The Last Broadcast [Blu-ray]

Director: Stefan Avalos, Lance Weiler Stefan Avalos

Overview

An absorbing, low budget thriller similar to Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line, The Last Broadcast was dubbed the first "desktop feature film" -- having been shot on inexpensive digital cameras and edited using home computers for the bewilderingly low price of $900. The effort landed filmmakers Steven Avalos and Lance Weiler in a November 1997 Wired Magazine cover story, where they were placed among the 25 people most likely to revolutionize the entertainment industry. Though constructed like an investigative documentary, The Last Broadcast is an assemblage of fictional yet realistically staged interviews, found video sequences, and contemplative voice-overs by the film's "director" David Leigh (David Beard), who claims to be making the film as a means of investigating the brutal murders of Steven Avkast (Steven Avalos) and Locus Wheeler (Lance Weiler), hosts of the small-town public access cable show "Truth or Fiction?". Leigh creates a complex and horrific story out of the show's final episodes, detailing Avkast and Wheeler's half-baked plan to multicast a special episode of "Truth or Fiction?" live on cable TV and the Internet. Prompted to investigate the legendary "Jersey Devil" by an anonymous fan, Avkast and Wheeler setup camp in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, recruiting local sound engineer Rein Clackin (Rein Clabbers) and "psychic" Jim Suerd (Jim Seward) for the event. Only Suerd makes it out of the woods alive, making him the prime suspect for a police investigation into the murders. When the "Truth or Fiction?" tapes (or what is left of them) are viewed by the police, Suerd's undeniably violent temper and unstable personality lead to his conviction for the murders. Leigh's film investigation, however, points in a different direction. As damaged video tapes of "The Last Broadcast" are painstakingly restored, the story of what really happened that night in the Pine Barrens begins to emerge. The Last Broadcast does a lot with its very modest budget, and is part of a growing lineage of successful "found footage" horrors which includes Cannibal Holocaust (1979) and The Blair Witch Project (1999).

Product Details

Release Date:	07/12/2022
UPC:	0760137100881
Original Release:	1998
Source:	101 Films
Language:	English
Time:	1:26:00

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

David Beard	David Leigh
James Seward	Jim Suerd
Stefan Avalos	Steven Avkast
Lance Weiler	Locus Wheeler,Joyce Dryer, Jim's Land Lady,Barry Williams, Editor of the Baroake County Recor,Ricky, `Fact or Fiction' Cameraman
Rein Clabbers	Rein Clackin
Michele Pulaski	Michelle Monarch,Actor
Tom Brunt	Tom Branski, Technical Director of `Fact or Fictio
Mark Rublee	Video Engineer
Clair Deforest	Editor for the Prosecution
A.D. Roso	Anthony Rosi, Lead Investigator of Murders
Dale Worstall	Dr. Dale Orstall, Jim's Child Psychologist
Vann K. Weller	Dr. Vann Waller, Forensic Pathologist
Sam Wells	Sam Woods, Television Soap Director
Jay MacDonald	Jay McDowell, Web Designer
Marianne Connor	Mary Brenner, TV Reporter
Jennifer Nasal	911 Operator
Brett Nielsen	Man Struck by Lightening Three Times
Holly Madison	Miss Lady Bright Eyes
Jeremy Coleman	Ray, `Fact or Fiction' Cameraman
Chadd Ritenbaugh	Man with Guitar

Technical Credits

Stefan Avalos

Lance Weiler

Stefan Avalos	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Lance Weiler	Director,Producer,Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Internet chat rooms buzzed with the idea that Daniel Myrick and Ed Sanchez, the directors of the groundbreaking indie horror flick The Blair Witch Project, stole their idea from a rough draft of The Last Broadcast, publicized years before that film materialized. Whether this is true or not is almost irrelevant, given Blair's vastly different approach: It prefers unexplained recovered footage, rather than the documentary-style re-creation that Broadcast favors. Blair's technique ends up being far more ominous and chilling, but Broadcast certainly posits some intriguing ideas of its own in the missing filmmaker department. Most impressive is that it comes across as far more polished than the kind of amateurish pet project one might expect from a film with the unspeakably tiny budget of 900 dollars. It also weaves a complex story line involving a handful of shady characters, and does a believable job of creating back stories for them -- like Blair, it tries to assert that these events really happened. But the documentary approach remains too hermetic to convey real terror, too after-the-fact to suggest the ongoing presence of danger. The droning documentarist lulls his viewers to sleep with his dispassionate sleuth work, leaving them without any sense of the lost characters and only a limited inclination to keep out of the woods.