Special Bulletin (1983)

Special Bulletin (1983) 5 of 5 Dir: Edward Zwick Stars: Ed Flanders, Christopher Allport, Mary ArmstrongA reporter and his cameraman are covering an impending dock workers strike when a vehicle roles up and a fire fight ensues. Next thing you know he is broadcasting live from a ship stating the demands of a group of terrorists who threaten to set off a nuclear device if they demands are not met.This taunt and very well acted TV film grabs you from the beginning and won't let go. The film is told as live breaking news situation, 'Special Bulletin' benefits from excellent edition and a tight script. It will keep you on the edge of your seat up until the final fatal frame. The film seems even more deadly urgent now post 9/11. Highly recommended.

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.

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. ;-)

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...)