Like Prom Night, Valentine opens on a flashback in which a middle school dweeb is teased past the point of reason. This time, it's because he keeps asking, to scores of rejection, his cutest classmates to dance--flashback, indeed! Unfortunately, the scene builds to a Carrie homage that veers into plagiarism. Cut to: several years later; Katherine Heigl, as one of the girls who said no, receives an elaborate--and threatening--valentine card. Minutes later, she meets a violent end in a convenient place: a cold storage facility. Her childhood snob-friends show up at the funeral (punctuating their arrested development, they've not stopped hanging out with each other since sixth grade, though the filmmakers leave this decidedly abnormal practice unsatirized) and are greeted by the investigating officer (Fulvio Cecere). He warns them against guys with the initials "J.M.," and begins a flirtation with Richards' Paige Prescott that all but guarantees a romantic subplot. When Valentine can't decide on the parameters of their attraction, it offs both characters. And the wheel keeps turning.

I thought Richards was insufferable in Starship Troopers, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and The World is Not Enough, but she's on Valentine's wavelength playing a peculiar Hollywood convention: the jezebel who doesn't have any sex. If it weren't for Richards, the movie would be a total bore with an indistinguishable female cast; she is one of its few non-blondes, and, belying that old adage, we have more fun with her. One of Valentine's major weaknesses is that it doesn't decide on a lead; Richards would have done the trick, ditto the crushingly beautiful Heigl. While most examples of the slasher sub-genre are ensemble pieces, a hero or heroine is always duly noted so as to avoid a disengaging climax.

Leaving innumerable plotholes out of this, another problem with Valentine is that it's overproduced. Although director Jamie Blanks might not take the observation that this follow-up to his inferior (and that's saying something) Urban Legend looks too polished as a criticism, I can't suppress these pangs of nostalgia for crap with the hat and shades to match, to paraphrase Mitch Ryder. Valentine is a return of sorts to mostly irony-free teen schlock, but the violence is so reticent and the overall packaging so slick that it would be less than hip to pretend it's something other than a cynical teen-and-Scream-boom cash-grab by a major studio. Richards is her own private marvel, though; could another actress so elevate the line, "You brought me up here to show me your penis?"?

Warner's DVD release is up to their usual high standards. Valentine is presented in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of superb clarity and saturation. (Reds are suitably vibrant.) There is a dark cast throughout that suggests the early stages of Macrovision in the most underlit sequences, yet it feels organic to the nature of the cinematography. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix leaves a little to be desired, as it reserves surround usage for abstract party noise and the like and doesn't defer enough jolt to the subwoofer. Left-right separation is expert, if infrequent.

The Australian Blanks' commentary track is full of minor revelations, such as whence the concept of "Turbo Dating" came and the pitfalls of cutting a shadowy-looking film on a computer. Additionally, Blanks discusses with some frankness just what was imposed on Valentine by the powers that be. Besides sparse cast/crew bios and the theatrical trailer (a somewhat misleading label since it's the teaser), the remaining menu selections are assigned cryptic values: "Club Reel" is a music video (well, a tricky montage of Valentine clips) for Orgy's "Opticon," while "Studio Extras" is actually the 7-minute "Valentine: Behind the Scenes", featuring superficial interviews with principals plus a deleted scene.-Bill Chambers

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