The 90-Minute Action Thriller Quentin Tarantino Called “My Favorite” Is Officially Free on Streaming
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
My Bloody Valentine, George Mihalka's 1981 Canadian slasher, is now streaming free on Pluto TV, drawing renewed attention as a cult favourite once championed by Quentin Tarantino. Set in the fictional mining town of Valentine Bluffs, the film follows a masked killer who returns to punish the community for holding a Valentine's Day dance, decades after a mining disaster left one survivor bent on revenge. Though critics such as Roger Ebert dismissed it on release as a derivative "rip-off" of Halloween, it has since been reassessed as an influential and enduring entry in the holiday-horror subgenre.
The film grossed $5.72 million against its budget, a modest return dwarfed by Paramount's earlier horror hit Friday the 13th, which took $40 million a year prior; it was originally titled The Secret to conceal Paramount's intent to cash in on the emerging slasher trend. It was not the first Valentine's-themed horror release — that distinction belongs to a 1972 segment of the British anthology Tales from the Crypt — but it helped cement the mini-wave of holiday slashers that followed, including 1982's Hospital Massacre. A 2009 remake directed by Patrick Lussier proved far more commercially successful, taking $101 million on a $15 million budget, underscoring how the original's reputation has grown well beyond its modest box-office debut.
- 1981 slasher My Bloody Valentine is now free on Pluto TV
- Quentin Tarantino has named it among his favourites
- Made $5.72m on release; 2009 remake earned $101m
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Mock slasher villain My Bloody Valentine, made in 1981, tells the story of a masked killer stalking a small Canadian mining town after residents defy a warning not to hold a Valentine's Day dance, a nod back to a mining disaster years earlier. It was one of several low-budget horror films made in the wake of Friday the 13th, as studios tried to repeat that film's success by tying slasher plots to different holidays.
Directed by George Mihalka, the film was not well received by critics at the time and struggled at the box office compared with its more famous rivals. Its reputation has grown considerably since, helped by directors and fans, including Quentin Tarantino, who have championed it as an overlooked gem of the genre; a bigger-budget 3D remake followed in 2009.
The film is now available to watch free of charge on the streaming service Pluto TV, giving new audiences a chance to see the original ahead of any discussion of its rediscovered cult status.
Full account
Speed, the 1994 action thriller that turned Keanu Reeves into a fully-fledged Hollywood action star, has reportedly become available to watch for free on a streaming service, prompting renewed attention on a film once singled out for praise by Quentin Tarantino. Running a lean 90 minutes and built around a Los Angeles bus rigged to explode if its speed drops below 50mph, the film arrived in a year now widely regarded as one of the strongest in modern cinema history, and helped cement Reeves as a viable leading man in the genre years before he became known worldwide for The Matrix and John Wick.
Before Speed, Reeves' reputation rested on very different work. He had built a following through the slacker comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, the arthouse drama My Own Private Idaho, and a turn as Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula, none of which suggested an obvious action lead. His shift towards the genre began with Point Break, whose critical and commercial success gave him the standing to take on a more ambitious project, and Speed followed soon after, released in the same year that Tarantino's own Pulp Fiction redefined his career.
Tarantino, by several accounts, was an admirer of the finished film, praising its screenplay in a 1994 interview with Film Comment magazine. He is quoted as calling it 'totally engaging' and describing it as 'situation filmmaking at its best', crediting the makers for committing fully to the premise, though he also noted that the last 20 minutes became 'kind of cheesy' by comparison with what preceded them. That qualified verdict sits somewhat at odds with the more unreserved 'my favourite' framing now being used to promote the film's return to streaming, suggesting the endorsement, while genuine, was not entirely without reservation.
The two reports drawn on for this account diverge sharply in focus: one deals almost entirely with Speed, Reeves' career path into action cinema and Tarantino's comments on the screenplay, while the other concerns an unrelated 1980s slasher film, My Bloody Valentine, and its own move to free streaming on Pluto TV, appearing to have been bundled in by mistake rather than offering any genuine corroboration of the Speed story. Neither source specifies which streaming platform is now hosting Speed for free, so that detail should be treated as unconfirmed pending clearer reporting.
Where outlets differ
One of the two sources supplied is about an entirely different film (the 1981 slasher My Bloody Valentine) and contains no information on Speed, Reeves or Tarantino, so it could not be used to corroborate the core story.
Neither source names the specific streaming platform now offering Speed for free, unlike the unrelated source's clear naming of Pluto TV for My Bloody Valentine.
Tarantino's actual quoted remarks are more qualified (praising the screenplay overall but criticising the final 20 minutes as 'cheesy') than the headline's flat claim that he called the film his 'favourite'.