The Last Broadcast (1 Viewer)

[Steve Lockwood]

I was thinking of picking this up having never seen it before. Did anyone enjoy the dvd version of this film?

 

[Maurice Verploegen]

Steve,

If you like this genre, get it. This is a great DVD loaded with lots of extra's. It is also pretty inexpensive. Don't look for the sound and picture to blow your system away. But it is not that kind of film. I would say "go for it". Enjoy!

Maurice

 

[Robert Dunnill]

I have this disc, but I wasn't particularly impressed. Just my opinion.

RD

 

[John P Grosskopf]

Do not listen to the nay sayers on this disc. In my opinion, this movie rocks!

It blows away Blair witch, which pales in comparison. Many believe that BW actually stole its best ideas from this little gem of camcorder cinema.

Unlike BWP, this movie has actual creepy moments and a decent plot. It also has an ending that pays off rather than dissapoint as did BWP.

The commentary on the making of the film is excellent, and should be required study for low budget video film making.

Being a direct video transfer from originally Hi8 analog video it does look very cheap, but it still gets the job done in a creepy way that BW never came close to.

The Last Broadcast also has the distinction of being the first film actually distributed (world wide even) by satelite to movie theaters and displayed with video projection.

Do yourself a favor and watch this one with the lights out. It'll creep the excrement out of you.

 

[Ken Seeber]

Chalk me up as another naysayer. I absolutely hated this movie. It was inept in every way, from the acting all the way down to the sub-high-school production values. My favorite had to be the TV news reporter who was using a $6 Radio Shack microphone that had a station ID flag on it that was hand-lettered on folded typing paper.

I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that the decision to suddenly switch from first-person (pseudo documentary) full-screen VHS video cource to third person (narrative) widescreen 35 mm film was a poor one. If you're going to make a high-concept film like this, stick with the concept all the way to the end.

 

[Matthew Chmiel]

I'm another naysayer for this movie. This movie was just plain awful (I bought a copy of it new at Tower Records for $13 when it came out, quickly sold it on eBay for $20). It makes The Blair Witch Project look like a decent big budget blockbuster. The movie is awful in every way possible and how dare the producers say the creators behind The Blair Witch Project ripped them off cause at least The Blair Witch Project was watchable. One of the only times I bought a movie sight unseen and totally hated the movie.

I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that the decision to suddenly switch from first-person (pseudo documentary) full-screen VHS video source to third person (narrative) widescreen 35 mm film was a poor one. If you're going to make a high-concept film like this, stick with the concept all the way to the end.

I agree with that statement completely.

 

[Richard Smith]

Heres another no for you. I must say that I would have liked the film quite a bit more if it wasn't for the ending. It turns an ok film into a very bad one. The Blair Witch Project may have taken ideas from The Last Broadcast but it improved on it in every way.
Richard

 

[John P Grosskopf]

Actually, it was critics, not the producers who pointed out the BWP ripped off TLB.

Budget-wise, TLB was only a fraction of BWP's $30,000-$50,000 budget (accounts of the budget differ depending on which producer said what in different interviews) making BWP look like "Pearl Harbor" in comparison budgetwise.

Yes the movie has its flaws, but this was homemade film making in its most basic and truest sense. They even had to borrow a Hi8mm camera from a friend for Christ's sake! It ain't no masterpiece, but it was never intended to be nor sold as such either.

BWP's success was one of brilliant marketing, and may have been the most successful scam job of movie promotion of all time. No other campaign rivals theirs which convinced the masses that they had to sit through 90 minutes of pure garbage and rightly surmized that people would be too embarased to tell their friends the truth about how bad the film was after working themselves into a lather sight unseen. Pure cynical genius...and the movie going public in America fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Go ahead and nay say all you want about TLB. Until a harsh critic of this film creates a better one for the same micro budget under similiar conditions, I will still hold this film in high regard. The world is a big place, I'm sure someone out there with a digital camera and PC has already done it. I'd be very interested to see the results.

Until then I'll happily accept TLB as an underappreciated gem of homemade entertainment superior to BWP.

My two cents, take them for what they're worth at your current exchange rate.

P.S. The Last Broadcast won the Silver Prize for Best Feature film at the 1998 Chicago Film Festival. It's not like an Oscar or anything, but at least there are a few people out there who can recognize unique and innovative micro-budget filmmaking when they see.

 

[Maurice Verploegen]

Amen John,

Nice post, I totaly agree with you. BWP was highly over rated. Mostly hipe! TLB was scary. Man, when I watched it for first time, it scared the crap out of me. When I watched BWP for the first time. All I can think of was....is this it? Is this what all the hype is about? What about that shaking of the camera? What is up with that. Again, to each is own. That is why there is something called "taste". But for me TLB was a lot better than BWP.

Let the flaming begin.....(I am just kiding).

Steve, I think this thread is nog going to help you out much. You see that there is a lot of different opinions on this subject. I would suggest to give it a rent first, and watch it. See what you think. Or buy it, watch it, don't like it, resell it.

Good Luck.

Maurice

 

[Justin_S]

The Blair Witch Project is a new horror classic in my opinion, and it blows away The Last Broadcast. Still, The Last Broadcast is definitely a good film, but Blair Witch is superior if you ask me.

 

[NickRHave]

This movie was horrible. Blair Witch may have been overrated but it was 1,000,000 times better then this terrible movie. So put me in with the nay sayers as well. The worst ending to a movie I have ever seen.

 

[John P Grosskopf]

The effects of BWP's hype machine (as outlined above) are still in effect IMO...proof that P. T. Barnum's thesis has validity. [BTW A most gracious thanks Mr. Seeber for your pointing out my error with the name]

To each his own I suppose, but I still say TLB is superior to BWP simply due to that fact that it was far more entertaining and creepy for a non-existent buget.

I find it ironic that many of the people I have talked to who hated Pearl Harbor also hated TLB, but for thae same reason...production budget.

They hated Pearl Harbor for its budget excess: "It would have been a good film if scaled down to a $20 million weeper, but at $200 million it's a mess."

They hated TLB for its budgetary minimalism: "Man, that movie was so cheap I could have crapped a better film from bean dip." [BTW, that's an actual quote from my friend Stan, who has yet to make good on that boast]

My view it that people do not accept films on their own terms, and appreciate a product for what went into (or didn't due to budget), and the results based upon how well what was attempted was achieved.

BWP promised the most horrifying expereince since The Exorcist, but delivered nothing more than motion sickness and a sense of being scammed

TLB promised nothing, but delivered an interesting character study that had definite creepy moments.

Again, my two cents, but they still are enough to get piece of Super Bubble at the A&P.

 

[Ken Seeber]

The effects of BWP's hype machine (as outlined above) are still in effect IMO...proof that William P. Barnum's thesis has validity.

That would be P.T. Barnum (Phineas Taylor Barnum), not William P. Barnum.

John, you're basically saying that people who liked "The Blair Witch Project" are too stupid to think for themselves. That's kind of an elitist attitude, don't you think?

I saw BWP at a screening months before it was released to theaters, before most people had ever heard of it and before the so-called hype machine kicked in. I loved it.

Believe it or not, you're not the only one who can assess the merits of a movie. While I personally can't stand "The Last Broadcast," I would never be so arrogant as to presume that you're just not smart enough to have formed your positive opinion of the movie on your own.

Off topic, John I was checking out your Web site. Interesting stuff, but the word you wanted is "decorrelation," not "decoloration."

 

[John P Grosskopf]

A most gracious thanks Mr. Seeber for your corrections. As you have seen from going to my old and way out-dated web page and my previous posts, I really need a copy editor. The reason (no joke) is my arthritic hands sometimes do not translate 100% correctly the contents of my thoughts as they are transposed through the keyboard. Many of my posts have typos which I go back and correct later due to this. I ask not symapthy nor a second thought for this revelation. It just is.

#1.

Off topic, John I was checking out your Web site. Interesting stuff, but the word you wanted is "decorrelation," not "decoloration."

Like I said, I need a good copy editor. I've been aware of many typos on that page, which is years out of date and no longer really applies to most home theater nuts. The donator of that web space seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, and I have been unable to contact him. Until I can, the typos will stand. When I sent pages to to him, I gave it a run through a spell checker, but it didn't speak THX, so I assume wrong words were put in the wrong places.

 

[Raymond Johnson]

I'd say TLB was a pretty good interesting & creepy film.........up until the horrible ending which totally ruins what was shown before + was left to the imagination(til then) & doesn't make any sense.
Could anyone please explain the ending?
So i'd say it's worth a rental,& i have no urge to see the film again.....mainly because of the ending.
As for BWP....huge rip-off..i doubt even if i saw it before all the hype,i still would have hated it,it was just boring & annoying.
At least TLB actually got your imagination going & was creepy.......until the ending completly ruins it........meanhile BWP just put my mind to sleep.

 

[GaryEA]

To answer Steve Lockwood's question without talking about any other film, I'd say it's worth a rental. I liked it. Wasn't perfect but wasn't horrible.

It's a curious little film.

Try not to let the long standing debates and comparions to other film(s) keep you from enjoying it. It is it's own film, and deserves to be discussed on it's own.

-g

 

[John P Grosskopf]

The ending of TLB is preety cool I think.

Essentially, the guy making the documentary is the killer.

He is making a documentary about the killings, and has supplied all the artifacts that are being used to solve the crime (i.e. videotape).

When he commited the crimes, he made sure to leave enough clues and materials behind to show who did it (him), and create a "mystery" people would be interested enough in to watch as a documantary.

The ending stepped out of the documentary structure so that we (the audience) were able to step away and realize what had been going on the whole time.

It could probably had been done differently, but I'm okay with how it ended. Not oscar winning cinema, but great for home made film.

 

[Emil Stoica]

"Cannibal Holocaust" did it better and before either BWP or TLB. See that one and these 2 pretenders will be shown the laughable films they are. IMO.

 

[John P Grosskopf]

Again, in defense of TLB, it was done for almost no budget but videotape and gas.

Its ending manages (in an admittedly ham-fisted way)to give not only a plot twist, but also profound social commentary on the state of voyerism in America.

The only reason the documentarian does what he does is that people WANT to see what he has to offer and gives them exactly what they want. That makes the audience as guilty as the killer. If there was no appetite, there would be no documentary.

TLB goes further by acting as satire, especially given its amateurish of production/presentation style while within the narrative of the the film attempting to be a serious documentary. This becomes especially evident in the end when:

the documentary itself is actually reavealed as a sort of fetish icon of rememberance for the killer/documentarian.


Further, since TLB is obviously fiction, it is another step removed from reality, which encourages looking more carefully at in the vein of satirical social commentary.

BWP's campaign on the other hand managed to get people in masse to believe it was a real document of real deaths (cynically brilliant BTW), bringing out the voyeur in all of us who are facinated by "real" human death and suffering (as long as it is not us). BWP cashed in on this dark aspect of human nature, essentially perpetuating fraud on the public by insinuating it was actual documentation of a film crew's grissly deaths. This plays upon and cashes in on mankind's deparavity rather than commenting on it in a critical manner as I believe TLB does.

Essentially, BWP made blood money by fixating of what much of the pucblic though were real deaths, whereas TLB commented on what BWP cashed in on even before it was produced. This begs the question, "Was TLB actually ahead of its time?"

I see TLB as precursor to the current video cinema darling of the moment, SERIES 7: The Contenders. Granted, Series 7 is way better than TLB (and had a huge budget comparrison-wise), but it hits many of the same satiric beats of social commentary as TLB, only to the nito-charged "Nth degree." Series 7 really hits home as to the nature of America's facination with suffering, death, and murder that hollywood only wishes it could appoach with films like HANNIBAL and AMERICAN PSYCHO. Series 7 even manges to make it hilarious to boot.

BTW, if you're a real fan of SERIES 7, the Region 3 import offers DTS sound for those so inclined (with me it's a case by case basis), and a great anamorphic transfer. No extras other than a trailer, but it's way cheaper (even with delivery) than the domestic disc.

 

[Ken Seeber]

BWP's campaign on the other hand managed to get people in masse to believe it was a real document of real deaths (cynically brilliant BTW), bringing out the voyeur in all of us who are facinated by "real" human death and suffering (as long as it is not us). BWP cashed in on this dark aspect of human nature, essentially perpetuating fraud on the public by insinuating it was actual documentation of a film crew's grissly deaths. This plays upon and cashes in on mankind's deparavity rather than commenting on it in a critical manner as I believe TLB does.

Essentially, BWP made blood money by fixating of what much of the pucblic though were real deaths, whereas TLB commented on what BWP cashed in on even before it was produced. This begs the question, "Was TLB actually ahead of its time?"

You've got to be kidding me. You've taken condescension to a whole new level.

To say that BWP was making "blood money" as if it were some kind of snuff film goes beyond the pale. Your over-reaching might hold water if not for the fact that all three actors were on every talk show and magazine cover imaginable in the weeks leading up to the release of the movie.

They were on Leno, Letterman and Conan O'Brien, the covers of Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone, and countless others. Not to mention that Heather was in every Steak 'n' Shake commercial airing at the time.

Considering all three were supposedly missing and presumed dead, it hardly seems as if Artisan was trying to get people to believe the movie was real. That was simply part of the artifice and mythology that the film put forth. I don't know a single person who went into the theater believing they were watching anything but a work of fiction.

You don't like "Blair Witch," and that's fine. It's definitely a movie that divides audiences, which is a good thing in my opinion. But stop assuming that anyone who liked it is a slack-jawed troglodyte who's too dumb to know the difference between fact and fiction.

By the way, because this thread was started by someone who hasn't seen "The Last Broadcast" yet, you might want to go back and add spoiler tags to your post above, where you blow the entire ending of the movie.