The Survivor (1981)

Very Cool!!!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This spooky little film is full of the supernatural imagery familiar to us from other good ghostly films (such as DON'T LOOK NOW). Filmed in Australia, the story of the man surviving the plane crash and being plagued by ghosts is both intriguing and dramatic. Director David Hemmings is adept at serving up disturbing images, from the burned young girl to the photographs of the dead. I have read the James Herbert novel on which this film is based before and from what I can remember it sticks pretty well to the source material.Robert Powell is on top form as the haunted (and in the end, haunting) pilot and he is given solid support from Jenny Agutter as the psychic he teams up with. Expect lots of shivers and chills instead of in your face horror and you'll find yourself enjoying this little mystery, which copes well with a low budget and is well worth your time. Not one for watching alone late at night!

This is a pretty cool film, and I have been surprised at how much it has been ignored over the years. Halliwell's Film Guide doesn't list it at all. It's a chilling, atmospheric horror story that plays on the audience's deepest fears about what lies in the dark. That said, the book is still better and alot more unsettling and disturbing. All the James Herbert novels I've read are very graphic and go into a great detail about sex and death, although I wouldn't say they make good bedtime reading.

For some reason this film never won the affection of either its peers or the viewing audience at the time. It played to half empty theaters, barely covered its production cost and was unceremoniously tossed out of everyone's subconscious. Yet its not even a bad film, I would venture to suggest a most interesting study of the paranormal and well directed by former BLOW UP star David Hemmings.Robert Powell is Captain Keller who's 747 suffers a bomb explosion just before take-off and 300 odd passengers are incinerated as the plane explodes in flames. A short time later Keller is found wandering from the burning wreckage unharmed and quite unable to fathom how he has survived. The mystery deepens when a rapidly convened investigation concludes that there is no possible way ANYONE could have survived the explosion and heat blast, wherever they were in the plane.As Keller embarks on his fateful odyssey, he and the audience are taken down lanes that both THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE may have trodden..and this was almost a generation earlier! The viewer needs to suspend belief and take things for what he sees (or thinks he sees) A really intelligent Aussie flick that you will get as much out of as you are prepared to put in. Always good to see Joseph Cotton and Jenny Agutter!

This little known movie should be seen by anyone who thinks Aussie films are all mindless travelogues with idiotic characters.After a catastrophic plane crash, rescuers are surprised to see the pilot walking unhurt from the twisted, burning wreckage. The pilot (Robert Powell) can offer no explanation as to how he survived the explosion that killed every other person on the plane. The tension mounts when the investigation proves that the crash was so severe that the pilot could not have POSSIBLY survived no matter where he was on the plane, and yet there he is.This is a well-crafted paranormal drama, with each new revelation concerning the crash leading you deeper into intrigue.Also, it was made 19 years before Unbreakable, which has some very similar plot elements.