BLOODY WEDNESDAY (1987) * ½

Phillip (Night Train to Terror) Yordan wrote this bleak, boring true-life story ripped from the then-current headlines.  It was based on the infamous San Diego McDonald’s massacre where a lone gunman killed dozens of people eating at the beloved fast food chain.  Incidents like that seemed surreal back when the film was made.  Now these incidents happen far too often.  It’s still a timely story.  It’s just not a very good movie.

Harry (Raymond Elmendorf) loses his job as a mechanic because he can’t keep his mind on his work.  The next day, he walks into church buck naked, which gets him sent to a mental hospital for evaluation.  He’s naturally released due to overcrowding (after all, he was only charged with indecent exposure) and winds up living in a rundown hotel.  There, he begins to lose touch with reality the more and more isolated he becomes.  He eventually turns his rage on a bunch of innocents eating breakfast in a diner.  (Come on, you didn’t think McDonald’s would allow them to film there, did you?)

The filmmakers try to put the audience in Harry’s shoes so you’re never sure what’s going on.  Sometimes he talks to the hotel staff and guests, who obviously aren’t really there.  However, what about those punks that are squatting downstairs?  Are they real, or is he hallucinating them too?  Some of the hallucinations are more obvious than others (like when he bangs his shrink).  Too bad none of this makes Harry a sympathetic character as Elmendorf is just too annoying for you to really care about.

The scenes of Harry interacting with imaginary people are so amateurish that the film fails miserably as a psychological study.  It never quite clicks as a horror movie either.  There is one memorable scene where Harry plays “courtroom”.  He ties up the punks and lets his teddy bear be the judge.  The bear, who talks in a voice only Harry can hear, presides over the scared shitless thugs screaming, “GUILTY!” in a creepy voice.  It’s just weird enough to be memorable, but not effective enough to really “work”.

The final diner massacre scene where Harry guns down dozens of people with a machine gun is effective though.  It just comes as too little too late.  As silly and off-kilter as the rest of the movie is, it feels cheap to have such a realistic depiction of a mass shooting as the capper of your film.  By then, whatever statement the filmmakers were trying to make was lost, especially when so much of what came before was so goofy and slapdash. 

AKA:  The Great American Massacre.