***SPOILERS*** The mass murder at a neighbor hood coffee shop by the deranged and delusional Harry Curtis, Raymond Elmendorf,could have been prevented if the police would have heeded his psychiatrist's Dr. Johnson's, Pamela Baker, warnings that he's just about to go off the deep end and explode. Harry has been down on his luck and life the last few weeks losing his job as a garage mechanic and having his wife Elaine, Tersea Mae Allen, walk out on him. Slowly losing it Harry trying the straighten out his shattered life tries religion but that has him walk buff naked to church during Sunday services that lead him to be committed into a mental institution for psychiatric observation. But under the care of his lawyer brother Ben, Navarre Perry, Harry is sent to stay at this half way house to get both his act and life together. It's there where Harry's mental state of mind goes from bad to worse: Much much much worse!With his mind slowly going offline Harry's hallucinations start to take over his mind and replace reality. It's only Harry's court appointed psychiatrist Dr. Johnson who realizes that Harry needs immediate psychiatric help, like being committed, before his mind snaps and he ends up killing someone. Before Harry does that he in fact gets conditioned by his deranged visions in flipping out and committing the murderous crime that he's to commit at the end of the movie. A crime that could have been prevented if only Harry had himself committed. Which by then not knowing right from wrong or fantasy from reality it was too late to help him and the some three dozen victims he was to gun down in the coffee shop whom he felt were a threat to him!***SPOILERS***With his both mind and reasoning processes completely gone Harry gets a Uzi machine-gun from one of the neighborhood gang bangers known as "The Animal", Jeff O'Haco, and goes into action. Crashing into the coffee shop Harry starts to mindlessly, like a mind numbed zombie, gun down everyone in sight. By the time the carnage was finally over, and Harry running out of bullets,36 people including Harry lied dead in the rubble. This was a massacre that could have well been prevented if Harry got the help that he so desperately needed. But by the police not taking Harry seriously as well as the pleas from his psychiatrist Dr. Johnson they in a way were just as responsible as he was by going by the book, in not having him committed, and letting him live out his murderous and paranoid fantasies.

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.

I am so glad to see that other people have seen this film. My friends and I are huge fans after a Sunday afternoon viewing of Bloody Wednesday. There is a scene where the head "gangster" (who talks like Wayne Newton) gives Harry a speech in a pool hall. It lasts about 5 minutes and makes absolutely no sense. It goes along the lines of: "You still want that gun in the window? What are you gonna do with a gun anyway, they're no good. You need one of these (pointing to a lead pipe), one smack across the mouth with one of these babies and you'll wind up with a four thousand buck dentist bill. There's a lot of fat citizens in this town that think they got it made with they're gold watches and chains and they're credit cards. I hate the bastards. S*** man I eat steak every night, costs me 15 bucks, body needs the protein." If you miss this speech and other wonderful scenes such as the trial where the teddy bear is the judge, you are missing out on a critical part of human life. Do not delay going through this experience. If you already own it do yourself a favor and watch the pool hall speech again. Phenomenal.

Miles better than some of the other movies of the 1980s and 1990s Philip Yordan was responsible for, but still pretty shoddy and odd.It starts off with a text scroll and voice-over explaining how the world isn't safe anymore, and how a bunch of people came to be killed in a coffee shop. We then see the bodies in the coffee shop. We then see the events leading up to that massacre.Harry is a strange man working in a garage. It's unclear if he is retarded or what exactly, since his behavior from scene to scene isn't entirely consistent. He's taken a car engine apart neatly and completely, but he can't figure out how to put even two pieces back together again (evidently he's usually very good at it). He's fired and his brother is called to come help him. Harry later walks into a church, singing along as he walks down the center aisle, naked. He's hospitalized where he proves to be very hostile with the Doctor there, but is released for lack of space and funding.Harry's older brother sets him up in an abandoned hotel he owns that still has electricity and plumbing. How much of what follows is real is unclear, since Harry seems to have very vivid hallucinations. Some punks who've snuck into the hotel give him trouble. Harry imagines he sees a bellhop and some of the former tenants of the hotel (shades of The Shining). He talks to his teddy bear, and hears it talking back to him (I was reminded of the boy in 1981's The Pit). He evidently has an ex-wife as well (she's in several scenes), or maybe she isn't real, I'm really not sure. He receives outpatient treatment from the Doctor who discharged him. He has some fantasies about he he can't separate from reality.