Robert Powell and Jenny Agutter star in this Australian production of a pilot and a medium who have need of each other after an air crash.

Powell was the pilot of an airliner which crashed on coming in for a landing at an airport. Mysteriously he was the only survivor and he survived with barely a scratch, but with retrograde amnesia, he cannot remember any of the details of the crash.

Agutter is a psychic who is having a bad time seeing visions of what happened and apparently communicating with those who died. What they discover about the crash the story for the rest of the film.

This film marks the farewell appearance of Joseph Cotten who has a small role as a priest. Soon afterwards this most classy of leading men from the golden days of Hollywood suffered a stroke and was forcibly retired from the cinema.

It's not a bad film, Survivor, but it plays like a blown up version of an episode of the TV series One Step Beyond. It might be worth a look if that's how your tastes run.

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!

In 2000, Final Destination saw Death catching up with a group of passengers who narrowly avoid being killed in an air disaster. In 1984, Sole Survivor saw the only survivor of a plane crash being haunted by the ghosts of the dead. And four years before that, The Survivor centred on a pilot who miraculously walks from the wreckage of his downed passenger plane, only to be menaced by the spirits of those who weren't so lucky. Each successive film was inspired by the previous one, with The Survivor being based on a James Herbert novel. Rather surprisingly, the first film is the weakest of the three versions, having neither the creepy atmosphere of Sole Survivor, nor the imaginatively gory death scenes of Final Destination.

The film stars Robert Powell, whose face and curly hair upsets me; it also features Jenny Agutter, who makes me feel all funny in a good way. Unfortunately, the lovely Jenny really doesn't make up for Powell's presence (I'm still angry at having wasted time watching him in Harlequin, made the previous year),or for the fact that the film becomes incredibly slow and very boring once the airplane crash is over. The Survivor meanders aimlessly for an hour and a half, culminating with a twist ending that is more than a tad confusing: has Powell's character been dead the whole time? Have the dead returned to claim the only survivor? Is Jenny Agutter's character a ghost as well? I don't really have the answers, and I doubt you will either.

NB. The name of Powell's character, David Keller, is remarkably similar to David Kessler, the name of the protagonist in Agutter's next film, An American Werewolf in London. It doesn't end well for either man.