Horror Grab Bag Week: Bloody Wednesday

I formally greet and rejoice for the return of my readers and welcome you back to Horror Grab Bag Week for a tale that is both bizarre and twisted.  A deranged man who prior to the Nestle plunge into sanity was a superb mechanic but the little voices in his head told him he would be far happier if he simply went mad.  Traipsing through the swamps of this man’s mind will be a tricky thing so grab your rubber boots and hip waders and everyone stay together in a group.  This is Bloody Wednesday.

 

Better than the magic covers any day!

Teddy says you should be punished you piece of spoiler!!

Say hello to Harry (Raymond Elmendorf of Cuba Crossing, The A-Team and Project X), a mechanic of some renown and in general a decent guy until he gets bullied by virtually every big hair band…er…um I mean gang in town.  Victimized by these little Tony Danza/John Stamos clones, Harry retreats into a safe world of his own creation after a horrendous divorce and his boss thinking he was less stable than nitroglycerin is let go. 

Oh no, I fell into a Kim Wilde video!!!! AHHHH!!!!

Harry starts to lose his grip on reality and wanders into a church during evening mass stark naked.   He is then shockingly committed to a psychiatric hospital where his doctor Emily Johnson (Pamela Baker of I Want to Live and Through Naked Eyes) truly wants to help Harry but because she has a vagina all her Cro-Magnon colleagues view Harry as harmless and release him due to overcrowding at the wacko basket. Out on his butt Harry shacks up in an abandoned hotel where he starts hallucinating…or does he?  Is he really going crackers or are people taunting him, tormenting every night and day and making him crack under the strain like a delicate china cup?

Check...please...ugh.

Harry’s only friends are this bellhop he converses with and his oversized teddy bear.   The walls of reality and fantasy come crashing against one another; Harry is finally fed up with all this nonsense and somehow gets his hands on a submachine gun and brother is he locked and loaded.

What is fascinating about this film is seeing Harry through the eyes of the other characters.  This timid and mild-mannered man probably never stood up for himself at any given time, threatens and forces a gang of thugs on their knees with a .44 while he decides what to do with them.  He is literally arguing with his teddy bear on whether or not to ventilate them.  His responses, body twitches and shrieks of horror in the night may be…a little over the top but it does not detract this performance in my opinion.  Also the askew worlds bouncing back and forth give the kiddy ride equivalency of an acid trip or a bipolar disorder in full swings of his highs and lows to the severity I have never heard of.

 

No I don't want to visit Tigger and Owl!!!

Dr. Johnson tries desperately to locate Harry before he can do anything that may harm him or others but has no idea where to look and ultimately has no choice but to give up. 

35mm Spherical captures more than a fair share of zoom pans, a fish eye lens and decent hand held throughout this warped imagery.  A very surreal mood is cast over you from this flick it almost has the feel of homage to Polanski’s The Tenant just not as refined.  Not an amazing film but certainly not mundane either.