To paraphrase Edwin Starr: Valentine’s Day!  Huh!  What is it good for?

Well...depends who you ask:  it certainly didn’t work out too well for the poor Roman priest who got himself beaten, stoned, beheaded (and later canonized) for nuptializing Christian couples out of season, nor for any of the other Catholic martyrs named Valentine whose various grisly fates somehow led to the annual tradition of grown-ass men dropping seventy bucks a pop to have teddy bears in boxer shorts with hearts on them delivered to grown-ass women in the middle of winter.

Scholars blame Geoffrey Chaucer for ruining February 14th by linking a bunch of obscure Roman Catholic feast days with the aggravating concept of courtly love, thus stressing out singles and couples alike for centuries to come with unrealistic, unattainable expectations about all the perfect moments of romance we’re all supposed to be having (instead of weeping lonely tears into our popcorn at solo matinees of He’s Just Not That Into You or forgetting to buy a frickin’ card for our significant others and never hearing the goddamn frickin’ end of it).

It should, of course, be remembered that St. Valentine’s ol’ pagan buddy Cupid is the son of both a goddess of love AND a god of war, and thus not all the couples the little bastard shoots with his arrows wind up living happily ever after. Therefore, as a cheery reminder that things could always be worse in this infernal season of l’amour, your friends-with-benefits here at the Screengrab are proud to present BLOODY VALENTINES: THE WORST RELATIONSHIPS IN CINEMA HISTORY!

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