'The Blair Witch' at 10

A terrified Heather Donahue would come to be “Blair Witch’s” signature image, building publicity and plenty of parodies.

Ten summers ago, a group of independent filmmakers came up with a Web-based, viral marketing campaign that proved so effective -- and influential -- in creating buzz and audience anticipation that it overshadowed the very movie it was designed to promote.

These guys were never heard from again -- but their promotional savvy lives on.

That's the conventional wisdom about the no-budget, exercise-in-imagination horror flick "The Blair Witch Project." But like most things surrounding a movie that trafficked heavily in mythology, the truth is a bit more complicated, not to mention happier (at least for some of the principals involved).

When it opened on 27 screens in mid-July 1999, "Blair" found an eager audience that had been primed for months through the film's innovative website and the free publicity it garnered at overflow screenings at Sundance and Cannes. Many at the early screenings believed that the film's novel premise -- three student filmmakers disappear in the woods while shooting a documentary about the legend of a local witch and their footage is found a year later -- contained some grain of truth.

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