Survive! (1976)

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely brilliant

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

SURVIVE! is a Mexican version of the famous true story about the team of rugby players from Uruguay whose plane crashed over the Andes, trapping the survivors in an icy wasteland. Director Rene Cardona spent a lengthy career making B-movies, many of them in the horror and wrestling genres, and unsurprisingly he enhances the horrific elements of this particular story. Cannibalism plays an important role in the film and it's depicted in a surprisingly explicit way for the era, which makes this film much more realistic than you might expect. The cast members give average performances but the down-to-earth style of shooting adds to the aforementioned realism and the script sticks to survival staples rather than adding in flashbacks or melodrama. The plane cash is also quite well staged.

I saw this flick on the big screen as a kid and loved it -- cheeziness and all. Recently, I found a copy on video and checked it out again. Badly made, sure... schlocky fun, most definitely. It still packs an entertaining punch. It's much more fun than the dull Disney version ("Alive"). The only thing "Alive" did better were the special effects. If you're a lover of B-movies, I highly recommend "Survive", not to mention all the other Rene Cardona Jnr movies... and the Mexican wrestling flicks made by his father (Rene Cardona Snr). "Survive" is long overdue for DVD special edition treatment. Are you listening, all you kind folk, at Anchor Bay...?

Making a film based on a true story, particularly one as incredible and horrifying as the 1972 Andean plane crash, is hard for even the best filmmakers. But the Mexicans behind this forgettable and cheap exploitation flick don't even try! The actual names of both the survivors and the casualties of the Uruguayan air force plane crash have ALL been altered, the crash itself is obviously staged in a very slip-shod manner, and the cannibalism aspect has been unnecessarily and gorily played up. Shockingly, it made a ton of money on both sides of the border. Thankfully, thought, it has mercifully been forgotten. But the same people behind this would later give us the equally revolting GUYANA: CULT OF THE DAMNED!This cheap horror exploitation flick necessitated the making of ALIVE some fifteen years later. That film was a masterpiece. SURVIVE!, to put it mildly, is not.

Nobody will read this review, because nobody saw the movie. I saw it late night on cable,soon after 1993's outstanding "Alive" was released. I was curious to see it and compare the two. "Survive!" is shockingly bad, dated beyond belief, and bears such a close resemblance to "Airplane!" that I have to now wonder if their inspiration was at least partially taken from this 1976 stinker. For one thing, it is poorly dubbed into English, and that would be forgivable, but the ineptness of the effects of the plane crash scene is such that I wished I had recorded it, so I could laugh at it again and again.