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Post by dem on Sept 19, 2010 9:22:53 GMT
D. A. Stern - The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier (Boxtree, 1999) Note From The Author - Introduction - Overview - Footage - The Search - The Students - The Blair Witch - Rustin Parr - Heather's Journal - The Black Hills - The AftermathBlurb In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary .. .
A year later their footage was found.
What actually happened to Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard deep in the Maryland woods has become the stuff of legend. What they captured on film in their final days has transformed their sudden disappearance into one of America's most suggestive nightmares .. .
Now the complete story can be told.
In an exclusive arrangement with the filmmakers' families, noted journalist D.A. Stern and private investigator Buck Buchanan have unsealed the official police files to compile the first fully detailed and illustrated investigative files on one of the most disturbing cases in Maryland history .. .
The legends, myths and facts surrounding the Blair Witch
The uncanny connection to Maryland mass murderer Rustin Parr
Detailed crime-scene photos
Heather Donahue's chilling journals
Related cult murders and bizarre disappearances
The meaning of the strange campsite talismen, symbols and ruins
Exclusive interviews with the victims' friends and families
Insight into the shocking case from Haxan Films and Artisan EntertainmentExcuse the glorified stub post but, now past the p.100 mark in Zombie Apocalypse, this 'dossier' is the nearest comparison i can make to the way Stephen Jones & Robinson have presented their book. Personally, i found The Blair Witch Project itself (i.e., the film) more interesting than scary but the stuff that really grabbed me was the length's the team went to to construct a back-legend - the faux "documentary", this very entertaining compilation of bogus interviews, correspondence, journal entries, press clippings from the 1940's relating to the "executed child-murderer" Rustin Parr & Co. - to make it all seem so very authentic. On the surprisingly rare occasions the Blair Witch has been mentioned on here we've kicked around a few literary & artistic influences (Karl E. Wagner's Sticks, Robert Bloch's Notebook Found In A Deserted House, Lee Coye's haunting illustrations for Hugh B. Cave's Murgunstrumm, etc.) and left it at that, so maybe a thread was overdue.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 19, 2010 10:22:59 GMT
I am not embarrassed to admit that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT frightened me profoundly. What makes it successful is that it employs a device that you often encounter in the ghost-story literature but almost never on film, where a piece of information dropped early on, seemingly in passing, comes back to haunt us at the end. Many people missed out on the full effect simply because they were not paying enough attention.
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Post by andydecker on Sept 19, 2010 10:34:32 GMT
Many people missed out on the full effect simply because they were not paying enough attention.  Frankly I was too bored to pay attention. I can´t stand this movie. Sometimes movies just don´t connect, especially if the dreaded time-lag did its work. After reading so much about it beforehand I could only wonder what the hype was about. I thought it boring. That the cameramovement gave me a headache didn´t help either. ;D |
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Post by bushwick on Sept 19, 2010 13:11:49 GMT
Frankly I was too bored to pay attention. I can´t stand this movie. Sometimes movies just don´t connect, especially if the dreaded time-lag did its work. After reading so much about it beforehand I could only wonder what the hype was about. I thought it boring. That the cameramovement gave me a headache didn´t help either. ;D ...have to agree...the fact that I'd heard so much about this film before I saw it completely voided the point of watching it.. |
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on Sept 19, 2010 18:35:49 GMT
Another agreement here. I saw it once & that was enough & the handheld thing has never really worked for me, it just annoys me. There are rare exceptions, but I think The Evil Dead is the only one that gets away with it (They were literally running about the woods with a camera attached to a board, as they couldn't afford the proper gear). The only thing I will give them is the marketing & use of the internet for publicity (second nature now, but hadn't really been exploited then). For me it's just utter crap, that a student should be embarrassed by & as for atomsphere, I'll stick with the original The Haunting for that. It never frightened me, as films don't really do that to me. I'll stop being a grumpy old git now & let this thread get back on topic , I think I'm off to watch The Manitou. |
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Post by dem on Sept 19, 2010 20:28:36 GMT
The only thing I will give them is the marketing & use of the internet for publicity that's the bit that captured my imagination. the film itself was almost incidental to the real story (Hexan's extremely savvy and, at the time, revolutionary marketing campaign). First time i saw the documentary i thought it was far and away more accomplished and imaginative than the movie, although, of course, that was hardly the point. Some months after "everyone" agreed it was the most terrifying thing ever, Shivers (bless 'em) ran a "controversial" item, "Blair Witch Project. Was it really frightening or just overhyped? We investigate!" and the author genuinely seemed to believe he was a voice in the wilderness whereas anyone i knew who'd seen it would come into work moaning about what boring crap it was. i quite, uh, liked it myself, just didn't find it the least unsettling. |
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Post by mattofthespurs on Sept 20, 2010 18:11:12 GMT
The thing with TBWP was the whole internet thing really gave it some substance.
Watch it today, without that internet presence, and it really does lose something.
Definately a product of it's day and often imitated to good effect.
It's had a profound effect, in a positive way, that most people don't give it the credit it deserves.
I like to think that in a few years time it will be appreciated for what it was and what it did for horror cinema. Which was invigorated it.
And i'm on old, old school, fogey.
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Post by dem on Sept 20, 2010 22:24:09 GMT
the faking of the "legend" is something i'd have loved to have worked on. i dug out Fortean Times # 128 (Nov. 1999) earlier, probably hadn't read it since it came out, and Bob Rickard's interview with two of the Haxan team - director Daniel Myrick and production designer Ben Rock - makes for a fascinating read. It seems a shared love for the mid-seventies In Search Of series narrated by Leonard Nimoy was their chief inspiration, in particular the episode which broadcast grainy "authentic" footage of Bigfoot going about his or her business in the woods (the clips are easily found on YouTube). belated happy birthday, matt! |
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Post by marksamuels on Sept 20, 2010 22:54:28 GMT
Hey, birthday boy (belated too)! Hope you had a good 'un.
Blair Witch scared me senseless when I first saw it. So too did Paranormal Activity. Maybe the shine's worn off though because I saw The Last Exorcism recently and thought: Bleugh. Wasn't impressed.
Mark S.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 21, 2010 18:12:03 GMT
Blair Witch scared me senseless when I first saw it. The voice of reason! |
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Post by mattofthespurs on Sept 22, 2010 16:00:54 GMT
belated happy birthday, matt! Thanks!  |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Sept 22, 2010 18:28:36 GMT
belated happy birthday, matt! Thanks! likewise |
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Post by ramseycampbell on Sept 25, 2010 13:38:15 GMT
The thing with TBWP was the whole internet thing really gave it some substance. Watch it today, without that internet presence, and it really does lose something. Well, I saw it on DVD before it received a British release, and knew nothing at all about the Internet background - I'd simply been told by Christa Faust and David Schow that it was a horror film in the form of a documentary they thought I would like. I've seen it several times since, and I still find it very frightening. Indeed, I've said elsewhere that I think it's the closest the cinema has ever come in my experience to Lovecraft's ambitions for the tale of supernatural terror. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 25, 2010 19:38:11 GMT
Exactly! Well, not exactly, of course, but close enough.
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Post by marksamuels on Sept 25, 2010 23:29:55 GMT
Yeh, I remember reading Ramsey's review in All-Hallows, and thinking: he's nailed it, since it was for me at least, a really terrifying cinematic experience.
Mark S.
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Frankly I was too bored to pay attention. 
