| The Last Broadcast | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Stefan Avalos Lance Weiler |
| Produced by | Stefan Avalos Lance Weiler |
| Written by | Stefan Avalos Lance Weiler |
| Starring | Stefan Avalos Lance Weiler David Beard Jim Seward |
| Music by | Stefan Avalos A.D. Roso |
| Release date(s) | United States March 9, 1998 (Premiere) October 23, 1998 (Wide) United Kingdom March 24, 2000 (Wide) April 1, 2000 (Dead by Dawn Edinburgh Horror Film Festival) |
| Running time | 86 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $900 (estimated) |
| Box office | $12,097 |
The Last Broadcast is a 1998 American horror film made by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler. The film was produced digitally using inexpensive PC-based hardware and software.
Contents |
The film deals with a documentary film-maker named David Leigh, and his investigation of the Fact or Fiction murders, where a pair of Public-access television cable TV hosts are murdered in mysterious circumstances. Leigh sets out to find the truth behind these killings while making his documentary.
Fact or Fiction is a show dealing with unsolved mysteries and the paranormal. Its two hosts are Steven "Johnny" Avkast and Locus Wheeler. Initially a success, we find out through Leigh's investigations that the show is failing, and is threatened with imminent cancellation. It is at this point that Avkast comes up with the idea of a live Internet Relay Chat section of the show.
It is during one such chat that a caller gives Avkast the idea of searching for The Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens (the film only mentions the Jersey Devil, however, and gives absolutely no background details of the legend). Leaping on this idea, Avkast and Wheeler recruit Rein Clackin, a soundman who allegedly can record the paranormal, and Jim Suerd, a psychic who, Leigh discovers, is emotionally disturbed.
The plan is for the four to enter the Pine Barrens, with Suerd leading them to the location of The Jersey Devil. During the hunt, they will broadcast a live show simultaneously via television, internet and amateur radio.
The four enter the Barrens but only Suerd emerges alive, while the others are horribly murdered. Avkast's body is never found, though it is made clear in the following trial that he could not have survived considering the massive blood loss found at the crime scene.
Leigh then summarizes the trial. Suerd, as the only survivor, is also the only suspect. To aid the prosecution case they employ a video engineer (nicknamed "The Killer Cutter") to compile a portrait of the group's trip using the surviving film footage found at the crime scene.
Suerd is found guilty and imprisoned, though there is doubt over his guilt as his clothes were not drenched in blood and there is evidence he was engaged in an IRC room at the times of the murders.
Before anything can be proven, Suerd commits suicide in prison and the case is considered closed by the authorities. However, Leigh has a box sent to him containing a damaged videotape reel, which Leigh assumes is tape from the Fact or Fiction team thought not to exist. A data retrieval expert named Shelly Monarch is called in to reconstruct the images on the tape. She finds that not only have Wheeler and Clacklin's deaths been caught on tape, but that Suerd could not have committed the murders.
What is also caught is a blurred image of the real killer. As Leigh videotapes her, Monarch uses an image editor to re-construct the image of the killer's face; when she finishes, the viewer sees that Leigh himself was the actual murderer.
With this revelation, the film abruptly shifts from the perspective of Leigh's camera to a third person perspective, lingering on Monarch's tormented face as Leigh fights with and then suffocates her to death with a piece of plastic sheeting in a real-time sequence. Afterwards, Leigh loads Monarch's corpse into his car and drives it out to the woods, where he dumps it in a clearing and then begins awkwardly videotaping himself narrating the next segment of his documentary.
The Last Broadcast was released through Ventura Distribution on VHS and DVD. Wavelength Releasing also was a part of the DVD releasing. Heretic Films re-released the DVD in 2006.