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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - July 30th

"THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT" released in 1999

In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. 

A year later their footage was found.

- opening titles, The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project, one of the most successful independent films of all time, resurrects the pseudo-documentary genre first developed by Ruggero Deodato for his film Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Marketed via the internet as "recovered footage", the myth surrounding the film would cause as much a controversy as the events it records and helped reinvigorate the 'found footage' style of filming for decades to come! 

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Film student Heather Donahue enlists the help of cameraman Joshua Leonard and sound recordist Michael C. Williams to camp in the woods outside of Burkittsville (formerly Blair township), Maryland for the weekend to help shoot a documentary for her college project about the legend of the Blair Witch. Arriving in town, the crew interview some of the locals about what they know about the witch story, many of whom express their own experiences in the woods. One local tells them the story of Rustin Parr, a hermit who kidnapped seven children in the 1940's and brought them to his house in the woods to torture and murder them, later claiming to police that the spirit of Elly Edward, a witch hanged in Blair in the 18th century, influenced him to do it. The next day, Heather interviews two local fisherman who expand that Elly Edward was responsible for the three-day disappearance of a small girl in 1888 and the ritualistically murder of the five man search party that went out to look for her, found bound together at a place called Coffin Rock. The three filmmakers trek into the woods the next day to find Coffin Rock and shoot footage of the surrounding area. Filming completed, they attempt to hike back to their car but cannot find their way despite the map and the compass assuring them they are going in the right direction. The next day they discover a multitude of humanoid stick figures suspended from trees and that night, unknown forces shake their tent causing them to flee into the woods. With tensions running high in the group due to their situation, they soon come to realize that they are not alone in the woods and that there may be more to the legend of the Blair witch after all!

Michael Williams: [sees dozens of stick-men hanging from trees] No redneck is this creative.

Top:   Heather introduces the documentary at a cemetery outside

Burkittsville;   Above:   The filmmakers find hanging stickmen everywhere

outside their tent! 

Developed in 1993 by first time filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, they first came across the idea for the film after realizing that they found documentaries on paranormal phenomena scarier than traditional horror films. In developing the mythology behind the movie, the filmmakers used many inspirations. Several character names are near-anagrams; Elly Kedward (The Blair Witch) is Edward Kelley, a 16th-century mystic. Rustin Parr, the fictional 1940s child-murderer, began as an anagram for Rasputin. Writing a brief 35-page outline under the titles The Blair Witch Tapes (before being changed to The Black Hills Project), Myrick and Sanchez advertised in Backstage magazine for actors with strong improvisational abilities. Typically, the candidate entering the audition room would immediately be presented with a description like "you've just served 10 years of a 25-year prison sentence. Tell us why you should be due for parole". If the candidate hesitated to long, the audition would be over. Heather Donahue's response was "I don't think you should." Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard soon joined the cast, with the actors agreeing to play fictionalized versions of themselves; additionally, Leonard was given a brief crash course on using the 16mm camera (having past experience as a cameraman) and  Donahue, who had never operated a camera before, also spent time learning how to operate the video camera; the three principal actors would shot nearly all of the completed film as there was not an omniscient camera filming the scenes. 

Heather Donahue: I hear it.
Joshua Leonard: I don't hear shit.
Heather Donahue: [branch snaps in distance] Did you hear that?!

Top:   Cameraman Josh and sound recordist Mike prepare to camp in the woods;

Above:   The group flee into the woods when their tent is attacked

Deciding early on to remain in character for the entire eight days of filming, the actors would only break character only after collectively reciting their safety word, "taco". Donahue said she modeled her character after a director she once worked with, citing the character's self assuredness when everything went as planned, and confusion during crisis. Heather, Mike and Josh were under strict instructions to follow trails and directions given to them by the movie crew left in milk crates and found with Global Positioning Satellite systems, to ensure they would reach each designated site to camp in for the night. They were given individual instructions that they would use to help improvise the action of the next day. The directors also kept in touch with the actors via walkie-talkie to ensure they did not get lost. To keep the tension high, the actors were given less and less food each day and the directors deliberately did not let them know of the noises and other disturbances they would be making during the nights. The sounds of children heard at night was taken from kids playing around the house of director Eduardo Sánchez's mother, with the tape played over boomboxes in the forest (Josh's shouts in the final scene were also pre-recorded and played through speakers hidden away in the woods). The scene where Heather, Mick and Josh are running through the woods, when Heather screams "What the fuck is that?!" she is seeing one of the movie crew standing on a hill dressed in white with a ski-mask on! Josh was holding the camera as ran behind her and didn't manage to catch the image on film. 

Heather Donahue: [filming her last video diary] I'm scared to close my eyes, I'm scared to open them! We're gonna die out here.

Top:   With Josh's disappearance, Heather records her final thoughts on video;

Above:   Heather finds Josh's remains outside the tent in the morning.

At the very beginning, the actors were requested to interview the townspeople, who often, unbeknownst to the actors, were planted by the directors. As a result, the expressions on the actors' faces were unrehearsed as they listened to the stories prompting them to believe that although the film was fake, the legend surrounding the Blair Witch was actually real (only realizing when the film was released that the myth was false too). During the night shoots, the crackling sounds in the woods were made by the director and friends walking up to the camp's perimeter, breaking sticks, and then tossing them in various directions. The scene where Heather, Josh and Mike are sleeping in the tent when it shakes violently was unscripted and performed by the director's themselves, scaring the actors for real. Heather and Mike were also not informed that Josh was going to disappear near the end of the shoot. Originally intending for Mike to disappear, Myrick and Sanchez decided to change it to Josh as his and Heather's constant bickering was starting to become disruptive (most of the Heather-Josh arguments were edited out in post-production). The directors had left a note for Leonard instructing him to wait for the others to fall asleep, and then leave the tent. They had to wait for 45 minutes before calling him out, telling him "you're dead." - Leonard was actually glad to leave because there was a Jane's Addiction concert he wanted to go to. The teeth found by Heather (supposedly Josh' teeth) were real human teeth, supplied by director Eduardo Sánchez's dentist. The hair really belonged to Joshua Leonard.

TRIVIA:   The production company, Haxan Films, borrowed its named from Benjamin Christensen's witchcraft documentary, Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922), a source of inspiration for the film. Häxan is the Swedish word for the witch.

Top:   Archival photograph of the house of murderer Rustin Parr;

Above:   Heather finds Mike in the ruins of Parr's house in the woods

It took eight days to shoot the film, but eight months to edit it, with more money being spent on the movie afterwards than before its completion. The directors estimated the initial production budget of the movie to be around $20,000 and $25,000, but this rose to somewhere between $500,000 and $750,000 (over 20 times the original budget) after the studio did some additional post-production. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, The Blair Witch Project was acquired by Artisan Entertainment for $1.1 million, spending $25 million in marketing and advertising. One key strategy was promote the events in the film as being "real", with the movie's official website featuring fake police reports and "newsreel-style" interviews, and the filmmakers distributing flyers at Sundance asking viewers to come forward with any information about the "missing" students. The IMDb page also listed the actors as "missing, presumed dead" in the first year of the film's availability, leading to Heather Donahue's mother receiving sympathy cards from people who believed that her daughter was actually dead or missing!

Above:   Sample of flyers handed out by filmmakers at the Sundance Film Festival 

to promote the movie

USA Today has opined that the film was the first movie to go "Viral" despite existing before many of the technologies that help the spread of such phenomena, The Blair Witch Project opened to enormous box office gross; eventually earning $248,639,099 worldwide. Critics too were blown away by the film with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times giving the film a total of 4 stars, calling it "an extraordinarily effective horror film". Numerous fans were so convinced of the Blair Witch's existence (or at the very least, believe that it is a re-enactment of a true story) that they flocked to Maryland in hopes of discovering the legend - they apparently did not read the closing credits of the film. It also resulted in the Burkittsville town sign being stolen three times, the first occurring on the opening night of The Blair Witch Project. 

Above:   Co-directors Daniel Myrick (left) and Eduardo Sanchez

In the wake of the films huge success, Artisan immediately began prepping a sequel in conjuncture with the release of a number of novels, comic books, and a trilogy of video games (Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr, Blair Witch Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock, and Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale). Starring Jason Donovan, Kim Director, and Erica Leerhsen, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was released the next year to a poor box office performance and panned by the critics. The consensus of the sequel's failure was due to the film being so stylistically different from the first film, and not utilizing the "found footage" format opting for a more traditional approach. Rumors of a Blair Witch 3 were rumored for years but with nothing eventually being made until July 22, 2016, a surprise trailer for a sequel to the film, directed by Adam Wingard and entitled Blair Witch, was released at San Diego Comic-Con. The film was originally marketed as The Woods so as to be an exclusive surprise announcement for those in attendance at the convention. The film, produced by Lionsgate, is slated for a September 16, 2016 release and stars James Allen McCune as the brother of the original film's Heather Donahue.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   84%

And check out the trailer for the sequel, Blair Witch below!