ericrnolan 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?

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

bcolquho If you missed this movie when it was first on in the early 1980s, then you should watch it now. It's probably out on DVD. The plot could be taken from today's headlines. However, it's not. The thought of terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear bomb seemed distant and unrealistic back in 1983. Today, it seems all too real. Three years ago, our troops in Afghanistan captured Al Qaeda documents that said it was "their religious duty" to obtain nuclear weapons. The movie was about a reporter and a cameraman who were taken hostage by "peace activists" on a tugboat in Charleston Harbor. The "peace activists" are actually terrorists. They're demanding that every nuclear detonators in the Charleston area be delivered to them to destroyed or else they'll explode a nuclear bomb of their own. Where did they get it? We don't know. We have to assume that it was stolen. What happens in the last ten minutes? You'll have to torture me to get that information out of me and even then I wouldn't tell you. Watch and find out yourselves.