YOUR BLOODY VALENTINE:  EXTREME DATE MOVIES

**THIS THING CONTAINS CLIPS, SPOILERS AND VAGUELY SATIRICAL SEXIST LANGUAGE**

It’s Valentines soon and being an unoriginal hack I started thinking about my favourite romantic movies.  30 seconds later I got bored so decided to write a different kind of list. So, if you want an alternative to the usual Valentines-clichéd-cosy-rose-petal-drenched-chocolate-card-Love-Actually-rip-off-Day – here you go!

Basically, it’s an excuse to list some great movies with elements of extreme love. And violence. And horror. My kind of cinema.

SIGHTSEERS (2012)

The perfect date movie. I promise.  There’s romance, soul-searching and bloody murder.  This is one of the best British films released in a long while. I hate it when writers say a movie is “something meets something”  but this is like Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May meets Kalifornia, kind of.  I hate myself for saying that. Just watch it.

SECRET IN THEIR EYES (2009)

This is one of the best films you haven’t seen.  Or maybe you have. It rightly won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2010.  It has so many great elements: a vicious murder mystery, obsessive pursuit, revenge, political espionage and a painfully touching love story at its’ heart.

AUDITION (1999)

As date-movies go this is a real screamer.  What starts as one man’s attempt to find a wife via his own creepy version of the casting couch is turned into a violent proto-feminist-carve-up-par-excellence!  I’ve dated a couple of nutters before but not like this. You won’t look at a hessian sack the same way again.  Or cheese wire.  Or open your eyes ever again after seeing  this.

TEETH (2007)

Mixing comedy with coming-of-age movies this is a brilliant little horror film.  A girl with Jaws in her vagina starts cutting men’s cocks off!  Who said romance was dead eh?  She did – that’s who!

IRREVERSIBLE (2002)

Just one of the most brutal and beautiful love stories ever told on film.

MISERY (1990)

I still think that if Annie Wilkes hadn’t been such a violent mentalist her and Paul Sheldon may have had a chance of romance.  But she was and love for Kathy Bates and James Caan’s characters was not to be. Shame. Despite the torture they were such a lovely couple.

HAROLD & MAUDE (1971)

A story for outsiders as young man, slightly off-kilter Harold, falls in love with free-spirited octogenarian, Maude. It’s a wonderfully dark comedy full of brilliant scenes especially Harold’s fake “suicide” attempts. But the chemistry between Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon is really touching. Ruth Gordon proved in this and Rosemary’s Baby what a great actor she was.

SNOWTOWN (2011)

Your boyfriend or girlfriend are giving you the hump and you want to pump and dump them.  What do you do?  Sit them down while you watch this movie while sharpening your carving knife collection.  You won’t see them for dust!  Jokes aside this Aussie serial-killer movie is one of the darkest films I have seen in a long while. Brutal, grim and worst of all based on a true story.

EVIL DEAD (1981)

You go to a cabin in the woods hoping to get a bit of sugar from your girlfriend  and accidentally raise a Canderian demon using the Book Of The Dead.  Don’t you just hate it when that happens!  I know I do!

LES DIABOLIQUES (1955)

Watch this French film and Psycho in a double bill and you’ll never ever go into the bathroom again.  This is an absolute classic and they genuinely do not make them like this anymore.   Mainly because it’s in black and white, oh, and it has a story, suspense, plot-twists and doesn’t rely on green-screen-CGI-Superhero-blowing-shit-up!

THE SKIN I LIVE IN (2011)

As retribution goes Antonio Banderas’ vendetta in this takes some beating.  It’s a slow burner but the pay off is incredible as Pedro Almodovar movie combines: science-fiction, horror, melodrama, psychological torture etc. to create a date movie you won’t forget.   Banderas is a revelation in a role which turns his usual romantic leading man status on its head as he seeks transformative revenge.