{"id":15550,"date":"2017-03-14T15:04:43","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T19:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=15550"},"modified":"2017-03-14T21:13:33","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T01:13:33","slug":"br-survivor-the-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=15550","title":{"rendered":"BR: Survivor, The (1981)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Film<\/strong>:\u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Severin Films<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0A, B, C<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0January 10, 2017<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Horror \/ Supernatural \/ Ozploitation<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Suffering from temporary amnseia, the lone survivor of a devastating passenger plane crash finds himself haunted by unseen forces, and seeks the aide of a sympathetic medium amid\u00a0strange murders and tragedies.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>Not Quite Hollywood<\/strong> Extended Interviews with producer Antony Ginnane and cinematographer John Seale (22:12) \/ Extended Scene (3:34) \/ Featurette \u201cThe Legacy of James Herbert” (9:19) \/ 2017 Interview: Robert Powell on James Herbert (3:24) \/ Archival 1981 Australian TV Special Clapperboard<\/strong> featuring interviews with actors Joseph Cotton, Peter Sumner, Ralph Cottrill, and actress Angela Punch-McGregor (29:59) \/ Archival U.S. 1981 TV Interview with David Hemmings (15:43) \/ \u00a0Archival 1980 Australian TV Special Clapperboard<\/strong> featuring interviews extract with actors David Hemmings and Robert Powell on filming Harlequin<\/strong> (5:56) \/ Antony I. Ginnane Trailer Reel (32:03) \/\u00a0 TV Spot.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Riding on the unlikely international success of the somewhat supernatural thriller Harlequin \/ Dark Forces<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1980), Anthony Ginnane decided to produce an adaptation of James Herbert\u2019s novel \u2013 the first time Ginnane gambled on an existing property rather than an original screenplay (many of which were scripted by ozploitation master Everett De Roche).<\/p>\n

Ported over from Harlequin<\/strong> was star Robert Powell, and instead of acting, Ginnane\u2019s longtime producing partner David Hemmings took on directing chores. The script by David Ambrose (A Man Called Intrepid<\/strong>, The Final Countdown<\/strong>, Blackout<\/strong>) reportedly toned down the novel\u2019s gore quotient, and flipped the gender of a medium from an older man to a younger woman, and what begins as an eerie thriller with a mystical mood gradually becomes clunky, presumably the victim of mounting scene trims and some likely re-ordering which rendered the final act\u00a0into a bit of a confusing muddle.<\/p>\n

The Survivor<\/strong> has its admirers and defenders. Hemmings went after\u00a0dreamy tone\u00a0in\u00a0the film that launched his own stardom, Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s 1966 classic Blow-Up<\/a><\/strong>, and as a mood piece, it\u2019s truly fascinating, but in the archived interview on Severin\u2019s packed Blu-ray, cinematographer John Seale confesses edits and an abrupt ending hindered the film’s coherence.<\/p>\n

The central plot has medium Hobbs (Jenny Agutter) seemingly waiting through the afternoon and early evening for an event: the sudden downing of a major airliner, which severs the tops of trees and breaks apart in a field, ultimately exploding and killing everyone one board. Masses of police, fire, paramedics, and news crews swarm onto the absolute carnage, and found within the mangled remains is pilot Keller (Powell), relatively unscathed, and suffering from complete amnesia right from the moment the plane took off from the airport.<\/p>\n

As he attempts to reconstruct events, a forensic investigation pushes on, as does media attention on pilot incompetence. Woven into Keller\u2019s ongoing remorse are strange deaths, often signaled by a little girl to appears just before seemingly disparate characters \u2013 a photographer, a fisherman \u2013 die almost<\/em> of their own volition. The bodycount is slow, as is Keller\u2019s memory recovery, and even when he meets medium Hobbs, all we\u2019re told is Hobbs has found herself to be an involuntary conduit between the plane\u2019s dead and Keller.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s around this spot, highlighted by a spastic quasi-possession of Hobbs in her riverfront cabin, that Survivor<\/strong>\u2019s structure begins to get messy, and scenes feel as though they were re-ordered for mood and momentum than logic. When Keller argues with colleague Tewson (Peter Sumner) and takes a solo flight over the wreckage area, he returns and chats with his buddy without any commentary on his sudden discovery during flight; Keller only\u00a0reveals the disturbing observance to a teddy-garbed Hobbs: as he flew over the crash site, all debris had vanished and been replaced with Hobbs and the kids in the park.<\/p>\n

And when airline CEO Slater (The Lighthorsemen<\/strong>\u2019s Ralph Cotterill) wanders without a flashlight through the wreckage at night and gashes his hand (Shouldn\u2019t a forensics-trained man know<\/em> wreckage is dangerous, especially at night?)<\/em>, his next scene in a hangar has him wearing a small bandage where we saw him cut his cheek, but nothing on his hand.<\/p>\n

SPOILER ALERT<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The finale is equally abrupt in logic, having Slater admitting to Keller of planting a bomb to down the plane for no concrete reason; from his seated position, glowering, and chattering about death, the presumption is he\u2019s wholly mad. Rather than have any further explanation, the hangar packed with partially assembled wreckage explodes, and in a classic Twilight Zone<\/strong> wrap-up, Keller\u2019s body is found in the plane, clarifying that he was a ghost looking for closure, and justice for the dead.<\/p>\n

Of course that opens a wealth of questions: If he was a ghost, how\u00a0could everyone see and talk to him? Why didn\u2019t Hobbs tell him he was a ghost, given she\u2019s a medium and knows something about irritated spirits, <\/em>if not sense he was a soul drifting between plains? And what\u2019s with the Final Destination<\/strong>-style deaths? Were the photographer and his girlfriend and the fisherman intended to have died after the plane exploded, or was there a separate revenge story that was dropped from the film? (The deaths are wholly preposterous, from the photographer walking into a moving train, and the girlfriend guillotining her hand with a cutting board. There\u2019s no reason given to explain their sudden deaths.)<\/p>\n

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END OF SPOILERS<\/p>\n

The only actor who maintains relative character stability is Powell because Keller is a mentally wounded man\u00a0searching for answers; he\u2019s the film\u2019s strongest character and has the strongest dialogue, whereas Agutter spouts vague gibberish because her character\u2019s raison d\u2019etre remains fuzzy. We see her in the stellar title sequence, observing a passing plane (later revealed to be Keller taking that solo flight \u2013 but no explanation as to\u00a0whether it\u2019s a time loop, a portent, or another concept not properly worked out in the shooting script), and glancing at creepy kids in a playground, whose silent stalking game is perhaps the closest Hemmings comes to evoking the mimes in Blow-Up<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a problematic film which may well have made a bit more sense if the material Seale alleges was shot and shorn was reinstated, but the film may already have been designed by Hemmings and Ginnane for mood, and 99 mins. is the film\u2019s natural and logical length, regardless of its stumbles in logic.<\/p>\n

Billed as one of Australia\u2019s most expensive productions, the opening crash is more fast cuts than epic footage, but once the plane rests in the field, that\u2019s when the movie really begins, and we\u2019re treated to a haunting mood piece, much of it due to Powell, Brian May\u2019s eerie score, the excellent sound design that blends voices and effects like preludes before ghostly appearances or grisly demises, and John Seale\u2019s jaw-dropping footage that makes The Survivor<\/strong> one of Ginnane\u2019s most beautifully photographed productions.<\/p>\n

In the bonus interview\u00a0culled\u00a0from Mark Hartley\u2019s doc Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!<\/strong> (2008), Seale recalls colleagues being miffed and jealous when the young camera operator (Picnic at Hanging Rock<\/strong>, Gallipoli<\/strong>) graduated to full DOP on such a high-profile production, and yet he proved detractors dead wrong by composing exquisite images, moody lighting, and choreographing the massive explosions that transform the plane into a mangled mess. The finale is especially memorable, in which Keller\u2019s slow approach towards a killer is literally highlighted by pulling on dangling light bulbs before Hemmings closes the film with another colourful set of kabooms.<\/p>\n

Whereas the supernatural moments are uneven in impact and logic, Hemmings\u2019 fixations on the minutia of crash forensics is unusually detailed, spanning the reclamation of bodies, funerals, reassembling some debris in a hangar, tracking flaws, suspicions of a bomb, and Keller, Hobbs, and Slater being drawn to the remaining wreckage on the field, compelled to touch, feel, and walk through the dangerous ruins for answers. Arguably the film\u2019s narrative highlight is Keller\u2019s attempt to force a return of memories by sitting in his seat with Hobbs nearby, and Hemmings intercutting past and present moments in a chilling sequence.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt care went into crafting a thriller whose tone keeps audiences in murky darkness until the twist ending (a slight extension, archived separately on the disc, features some pertinent dialogue), but perhaps the only motif that rings true are the kids in the playground, whose stalking game is a perfect metaphor for a mass of grim reapers smothering their victims with carnage.<\/p>\n

As a director, Hemmings output consisted of a few features, some teleplays, and several episodes of generic action TV series (Magnum, P.I.<\/strong>, The A-Team<\/strong>, In the Heat of the Night<\/strong>) which probably weren\u2019t creatively rewarding when compared to Survivor<\/strong>, but he proved his interest lay in action when he took over direction of some key sequences\u00a0and the editing of Turkey Shoot<\/strong> (1982), a film in which he began as executive producer but eased in as unofficial second unit director. His feature films are comprised of Running Scared<\/strong> (1972), Just a Gigolo<\/strong> (1978), The Survivor<\/strong> (1981), Race for the Yankee Zephyr<\/strong> (1981), Tab Hunter\u2019s Dark Horse<\/strong> (1992), and the little-seen western Lone Justice 3<\/strong> (1996).<\/p>\n

Severin\u2019s disc includes some rare Aussie extras that help contextualize the film. Hemmings appears in an extract from a talk show where he discusses first arriving in Hollywood, attending a nightclub soiree, and doing a magic trick.<\/p>\n

The goofy Australian talk show Clapperboard<\/a><\/strong> (erroneous billed as On Location<\/strong>) features interviews with Agutter who shares thoughts on arriving in Hollywood and shooting in Australia (her second after co-starring in The Riddle of the Sands<\/strong>); Joseph Cotton (who plays a priest) on his first trip to Australia and travelling with his wife; and actors Sumner, Cotterill, and Angela Punch McGregor (Newsfront<\/strong>, We of the Never Never<\/strong>) who has a small role as Keller\u2019s girlfriend Beth, and gives her take on film acting. Hostess Anne Wills is genial but a little too gosh-golly in awe of the stars, and her on-camera outfits alternate between interview and studio segments.<\/p>\n

Powell appears in a recent interview and discusses James Herbert\u2019s work (including his recent activity\u00a0recording audiobooks); and the Ginnane interviews also culled from the Not Quite Hollywood<\/strong> outtakes archive\u00a0feature background on the film\u2019s financing, production, and Ginnane\u2019s frustration with the Australian actor\u2019s union who at the time were proposing a vetting system (initiated and executed by themselves) to ensure foreign actors like Agutter and Powell and Cotton wouldn\u2019t take jobs away from native productions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legacy of James Herbert\u201d provides an overview of the author, whose filmed works include the CanCon \/ shot-in-Toronto killer rats film Deadly Eyes<\/strong>, (1982), Fluke<\/strong> (1995), the ghost story Haunted<\/strong> (1995), and the miniseries The Secret of Crickley Hall<\/strong> (2012). The piece is designed to give the improperly branded \u201cpoor man\u2019s Stephen King\u201d his due for writing concise, often graphic novels that went against the staid gothic novels of Britain, and giving British horror a new voice. Historians Chris Cooke and David Flint say Herbert wasn\u2019t crazy about the film version of The Survivor<\/strong>, but as Cooke aptly explains, his novels succeeded because of a unique balance of tone, imagery, and plotting which filmmakers rarely managed to get right when they tackled his early work.<\/p>\n

Severin\u2019s disc is near-perfect \u2013 the transfer is gorgeous, the extras neatly contextualize Survivor<\/strong> within the ozploitation genre and Ginnane\u2019s lengthy filmography \u2013 but the only thing missing is an isolated score track to showcase May\u2019s successful blend or orchestral and synth cues.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a menu authoring fubar on the Blu-ray: clicking on the link for the billed Clapperboard<\/strong> interview with Hemmings and Powell replays the Hemmings solo interview. (The interview is <\/em>present on the authored disc, but it\u2019s inaccessible, except with archiving software.) The relatively short (5:56) Q&A, however, is playable on Severin\u2019s DVD, and in the excerpt hostess & interviewer Wills is sandwiched between the two \u201chandsome men\u201d as they discuss filming Harlequin<\/strong>, nuances of film acting, and legendary actor Broderick Crawford (All the King\u2019s Men<\/a><\/strong>, Born Yesterday<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n

The Survivor<\/strong> was released around 2004 as a non-anamorphic bare bones DVD by Elite as a separate DVD and in the boxed set Aussie Horror Collection 2 (which also included 1988\u2019s The Dreaming<\/strong>, 1993\u2019s Voyage Into Fear<\/strong> \/ aka Encounters<\/strong>, and 1979\u2019s Snapshot<\/strong>. Scorpion Releasing\u2019s 2012 disc sports a commentary track with Ginnane and the label\u2019s \u2018nightmare hostess\u2019 Katarina Leigh Waters, which remains unique to that release. (Within their discussion, Ginnane reportedly cites actors Punch-McGregor and Sumner losing scenes to keep the film\u2019s running time and pacing more brisk.)<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2017 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a> —\u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a>
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\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

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