His head hidden under his helmet, his face covered behind the glassy, round, unforgiving, unfeeling eyes of his gas mask, his body made anonymous in his coal-black jumpsuit, The Miner is a pure force of nature. He’s somewhat reminiscent in that way of Michael Myers — referred to as The Shape in the end credits of Halloween. There are a number of point-of-view shots in the film, not only from the Miner’s point of view but from the points-of-view of his victims; this means we get plenty of shots of the Miner seeming to attack the camera. And it’s brutal. The light on his helmet shines directly into the lens, momentarily blinding and confusing us just like the characters are blinded and confused. When we’re allowed to focus, the Miner’s attacks are savage.

Witness this sequence from the last act of the film, as the main characters are trapped in the mine with him. The Miner doesn’t stand there menacingly, like Michael Myers does. He doesn’t step gingerly through the forest like some early incarnations of Jason. The Miner is always moving, and he’s moving fast. The sound design contributes to the brutality of this shot as well; the shattering glass is sharp and jarring, and it’s mixed perfectly with the killer’s ominous, Darth Vader-like breathing.

The other thing I admire so much about My Bloody Valentine is its unusual structure. This is a film that barely has a protagonist for the first two acts. Sure, the sheriff is trying to figure out if Harry Warden is back in town, but Halloween had Dr. Loomis trying to track down Michael Myers, and I’m not sure I’d call Dr. Loomis the protagonist of that film. TV would call that the B-story; the A-story is Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode trying to survive Halloween night. Imagine, instead, if Dr. Loomis’s story was intercut with a dozen girls at lunch planning a sleepover later that night, and then the sleepover happened, and a bunch of guys came over, and it was only as they broke off into couples and got killed that we really got to know much about them, and then with about 25 minutes left in the movie, the action slowly zeroes in on Laurie as we realize she’s going to be the one who ends up battling the Shape.

That’s My Bloody Valentine. There’s a loosely sketched-out love triangle among three of the local twentysomethings, Sarah, Axel, and TJ. TJ went away for a while — we never find out why — and now that he’s back, he wants to resume his relationship with Sarah. He forces himself on her, in fact. He’s kind of an asshole. We don’t really root for him. Sarah, on the other hand, waffles between the two boys. Axel is a bit of a wimp, and then he’s a drunken asshole who gets in fights with TJ over nothing. Sure, you can guess that they’ll probably wind up being the most important characters, but really, none of them have any more lines than their friends until the last 15 minutes or so of the film. Most of the movie is about the locals as a collective, a group of a dozen or so twentysomethings who first help plan the dance, then when it’s canceled all develop plans for a separate party down at the Hanniger mine. We see who the goofball is, and who he’s dating, and which girl likes that other boy, and which one’s too nervous to ask out a girl, and who shaved his beard, and so on. It’s an interesting tactic, one that sets My Bloody Valentine apart from other, similar slashers.

Ultimately, My Bloody Valentine deserves to be remembered as a staple of the slasher genre, not just another holiday-themed Halloween knockoff. For the brutality of its kills, the memorability of its killer, and its willingness to buck some conventions of the still-coalescing subgenre, My Bloody Valentine is a blast from start to finish.

Oh, and there’s this fantastic theme song, too.

Happy Valentine’s Day!