Title:
Sole Survivor
What Year?:
1982 (copyright), 1984 (confirmed theatrical release)
Classification:
Irreproducible Oddity/ Prototype
Rating:
Downright Decent! (4/5)
With this review, I’m back with another redo of a much older review on my old blog. Like Shanks, it is one of the most unique in the genre, enough that I seriously considered including it elsewhere. A major factor in my decision was that I realized just how many of the entries for this feature were from the 1980s. Moving Shanks back to this feature partly remedied this, but that also meant bringing in this one, from the early 1980s. I decided that this would be a further opportunity to consider just how creative the genre was in the decade, in this case to the point that I spent a very long time debating whether it belonged under horror, science fiction or the middle ground of "urban" fantasy. Here is Sole Survivor, the very weird zombie movie that on top of everything else anticipated Final Destination.
Our story begins with shots of deserted and desolate city streets, ending with a shot of a woman on a bus with a revolver. We then see the same woman, named Denise, survive a grisly plane crash, first seen in a vision of a crazy actress she crossed the country to work with. Denise seems to recover quickly, and soon strikes up a romance with a doctor. But she begins to see strange people following her, seemingly aided by a series of accidents and mishaps, all while the doctor unhelpfully warns her about “survivor syndrome”. As the encounters become more sinister, she and the doctor realize (with further input from a comic-relief coroner) that these are not ordinary prowlers but dead bodies returned to life, seemingly by the cosmic forces of fate or Death itself. Their mission is clearly to finish off the final survivor, and they prove to have no qualms about killing anyone else who gets in the way. Denise must go on the run to escape the undead, but can anywhere be safe from the Grim Reaper’s repo men?
Sole Survivor was written and directed by Tom Eberhardt in his directorial debut. The film starred Anita Skinner, otherwise known for the 1978 film Girlfriends, with producer/ actress Caren Larkey as the actress/ psychic Karla Davis and the late Kurt Johnson as the doctor/ love interest. Other cast included William Snare as the coroner and future action star Leon as a gang member. The movie would become known as a possible source for Final Destination, though it was itself similar to a 1970 made-for-TV movie of the same name as well as the 1961 film Carnival Of Souls. The finished film was released in either late 1983 or early 1984 by International Film Marketing, which Larkey criticized for shortening the film as well as various financial disputes. An 85-minute cut with commentary by Larkey was released on DVD by Code Red in 2008, now a semi-rare item. The disc includes a theatrical trailer with shots of a zombie-like creature not in the actual film. Other versions available include a foreign Blu Ray release and a DVD-R 2-pack with the film Interface.
As with many things zombie-related, I first heard of this movie from Dendle’s The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia. I believe I must have looked it up based on what I remembered from the book sometime before the DVD release; it was only quite a bit later that I reread the book and found it largely negative concerning the movie. I finally watched it through Netflix, and bought it just before it was getting expensive, still for far more than I could really afford at the time. It became the first zombie movie review I did for my old Exotroopers blog, which I ultimately cited in several reviews for this feature including one of Eberhardt’s Night of the Comet (not included here). It has remained a favorite of mine in the genre, viewed often enough that I had already thought of most of what I wanted to say well before I watched it for this review. Ultimately, what made me think of coming back to it here rather than in my actual zombie-movie review feature has been a growing recognition of how much it “feels” like science fiction rather than horror. A big part of what I hoped to achieve going into this review has been a better understanding why this is the case.
That brings us straight to the already-debated question of the movie’s influences, both before and later. On that front, what this film and Final Destination have always made me think of first and foremost is the Change War series by SF titan Fritz Leiber, but I have no illusions of the likelihood that those associated with either film knew of it. For the movie landscape, the movies I find most appropriate for comparison are The Terminator and Re-Animator, both made or released at what I would consider effectively the same time. (See also the sequel to the latter.) The obvious parallels to the first movie as well as Leiber’s stories lie in the concept of trying to change history in a space -time continuum that can directly resist alteration. I find ties to the latter movie not just in the presence of the undead but in the potential influence of H.P. Lovecraft. In these terms in particular, Sole Survivor captures the qualities of Lovecraftian cosmic terror better than the Band crew did working from one of Lovecraft’s own stories. At the same time, both movies effectively add a clinical element to the atmospheric horror, in this case heightened by the almost non-existent makeup and effects.
Moving forward, I have already extolled the undead, easily the most resourceful on record. Beyond their evident intelligence and unnerving stealth, the most impressive thing about them is their indifference to collateral casualties. If their motive is to prevent some greater catastrophe from a changed timeline or an imbalance of the supernatural forces of life and death, they still clearly favor termination with prejudice. More curiously, they don’t show that much concern when an attack fails; the one sign of frustration is a shot of a clenched fist as Denise drives off. Their most disconcerting habit is returning to the original scene of their demise and apparently deanimating after a mission has succeeded or failed. What is most intriguing is how the scenes of the undead are intermixed with shots of technology and modern life. A number of times, Eberhardt’s direction focuses on machinery, sometimes for a story point and sometimes for little more than atmosphere: The unforgettable shot of a radar screen, a stopped clock, a malfunctioning elevator, and any number of vehicle troubles. It is here that the science-fictional vibe is strongest, yet it is also where we get the surest proof that forces greater than the undead themselves are in play. It’s enough to raise a “fan theory” in my mind, that the plane crash itself was just the first (???) attempt to wipe Denise out of the timeline.
For the rest of the good and bad, it is enough to consider the performances from Skinner and Johnson. Skinner gives a fine and nuanced performance, often nearly silent but at other times jarringly bubbly. The tone is set early with an effective recounting of a misadventure with the flesh-and-blood repo men, foreshadowing a counterintuitively believable tendency to become euphoric in the face of danger. By comparison, Johnson as the doctor gets an awkward start, initially serving as an exposition generator on survivor’s guilt. As his character further develops, however, his behavior becomes more natural as he wavers between believing Denise and questioning her behavior. The doctor finds a foil in the coroner, who seems unperturbed when he deduces from lividity (also a story point in Return of the Living Dead) that a deanimated revenant died standing up. The one real “problem” is that the final act unfolds far too fast to bring a sense of emotional resolution beyond a poignant smile from Denise, leaving us to wonder if Eberhardt’s cut was really any better. As an extra dark footnote, Johnson died of complications from AIDS in 1986.
As with the last original review, I’ve now gone on longer than usual without getting to the “one scene”. I could easily have picked out two or three in advance, yet the one I decided on was a real surprise. After her narrowest escape, Denise drives into town and pulls over, distraught from her ordeal and the deaths of several others. She becomes visibly panicked when she discovers the car will not restart. At the peak of her meltdown, there is a pounding on the vehicle, and she comes out with a gun already drawn. She discovers merely a group of youths led by Leon, who quickly talks the others into backing down. Denise abandons the vehicle and runs across the street to catch the bus seen in the beginning. What got this one in is a final shot as the bus drives away, revealing a silhouette of a figure on a street corner she just left. It’s a small detail among many that I’m honestly not sure I ever noticed before. There’s no closeup of a grimacing ghoul, no last rush after the bus, just a shot of the figure walking somewhat jerkily out of frame. It’s one of the clearest views we get of a revenant actually in motion, slow but by no means clumsy. It also gives a clear sense of the mentality of whatever force or entity is behind them, determined to succeed but methodical enough to wait for another chance that will certainly come.
In closing, the best thing I can add is a quote from Dendle’s definitive volume, where he remarks: “(T)hese thoroughly malevolent undead have a cool and sober patience even for zombies (but) on the whole there isn’t much to distinguish them from the weirdos that also hang around city streets staring at people.” This is precisely where I disagree with critics of this movie, in this case respectfully. It is their ability to blend in and bide their time that makes these revenants uniquely unnerving, and surely this is the movie’s most intentionally pointed social commentary. If you are their intended target, or even in their way, this lot are as deadly as any multiplying horde, and there won’t be a Kyle Reese to tell you why they are after you in the first place. That is as disturbing and post-modern as “urban” horror can get, one more reason this movie should be heralded for its intentions as much as its execution.
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