Eat Your Heart Out

Admit it. You want to ring the little cherub's neck, chop off those oh-so-dainty winglets, and jam that bow right up Cupid's sorry airborne ass. Screw Valentine's Day -- your idea of a Hallmark moment right about now is watching the one who left your poor, misbegotten heart a smeary red stain on the tarmac o' love twist and shout in a vat of flaming howler monkeys while lampreys nuzzle at his/her/its nether regions.

But that's OK, because we've all been there (except for the lamprey part -- that's just wrong). And so to help you through the screeching black hell that is Feb. 14, oh single one, we've compiled a list of films for you to watch while you're crawling into that bottle of merlot that by all rights you should be sharing with that cad/harpy/walking emotional cluster bomb right about now. Not a stitch of normal Eros among 'em, either, so it's safe for you to take the fondue forks out of your eyes. Break open a trough of cookie-dough ice cream, and savor the heartache.

1. Addicted to Love. Director Griffin Dunne mines fertile, febrile territory in this unjustly overlooked anti-romantic comedy that casts Matthew Broderick as a broken-hearted stalker and Meg Ryan (sporting some alluring biker-chic) as an equally deranged castoff who enter into an uneasy alliance against their exes. If there's such a thing as "creepy frothiness" this film has it.

2. Nekromantik 2: The Loving Dead. Like Cyndi Lauper before him, Germany's Jörg Buttgereit knows that girls just want to have fun, and if that means banging a crusty dead guy with a broomstick for a penis, then so be it.

3. Little Shop of Horrors. Roger Corman's 1960 original is primo Bowery-black comedy to this day, and ultimately shows that even if you buy a girl flowers, you're still going to end up devoured by a giant, talking plant. Well, duh.

4. Boxing Helena. David Lynch's daughter Jennifer proves that she's a chip off the old pop as she directs Julian Sands de-limbing Sherilyn Fenn to keep his inamorata from playing hard to get (or the violin, or much of anything ever again). Edgy!

5. Rabid. David Cronenberg and Ivory Soap Girl-cum-Seventies-porn star Marilyn Chambers get to the heart of this whole Eros/Thanatos thing in a tale of venereal lovesickness that leads to nasty sex and -- oh baby! -- rampant cannibalism. Bon appétit!