Special Bulletin

Though this originally aired (on NBC, if I remember correctly) in 1984, it was prescient in how it depicted news media coverage of a "breaking news" event.

Complete with glitzy (for their time) graphics, concerned anchors, wall-to-wall coverage, talking heads, and gripping live reports, it does not seem dated (except for the hair styles!), even today.

Though it depicts the coverage of a hostage crisis by a fourth broadcast network, this aired a year before the Fox network came into existence. The RBS network's graphics, promotional spots, and anchors are so realistic that the real network that aired the film really didn't have any choice but to continually remind viewers that what they were watching was fiction. And though we're all familiar today with the news networks' saturation coverage of live events, this originally aired only 4 years after the inception of CNN -- before that network was the major force that it is today.

Depicting a gripping series of events, it's as much or more of a commentary on how the news media handles such situations than anything else. The way that the events are presented will seem eerily familiar to anyone in today's world, but remember that terrorism was not a big concern to many people 20 years ago.

The acting and production values combine to make for one of the most powerful films ever produced for television. I highly recommend this film not only for its impact, but for its almost too accurate portrayal of events that are all too easy to imagine in today's world.

There's a pretty damn interesting chestnut from from 80's-era nuclear nightmare films available on Youtube — 1983's "Special Bulletin." I was surprised I hadn't heard of it. I think most 80's kids remember ABC's "The Day After." That infamous television movie was a cultural touchstone that scared a generation of kids. "Special Bulletin" was produced by NBC the same year, actually preceding "The Day After" by nine months. Instead of a world-ending war with Russia, the feature-length special imagined a single incident of nuclear terrorism in Charleston, South Carolina. (I myself had no idea that Charleston was the strategic military nexus that the movie explains it to be.)

"Special Bulletin" was filmed as a "War of the Worlds"-type narrative, consisting exclusively of faux news coverage, and it's pretty damned good. (It won a handful of Emmys.) It's just as frightening today — or maybe more so, given the increased threat of precisely this kind of terrorism from stateless groups.

The acting is mostly good, the directing successfully captures the feel of live news coverage, and the absence of a musical score further lends the movie a sense of realism. The story has a few surprises for us, too — the plot setup is creative and interesting, and much more thought went in the the teleplay than I would have expected. The film asks some difficult questions about the role of the media in affecting the outcome of high-profile crimes like the one depicted. (Would such questions be more or less relevant in the age of camera-phones, uploaded ISIS executions and Facebook Live? I'm not sure.)

I was also quite impressed with some of "Special Bulletin's" thriller elements. (I'd say more, but I will avoid spoilers.)

One thing that detracts from the format's realism is the fact that some of this movie's actors are easily recognizable from other roles in the 80's (although it's fun spotting them as an 80's movie fan).

Most viewers my age, for example, will recognize Ed Flanders and Lane Smith. The utterly sexy female reporter who arrives on location at Charleston Harbor is Roxanne Hart, who later played Brenda in "Highlander" (1986). (She's still quite beautiful, guys, and she's still making movies.) Most jarring of all, however, is a prominent role played by David Clennon, who any fan of horror- science fiction will recognize as Palmer from John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece, "The Thing." This is still fun, though — he has that same disarrayed hair. Was it his trademark back in the day?

I saw about the last 20 minutes of a rerun at about 3am, without the precautionary warnings used in the original airing, and still remember how believable and intensely effective the movie was. Based on what I saw of it and remember after about 15 years [I probably saw this in the late 80s or very early 90s], very well done. I might even add it to my "to rent" list so I can see the whole thing :-). I even woke my grandfather [I was living in his house at the time] to ask him if we knew anyone in Charleston. Once we worked out that it had only been a movie, he was sympathetically amused. His sister had been taken in by the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, so he apparently readily understood how easy it had been for me to be confused by an apparent newscast with no commercials or warnings.

When I first saw this movie, I thought it was a legitimate news broadcast. This was due to the fact that, on my first viewing, I didn't watch it from the start. The TV station that I first watched it on broke away for commercials, just like a regular TV cable news channel would do. To me, this made it even more convincing. The close attention to detail and accuracy of news journalism format made this movie very powerful and frightening. I highly recommend this movie to Journalism majors and anybody who enjoys strong and powerful drama...

I was in the studio of WMAR-TV the night this excellent "disaster" film was shown, due to the fact that the Management heard about our OTR Club and that we had WOTW in our collection. I was invited to watch the show and to compare it with the panic b/cast on the 11 o'clock news that followed.

I told them it was very well done, and was very realistic. Had they not had the disclaimers on the screen it could have well been taken for the real thing. I told them if they would have cast real reporters in the major roles it would have added something to the show. Orson Welles used real names of NY based reporters for the broadcast of WOTW which really gave it that authentic feeling. And with the "Secretary Of State" sounding like Roosevelt was the icing on the cake.

I pointed out that at the time Special Bulletin was aired the American public was not as gullible as they were in 1938.(We even played some clips of WOTW to compare it with Special Bulletin). We were on the brink of War and any program like that, would of course cause concern, which, unfortunately it did.

Al in all this film was very well done and was more or less a tribute to Orson Welles and WOTW.

JohnnyReb