PulseFLICKS – The telltale heartbreak 

A cynical movie fan’s guide to Valentine’s Day
By Robert Newton. 

Harvey Ball’s iconic yellow smiley face. The birth control pill. The flush toilet. Well-known Worcester inventions all, but one of the things that our fair city is does not get much credit for is that it is widely regarded as the place in which the first mass-produced American Valentine’s Day cards were produced in 1847 by Esther Howland. To the millions of lovers in love and fans of both local history and strong women, the celebrated self-starter is a hero, but to single and jilted people everywhere, she is a miserable devil, the lemon juice in the paper cut of the soul. Welcome to Worcester, Heart Of The Commonwealth and Spawning Ground of Romantic Anguish™!

We have prepared an antidote to all the wretched lovey-doveyness of the accursed February 14 ~ a list of movies that celebrate love lost, unrequited and unconventional. Use it to numb your pain (or enhance it, if that’s your thing), and have a crappy day!

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

One of the key images from this 1981 splatter-fest is a bloody human heart packed into a candy box ~ just the way most lonely people feel on Valentine’s Day. Not to be confused with the clumsy 2001 turkey, Valentine, starring Denise Richards, or “Family Ties” actor Scott Valentine, who starred in the forgettable 1987 comedy My Demon Lover. Horror nuts might also want to track down the Valentine’s Day revenge flick Hospital Massacre (1982) starring legendary Playmate Barbi Benton, or the more available The Blood Spattered Bride, Spanish workhorse Vicente Aranda’s gore-packed misogynist ode about a way-dysfunctional newlywed couple.

WAR OF THE ROSES

Danny DeVito’s relentless 1989 dark comedy, in which he pits feuding married couple Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner against each other, is spiteful through-and-through, embodying everything love is not. For divorce in a slightly more civil style, check out the multiple Oscar-winning Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), or wallow in the bitter denial of Paul Giamatti’s Merlot-hating schlub in Sideways (2004) co-starring Virginia Madsen, who was the object of a home computer’s affection in Electric Dreams (1984).

LUNATICS: A LOVE STORY
Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, under the aegis of his Renaissance Pictures, let pal Josh Becker direct this low-budget 1991 movie about a Catcher In The Rye-brand paranoid (Ted Raimi) who falls for Valley Girl Deborah Foreman and ignores the spiders in his brain for long enough to brave life outside his apartment to save her from a vicious street gang.

THE WOODSMAN
Kevin Bacon threw caution to the wind and produced and starred in this brooding and remarkably non-judgmental 2004 drama about a pedophile who returns to his hometown after 12 years in jail to start his life anew. There he meets a tough girl (played by real-life wife Kyra Sedgwick), who gives him a glimpse of a normal life. For an ickier, more literary take on this kind of alien love, check out Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Nabokov’s Lolita (1962) or even Adrian Lyne’s 1997 version.