Interesting bit from:


http://cinemenium.com/blairwitch/

Throughout the years, I've collected all the news and rumors about Elly
Kedward - better known as the Blair Witch - who ritually killed several
children. She died 300 years ago but there are still rumors about
strange and horrifying things happening in the woods near the Black
Hills Forest.


February, 1785:
Several children accuse Elly Kedward of luring them into her home to
draw blood from them. Kedward is found guilty of witchcraft, banished
from the village during a particularly harsh winter and presumed dead.

November, 1786:
By midwinter all of Kedward's accusers along with half of the town's
children vanish. Fearing a curse, the townspeople flee Blair and vow
never to utter Elly Kedward's name again.

November, 1809:
The Blair Witch Cult is published. This rare book, commonly
considered fiction, tells of an entire town cursed by an outcast witch.

1824:
Burkittsville is founded on the Blair site.

August, 1825:
Eleven witnesses testify to seeing a pale woman's hand reach up and
pull ten-year-old Eileen Treacle into Tappy East Creek. Her body is never
recovered, and for thirteen days after the drowning the creek is clogged
with oily bundles of sticks.

March, 1886:
Eight-year-old Robin Weaver is reported missing and search parties are
dispatched. Although Weaver returns, one of the search parties does
not. Their bodies are found weeks later at Coffin Rock tied together at
the arms and legs and completely disemboweled.

November, 1940 - May 1941:
Starting with Emily Hollands, a total of seven children are abducted
from the area surrounding Burkittsville, Maryland.

May 25, 1941:
An old hermit named Rustin Parr walks into a local market and tells
the people there that he is "finally finished." After Police hike for four
hours to his secluded house in the woods, they find the bodies of seven
missing children in the cellar. Each child has been ritualistically
murdered and disemboweled. Parr admits to everything in detail, telling
authorities that he did it for "an old woman ghost" who occupied the
woods near his house. He is quickly convicted and hanged.

October 20, 1994:
Montgomery College students arrive in Burkittsville to interview locals
about the legend of the Blair Witch for a class project. Heather
interviews Mary Brown an old and quite insane woman who has lived in
the area all her life. Mary claims to have seen the Blair Witch one day
near Tappy Creek in the form of a hairy, half-human, half-animal beast.

October 21, 1994:
In the early morning Heather interviews two fishermen who tell the
filmmakers that Coffin Rock is less than twenty minutes from town and
easily accessible by an old logging trail. The filmmakers hike into Black
Hills Forest shortly thereafter and are never seen again.

October 25, 1994:
The first APB is issued. Josh's car is found later in the day parked on
Black Rock Road.

October 26, 1994:
The Maryland State Police launch their search of the Black Hills area,
an operation that lasts ten days and includes up to one hundred men
aided by dogs, helicopters, and even a fly over by a Department of
Defense Satellite.

November 5, 1994:
The search is called off after 33,000 man hours fail to find a trace of the
filmmakers or any of their gear. Heather's mother, Angie Donahue,
begins an exhaustive personal search for her daughter and her two
companions.

June 19, 1995:
The case is declared inactive and unsolved.

October 16, 1995:
Students from the University of Maryland's Anthropology Department
discover a duffel bag containing film cans, DAT tapes, video-cassettes, a
Hi-8 video camera, Heather's journal and a CP-16 film camera buried
under the foundation of a 100 year-old cabin. When the evidence is
examined, Burkittsville Sheriff Ron Cravens announced that the 11 rolls
of black and white film and 10 HI8 video tapes are indeed the property of
Heather Donahue and her crew.

December 15, 1995:
After an initial study of the bag's contents, select pieces of film footage
are shown to the families. According to Angie Donahue, there are
several unusual events but nothing conclusive. The families question the
thoroughness of the analysis and demanded another look.

February 19, 1996:
The families are shown a second group of clips that local law
enforcement officials consider to be faked. Outraged, Mrs. Donahue
goes public with her criticism and Sheriff Cravens restricts all access to
the evidence; a restriction that two lawsuits fail to lift.

March 1, 1996:
The Sheriff's department announces that the evidence is inconclusive
and the case is once again declared inactive and unsolved. The footage
is to be released to the families when the legal limit of its classification
runs out, on October 16, 1997.

October 16, 1997:
The found footage of their children's last days is turned over to the
families of Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams.
Angie Donahue contracts Haxan Films to examine the footage and piece
together the events of October 20 - 28, 1994.

This film will be on Showtime this month so I can finally watch it, with the lights all off, of course. It's too short for me to have bothered seeing it in theaters. They'll also debut its little quasi-sequel/companion piece, The Burkittsville 7, right afterwards.

There are two movie sequels planned and three PC games being developed. The two movie sequels have been inevitably turned Hollywood and shall, in all likelihood, lose sight of what initially brought The Blair Witch Project appeal.

This movie is on the below website that edits movie to make them "clean" (i.e. no sex, violence, cursing, etc.) as a film they will NOT edit:

We will not edit the following movies:

Pretty Woman
Liar Liar
Blair Witch Project
The Story Of Us
Addicted To Love
American History X
Caddyshack
Eyes Wide Shut
Basic Instinct
Show Girls
Gross Pointe Blank
Primary Colors
Rounders
Payback
Election
Analyze This
Return Of The Dragon
Face Off
There are some movies we will not edit because of theme, overall message, and number of edits in the movie.

You must own the movie before we edit it!

http://www.cleanflicks.com/

I don't understand why this film would be so unacceptable. Too much cursing?

Interesting, they won't clean "Eyes Wide Shut." Could that be because the clean version would have a two minute running time?!?

I wouldn't say that. You could take out all of the sex an nudity and probably still have
about 1 or 1.5 hours of stuff (out of the film's total 5 hour running time, what you mean it
wasn't 5 hours it sure seemed like it) The problem is what was left would be completely
unintelligible. After the party the whole argument would get deleted because Kidman's
shirt was see through, without that no one knows why Tom is running around the city
trying to score. That the whole orgy sequence, without that you don't know what girl he's
trying to find out if she's dead. The only stuff left would be that ridiculously long, drawn
out, dialogue scene between Tom and the Rich guy at the end.


Basically what it come down to for those "clean flicks" people is simply the volume of
edits (sometimes 1 every 30 seconds) that they don't have time for. and would the film
have any narrative coherence after they butchered it?

I did the same with this board as I did with Titanic and Armageddon. This board had more than 50 messages, and since space is a concern around here, I deleted all posts made before March of 2000.

Could somebody explain the ending to me? I was watching it, the hikers were in a house, and the girl starts screaming, then the film ends. What was she screaming at? Anyone know?

What happens in the ending?

SPOILER:

Remember the Rustin Parr story? - it's in the interviews with the townspeople at the beginning of the movie. (And it's not in the bootleg.) He took the children to the basement of his house in the woods and killed them two at a time, and made one face the wall while he killed the other.

So Mike and Heather trace the screams to an abandoned house in the woods, with bloody handprints all over the walls. Hm. Rustin Parr's house, anyone? When Mike goes down in the basement, something gets him. And when Heather gets to the basement, she sees Mike standing in the corner, facing the wall. And she knows she's going to die.

As for who exactly gets Mike and Heather - whether it's the Blair Witch, or the ghost of Rustin Parr, or Josh being influenced by the Blair Witch, or something else entirely - we don't know. Everything after that camera stops running is up to your imagination.

http://tbwp.freeservers.com/spoiler.html#end

Thanks very much, Cornpone. Much appreciated.

I had never thought about it being Josh. It that really an option? I thought Mike and heather found some bits of him after he vanished.

I remember the fuss as well when it was released.

This & The Matrix were very much signposts that "Internet Era" films were mainsteam.

I remember the hoopla when this movie came out, and that some people thought it was real (what helped that is that Josh, Heather, and Mike used their real names in the movie).

Heck, some Good Samaritans even headed to Burkittsville, to organize searching parties for Josh, Heather, and Mike! Not that it would have done the three of them much good. The movie, which came out in 1999, said that the three of them disappeared in 1994, five years earlier. All those Good Samaritans would have found would have been bones.

Of course, it wasn't real. Josh, Heather, and Mike are just fine.

All those Good Samaritans would have found would have been bones.

Or would have joined Josh, Heather, and Mike in whatever parallel horror reality they had ended up in.

Good point.