The original My Bloody Valentine, which Quentin Tarantino cites as his all-time fave slasher pic, required an astonishing nine minutes of cuts from the US censor before seeing the inside of a musty fleapit.
 
Eighteen years of civilisation later and the only limit on this movie’s gore is the filmmakers’ imagination.  It may not be classic terror, but its liberal policy toward bloodletting and nudity should win it plenty of fright fans.
 
Spoilt rich kid Tom (Ackles) clumsily causes the deaths of miners in his daddy’s plant, only for the police to discover that survivor Harry Warden killed his workmates to conserve his oxygen.
 
After a hospital massacre, Warden returns to the mine, where Tom is partying with girlfriend Sarah (King) and friends Axel (Smith) and Irene (Betsy Rue).  Taking his pickaxe to the revellers, Warden appears to be mortally wounded by the police.
 
Ten years later and Tom returns home to sell the mine his dead dad left him.  Sarah is married to Axel, who has become the town sheriff, and tells Tom selling the mine will destroy the town.
 
Agreeing with this is the gasmask-wearing Harry Warden, seemingly back from the grave and mining the craniums of those related to events of a decade ago. 
 
Does Warden still breathe, or is Axel right to point the finger at Tom?  But, with closet skeletons of his own, can the lawman be trusted?
 
My Bloody Valentine works well in eye-popping 3-D, as director Lussier delights in putting the audience on the business end of the killer’s pickaxe or at the epicentre of messy eviscerations, and immerses them in the foreboding mine shafts.
 
But, even in 2-D the graphic horror (the killer literally steals victims’ hearts) and a protracted nude chase with Rue is good for crowd-pleasing thrills and blood-spills.
 
Like the original, this quickly dispenses with the teens to focus on the grown-ups, and retains the whodunit mystery for filler between the viscera.
 
A lifeless King seems to have taken a pickaxe to the bonce before filming began, but looks the scream queen part in a series of tight tops.  Luckily 70s horror veteran Tom Atkins is on hand for cheesy gravitas, and Ackles and Smith play their parts with admirably straight faces. 
 
Proof that remaking second tier slashers is wiser than tackling Halloween or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, so who’s up for having a go at The Burning?

Rob Daniel