Bloody
Wednesday
(1985/Film Chest DVD)
Picture:
C- Sound: C- Extras: D Film: C
You'll
be praying for Thursday!!!!!
Mark
G. Gilhuis' Bloody
Wednesday
is a 1985 B-movie that takes its audience on a mental roller coaster
descent into madness with its lead, Harry (nicely played by Raymond
Elmendorf), who loses his job as an auto mechanic and starts to have
bizarre hallucinations (paired with his talking teddy bear) that all
lead up to a mass shooting at restaurant. Realistic enough and based
on a true story involving a 1984 shootout at a McDonald's in San
Diego where innocent victims were killed by the hands of a madman,
the story follows the same beats here only making it from the
killer's perspective.
The
film is very low budget '80s and even shines with a synth soundtrack.
The filmmaking isn't half bad, nor are most of the performances and
there are a few standout scenes that turned out pretty well. One
cool scene involves a nightmare with a snake that ends up being a
twisted bedspread was pretty cleverly executed and another where the
teddy bear acts a judge on the lives of some kidnapped street thugs.
The
same can't be said for the picture or sound transfer, with little to
no detail in the shots and a full screen 1.33 X 1/4 X 3 aspect ratio
(as it was intended) paired with a 2.0 Mono sound mix that is nothing
to shake a stick at. For DVD and a film of this budget, it doesn't
look terrible but you can tell little to no money was put into this
release on disc, aside from the cleverly photoshopped cover that
truthfully peaked my interest.
No
extras... and a god-awful menu screen.
While
realistic in tone and not awful for its time in terms of production
value, the film follows many of the same story beats that we have
seen in stronger films such as Taxi
Driver
or The
Shining
(there's even a hotel!), to name a few. Bloody
Wednesday
is a fun trip down nostalgia lane with a few standout sequences that
aren't bad but it's by no means a classic.
-
James Lockhart
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/
