There is an explosion, the airplane has to make an emergency landing, it seems to succeed, everything comes to a standstill, almost all the passengers are unconscious from the shock, and then everything explodes - 300 casualties, everyone dies, but one man emerges from the plane alive, the pilot, Robert Powell, who always made highly interesting roles, and this is another of them. A girl on the ground who witnessed the whole aircrash gets in touch with him, and they try to work out what caused the accident together. She is very much troubled by the spirits of the casualties, mostly screaming women and children, and she thinks he can help them out. They reconstruct the whole incident and finally arrive at some answers, far too late but anyway. The casualties have been added to in the meanwhile, there is an insolent paparazzo and his girl friend, and finally we arrive at the motive and the source. I have never experienced David Hemmings as a director earlier, but he managed to untie this clot of mysteries rather well in the end, and the old Joseph Cotten appears as a reasonable priest - he was 75 at the time. On the whole it's a good metaphysical-parapsychological film, although slow and meditative, but it does get the airplane flying.
Review of The Survivor
