Tuesday 25 October 2011

The Survivor

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Year:1981
Country of origin:Australia
Director:David Hemmings
Genre:Spooky plane crash shenanigans
Starring:Robert Powell, Jenny Agutter, Joseph Cotten
Rating:2/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083144/
Tagline:A tale of death, and of an evil which transcends death
Favourite line:None worth mentioning

Fairly tame dramatisation of a very good James Herbert novel.

Robert Powell plays Keller, the pilot of an airliner that crashes in mysterious circumstances. More mysterious still, he is the only survivor, walking away all but unscathed from a crash that investigators believe nobody could have escaped from. Things take a disturbing twist when Agutter's (yum, yum) Hobbs takes an interest, a woman claiming to have psychic abilites who believes she is experiencing visions of the events that took place on board prior to the accident.
Can the duo work together to solve the mystery?
Is Keller really alive, or just a phantom?
Can Powell stop reminding you of Jesus of Nazareth every time his pallid visage fills the screen?
And, most crucially of all, at what point will Jenny Agutter get her kit off.
The answers to the above: Yes, neither, almost and never.

It's all very low key and plodding, and never really grabs the attention.
The direction is sloppy for the most part, though the sequences on board the 'plane are decent enough and, most annoyingly, the musical score is almost unbearable at times, all crashing cymbals and shrieking brass.
Not great but then, being an adaptation of a top quality horror novel, I wasn't expecting miracles.

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