Well Deserved Praise

The greatest movie ever made..!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I was channel surfing sometime around 1999-2000 (my mid 20's) and I believe this was showing on IFC. For whatever reason I stopped on this film and believed it truly was a documentary.I was not watching a film, this was real.I literally checked my doors multiple times (out of fear!)Once the conclusion was reached and I realized I had been had I ordered the VHS tape and had a viewing party under the premise of watching a documentary...The screening went as follows...I have no idea why it turned out this way...the ladies thought it was "ok" and "interesting", the guys were scared stupid (like me). One commented that he was continually looking outside, scared as if someone/something was out there and he couldn't see it/them.In the 2nd viewing I must say I was almost ashamed that I reacted the way I did the first time thru. Long story short, I get the negative reactions if you KNOW this is a work of fiction. If you have a chance to show it to others without knowledge that this is a movie (not a documentary filmed in real time), I would HIGHLY recommend you do so. The folks getting scammed will thank you. It's a gift.

The Last Broadcast is the kind of example that should be remembered when watching Romero's Diary of the Dead. There were some who criticized Romero for the style of the picture, for the amateurish acting and an unfitting documentary approach. I would put forward the argument that Romero's self-conscious approach that one of the film students edited The Death of Death on a comp while locked in a panic room was meant to *satirize* other documentary-style pictures that go overboard in trying to make "messages". Such as, well, The Last Broadcast. Here is a horror-documentary that takes itself way too seriously for its own good, after opening with a possibly promising premise and couple of scenes that work as intentionally amateur clips of "Fact or Fiction" hosts on Public Access TV- later victims of what could be the Jersey Devil- and then nose-diving into either mind-numbingly boring exposition, cheesy and/or ridiculously edited "digital" images, and a final ten minutes that had me smacking my head just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.So, in short, The Last Broadcast is definitely something of an independent find, but not in one of those nice ways where you find an item you hear about for years and it turns out to be a gem. Here we get "real people" (and some of them, of course, are) telling the story through David Leigh's audio commentary about the Jim Suerd being charged and convicted of murdering the hosts of "Fact or Fiction" and then the process of piecing together footage that is mysteriously sent to the filmmaker and editor Michelle and what clues might lie within. As trying for the documentary style by directors Avalos and Weiler, it falls flat. Not just because of others out there (i.e. Cannibal Holocaust, the Monster Hunter) that take similar approaches with sharper results. It's because of an inherent lack of understanding of how a documentary should work even as a "not-real" documentary. It's hard to build any suspense because whenever something interesting might happen in the found footage there's a cut-away to something stupid, or a lousy freeze-frame or another editing device used as if by the "filmmaker".And it's not really a fault of it being shot on such a ridiculously low budget in and of itself. I can respect that, and if anything it's a good sign for other filmmakers that something can be attempted to be shot on hand-held cameras and edited in the midst of "the digital age". But in the ill-prepared hands it's not an asset either, as Avalos and Weiler can't direct their actors much at all, least of them horribly monotoned David Beard (seriously, wouldn't Vincent Price's droll but menacing baritone work far greater worth here?), and they barely ever conjure up much genuine suspense because, really, the main focus of the Jersey Devil is blurred by poor storytelling: a continuing mass of not-even first-year film school attempts at making "flashy" editing choices and transitions. And yet I might have been able to forgive a lot of the flaws throughout the picture if not, oh for the love of Pete, those last ten minutes.After the bulk of the picture going through its warped documentary approach, when a horrific and sudden (not to mention completely WTF) murder happens, the style reverts to a regular third-person approach, complete with cranes and stedi-cams and other things that suddenly take the viewer completely out of what's been happening. Aside from the murder not making much sense, and even being laughable to a morbid degree, it also doesn't really do much to suggest anything menacing about the Jersey Devil. What is it, that the Jersey Devil somehow can go through internet lines ala electric Gremlin from Gremlins 2 and ask questions to low-rent public access hosts? Or that the Jersey Devil infects the souls of filmmakers who suddenly go from being objective to subjective? What's the point? There isn't one, in the end, which makes the original idea lose next to all of its potential.Or, to put it another way, it says right on the front of the video box a quote from a supposedly praising review: "May have influenced Blair Witch... it certainly preceded it." Um... What?

If you come into this movie expecting to see a documentary on the Jersey Devil, you will be sadly disappointed. If on the other hand, you sit back and watch without that expectation, you just might be entertained. I have seen other ultra-low budgets shot on video, and I can honestly say "The Last Broadcast" has more thought, and creativity, than a dozen of them combined. I had no problem with the ending either, far better than seeing some guy flash by in a rubber devil suit. The filmmakers made the most out of what they had to work with, and for that reason alone the movie met my expectations. You might want to check this one out. - MERK

Comparisons… we just can't help ourselves. I see a lot of comparing between this particular shadowy cult effort to the very similar in style, worldwide hit 'The Blair Witch Project (1999)'. Both share a low-budget cost and that documentary edited structure, but other than that. Really that's it. Well it did come out before its more fancied rival. We begin with Steven Avkast and Locus Wheeler hosts of a cheap cable show called "Fact or Fiction" going into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey with the aid of Rein Clackin and Jim Suerd to broadcast the search for New Jersey Devil. However Suerd is the only to come out alive, and accused of the murders. A year later filmmaker David Leigh decides to make a documentary about it using the live footage they shot to get down to the bottom off what really happened in the woods that night. 'Broadcast' has more an entertainingly detailed background (from actual footage to interviews) to its story-telling and for most part it's highly captivating and immensely inventive. Well that's up until the indifferently eye-rolling last ten minutes, which totally spins back onto itself with a ridiculous (if off-putting) revelation. It was going so well (I liked the whole ambiguous, open-minded and eerie nature), then they shot themselves in the foot. It feels like it came from another movie. They lost that chilling vibe and cooked up some glaring plot holes because of that sudden inclusion even if it was undeniably effective. Still the gimmick is provocatively engineered and efficiently presented by the director and his actors (believably capable performances by Jim Seward, Stefan Avalos, Lance Weiler, Rein Clabbers and David Beard) to leave an unforgettable imprint. The set-up manages to feel sincere with good use of illuminating the manipulative air stemming from the media to influence an outcome. Be it bullet proof or not. Everything is basically suggestive with a drearily dreaded tone. Some sequences can cause a shudder and make your skin crawl, as things are linked together or put down for us to mull over. A slick, stark and engrossingly blood curdling concept that's almost pulled off.