Survivor (1987)

A low budget, forgotten adventure film which focuses more on characters and philosophy than hard-hitting action, this dated but moderately impressive sci-fi film should be interesting viewing for fans of the genre. The makers of this film opt for a more thoughtful tone than most, as the "Survivor" wonders why the human race should still attempt to kill each other even as he blasts another survivor to death. The lack of budget means that any major action scenes are missing (the first sight of our hero is him tied to railings, as his survival and previous adventures are told in voice-over), although there are a fair amount of shoot-outs to keep action fans appeased.SURVIVOR benefits from good locations, especially the barren, bleak and windy desert which gusts around our hero's feet as he makes his way towards society. The desert also contains the rusty hulks of old, rotting ships which make for great visuals. In comparison, the dank underground base in which he finds himself at the end of the film is very atmospheric. The film is almost free of dialogue until the end, instead using voice-over narration as a means to communicate to the viewer the events which take place. I liked this style, as it reminded me of THE AFTERMATH, one of my favourite post-apocalyptic movies out there.Christopher Mayer is the hero with the '80s hair, and plays his role impassively yet with glimpses of humanity showing through. While he may not be the most appealing of heroes, I've seen a lot worse. Something that did annoy me was his weakness in the film - he's forever getting injured and fails to put up much of a fight, instead getting out of dangerous situations by the skin of his teeth at the last minute. I'm not saying I would have preferred some Van Damme ass-kicker but a bit more aggression/ability would have helped. The unknown Sue Kiel stars as the unconventional love interest and interestingly her character lends her own views to the proceedings. Richard Moll (who has carved a career in movie bad guys) is the philosophising villain who plans to produce a new society, and has a great character. Somewhat bizarrely, the British John Carson (who is best remembered as Squire Hamilton in PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES) turns up in a supporting role as an ally of the hero.The ending does venture into MAD MAX-style silliness what with its villains swinging around on chains and the like, but closes on a high with a great prolonged battle between Moll and Mayer in which the chief word is suspense. Otherwise this is a slow-moving movie which probably won't appeal to most fans looking for another action-packed MAD MAX rip-off. I can't say that I enjoyed watching it, but the South African visuals count for a lot and the change of pace certainly makes it one of the more original, and interesting, genre oddities.

That's what I asked myself when I saw the cover-art for SURVIVOR. The box just screams "Chip Mayer is... SURVIVOR"! Well, turns out that Christopher"Chip"Mayer played Vance Duke in the early 80's TV show THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. I found it of no importance as that particular show was just a bit before my time and I had only seen a couple of re-runs of it. SURVIVOR was Chip's feature film debut, but after that it was pretty much back to TV-work for him. He appeared in a whole lot of TV-series throughout the 90's, but never as a regular. So that might make one suspicious about the man's acting abilities.Anyway, on to SURVIVOR. This is one of the most off-beat movies set in a post-apocalyptic future you will ever encounter. It just might be the weirdest one I've come across and it's also a bit of a mess. So Chip Mayer stars as one of the few survivors of World War III. The reason he survived the war, is because he was a biologist/astronaut who was safely on board a shuttle in space when the war happened. We see nothing of his space adventures and Chip's character is introduced roaming the desert wastelands on his self-made vehicle driven by solar-energy. He nearly dies in a gun battle with another nomad and gets picked up by this silent, lonesome woman who lives on a stranded ship.Now, this may seem all your standard wasteland-future stuff, but by then you have already seen stock-footage of a space-shuttle launch and devastating mushroom-clouds, presented as flash-backs from our protagonist. You've also seen seen strange flash-forwards of unexplainable scenes that have yet to happen in the movie (Why? Don't ask me. Maybe Chip has the power to dream of things to come... too much radiation, I guess). And the weirdest thing of all: monologues and even dialogues are not seen being spoken. We hear them as the character's thoughts and reflections. Even when they're together the voices often can be heard off-screen. Strange.The movie actually is divided in two parts. The first part is slow and shows a lot of scenes portraying the desolate wasteland and the silent couple on the boat. The cinematography is over-all pretty beautiful. Once on the boat the movie slows down even more. The female doesn't seem to like Chip's company very much (she likes to be alone on her boat). But inevitably they get really naked and end up having sex in a cheesy soft-core scene, that (and I thought I would never say this) drags on way too long. And just when you start thinking "Happy end", the girl gets kidnapped.This is were we get to the second part of the movie. Supposedly, Chip was searching for a promised land of some sort. He never finds it, but he does stumble upon an underground community living in a subterranean power station. Then the inhabitants explain to Chip that they were living their lives in peace, denying access to any outsiders. That is until the evil Kragg (played by Richard Moll) showed up, took over and terrorizes the inhabitants. Chip figures out that it was Kragg who stole his girlfriend and is forced into the roll of hero. He must kill Kragg, save the enslaved inhabitants and find his girlfriend. Will he succeed? It's up to you to find out by sitting through this flick (Don't complain, I had to do the same).Now that second part feels like a different movie all together. The cinematography is darker. There's a bit more fighting (the fight between Chip and some of Kragg's scum hanging and swinging from chains was pretty cool). The strange off-screen voices are less present and there's even some room for spoken dialogues. We're also shown the complete scenes we saw fragments of in those incomprehensible flash-forwards during the first part of the movie. So, in a way, this all is mildly entertaining, because it keeps you wondering where it will all lead to eventually.But I can't say SURVIVOR is a good movie. There might be some interesting ideas and subplots present, but nothing is really done with that. It all basically leads to nowhere. And in the end not much happened during the whole movie and you'll be left wondering what the hell it was you have just been watching. Chip Mayer can't act, but that's covered up by making him say almost nothing throughout the whole movie (except for his silly thoughts). Kragg himself is a rather menacing figure, portrayed by a grim-looking Richard Moll. He has a nice monologue and he provides the end-boss fight for Chip. A rather peculiar fact is that Richard Moll also starred in another post-apocalyptic, more sci-fi orientated movie ten years later, called... THE SURVIVOR (1998). There he played an almost identical role as an evil character named Kyla. Needless to say that movie was also pretty bad. On a final note I'd like to mention the musical soundtrack, which can most of the time be described as the rest of the movie: off-beat and weird. But on at least two occasions the film-makers mess it up completely by putting this really bad and cheesy 80's soft-rock song on the soundtrack. Extremely bad move, as it is totally inappropriate and brings down the movie a level or two.So, yes, SURVIVOR might be considered a cult-movie within the post-apocalyptic genre. But often the line between "cult" and just plain "bad" is very thin. SURVIVOR, mostly, hangs with its full body in common badness, and occasionally peeks with its head over the border into the cult regions.

Man returns from space to find war has devastated the earth . . .starts promisingly with a solar powered train, and the hero almost dying, but alas we are not spared the rest of the film. What few people he comes across all try to kill him, except for a scary foreign girl that he becomes. . .erm. .. friendly with.Well, she gets kidnapped by some bad guy (what is it about the future? There's an apocalypse and suddenly everyone changes their name to Kragg) and being the only woman he's seen, he has to go off to save her. Not too bad a film in the "so bad it's good" sense. A rare accurate post-apocalyptic world - no water OR petrol.

The memory I have of this film goes a long way back ever since I saw the theatrical trailer (it actually got released in the Philipines back in '87). Recently I picked up the DVD (region 0) and I just like this film for unknown reasons really. Chip Meyer plays an astronaut who comes back to earth only to discover he just missed out on world war III. It starts in flashback style and alot will find this film a total bore (specially the second half) but if you like end of the war films, you should see this film. It's the narration perhaps (the actors don't really talk, just narrate their thoughts to us), is it the cheesy score? Is it the cool cover art that appealed to me? Maybe it's because I love films about the end of the world. Check out Damnation Alley, City Limits for more post-apocalyptic low-budget mayem.