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Author’s Note: This article contains significant spoilers for My Bloody Valentine (1981).
“My Bloody Valentine” (1981) is a Canadian slasher film that takes place in the fictional mining town of Valentine Bluffs, Nova Scotia, Canada. The film focuses on a group of young adults who decide to have the first Valentine’s Day party in 20 years, and the carnage that follows. The legendary killer of “My Bloody Valentine” is Harry Warden, a miner who died as a result of his supervisor's negligence. 20 years prior to the events of the movie two supervisors left five miners in the mines in order to attend the dance. In their haste to leave they neglected to check the methane gas levels in the tunnels, resulting in an explosion that caused a tunnel to collapse. The five miners were trapped and Warden, the only survivor, resorted to cannibalism to survive while awaiting rescue. Due to the intense trauma of being trapped and having to devour his coworker to survive, Warden went insane. The following year, Warden murdered the two supervisors who abandoned their posts a year earlier.
From an American Appalachian perspective, Warden’s rage is rather righteous. During my initial watch of this film I couldn’t help but think of the Battle of Blair Mountain, where approximately ten-thousand striking coal miners faced off against strike breakers, sheriff's deputies, and the West Virginia Army National Guard. The largest labor uprising in the United States, the Battle of Blair Mountain was the result of union-busting tactics, unlawful terminations of union workers, and the tied-in use of company towns to tie workers to the company in a way that suppressed their rights as laborers. The Battle of Blair Mountain was part of the early 20th century West Virginia coal wars, a violent and hostile struggle between coal miners and coal companies in Post Civil War Appalachia. It is an important chapter of Appalachian history that often gets brushed over by our education curriculum; why teach about the National Guard murdering the citizens of their own state? Why talk about the abhorrent practices of corporations, company towns, and interrogate capitalist greed? However, despite the turn I’ve taken here, this is not an essay on union resistance in Appalachia (I would need multiple thesis projects for that), but rather about how these similar ethics and efforts were most needed in “My Bloody Valentine”. Nova Scotia also saw union strikes (the workers were represented by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the union also responsible for representing the miners involved in the Battle of Blair Mountain) from 1922-1925, mainly resulting from company town conditions, slashed wages, and union busting.
Through the course of the movie, there is no mention of a union or organizing group. We can assume, however, that the miners of Valentine Bluffs are employed by some sort of company, most likely Dominion Steel and Coal Company (also known as the British Empire Steel Corporation, or BESCO) which owned the majority of coal mines in the province and ceased coal operations in 1966. Since the events of the film take place in 1981, this would put the Valentine Bluffs mining disaster as happening in 1961. The Nova Scotia strikes were directly caused by BESCOs’ actions against miners in order to address their own financial issues. As such, we can assume that the mines in Valentine Bluffs were affected by their parent company’s union busting tactics and financial difficulties.
The importance of the UMWA’s efforts can never be understated. It is because of the efforts and deaths of UMWA organizers that we have the rights to the eight-hour work day, improved collective bargaining rights, and the foundations for how strikes and unions can achieve rights for their members. Having a union also allows more protective rights for workers, ensuring claims can be made for compensation and that safety practices are followed. In the case of the miners in “My Bloody Valentine”, these safe practices were violated. When the supervisors chose to leave before their co-workers were out of the mines safely, they chose to leave them to die. Union resistance history shows us how blatantly companies don’t care about their employees’ well-being, and in many cases supervisors are seen as an extension of the company. During the course of the film there is nothing to indicate there is a union, or that legal action is taken against the company for the negligence of their supervisors and the deaths of the miners. In fact, Harry Warden is abandoned, sinking into insanity due to what he experienced at the hands of those responsible for his well-being while on the job. This is intentional, with director George Mihalka stating "Harry Warden wasn't born evil; he was a hardworking man who went insane when the bosses neglected the people that worked for them, causing a disaster. I really insisted on the subtext. Okay, it's not exactly a treatise on Das Kapita, but at the same time, that's who the character is." Harry was taken advantage of by the company and supervisors who saw him and his fellow miners as little more than pieces of the profit producing machine. Without any other recourse, Harry found justice on his own terms; murder.
I’m not going to go as far as to say Harry was right, but I do understand him. In many ways, his story is similar to that of individuals caught in the West Virginia coal wars. He’s a working man who lost everything, and who wanted recompense. I do find his anger relatable and natural. The actions of the supervisors and the unnamed mining company, or rather, their inaction, leads to the events of the film. The true killer of the 1981 slasher is protagonist Axel, the son of one of the supervisors killed by Harry Warden. When he was a child, Axel witnessed Harry murdering his father by tearing his heart out. The trauma of this moment, much like the trauma Harry experienced, is what turned Axel into a pick-ax wielding murderer later in life. The neglect of the company is what ultimately led to two massacres in Valentine Bluffs. Maybe if there had been union action in place, we would have seen a different result. As always, support your local unions. Union proud. Union strong.
I still need a knife.
-Leslie
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by Leslie Anne Smith
Leslie Anne Smith has an MA in Publishing from the University of Derby and has worked as an ESL teacher in South Korea and the US. They are passionate about language learning, minority language preservation, traveling, postcards, football (the real one), and uplifting queer voices. They live out of a suitcase most of the time, but the return address for all their post is for Alabama. Fodd bynnag, bidden nhw bob amser yn dweud annibyniaeth i Gymru.
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