Beware of 80's horror movies of which the DVD-cover repeatedly 'warns' you about the extremely graphic content and/or shocking images of the film
Nearly always, this is just a method to divert your attention of the fact that it's a very incompetent and cheap production. In this case, it's even worse, as "Bloody Wednesday" turns out very boring and not bloody at all! The only "graphic content" is found at the beginning and ending of the film and that actually is twice the same sequence! (Oops
that was a spoiler!). The "story" of Bloody Wednesday revolves on a thirty-something loser called Harry! Harry has got some serious issues
He has legal conversations with his teddy bear (I'm serious!) and he walks into church services naked, singing Hallelujah-praise the Lord! When Harry is fired for the umpteenth time, his brother hires his as a janitor for an abandoned hotel where he then loses his mind completely. I suppose this movie was meant to be a psychological portrait of a man unable to function in modern society, constantly trying to fool the audience by showing events that are whether real
.or the imagination of a sick man. No matter what this film tries to achieve, it fails
There's absolutely no structure, not a single idea is elaborated properly (the hotel-suicides, Harry's desires towards his female doctor
) and the inexperienced star Raymond Elmendorf lacks the required talent to play a demanding role like this. Most of the time, he weakly imitates a combination of the characters Jack Torrance (from "The Shining") and Norman Bates (from "Psycho") but he hasn't got personality himself. The total lack of violence and sleaze is unacceptable and there's absolutely no trace of twisted humor in the script
Or maybe it was so lousy that I didn't even notice it. I find it rather surprising that this turkey was written by Philip Jordan, as his other 80's trash-horror films are a lot more entertaining (Night Train to Terror, The Unholy
). In case you want to see a good and truly raw drama handling about urban-insanity, keep your eyes open for Abel Ferrara's "The Driller Killer" but do avoid this garbage at all costs.
Review of Bloody Wednesday
