d-millhoff While ABC was making its epic The Day After and BBC its counterpart, Threads, NBC produced this low-budget but VERY effective sleeper.As noted in other reviews, its premise borrows from Orson Welles' infamous Mercury Theater production of War of the Worlds, adopting the format of a live TV "breaking news" broadcast.As others point out, it's dated, but only because it accurately reflects TV news in the early 1980's. The media has changed in the 30 years since it was broadcast - and some of the 'anchorperson' acting feels a little flat - but this is pre-9/11, where there was little precedent for such events.It's well-done, using low-budget local news format to its best advantage to deliver story and drama without expensive production values. The science, while imperfect, is convincing and pretty close to the mark, and the 'breaking news' format allows for 'experts' to explain technical stuff without dumbing anything down or insulting the audience's intelligence.An interesting sub-plot is how it delves into the media's commercial hype and influence on the events it covers.I finally obtained a DVD of this - not very good quality, obviously transferred and edited from a VHS of live broadcast, but you have to take what you can get. Curiously, the lower quality isn't bothersome - if anything, it adds to the feeling of authenticity.It's far from a perfect movie, but for a modest production, it is quite ambitious and accomplished a lot.Highly recommended.

Rodrigo Amaro Boy, that was very different of what I usually see and it was awesome! And how come I never ever heard of this film before? Thank you IMDb for always making me curious about everything presented here, because if it wasn't for a few researches on EMMY nominees and awards of 1983 I wouldn't be able to know and see "Special Bulletin", a truly special film that deserves more views from all kinds of public.And who could have thought that the minds behind this film is the team Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz, famous for films such as "Blood Diamond" and "Defiance" and many others? "Special Bulletin" is a TV film released in 1983 telling a fictional (but told in a very realistic way) news coverage of a terrorist group who took over the control of a ship, made a few hostages (including a reporter and a cameraman) with one demand: or the government release all the nuclear devices they had control in Charleston, South Carolina, or they will detonate a nuclear bomb in the city. The whole film is presented as a news coverage coming from New York with two anchors (played by Ed Flanders and Kathryn Walker), and they present the situation inside the boat; other reports digging more and more about the characters of the situation, who they are and what they want. It is an hour and half picture that seems to go longer (in a good way) because you get hold to the whole thing, and it looks like a news report that you can't let go. Everything looks real. Well, almost everything. There's a few goofs, few details that makes you realize that this is only a movie and people in the 1980's got very impressed with the material that the producers had to include in a few parts some notes informing that the whole thing wasn't happening, it was fiction. A few things that makes of "Special Bulletin" a real bulletin: Everything was filmed on video, with those old cameras that couldn't film properly at night without making a giant flash ruining the image (remember those images coming from the news? If you don't, look on the internet from news images of that decade, you're see what I'm talking about); the editing, the sound effects with noise problems, things that happens in live coverage, the relative unknown cast (now, we can recognize names like Lane Smith, David Clennon and David Rasche and there's a hilarious scene with Michael Madsen). What makes of this film unrealistic: some of the reactions presented in the whole situation seems forced (e.g. the guy with the machine gun walking outside of the boat looked so much like an actor playing a scene; and the anchors talks in some parts, it wasn't too natural). But it's nothing that ruins the experience of watching it.I was surprised by the quality of this film, how every single thing works perfectly, from the great tension of the story to the actors performances; it really makes you look through a complete report that goes unfolding in front of you. The coverage made by the reporters in all of the country was interesting, you can see how news are made in such short time through investigations, live reports that goes on and off so fast, and the anchors have to figure out a way of telling everything to its audience, and more and more things are coming in the way, and they deal in a tragical situation (reserved to the last shocking minutes of the film).Even today there's a gigantic impact while watching, and I'll probably never forget this wonderful experience. 10/10

Judi Copeland I had this movie on VHS and thought it was a great practical joke to play on people by putting it on before they came in so they just thought it was background noise only for them to hear the "We interrupt this program for a special bulletin" and watch the fun begin.Of course as the years progressed, the joke lost its power because the look is so 80s and the USSR is no longer a threat.The main storyline is one of a group of terrorists, who do not think of themselves as such, trying to get everyone's attention to what a full scale nuclear attack can do. They take a news anchor and camera man hostage and tell their story to the world. Their message is totally missed in the glitz of the media's usual antics such as fancy graphics and theme music to the crisis instead of just focusing on the crisis itself.This should be seen by anyone taking a journalism course and those critical of the mainstream media would get a kick out of it.

W4HTX Having someone from Toronto, Canada pontificate about what is and isn't said by people in The South is like having Gandhi comment on what it's like to be a mass murderer. He's never done it, so how would Gandhi know? "No one refers to the Civil War as 'the late unpleasantness with the North'." Really? My beloved Grandmother referred to the 'late unpleasantness' as "The War of Northern Aggression" and as the "Late unpleasantness with the north" - she never referred to the north with a capital N. She also followed ANYONE who said 'Civil War' with an admonition that "There was nothing civil about that war!" People in Charleston still to this day speak in a reverent tone of the men and boys killed on both sides."That's not what a Wheeling, W.Va. accent sounds like." I beg to ask the question, how does someone in Toronto find out what persons from Wheeling West Virginia sound like? I admit the person in question may have traveled to Wheeling, but the probability seems rather low."Local TV news reporters don't use words like "flabbergasted", except in teleplays written by novices. And so on." This person has likely never watched the local news in Charleston, SC. It never ceases to amaze me at what local newscasters, especially Southerners, say on the air.I'll say that for the record, I was born and raised in Charleston, SC and know a bit of the history of The Holy City and The South. It's referred to as The Holy City because it has more churches per square mile than anywhere else in the world.Ancestors of mine fought in The War of Northern Aggression, some of them for the North, some for the South.Oh, yes, don't let me forget. I was actually IN the film. Un-credited extra, I portrayed a Charleston City Police Officer. Since I had the costume already, and the motorcycle, I was 'typecast' as the only motorcycle cop in the film. I was on screen for maybe 1.5 seconds, if that. Chasing looters with a pal of mine in a CPD cruiser, I was following his cruiser on the Honda 750 police motorcycle.All in all, I enjoyed the film being made as much as getting to watch it. I also enjoyed being able to talk with Lane Smith; he was friendly, personable, and a pretty sharp conversationalist. (Mr. Smith, himself a Southerner from Memphis, Tennessee has been famous as Perry White on the 'New Adventures of Superman' with Dean Cain in the title role.) Working off duty on the film's security detail, I was able to me lots of other interesting people as well. No one from Toronto Canada though. ;-)