Last Valentine's Day, the Face-Off article I wrote to celebrate the holiday was HOSPITAL MASSACRE vs. LOVERS LANE, putting a 1981 slasher up against a 2000 slasher, both of which are set around Valentine's Day.
I don't own a copy of Jon Ward's LOVERS LANE, and when I went to get one I found that the movie wasn't so easy to find. The DVD is out of print, and while there are some used copies out there going for somewhat reasonable prices, there are also copies going for over $120. I don't know if there's anyone out there who would pay that much for an obscure 2000 slasher best known for being a skeleton in the closet of actress Anna Faris, but that's the asking price.
Directed by Ward from a screenplay written by Geof Miller and Rory Veal, LOVERS LANE tells what happens whenÂ
a man who committed a series of murders thirteen years ago begins to hunt down his victims' children.
Yeah, standard stuff, but there are some twists along the way, and you get to see future celebrity Faris go around in a cheerleader outfit and get stalked by a hook-handed killer.
I ended up borrowing a LOVERS LANE DVD from a friend so I could write that Face-Off article, but if I had written it this year I would have had an even easier time getting the movie: it has been brought to my attention that LOVERS LANE is now available for viewing on Amazon Prime.
So what better way could there be to spend Valentine's Day than by watching LOVERS LANE and seeing Faris in her least favorite acting gig? Speaking to Entertainment Weekly last year, she described being cast in this film as "getting a really shitty job". She then backtracked and softened her stance on it, but she is still not happy that she made LOVERS LANE. Head over to Amazon now and see why.
Faris's co-stars in the movie include Erin J. Dean, Riley Smith, and Sarah Lancaster.