Bloody Wednesday

I am nostalgic for the 80s and the days of going to neighborhood video stores, or even to neighborhood 7-11s, to rent VHS tapes for home viewing. One way of appeasing this nostalgia is to watch 80s movies now that I didn't catch back then, and "Bloody Wednesday" was one of these so I found it on You Tube.

A California mechanic begins acting very weird and "can no longer work." After walking naked and singing into a church, he gets hospitalized, but is released to his brother's custody. His brother puts him up in an old empty hotel he's in charge of, and things get weirder and weirder until the final acts of violence.

This movie tells you what's going to happen from its opening scene so there can be no "spoilers" here. But it really has nothing to do with the "McDonald's Massacre" in southern California in the early 80s. Repeated online descriptions say it does, but these are simply wrong. The character here bears zero resemblance to James Huberty of the real-life massacre, and this movie is more a low-budget, urban aping of "The Shining" than it is about any real-life massacre.

The guy's hallucinations here are unrealistic and deeply involved in a way that I've never heard of hallucinations being with real patients. They are much more detailed fantasies than hallucinations, and most people know what their private fantasies are and do not believe them to be real. Our character here does, and this does not always make for a plausible viewing experience.

Confusing matters further is the fact that there are apparent REAL threats against our character in the form of three punks with a stupid grudge against him. In a sequence more bizarre than any of his fantasies, our guy ends up in an extended conversation with one punk about everything including the meaning of life!

All this may have worked better if done in a different style. As it is, with our guy fumbling between fantasy and reality while distracting action sequences are thrown in, it seems a muddle.

I think the guy's talking teddy bear is a good character and should have been developed more. Instead, there are distractions with hallucinated butlers and possibly hallucinated private eyes looking for long-stashed treasures and such. Most of the stuff with the punks is another snooze, and endless sequences of our guy trying to seduce his female psychiatrist (!!) just go nowhere as well.

Even the final massacre is done oddly, with several people conveniently jumping out on cue to get shot. The end that our shooter comes to is different from real-life Huberty's. The general racial make-up of the victims is different. Huberty's was an attack on a popular fast-food joint. Here we have an attack on a small family restaurant. Huberty called for psychiatric help before his crimes but was put on a callers' waiting list. Our man here has steady psychiatric attention that does him no good. Huberty never separated from his family and was living with them the day of the McDonald's Massacre. Our man here is long abandoned by his wife. Huberty let legitimate concerns about the government become driving obsessions. Our guy here is totally apolitical. And on and on go the complete differences.

Our guy here is hard to sympathize with as he acts child-like and confused one moment, but arrogantly sure of his sanity and dismissive of others the next. Hey, he just forgot to put his clothes on before going to church, what's the big deal?! Such is a guy who is not exactly going to pull at your heartstrings.

Nonetheless, this movie succeeds in some ways as an 80s oddity complete with a Casio-driven score. It is worth a look for 80s video fans in spite of its flaws, and enjoyable in some ways for fans of the strange, especially fans of the low-budget strange. All others need not apply.

Bloody Wednesday treads some of the territory I value the most in cinema, the mind in disarray, its structure embodied in architecture, the pressures within and without. It also as a social agenda, which matters less to me as a viewer but does have the advantage of being something I agree rather strongly with. It is perhaps unfortunate that it announces itself so boldly with the title and opening text, telling instantly that this is less cinema of exploration than cinema as arrow, clean flight from singing bow to grisly target, but its a well mounted and weird enough affair to mostly forgive its shortcomings. The tale is of Harry Curtis, divorced, perpetual loser, who wigs out one afternoon and loses his job as a mechanic, then rocks up to a church service in the buff and is sent for psychiatric evaluation for his efforts. But even though the doctor has her suspicions, he can't stay and ends up living in an abandoned hotel. Then slowly but surely, things get out of control... The key reference point is The Shining, hotel of grand spaces and dark corridors, menacing history and beguiling phantasms a mirror for the mind, a place to get lost and overwhelmed. But instead of gorgeous decor and Steadicam shots there's a talking teddy bear. And snakes, and ghosts that map to Curtis and his frustrations rather directly, and a street gang who turn up to make his life even harder. Its a curious and somewhat derivative brew with an ending inspired by a real life massacre of a few years previous, but generally decent writing pulls it off in engaging fashion. Characters are nicely defined and there are some interesting and quirky lines it has a writerly feel to it rather than the rather flat point a to point b no fuss no muss approach that may such films take. This is probably due to being written by Philip Yordan, who scored a Oscar win in the 50's and a couple more nominations, and though relegated to the realms of low budget horror by the 80's clearly figured he should still take his best shot at every project. Some of the performances help, Raymond Emendorf has a good blank melancholy that steadily grows to creepy intensity, Pamela Baker concerned and likable as his doctor, and Jeff O'Haco bes as the lead street tough, arrogant and venomous but smart in his way. Other performances are weaker, but it doesn't matter too much, the film moves nicely and delivers when it comes to the crunch, an appropriately bloody showdown with decent body-count. Altogether this isn't a film to set anyones life alight, but its good fun in its little way and a thoroughly agreeable late night time filler. Strong 6/10.

Talk about a misunderstood film! Bloody Wednesday is a movie about one mans decline into utter madness and the reasons as to why he murdered 36 people in a coffee shop one night. Written for the screen by Academy Award Winner Philip Yordan, you would think this movie would get a better wrap.

The movie circles around a man named Harry, an auto mechanic who is going through a nasty little divorce. When Harry gets fired from his job he starts really losing his mind by walking into a church completely naked singing Halleluya. He is committed to a hospital for sometime. Whe he is released his brother gives him a place to stay, a secluded rundown hotel. It is here that Harry quickly starts losing his mind as he sees ghosts, his life is threatened by street toughs, his teddy bear starts talking to him, etc etc. This all leads up to the obvious disaster at the end.

I thought this was a most enjoyable film. Originally I put this movie on to just go to sleep to, but the movie kept my interest to the very end. What makes this movie so much fun is really seeing the reactions of the people around Harry as they see him slip into insanity. This movie is no masterpiece writing as most of it is rather humorous. The basic message of the movie was well thought out though. I don't know if this was based on a true story or not, but, if it was I wouldn't rely on this movie to tell an accurate story of what happened.

Overall, an enjoyable piece of trash. Definitely worth watching again. 6/10

So reads the tagline for this bizarre thriller, scripted and produced by Academy Award winner Philip Yordan. Raymond Elmendorf stars as Harry, a mechanic who is slowly losing touch with reality. After showing up at church naked, Harry is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Although deemed a danger to society, he is quickly released due to the overcrowding and moves into a large abandoned hotel. Once inside, Harry suffers torment from figures both real (local street thugs) and imaginary (the hotel's dead occupants). All of this leads him to his breaking point so he decks himself out with firepower and heads to a local diner.

No doubt inspired by the 1984 McDonald's massacre in California by James Huberty, BLOODY Wednesday attempts to offer the reasons lurking behind random killing sprees. Unfortunately, it falls back on a series of cinematic psychological clichés, happy to portray Harry as an unprovoked nut/loner who has frequent dialogues with ghosts and his teddy bear (!). Harry may be a Vietnam vet (several moments of war sounds on the soundtrack allude to this), but it is never made clear. The film also offers some criticism of the mental health industry and the police but little time or attention is given to either.

The most interesting aspect of BLOODY Wednesday is the alternating between real life and Harry's dream world. One is never quite sure what is happening to Harry is genuine or his imagination. Regrettably, the film lacks the budget, actors and direction to pull this off. Lead Raymond Elmendorf is passable as the tormented Harry, with the rest of the cast being made up of unknowns. The best performance is by Jeff O'Haco (who played one of the Libyans in BACK TO THE FUTURE) as gang leader Animal. This is director Mark G. Gilhuis' only feature (possibly a pseudonym?). Screenwriter Philip Yordan had an amazingly eclectic career, probably the only man to have won an Oscar and work on NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR.

This is rather an odd tale of a guy who has severe mental problems. Based on a true story, it documents his decline from being the best mechanic at a garage to complete nutcase who sees delusions all day long and imagines voices in his head. Unable to cope with the stress of slowly losing his sanity and being alienated by everyone around him, he walks into a coffee shop one day and promptly blows 36 people away. The films attempts to explain how he got in that state in the first place.

For utter strangeness this movie is hard to beat. In the big build up to the events at the end, our deranged protagonist amongst other things: Has conversations with his squeaky-voiced homicidal teddy-bear about who to kill next, is attacked by noisy hissing snakes while in bed, plays Russian Roulette with a trio of toughs who try to beat him up, walks into a church service singing Hallejuah wearing nothing but a Bible over his privates and opens up what he thinks is a suitcase full of diamonds only to find.. well, watch it, and you'll see for yourself.

A surreal experience indeed, but not an unpleasant one. It is funny on more than one occasion (mainly due to other character's reactions to our hero's bizarre behaviour) and is strengthened by a brilliantly loopy leading performance by Raymond Elendorf. You can't help but feel for him, as his cries for help are ignored and when his lady psychiatrist is constantly rebuffed in her attempts to aid him by her uncaring colleagues. Perhaps if they'd been less worried about being sued than human life, this tragedy would never have happened.

Some elements of the plot don't add up (like how he is given the machine gun which was responsible for the massacre) and the depiction of mental illness is a bit far-fetched to say the least. Overall though, this is a very interesting watch if nothing else and well worth the quid I paid for it. 5/10