Review of Survivor

Survivor (1987)
How to make a movie with zero budget, an old rusty factory, abandoned ship, and desert for filming locations, as well as an attractive actress willing to show some skin
7 June 2013
Even among forgotten movies, this movie is probably forgotten. It's so obscure that there isn't even a Motion Picture Association of America logo or seal at the end of the final credits, and even Grade-Z Golan-Globus Cannon movies got those. I'm insanely curious about the background of how this movie got made, and my guess is that some low-rent producer came up with the idea based on whatever old sets and plane tickets he could muster together.

That said, this movie has the kind of scruffy charm you could only get from a 1980s post-apocalyptic straight-to-video film. The banal offbeat locations give this movie its boost. Makes sense, though: if the world has been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, who wouldn't want to live in an underground factory in the middle of a desert with a pool inside? And if you have an attractive actress, why not use her in the most awkwardly-long '80s-style softcore sex scene ever filmed? Why this scene was placed into a violent post-apocalyptic science fiction movie is beyond me, but then again I'd love to find out what was going on behind the scenes.

Movies like this defy any conventional star rating. Who was the intended audience for a movie like this? How did Richard Moll("Bull") from TV's "Night Court" get cast as the villain? Why was this the director's first and only film? What is he doing now? Just like the unexplained weirdness of the entire movie, such questions only heighten the mystery. Perhaps if the world is ever destroyed by nuclear war, survivors will find old VHS copies of movies like this and wonder what the heck society was thinking.
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