Bloody Wednesday
This was not a good movie. The tagline for this movie was "You'll pray for Thursday". Who was that tag line for? No one saw this movie in the theaters as it was released straight to video...two years after the movie was completed. The film was shot in 1985 but released on 8 September 1988 on VHS. The MPAA copyright date clearly says, "XMLXXXV.
This movie claims to be loosely based on the events of the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre. But actually, it was more of an exploitation of the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, because the movie really has no resemblance to the events of that mass shooting. It is almost like the first sixty minutes of the film was supposed to be part of a different movie. The violent mass shooting scene that ends BLOODY WEDNESDAY feels tacked on, added just so the film could earn that "based on a true story" tag line. It really seems like this movie was a 60 minute movie with a separate 30 minute other movie attached to it or maybe the producers were just desperate to make a 90-minute movie of a 30-minute manuscript.
Academy Award winning wordsmith Philip Yordan produced and wrote the screenplay for this terrible movie. But the script is not nearly as bad as the acting. The performances of the various actors and actresses really let Phillip Yordan's script look worse than it really was. During the first sixty minutes of this movie we have a somewhat interesting plot about a crazy man losing touch with reality and hallucinating. The viewer is purposefully left in the dark as to whether the main character, Harry, really did the following: seduce and bed his psychiatrist; carry out a Russian roulette revenge upon a street gang; kill his ex-wife in the bathtub; talk to various ghosts in a haunted hotel; find a suitcase full of diamonds; and, receive a strange visit from his enemy (a Rambo looking street gangster) who gives him a gun and tells him to use it. This part of the story could have worked much better if the actors did not fail the script.
Screenwriter, Phillip Yordan was guilty of blatantly stealing plot elements from much better films like The Shining (1980), The Pit (1981), The Warriors (1979) and even Taxi Driver (1976). After watching an hour of a film about insanity and ghosts in a hotel, the film suddenly takes on overt political tones and shifts into a film decrying class warfare; failed police bureaucracies and inadequate mechanisms for mental health providers to control dangerous patients. The painfully long final thirty minutes of the film inadequately builds towards an anticlimactic scene where Harry carries out a mass shooting at some unidentified coffee shop that looks more like a diner. But the viewer does not have any emotional attachment to any of the victims as no time was spent introducing them prior to the shooting. The shooting scene itself is cartoon violence with terrible squid special effects. This scene goes on way too long and what should be the highlight of the film ends up boring the audience.
This was not a good movie. The tagline for this movie was "You'll pray for Thursday". Who was that tag line for? No one saw this movie in the theaters as it was released straight to video...two years after the movie was completed. The film was shot in 1985 but released on 8 September 1988 on VHS. The MPAA copyright date clearly says, "XMLXXXV.
This movie claims to be loosely based on the events of the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre. But actually, it was more of an exploitation of the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, because the movie really has no resemblance to the events of that mass shooting. It is almost like the first sixty minutes of the film was supposed to be part of a different movie. The violent mass shooting scene that ends BLOODY WEDNESDAY feels tacked on, added just so the film could earn that "based on a true story" tag line. It really seems like this movie was a 60 minute movie with a separate 30 minute other movie attached to it or maybe the producers were just desperate to make a 90-minute movie of a 30-minute manuscript.
Academy Award winning wordsmith Philip Yordan produced and wrote the screenplay for this terrible movie. But the script is not nearly as bad as the acting. The performances of the various actors and actresses really let Phillip Yordan's script look worse than it really was. During the first sixty minutes of this movie we have a somewhat interesting plot about a crazy man losing touch with reality and hallucinating. The viewer is purposefully left in the dark as to whether the main character, Harry, really did the following: seduce and bed his psychiatrist; carry out a Russian roulette revenge upon a street gang; kill his ex-wife in the bathtub; talk to various ghosts in a haunted hotel; find a suitcase full of diamonds; and, receive a strange visit from his enemy (a Rambo looking street gangster) who gives him a gun and tells him to use it. This part of the story could have worked much better if the actors did not fail the script.
Screenwriter, Phillip Yordan was guilty of blatantly stealing plot elements from much better films like The Shining (1980), The Pit (1981), The Warriors (1979) and even Taxi Driver (1976). After watching an hour of a film about insanity and ghosts in a hotel, the film suddenly takes on overt political tones and shifts into a film decrying class warfare; failed police bureaucracies and inadequate mechanisms for mental health providers to control dangerous patients. The painfully long final thirty minutes of the film inadequately builds towards an anticlimactic scene where Harry carries out a mass shooting at some unidentified coffee shop that looks more like a diner. But the viewer does not have any emotional attachment to any of the victims as no time was spent introducing them prior to the shooting. The shooting scene itself is cartoon violence with terrible squid special effects. This scene goes on way too long and what should be the highlight of the film ends up boring the audience.