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The Last Broadcast

The Last Broadcast

List Price: $19.95
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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Formatting the tape will give it greater value!
Review: I rented this waste of time...as soon as it was available. I liked the Blair Witch Project and (living in NJ) this sounded like a cool movie. The box was nice...the comparisons to the Blair Witch raised expectations...but the movie has no quality. The story [was bad] and details are dismissed, the filming and acting is horrible and the end of the movie seems like they ran out of film and had to come up with an ending...very quickly. Don't waste your time...you have been warned!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Spellbinding Cinema Tour of the Influence of Mod. Journalism
Review: For a mere nine hundred dollar budget and extensive use of modern cost-effective computer printshop programs (Adobe Premiere (16MM) and Photoshop (gruesome visual effects), Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler single-handedly fashioned a whole new type of motion picture, the horror pseudo-doctumentary. Despite a lack of commercial success during its 1998 theatrical run, the Last Broadcast has since received substantial critical notices, a vastly multiplying cult following, and has been attributed as probable inspiration for Daniel Myrick's and Eduardo Sanchez's phenomenally successful The Blair Witch Project. The Last Broadcast follows filmmaker David Leigh's (David Beard) exhaustive efforts through his current documentary project to find the actual facts surrounding the deaths of Fact or Fiction cable TV hosts Stephen Avcast (Stephen Avalos), Locus Wheeler (Lance Weiler), and their soundman Rein Clackin (Rein Clabbers) as they were filming a broadacst up in New Jersey's Pine Barren Forest searching for the infamous Jersey Devil. What David Leigh finds is a possible police conspricacy, a imbecillic scapegoat, a supernatural suspect, and a much bigger mystery at hand. What exactly did happen to the Fact or Fiction crew? The question is just as provocative as the movie itself. The film achieves a low-budget documentary aura that seduces the audience into the mobrid universe of Fact or Fiction and the Jersey Devil. Obvious cinematic liabilities are unexpectedly warped into stunningly intense film trappings, the excessievly montone delivery of David Leigh as the narrator, the sometimes excessive performances of the cast, the very shoddy quality of the picture, and the amateurish camerawork all give the Last Broadcast a solid breadth of realism that attracts the hesistant viewer into the film's comprehensive tapestry of homicidal manslaughter, paranormal intrigue, and omnious sinister death that beckons for solace and answers. This film is a tribute to the intelligent insight of directors Avalos and Weiler who have a achieved a radically new film style that exploits passionately personal storytelling over the Hollywood creativity crutch of stars, production values, and special effects. Accentuated by a startling ending moral denouncement, The Last Broadcast is a horror milestone that is most definitely too ahead of its time for viewer comfort. Despite all the several complaints about the films's unforeseen ending, the film remains true to its philosophical roots and standpoints, and it doesn't diminish itself by taking the easy and expected route. In the same elusive club of horror classics such as Hitchcock's Psycho, Carpenter's Halloween, and Romero's Night of the Living Dead, The Last Broadcast goes for the more plausiable and horrifying threat of normalty over more exaggerated means of rattling an audience. The all-too comforting surroundings of normal life are much more frightening than all the aliens, demons, and ominpotent maniacs you could think of. The Last Broadcast will be fondly remembered as a horror masterwork for decades to come. A must-see. As for the Last Broadcast DVD package, the widescreen format is first-rate with a knowledgeable director's commentary track, theatrical trailers, and a well-versed documentary on the legend of the Jersey Devil.

P.S. Never Insuliate Your Office With Plastic

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: AN EXCELLENT HORROR MOVIE!
Review: THIS REALLY WORKS YOUR MIND. IF YOU GET IT, YOU WILL LOVE THIS MOVIE. IF YOU DON'T GET IT, THEN IT WON'T MAKE MUCH SENSE. CREEPY MOVIE.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't Waste Your Money!
Review: I bought this movie when I worked in a movie store everyone said it was supposed to be better than Blair Witch. This is the most boring horrible thing I have ever seen. They have a public access show which they want to search for the NJ devil. The movie was just bad nothing exciting at all. Please be warned I wish I would have been.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: EXCELLENT HORROR FILM!
Review: THIS IS MUCH BETTER THAN MOST OF THESE REVIEWS WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE. THIS IS A THINKING MAN'S HORROR MOVIE. IF YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A HORROR FAN AND ABOVE AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE THIS MOVIE WILL REALLY GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: doesn't work
Review: Despite the hoopla that this was the original 16mm low budget student success, The Last Broadcast falls flat on its behind, even after its creators tried to get the public to compare it directly to the Blair Witch, which was a far mor intelligent film. Another "dissapearance in the woods" movie, although this one is presented as a documentary, where pieces of the found film footage are examined by experts and a court of law. Had this movie actually bothered to delve into the legend of the Jersey Devil (which is an actual phenomenon, it may hvae been halfway interesting. The acting is grossly unconvincing, and the plot line is just boring. The film never becomes scary, what with all the courtroom talk, and the ending is just corny, and blatantly ruins whatever atmosphere the film had built upon. Leave this one on the shelf.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Ok for 95% of time, ruined by ending
Review: This was a watchable but far far far inferior film to TBWP which was ruined by an ending that is pure garbage and shows the lack of true talent on the part of the filmakers. By the way, how about actually mentioning what ... the NJ Devil is??? Guess if they had an extra 25 bucks to add to the budget they could have included this slightly important tidbit.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: An uneven curiosity piece, nothing more.
Review: For people like me, who grew up addicted to shows like In Search Of or Unsolved Mysteries, The Last Broadcast will offer some deliciously entertaining mockumentary moments of those paranormal reality shows. Those who want something that is 'real' had better look elsewhere.

A couple of guys running a cable access show exploring weird happenings and legends (think Wayne's World mixed up with those Lone Gunmen from The X-Files) are ripped to shreads shortly after finishing their last broadcast (hey, that's the title!) which entailed a hunt for the Jersey Devil in the pine barrens of New Jersey. The soul surviving member of the party is found guilty of murder and dies in prison of 'mysterious' causes. This movie tells the whole, ugly story behind that last broadcast (hey, that's the title!).

For awhile the movie almost works, jumping between blaming the misfit guide Jim Seward for the killings, but also hinting that, perhaps, the victims bumped into something other worldly in the woods. Something the documentarian character seems to want to go to any lengths to prove.

Sadly the movie cannot contain itself in its chosen narrative format. In the closing minutes the point of view abruptly shifts from mockumentary to simple third person narrative filmmaking with such sudden sloppiness I had to skip back to make sense of what I had just seen. It is a poor excuse for a twist ending that will leave the viewer feeling cheated. Nonetheless the movie has its moments, it just isn't entirely successful with them. In many ways The Blair Witch Project was more daring with its use of the documentary format. Recommended for the curious souls that won't mind being disappointed with a sloppy ending.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Idiotic ending ruins the whole thing
Review: The movie is actually quite effective at first. There are a few precious moments that are horribly creepy but the ending...oh..the ending is so stupid that it ruins the entire thing.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: the comparison can't be avioded
Review: My suggestion is to watch both the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and THE LAST BROADCAST. See BWP first, then see this movie, and you'll truly appreciate the superiority of this movie.

I think this movie outlasts BWP in so many ways. The violence is eerily suggestive, the tension is amazing and the plot is well-conceived and well-driven. Like BWP, this movie focuses on a woodland legand, in this case, the "Jersey Devil." Something goes horribly wrong in the woods as three arrogant young men go in search of it and the fame that will accompany their discovery.

The movie is set up like a documentary rather than just showing raw footage as in BWP. What you get, then, is a fantastic set-up rather than shaky camera after shaky camera. The movie is just so organized as compared to its copycat, and, as a lot of other reviewers will tell you, it is scarier. Ultimately, this is the finer of the two movies.


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