I remember jon schnepp saying he erased the credits off of a vhs copy and told his friend this was some random vhs tape he found outside. The friend watched it, freaked out, and wanted to call the cops lol.

Great choice!  Can't wait to listen to this.

This movie scared the hell out of me when I was in college back in '99.  The marketing campaign about it possibly being a true story didn't even factor in for me...I just thought it was incredibly effective.  

My friend who I saw it with lived out in the woods, and after we drove back to his place and I went to get in my car, he proceeded to turn all the outside lights off and leave me in pitch blackness.  I ran to my car, turned on all the outside and inside lights, and kept looking over my shoulder on the way home.

The 7pm showing was sold out so I had to go to the late show. I was writing movie reviews even though I did not yet have a computer at home. I usually posted my reviews on Saturday from the UMaine computer lab where I worked. However, I wanted to post this right away so I snuck into a computer lab at Bowdoin College (that was always left unlocked) and started writing. After about 10 minutes the power went out. Pitch black. No emergency lights came on. Then I heard a door close in the distance and then footsteps. Must be a security guard. Right? Of course that was just a movie. Nothing was going to happen. Then I remembered a line in the movie where they talked about how secure we felt with our modern life. How untouchable all our gadgets made us. The darkness, the adrenaline, my overactive imagination all went to work on me. And why didn't I yet see the flashlight that security guard certainly had? It seemed like an eternity later (it was probably about 10 minutes) the power came back on and I hightailed it out of the building. I never did find out what had opened and closed the door or caused those footsteps...

Oh Goodie.  With the 4 part Scarface I thought we were going to miss out on spooky season

Blair Witch is one of my all time favorite movies which is why i clicked on the video, and lucky me,  your commentary turned out to be extremely interesting. I look forward to more

Excellent conversation.

Everyone will talk about the monumental and significant effect of the marketing push for this film which in 1999 was absolutely revolutionary. I was completely bought into this and I remember getting my friends to come with me to see this film. I was hooked.
The film has some really scary moments with its Found Footage medium especially when hearing the Kid's Voices.
Can the same marketing success work today? It can, but, so many sites debunk fun viral pushes so early.

I was 29 at the time. I watched the mockumentary on Sci Fi a few weeks before the film was released and I was convinced it was real. I went to see the film opening day. It was in one of the smaller theaters in a local multiplex, and it was sold out...there were even people sitting on the floor in front of the screen. Not sure the fire marshal would have approved, but there they were. It was quite an experience. There was a lot of silence, then heavy breathing and muffled shrieks later on in the film. I walked out of the screening a bit disturbed; I'd never seen anything like it. It was only a few days later that I learned it was all fake, but it didn't matter. The film had made its impact. I recently picked up the Second Sight Blu Ray and it's a real marvel. I've watched the film every October since.

As a more recent example, Gleeson(?) was so despised as Geoffrey Baratheon on GOT, he quit acting for a good while after.

Amazing podcast!!!!

If they made this movie nowadays it would be cgi, jump scares and the same boring predictable recipe. But back then they actually put thought and depth behind the writing....even now, we cant 100% confirm what happened and thats what makes it mysterious...

The unfortunate tale of the burketsville 7.

You don’t even need to be 18 to know that you should pay the people who work for you. You don’t need 3 films under your belt to understand that either.

From what I can remember, the directors didn't really screw the actors over. The contact stated all actors would earn 1% of net profits after a $1 million dollar threshold was crossed which would have made the actors millions if the contract was honored. Artisan/Lionsgate artificially inflated marketing costs and other costs to make it look like the movie was losing the company money and so that they wouldn't have to pay the actors shit. The agreement signed in 1997 was a pretty standard contract for non union acting jobs at the time, but the executive heads at these studios and their lawyers knew how to weasel their way out of it and the actors/original filmmakers were just dumb broke college kids with no knowledge or resources to fight it.

I thought it was a crap film, I knew it would end like that!

How so?

I've seen it 18 times already!

All the great horror movies out there and cine-files goes with this one 😂

Have you heard the theory that the two guys in the film are killers, using the Blair Witch mythology as their excuse? One of them admits to throwing the map away, that's why they're lost. Other scenes have the guys walking toward something completely ignoring Heather and almost giggling to themselves that she's in a panic, seemingly both on the same page as to where they're headed. The SOUND GUY goes missing and they start hearing sounds in the forest, that sound guy is the first into the house at the end and would be easily able to sneak up behind her when she sees the second guy in the basement, and it would also explain why they can be more or less antagonizing toward her for the duration of the film. Take all the supernatural out of this film and we have two killers making a documentary about the girl they kill.