Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Robert Powell, Jenny Agutter, Joseph Cotten,
Angela Punch McGregor, Peter Sumner | Written by David Ambrose
UK Certification 15 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 90 minutes | Directed by David Hemmings
The Survivor is a 1981 Australian film based on the novel of the same title by literary horror maestro James Herbert. It stars Mr Jesus of Nazareth Robert Powell as a pilot who miraculously survives an airline disaster that killed every other person on board. Following his recovery, he has to deal with the guilt of being the pilot, suffer the intense air crash investigation — which raises many questions about how the plane came down — and the invasion of the supernatural into his life, where it seems as if the 300 victims of the incident are haunting Powell's character and the lives of those around him.
It's quite a strange film and it doesn't really go anywhere. It's so slow-burning that it may reduce some viewers to boredom after the first half, as it basically just takes a nosedive, no pun intended, from there on out. There are a couple of highly dramatic scenes with the supernatural element that I mentioned above, where the ghost of a young girl stalks a photographer and causes his death, as well as another's. Why I'm not quite sure, it's never really explained. There's this whole haunting angle that is prevalent throughout the entire film, but for most of it it simply looms over the story, with the only specifically spooky events really happening in the first 40 minutes.
It's actually quite graphic for a film made in 1981 — there are a multitude of hideously realistic corpses that are all burnt out from the plane crash and there isn't much restraint in the flow of blood throughout. Some excellent practical effects work. Speaking of effects, the opening air crash is very well put together — chaos and destruction are plentiful and it's all very realistic. I imagine that scene was the most costly part of the film, which was the first ever Australian movie to have a budget of over $1,000,000 AUS.
The performances are solid and the cast is lead well by Powell, but the weakness of the script cannot save the film and thus the fine actors are more like black sheep in a bad movie. An older Joseph Cotten makes his last ever performance in the picture with an unfortunately small role. I haven't read the novel so I cannot comment on the source material, but The Survivor looks as if it could have greatly benefited from a much more refined edit, to make the film more shapely and not so nonsensical. When the closing credits rolled I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.
EXTRAS ★ A weblink (if you can call that an extra) and a pretty well worn out trailer, though I quite like seeing trailers in their aged form, it gives them a kind of charm, though not so much when the film isn't that great to begin with.