Special Bulletin

There is no doubt in my mind that SB was one of the best tv movies ever made.

It was the first of a series of "nuclear war/nuclear confrontation" movies that aired within about a year of each other, including "The Day After", "Threads", "By Dawn's Early Light", and the sadly now-oft-forgotten "Countdown To Looking Glass".

But where all of those dealt with nuclear war or the onset of it, SB was about domestic terrorism. Ed Flanders, David Clennon, and David Rasche were excellent in their portrayals of the harried anchorman and two of the terrorists he spoke with on the live coverage of the event.

Shot to look like an actual news telecast, NBC freaked when they first saw it and put disclaimers everywhere, but people who tuned in late flooded local stations asking if it was real, though not on a scale that Orson Welles and company had happen when War Of The Worlds was broadcast in the thirties - and that's the difference between television and radio for you...

It's hard to believe that this movie, which won several Emmy awards including best TV Movie or Miniseries that year, was put together by the same team that later produced the intensely annoying "Thirtysomething" (and Clennon was also on that show). But when they do something right, they DO IT RIGHT.

As Leonard Maltin's review book puts it, "Way Above Average".

Now if we can just get them to release it on DVD....

My score: 12 on a scale of 1-10 (yes, that's how much I think of this movie...)

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?

The first time I saw this, I initially thought that this was happening, only because I caught it when the movie was already in progress. The characters were believable and the realism was well done. It took a couple of minutes when I figured out that this was a movie; At the time I thought it was odd that only one channel was covering this and the others had their normal programing when I checked the other stations to see if they were covering this.

The more I watched, the more it drew me in. I was fascinated over the realistic quality and it was scary to think this could happen. I remember hearing on the news and in the papers, many people panicked when they saw this movie; They too thought this was happening, despite the disclaimers shown during the commercial breaks.

A few years later one of our local stations had shown this for their daily "One O'clock movie" feature and I made it a point to watch it in it's entirety. Once again, I was fascinated.

On a side note, I heard that they day the local station had shown this, many people once again thinking this was happening and phoned their loved ones living in Charleston SC (where the movie took place), to see if they were okay, despite the disclaimers. Maybe this is the reason why no one has shown this movie for years.

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...

Just a quick note, I worked on this tv movie in Charleston, SC, and am updating some IMDB records for the films I worked on in the 1980s. It was great to see the New York, California, and local "crews" come together, and a fun picture to be part of. I think it was Ed and Marshall's first effort together, before "Thirtysomething." I helped as a production assistant, and did some picture car coordinator role --the best part of that was helping get the tanks and the jeeps painted white at the last minute. The "live tv" format worked very well for this film, so well in fact that NBC had to insert "disclaimers" between commercials that this was not real, it's only a movie....