Harry Warden

Harry Warden
My Bloody Valentine character
Created by Stephen Miller
Portrayed by Peter Cowper
Classification Mass murderer
Signature weapon Pick axe

Harry Warden is a character from the My Bloody Valentine films. He appears in George Mihalka's My Bloody Valentine and Patrick Lussier's My Bloody Valentine 3D as one of the main antagonists. Despite the My Bloody Valentine films not launching a franchise, Harry Warden has gained a cult status in the horror genre despite only appearing in two films. In the films, the killers including Warden, presume the identity of The Miner.[1][2]

Appearances

In the original My Bloody Valentine, Harry first appears inside a mine shaft, with a female miner that performs a strip tease and fondles with his breathing tube. Harry brutally kills her with a mining pick. When the town's police chief Jake Newby receives an anonymous box of Valentine chocolates containing a human heart and a note warning that murders will begin if the dance proceeds, he checks the mental institution where Harry Warden was incarcerated, but they have no record of him. It is later revealed that the murders were done by the young miner Axel who witnessed his father (being one of the supervisors) being murdered by Harry Warden when he was a child and was since traumatized by the event ever since.

In My Bloody Valentine 3D, on the Valentine's Day of 1997, a cave-in on the north side of a Hanninger mine trapped six miners. Several days later, rescue teams found five dead miners and Harry Warden, who survived by killing the other miners with a pickaxe, allowing himself to breathe. Exactly one year later, Warden wakes from his coma in the hospital, and goes on a murderous rampage. Soon after, Sheriff Burke arrives, finding multiple mutilated bodies and the heart of a nurse inside a candy box. Burke assumes that Warden had awoken from his coma and attempts to figure out where he's headed. Meanwhile, a party is thrown at the abandoned mine shaft that was the site of the disaster, attended by many teens. After murdering several of the teens, and before he can murder Tom (the last teen in the mine), Warden is shot by Burke. Ten years later, murders begin happening again leading to speculation that Warden is back. It is revealed that Tom is the killer after developing a split personality from his encounter with Warden.

Characterization

He is depicted as a once normal man who descended into madness when his bosses weren't paying attention to their workers, which led to the disaster and subsequently Warden's insanity. He is depicted similar to Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees in that he is a deranged silent killer who lurks in the shadows. In Canadian Cinema Since the 1980s: At the Heart of the World, Mihalka stated, "Harry Warden [the original Valentine's Day killer] wasn't born evil; he was a hardworking guy 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."[3]

Reception

In Horror Movie Freak, Don Sumner called Warden a "great villain".[4] In Understanding Social Divisions, Shaun Best compared Warden to Hannibal Lector, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Norman Bates, and Jason Voorhees, stating that they all "reinforce the stigma surrounding mental illness and present a powerful picture of people who suffer from mental illness as potential psycho-killers."[5] Matt Molgaard of Horror Freak News praised the character, saying, "You know, it really doesn’t matter who sports the mask of the Miner: be it Harry Warden, Tom Hanniger, or Billy Crystal. It’s all about the sense of inescapable dread that sinks to the bottom of the stomach the moment that mask earns screen time. Of all the legendary masks horror freaks discuss on a regular basis (Myers, Voorhees, Ghostface, etc., etc.), this one is certainly one of the more frightening to behold. The odd thing is I can’t even fully explain why that is. Perhaps it is better that I don’t over-analyze things and just respect the Miner and his mask for what they are: kick ass, top notch additions to the genre! Don’t bypass the 2009 remake simply because you’re a purist: it’s awfully entertaining and sports one of the most awkward (therefore must-see) nude scenes I’ve seen in 31 years!"[6]

References

  1. ↑ "MOVIE OF THE DAY: My Bloody Valentine (1981)". CHUD. Retrieved 7 August 2016.
  2. ↑ "Where in the Horror are they Now? The Cast of My Bloody Valentine (1981)!". JoBlo Movie Network. Retrieved 7 August 2016.
  3. ↑ Pike, David. Canadian Cinema Since the 1980s: At the Heart of the World. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 1442698322.
  4. ↑ Sumner, Don (2010). Horror Movie Freaks. Krause Publications. ISBN 1440215642.
  5. ↑ Best, Shaun (2005). Understanding Social Divisions. SAGE. ISBN 144622354X.
  6. ↑ "Top 51 Horror Movie Villains - Horror Freak News". Horror Freak News.


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