The Survivalist (aka Jack Tillman,
Survivalist)
1987, USA
dir. Sig Shore
cast: Steve
Railsback, Marjoe Gortner, Cliff De Young
A mysterious
nuclear explosion in Siberia brings the superpowers to the verge of
nuclear war. Panic sweeps America and law and order collapses. The
Constitution is suspended, martial law is declared and the National
Guard mobilised. Jack Tillman is a construction contractor, Vietnam
vet and survivalist. After a run in with the National Guard at his
local bank, the Guard, headed up by local no good biker and Tillman's
long time rival Lt Youngman (Gortner with a grey mullet) decide he
must be made an example of. I say run in, he actually smashes the
front of the bank in with a JCB to get a safety deposit box where
he's got gold to barter with or something. As Tillman travels across
country to retrieve his son, he is pursued by the National Guard
biker gang.
Perhaps
surprisingly, there seems to be very few films aimed at the
survivalist demographic. This is one of them, playing out like your
average militia fantasy- society breaking down without a bomb being
dropped, the usual evil biker gang actually being part of the
government (you do wonder how they get by with long hair and fruity
make up in the military, perhaps this was a comment on the degeneracy
of the secular liberal state?) and the good, honest small business
man becoming the oppressed. It paints possibly one of the most
depressing pictures of humanity in any post-apocalypse film, everyone
turns into a mindless looter (with even the local hospital being
attacked by drug hungry junkies), his doctor friend is portrayed as
crazy for wanting to return to town to help people and is murdered
for his pick up truck and it's every man for himself in a way that
makes Panic In The Year Zero
look like a piece of bleeding heart liberal propaganda. That would be one thing if it was a half way entertaining film, but it's just a sub-par action movie with some ropey acting and undistinguished
action sequences, there's not even much in the way of unintentional
humour to commend it.
NB: this is
nothing to do with the Survivalist books by Jerry Ahern,which was a
popular post-apocalypse men's adventure series in the 1980s.
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