The Survivor

Introduction

James Herbert is or was one of Britain's best known horror writers, I read a number of his books during the early 80's including The Rats and The Fog. He was essentially Britain's answer to Stephen King and as such was only a matter of time before some of his works were converted to the big screen. Surprisingly, it was not only supernatural novel The Survivor, but also the Australians who would step up to make it and actor David Hemmings who would sit behind the camera to direct.

A 747 crashes to the ground in Australia killing all 200 people on board bar the pilot, Captain David Keller (Robert Powell) who walks out of the blazing wreckage with nary a scratch. Only problem is, he can't remember anything about the crash. Keller is tormented by guilt at being the only survivor, not helped by either the rather suspicious Aircrash Investigation Chief or the distraught relatives of those who died. Still, Keller has help on hand, should he want it, in the rather easy on the eye form of psychic Hobbs (Jenny Agutter).

Whilst these two are busy getting themselves acquainted (no, not in that way...), there's some darn right spookiness going on. A strange little girl and a host of mysterious voices are seemingly taking vengeance on those who have wronged them, primarily by attempting to profit from their deaths. It also turns out that as well as this side mission, the spirits of the passengers are looking to Keller to find out who exactly killed them...

Picture

Bar a bit of graininess at the bookended opening and closing sequence, the picture is pretty good and in good shape, considering its age. Black levels are also very good.

Audio

Although the soundtrack is an adequate 2.0 Stereo, albeit with no subtitles, there are disappointingly two rather large screeches of white noise on the soundtrack within the first half hour. How this was not spotted during the QA process, heaven knows.

The soundtrack provides an air of foreboding even during sequences that actually don't seem to need any tension at all. To say the short musical interlude is overused would be understating things a little.

Overall

The Survivor is apparently notable for three things...

1. It was the first film to cost more than a million Australian dollars to make.
2. It was the last on-screen appearance of Joseph Cotton
3. It was apparently the only on screen appearance of Jenny Agutter where she remained fully clothed.

I'm not sure of the last one, it would certainly have livened up The Railway Children somewhat...

Let's get one thing straight, this Hemmings-helmed piece is a rather straight forward ghost story masquering as some kind of horror, but is also a bit of a mess. It may well have been the big budget film of its day, but that doesn't excuse the rather sloppy uneveness of the whole thing.

I'm not convinced by any of the acting, not even Powell and Agutter who just seem to be playing things completely over the top. Joseph Cotton may well have regretted that this film was his swansong as he's given very little to do. Still, the script was worse, deviating quite a long way from the source material. It would appear that Hemmings couldn't quite make up his mind where to go with this story or felt that the investigatory aspect featuring our dynamic duo needed something to pad it out. What we end up with are the ghosts of the dead passengers deciding to kill off anyone attempting to make money from their demise, so both a looter and photographer end up being killed for their real or perceived sins, not to mention a tenuous link to the photographer's girlfriend - but then ghosts were always a little judgemental in these things.

Overall I felt a little shortchanged, despite remembering I'd seen this quite unmemorable film some years before, in a film where the central mystery was almost ignored whilst other spooky (or rather horror) things were going on and the final twist at the end was telegraphed almost from the first frame after the crash, due to some rather heavy handed editing and an over reliance and repetition from the soundtrack.

Not great.