a section where T.J. takes Sarah to a bluff overlooking the sea to talk her, and as everyone is spending time at the bar again that night, she's seen walking the dark, windy streets, wondering to herself how she's going to tell Axel the decision she's come to. Appearing to feel like someone's watching her, she keeps turning and looking behind her, at one point turning back around to come face-to-face with Newby, which makes her gasp. He apologizes for scaring her and explains that he's just making his nightly patrol. She then heads on home, as he continues his duty. At the bar, Happy, while giving T.J. a beer, is convinced that Mabel did not die from a heart attack like they said; at the same time, as the youngsters trying to figure out what to do if they can't have a dance, Howard suggests that they have a party. Everyone is up for it, until Hollis reminds him that Newby's got the town locked up tight, which is when T.J. chimes in and suggests having it at the mine. Hollis and Axel aren't so sure about that idea but the others are interested and T.J. reminds that they've got everything they'd need at the main building, like a rec room and a pool table. When Tommy and Howard make a joke about Harry Warden, Hollis tells them both to shut up and Happy tells Howard to beware of what he makes fun of, adding that they'd best forget about having any party at all. T.J. gets up and tells Happy to lighten up, saying, "Piss on Harry Warden and that damn old legend." He also tells Happy that he'd better not say anything and he simply responds, "Don't say I didn't warn you." With that, T.J. declares that they're going to have a party and everyone cheers, while Happy growls, "Assholes."
Later, Happy, dressed up in a miner uniform, carrying a pickaxe, and a bottle of liquor, sneaks onto the grounds of the mines and uses the axe to pry the lock off of the main building. He walks inside right before Newby pulls up to the gate, makes sure it's securely locked, and drives away. Meanwhile, Happy rigs up a dummy dressed in Harry Warden's mining garb, complete with a pickaxe, and rigs it to where, when the door is open, the axe-wielding hand rises up in a threatening manner. Testing it three times and laughing drunkenly as he does, he's about to leave when he decides to go back for one more. Opening the door, he's faced with the real Harry Warden, who promptly stabs him up through the chin with the pickaxe, the blade coming out through his left eye socket. His eye hanging out and blood spewing out of his mouth, Happy is forced down to the ground as the life gurgles out of him and Warden proceeds to drag him away across the gravels by the axe.
Come the next day, the town is virtually lifeless, with no one on the streets and stray decorations blowing in the wind, with Hanniger and Newby finding one outside the city hall and crumpling it up. By nightfall, the partiers have made it to the mines and rush into the main building's rec room, ready to live it up, and with plenty of beer and food to keep them going. They immediately put on some dance music and get rowdy, throwing stuff to each other and such. Back in town, Newby asks his deputy, Ben, if anything's going on and he says it's been quiet all evening. Newby is relieved to hear it, but stops short when Ben points at a candy box on the desk, saying it came for him. Horrified and sitting down, Newby gets Ben out of the room by asking him to fetch him some coffee and, once he's gone, he cautiously unwraps the cellophane from around it, slowly opens the lid, and removes the card underneath it to reveal... chocolates. Relieved and laughing at himself, he takes the card and opens it to find the message, "Be my valentine! Mabel." The thought of her darkens his mood once again. Back at the mines, the party is in full swing, although T.J. asks who busted the main lock, as he has the keys. Howard is immediately blamed and he says that Harry Warden did it. Everyone then goes back to having fun, with Axel starting to chug the beers, when John and Sylvia slip outside for some alone time. Meanwhile, Dave, who was talking with a girl, is told by Tommy that he looks pretty good and he says it's just to get Newby off his back, adding that he wants to get out of town quick. Seeing a girl come out of the kitchen with a hotdog, Dave says that he has the munchies and goes in there himself to satisfy them. Walking into the small, dim room, he sees a boiling pot of water with hot dogs in them on the stove and, getting some tongs, attempts to grab one. However, Harry Warden grabs him by the back of his hair and shoves his face down into the pot, holding him there as he struggles. It doesn't take long before he stops struggling, the flesh on his face now having scalded off (you hear the pot sizzling as well, adding to the squirm factor).
At the police station, Newby comes out of his office, looking troubled, and tells Ben that he has a feeling about the mine, where he's planning on going. He's about to leave, when he hears the sounds of dogs barking and growling right outside. Walking out there, he finds a few strays lapping up the blood that's leaking out of a candy box on the curb and chases them off, before picking up a card left on top of the box. Opening it and pulling out a valentine, he finds that it reads, "You didn't stop the party." Baffled at what Warden could mean, he yells, "What damn party?!", which prompts Ben to come running outside, his hand on his gun. Newby then picks up the blood-soaked box and looks at the stuff on his finger. Back at the party, everything is still going fine until Axel gets a little too touchy-feely for Sarah's liking and ignores her telling him to stop. T.J. tells him to back off and Axel says that he's the one who should back off, saying that Sarah wants nothing to do with him. Sarah tells Axel that she can speak for herself, when T.J. says that she wants to come back to him, to which Axel says, "Bullshit, man." Angered, Sarah wrenches herself free from Axel and tells them both to back off, before walking away. Axel then makes a remark that really angers T.J., who storms up to him and shoves him, telling him, "That's it!" Axel proceeds to clock him right in the face, knocking him onto the pool table, and when T.J. tries to return the punch, Axel blocks it, socks him in the gut, and punches him onto the table again. Hollis quickly steps in and breaks the fight up, holding them both back and telling them to knock it off, flinging Axel onto the table behind him and shoving him, telling him to get out. Axel storms outside, grabbing a beer on his way, slams the door behind him, and makes his way to the side of the building, while Hollis sees if T.J. is okay. After telling him he is, T.J. tries to comfort Sarah, who's upset over the whole thing, but she says that she just doesn't care anymore and asks him to leave her alone. She walks away, with Patty walking after her to comfort her, and Howard livens the party back up back by snorting some Coke (the soda) up his nose, which he was doing earlier. Outside, Axel, feeling really low, stumbles to a corner, sits down, takes a swig of beer, and bangs his head against the wooden wall behind him while sobbing.
In the actual mines, John and Sylvia are making out in the area up top where the uniforms are stored on some hooks up on the ceiling, when Sylvia, glancing up there, asks him how they get them down. He tells her to pull the rope hanging next to them, adding that she should release the hook and let it go. She does and it comes falling down on her, making the two of them laugh. They're about to go back to making out when she says, "You know what we need?" He thinks he has the answer and pulls out a condom but she says that what she meant was a couple of beers. He says that he'll go get them and she offers to go with him but he tells her to just stay and wait. With that, he gets up and heads out the door, as she lays back down and gets comfortable. John walks into the rec room, the party still going on, and heads to the kitchen, passing by T.J. as he does. In the kitchen, a couple of the girls are continuing to boil some hotdogs, when they pull out some sort of animal heart, causing them to recoil in disgust. Hearing them and turning to look, John opens the freezer and reaches in for beer as he comments on, not seeing Dave's scalded body shoved inside. As he walks out, he suggests that it was Howard. Back in the mine, Sylvia is still waiting for him, looking up at the uniforms at they creak back and forth on the ceiling. The eerie silence, save for that sound, seems to creep her out a little bit, when she then hears the sound of one of the showers running in the next room. She asks if it's John but gets no answer, as more of the showers are turned on. Calling again but still not getting an answer, and hearing more of them running, Sylvia jumps off the platform she and John were making out on and tells him that if he's trying to scare her, he's doing a good job. She then peers into that room and calls for John again, only for one of the uniforms to come down on her, followed by a bunch more, which surround her and make her panic. She jumps into the next section, only for more of them to come down on her and when she tries to run for the exit, she cuts off by them as they keep falling. Swirling around and disoriented, Sylvia then screams when Happy's body, hanging from one of the hooks, falls down in front of her. Screaming, she shoves the body and turns around, only to run into Harry Warden, who grabs her by the sides of her face, lifts her up, carries her through the uniforms into the shower area, and impales her through the back of the head on the sharp end of one of the shower-heads. Blood gushes out of her mouth and her legs twitch as he shoves her deeply onto it before she finally dies and he firmly hangs there, turning the water before leaving.
That's when John comes back with the beers and, upon hearing the showers running and seeing the steam coming from that room, is quite excited at the prospect. He unbuttons his shirt and walks in, the steam being so thick that it takes a second for him to find Sylvia, and when he does find her, hanging from the shower-head, water streaming out of her mouth like a macabre fountain, he drops the bundle of beers in his hand and holds the sides of his head in horror. Elsewhere, Newby is in his vehicle when he gets a call over the radio, telling him that a call came in from Eastfield. Being told that it's urgent, he turns his truck around just as he makes it to the mine's main gate. At the party, Patty suggests to Hollis that he take them down into the mine for a little trip, which he's not too keen on doing. She whispers to him that it'll cheer Sarah up and Harriet says that she's up for it, suggesting to Mike that they go as well. Hollis is finally coaxed into taking them but says that he'll taken them down for one quick ride and then come back up. He, Patty, Sarah, Harriet, Mike, and Howard then head out the door, with Howard bringing some beer with them, and when they make it out the door and walk towards the mine, T.J. comes running out. He tries to talk Hollis out of it, telling him that he knows the rules, but he insists that they'll come right back up and proceed to go on, with T.J. walking back into the rec room. Hollis guides them to the mine-car and, after grabbing some gear, like flashlights and blankets, he hits the switch, joins them in the car, and they descend down into the darkness. They hoop and holler, as well as take swigs of beer, as they head down, and when they stop and disembark, Hollis tells that they're going right back up. However, the girls are eager to do it again, making Hollis groan, and Harriet then asks him about a dark tunnel off to the side. He says that it's an abandoned section that they don't go down anymore. The girls then ask for a tour, with Howard insisting it for them, and Hollis relents, leading down a corridor and telling them to keep the blankets wrapped around them. Coming to a fork, he leads them down one of the passages, calling a tipple, with Howard lagging behind a bit, looking down the opposite tunnel. He runs after them when Hollis tells him to come on and he says that he thought he heard something. Hollis leads everyone to the main engine room, when Mike and Harriet break off from them, telling him they'll meet up with him at the main shaft in ten minutes. After he tells them not to be any longer, Mike leads Harriet through a door in the wall, into an old, dark break room, with the two of them sitting down, intending to enjoy their time alone.
Meanwhile, the party comes to a screeching halt when one of the women comes running out of the kitchen, screaming. Tommy runs up to her, asking her what the problem is, and she can only point towards the door and gasp, "He's in there! He's in there!" Axel promptly runs into the kitchen to check on it, as T.J. tries to get the girl to tell him what it is, when John stumbles in and collapses to the floor. A couple of the guys help him up, as he hyperventilates, murmuring, "He killed her." T.J. tries to get him to explain, when Axel comes out and tells them that Dave is dead, sending the girls into hysterics. Tommy tells T.J. that somebody's killed Sylvia and Axel promptly yells, "It's Harry Warden! He's here! Everybody get the fuck out! Go! Go! Go!" With that, everybody runs out of the building in a panic, while T.J. goes to the payphone and puts a coin in to call the police. Getting nothing, he hits the hook in frustration, saying that Warden must have cut the phone lines. He tells Tommy to make sure everyone gets out and to go get Newby as quickly as he can. T.J. then takes Axel aside and tells him Sarah is in the mine with the others. Realizing the mine is where Warden probably is, T.J. rushes out through the door, determined to save Sarah, with Axel right behind him. Changing into their coveralls, they rush towards the mine as the last of the cars peel out of the driveway, having to take the elevator down. After Axel tells him that it'll be his fault if anything happens to Sarah, T.J. tells him that they should just worry about getting them out, instructing him to take the level above the abandoned section, which he'll search himself, and that they'll meet in the main shaft by the elevator. With that, they shake hands and then get into the elevator and descend down into the mine.
In the mine, Sarah and Patty have lost Hollis, who comes up to them, shining his headlamp in their faces, and says, "Boo!", spooking them. Patty admonishes him his joke and asks him where he was. He says that they must have gone down the wrong tunnel, although Sarah thinks he led them astray on purpose. Pleading innocent, he then leads them down the tunnel ahead, while elsewhere, T.J. makes it down into the same section. Backing up down the tunnel in front of them, Hollis explains that it's the oldest part of the mine, having been built in the 1800's, and that nobody has worked down there since the incident with Harry Warden. At that moment, Howard suddenly hangs down from the ceiling and yells, scaring both Hollis and the girls. Once they calm down and give him an earful for it, Hollis helps Howard get down from the rafters, first trying to pull him out but he then decides to climb out the other way, with him helping. Grabbing his lantern, he gets down, with Hollis telling him to stay with them and to quit goofing around. Sarah then wonders where Mike and Harriet are and Howard, for about the tenth time, says, "Maybe Harry Warden got them." They then start down the tunnel, pulling him along, and he almost goes back for his blanket but Hollis makes him come on. Unbeknownst to any of them, Warden is watching from the rafters. Following a brief bit of Mike and Harriet making out in that room (I'm guessing that's when their death scene would have happened), Hollis leads them down a corridor to the main shaft so they can go back up. They stop when Patty this time asks where Mike and Harriet are, when they hear a smashing sound back down in the tunnel. Turning around, they peer into the darkness, wondering what the sound is, unaware that it's Warden smashing the lights strung along the wall with his pickaxe. Hearing the sounds, Hollis writes it off as just rats but when another loud smash echoes, Howard tells him that wasn't a rat; Hollis then says that they should just go find Mike and Harriet and get out. They resume heading through the tunnel, with Howard looking back upon hearing another smash. Out in town, Newby gets into his truck and is just about to take off, when a car comes barreling towards him, swerving crazily, before pulling up beside him. Tommy, John, and one of the girls get out and as Newby starts ripping into him for driving like that, Tommy tells him about what happened at the mines and about those stuck down below. Learning that Warden has killed Sylvia and Dave, Newby tells them to get home and stay put. As they drive off, he takes off in the opposite direction, his siren blaring, and calls Ben, telling him to get ahold of Hanniger, as well as every man that he can, and have them meet him at the mine.
Hollis, Howard, Sarah, and Patty keep looking for Mike and Harriet, calling for them but not getting an answer, and they all nearly have a heart attack when T.J. emerges from another tunnel across from them. After seeing that everyone is okay, he tells them that they've got to get out because Harry Warden has returned and has already killed Sylvia and Dave. Hollis and Howard are, naturally, incredulous at this but T.J. is emphatic, saying that Warden is down in the mine somewhere and that they'd better listen to him if they want to get out alive. While the others believe him, Sarah tells T.J. it better not be a joke and he asks her if he looks like he's joking. He's about to start leading them out, when Howard brings up Mike and Harriet, who Howard said was in the main engine room when he last saw them. T.J. tells him to check the main shaft while he investigates tunnel six and meets him there. He also tells Howard to stay with the girls and wait for Axel and then, despite Patty's objections towards Hollis, they head off to their individual areas; Howard, however, is not too thrilled at having to watch the girls, as he admits he doesn't really know his way around. Hollis enters the break room, calling for Mike and Harriet and telling them that this isn't a good time for them to be doing anything. When he walks further in, though, he sees them both impaled on the bench they were making out on and, horrified at this, he slowly backs away, looking back and forth as he does. In the dark, Warden loads a nail-gun, the sound of which startles Hollis, causing him to turn around and drop his helmet. Picking it up, he's about to put it back on his head, when Warden shines his own headlamp into his face, grabs his arm, yanks it down, and shoots him right in the temple with the nail-gun. Hollis sags over a bit, his glasses slipping off his face, while Warden loads another nail and shoots him again, this time right in the forehead. Barely alive, with his vision failing, Hollis stumbles out of the room.
Sarah, Patty, and Howard continue waiting in the tunnel, when Howard hears some rustling around the corner next to him. At first, it seems to be nothing, but then Hollis stumbles around it, basically falling into his arms before collapsing to the ground. Patty is absolutely distraught at this and cries over his body, as Howard and Sarah are beside themselves, not knowing what to do, the former having removed one of the nails from his head. A light illuminates them and they then see Warden stomping towards them from the other end of the tunnel, breathing heavily. Howard gets to his feet, grabbing his lantern and blanket, and tells the other two to come on. Sarah tries to get Patty to come but she's too distraught to think, and Warden ducks into other tunnel as Howard runs off in the opposite direction. Sarah tries to stop him, telling him that he can't just leave them, but he's not waiting. Still trying to get Patty to come on, and trying to fight her off as she grabs the flashlight on his belt, Sarah has to yell at Patty and slap her across the face to get her to come to her senses. Patty then embraces her and cries, as Sarah helps her to her feet, when a light shines on them again. This time, though, it's revealed to be Axel, who asks where the others are. Not getting an answer, he gets them both to come with him, Patty continuing to cry over not wanting to leave Hollis behind. Heading down the tunnel, Axel asks where T.J. is and Sarah said that he's off looking for Mike and Harriet. Axel leads to where the elevator is, although they continue to have trouble with Patty, who keeps crying about not wanting to leave Hollis' body back there. Sarah gets so frustrated with her at one point that she yells at her to shut up and keeps dragging her along, following Axel. Reaching a spot where another tunnel joins with theirs, Axel stops them both and turns off his headlamp, as he hears somebody coming. He grabs a small log from a stack of them against the wall and, when the person rounds the corner, swings and hits him right in the gut. It turns out to be T.J., though, who angrily yells at Axel for it and who answers that he thought he was Warden. He then asks where Howard is and is told that he ran off, frustrating T.J. further, as he knows he won't find his way out alone. Axel tells him that Hollis is dead and that they have to get the girls up top, get some help, and come back for the others. T.J. then leads them back down the tunnel he came from, while up to, Newby finally arrives at the mine. Getting out of his truck and removing his revolver, he runs to the elevator, only to find that he can't get the controls to work. He then hears someone trying to contact him on the radio and runs back to his truck.
Climbing over a large pile of rocks on the floor, they reach the elevator, only to find that the control panel is smashed. The girls are about ready to panic at this, when Axel tells them that they'll have to climb. Despite Patty's objects, they start climbing up the ladder in the shaft, with Axel in front, followed by Patty, Sarah, and T.J. Heading up, Patty asks Axel to slow down, with Sarah egging her on and Axel telling her not to look down. They climb a little more, when Patty stops, saying she doesn't want to go any further and asks if they could go another way. Sarah tells her there is no other way and yells at her to move. They resume climbing, with Sarah telling Axel to go slower, as Patty keeps stopping in front of her, but Axel doesn't slow down at all. Patty then slips when she takes a step and, catching herself, becomes frightened and freezes, saying that she's not going any further. Axel tells Sarah to help her and when she reaches Patty, she tells her that she's right behind her. This encourages her to keep going, with Sarah keeping close behind her, when T.J. slips and nearly falls himself. The vibrations from this cause him to knock loose Howard's body, which is hanging from a rope as it falls down and catches right in front of the girls. The impact shears the head loose, with Sarah getting sprayed in the face with blood, and the headless body falls down the shaft, hitting the bottom. T.J. tells the others to come down and they do, passing by Howard's head as it continues hanging by the noose. Reaching the bottom, T.J. guides the girls away from the corpse, as Axel joins them. Now worried that Warden is up top, T.J. says they can get out if they make it to the rail-cars and Axel begins leading through a shortcut through the sump area. Reaching it, with a rickety walkway extending over a pool of water that goes down 60 feet, Axel has T.J. take the girls over, telling him to yell when they're across, as he brings up the rear. They make it across and T.J. yells for Axel to come on over, when they hear him grunt, followed by the sound of water splashing. Running back, they find a broken section of the walkway's railing and see the light of Axel's headlamp go out below the surface of the water. Sarah tells T.J. to do something but he says he can't, given how deep it is. When Sarah protests, he tells her and Patty to move it, saying that it's too late for Axel. They then head back across, as air bubbles continue to hit the water's surface.
Making it to the tracks, T.J. tells the girls to hug along the left side of the wall and as they head down the tunnel, he looks down another that joins it. After taking a few steps, they hear the sound of wood creaking and breaking, along with rocks falling, and rush back to find no sign of T.J. Not getting an answer when they call for him, and seeing nothing but some debris falling from the ceiling, they hear the sound of Warden's heavy breathing and head back down the tunnel they were walking. Making it past an abandoned rail-car, they keep on going, avoiding dust falling from the ceiling, when Warden rounds the corner ahead and stabs Patty in the torso with his pickaxe. Sarah can only scream as her friend slumps down to the floor, dying a slow, painful death, when Warden turns his attention to her. She runs for it down the tunnel, while up top, the reinforcements that Newby called for meet him at the mine. Sarah stops at one point to cry over Patty and jumps when a hand touches her on the shoulder, only to see that it's T.J., with a bleeding head wound. Calming her down as she cries in relief, he guides her down the tunnel as quickly and quietly as they can go. Back up top, Newby tells his men that the elevator isn't working and guides to the alternate way down they'll have to take, which is the rail-car tunnel. T.J. and Sarah reach the rail-cars but Warden pops out of another tunnel right after they do. He watches as T.J. fumbles with the controls to the cars and moves in for the kill. T.J. gets the cars working and tells Sarah to jump for them, but while they do, Warden climbs up onto the rear car and makes his way across the cars towards them. Newby and his men are heading to the spot from the other direction, as T.J. and Sarah try to stay ahead of Warden. Grabbing a shovel, T.J. blocks his pickaxe when he tries to stab him and manages to hit him in the stomach. The two of them continue battling atop the car, Warden managing to knock the shovel out of T.J.'s hands and the two of them tumble off the cars. Sarah jumps off herself and hands T.J. the shovel after he dodges a swing from Warden. He manages to knock him back and block another swing with it, after which he gets to his feet and backs up with Sarah. Warden follows after them, swinging, while Newby's group meets the cars up ahead; as it passes by them, Newby finds some blood on the rim of it.
Warden is still swinging at them as he chases them down the tunnel, the two of them backing up and T.J. continuing to block his swings with the shovel. Coming on an opening in the wall, T.J. tells her to duck into it and she does, with him joining her, as Warden has to pull his axe's blade out of the wall. Hacking down a board across the opening, one that warns people to stay out, he comes upon them as T.J. is helping Sarah up after a trip. They again duel with their tools, Warden now the one doing the blocking and shoving T.J. into the wall before smacking his axe into a blockade of wood and stone that comes loose. T.J. whacks him with the shovel and he, in turn, rips down a support beam. Again, T.J. smacks him and Warden swings, again getting axe stuck in a blockade and yanking it apart as he pulls it out. He manages to knock the shovel out of T.J.'s hands but, before he can stab him, Sarah hits him in the back with a large rock. Warden swings at her but misses, and when T.J. rushes him, he shoves him and swings but gets his axe stuck in another support beam. T.J. falls to the floor and Warden, deciding not to waste time with the axe, pulls out a knife and comes in for the kill, standing over T.J. and brandishing the knife. Before he can stab him, Sarah yanks on his gas mask and pulls it off, revealing the killer to actually be Axel. Shocked at this, T.J. asks, "Why?", and we get a quick flashback to Axel as a little kid, who watched from underneath his dad's bed as Warden murdered him and tore out his heart, with Axel getting blood on his face and licking it. As Axel remembers this, T.J. knocks him back with a large rock, causing him to stumble into another support beam and set off a cave-in. While Axel is trapped, T.J. and Sarah make it out, telling the men who show up that the killer is in the alcove. When Newby and Mayor Hanniger show up, T.J. tells them that it isn't Warden, which Newby says he knows, as he learned from Eastfield earlier that Warden died five years before. T.J. then reveals that it's Axel, shocking both of them, and as they head out, Hanniger tells Newby that Warden killed Axel's father on Valentine's Day. They then rush to join the others in digging Axel out and T.J. and Sarah are about to follow the tunnel out, when one of the men uncovers Axel's hand and yells that he's alive. Hearing this, and despite T.J.'s protests, Sarah rushes back to see him. She pushes her way through the men and reaches for the hand, again asking why, when Axel grabs her by the wrist. The others try to help her, while Axel cuts his own arm off in order to escape, and they pull the arm loose with her. On the other side, Axel yells, "Hanniger, I'll be waiting in hell for you! Harry? Harry, I'm coming! This whole fucking town is going to die!" As he makes his way down the tunnel, searching for another way out, he laughs crazily, telling them he and Warden will return and asks Sarah to be his bloody valentine. The movie ends with him disappearing into the dark, singing, "Daddy's gone away, Harry Warden made you pay."
Music-wise, the most memorable aspect is the ending song, The Ballad of Harry Warden, which was written by the movie's composer, Paul Zaza, and sung by John McDermott. As a cap on the already bittersweet ending, it creates a real sense of gloom and darkness, as it describes how Valentine Bluffs will never be the same after this and how its citizens will go on dreading February 14th every time it rolls around, doing nothing but sitting around, remembering what happened and dreading what may come next. The actual score, however, is nothing to write home about, as it's very run-of-the-mill and leaves little, if any, impression, save for this kind of memorable, harp-like string bit that plays when the movie's title comes and this country theme you hear when the guys rush to town after working in the mines at the beginning of the movie. A bunch of other country songs, many of which are sung by Lee Bach, can be heard playing on the radio and in the bar's jukebox but they're so peripheral in how they're used that's nothing to say about them either.
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