Sole Survivor (1970, dir Paul Stanley)
A real 'they don't make 'em like this anymore' film, this
CBS Friday Night Movie aired at the very beginning of 1970 - January 9, so the credits on the film still say 1969. I immediately thought of
The Twilight Zone when I watched this film and, indeed, when I checked, an early episode of the second season (the first of season two in production order, IIRC) was indeed based on the same historical event.
In this supernaturally-tinged drama, a team of military investigators in the late 1960s fly to the Libyan desert after discovering a crashed World War II bomber. Accompanying them is a one star general who, as a young navigator, had bailed out of the aircraft and was the... sole survivor. However, the aircraft crashed hundreds of miles further away from where the general bailed out, calling his conduct into question.
This, in itself, is a great setup for a film. However, where screenwriter Guerdon Trueblood (fantastic name!) really scores is by including the ghosts of the five airmen who perished in the flight, who have been haunting the crash site for 17 years unable to leave. The airmen have their own stories, but also act as a 'Greek chorus' of sorts, unseen by the rest of the cast.
And what a cast we have! The main investigator focused on is Major Michael Devlin, played by Vince Edwards. Devlin is haunted by a failing of his own in the past that led to tragedy, and thus becomes suspicious when he arrives at the crash site. It's not just suspicion that drives him, though. He feels an intense empathy for Brigadier General Russell Hamner, played superbly by Richard Baseheart. Hamner doesn't need ghosts to be haunted by his actions on the plane in WWII. He's a man conflicted as he reaches the crash site, desperately needing to face up to the past, equally to run from it and protect his reputation. Devlin's boss, Lt Colonel Josef Gronke (William Shatner, straight off some sci-fi show no one's ever heard of!) is stuck between his old blood-and-thunder days and becoming a third rate 'politician', placating the General and pressuring Devlin not to push the investigation.
The phantom airmen have some limited ability to move objects when out of sight of the living, but they can't make themselves known. Until their bodies are found, they're stuck by the plane. Of the airmen, the strongest character is Tony, played by Lou Antonio. Of all the ghosts, Tony is the most convinced he'll get to go back to the USA, because his body is buried beneath the tail of the plane.
It's ironic that it's Tony who ultimately faces being left alone out there, undiscovered. The airmen, led by their captain, Mac (Patrick Wayne), died out in the desert. As time goes by, the airmen become increasingly frustrated, as Hamner uses his rank to force the investigators to deliver an early report...
The film is fabulous. It's maturely written, well directed and taken seriously by all of its cast. In this era of excessively fast-paced dramas, filled with glib, smart-ass one-liners to undercut the tension, it's almost a shock to be reminded how effective a more methodically-paced production can be. There are no fancy special effects here. The ghosts wander around casting shadows, they sit on the fuselage and talk, they stand next to our oblivious living characters. There are no cheesy dissolve effects or split screen effects. This is a small enough drama that you could probably adapt it for the stage quite easily. It relies mostly on the fabulous performances making the best of excellent writing.
The music score is written by Swiss-American composer Paul Glass. Glass, the son of silent film actor and producer Gaston Glass, is a serious composer who has dipped into film scores during his long career. His score is low key - I love how older productions don't plaster every scene with music, telling me how to react! The score reflects the wistful, elegiac qualities of the film, especially using a harmonica, which is beloved of one of the aircrew, Gant (Lawrence P Casey). It's not a hugely memorable score, but it does its job of assisting the drama, which I wish more musicians would do these days.
Director Paul Stanley's work is nothing showy. It would seem negative to use a term such as 'workmanlike', but this is a film where the fireworks need to come from the performances and Stanley allows everyone to shine in his role - this is a majority male film with no women in the desert location scenes. That doesn't bother me in the slightest - nowadays there would be an insistence on having a mixed cat, which I think would neither particularly have benefited nor harmed the film, although I think the casting is perfect as it is - but some people in the present day who don't respect old films would likely kick up a fuss about it.
One criticism is the day-for-night filming. I perfectly understand why it's done, but there are shadows everywhere. I've never understood why filmmakers don't use a simple trick to cover for it: use a shot of a full moon to establish the scene. If the moon is full, it explains the shadows! It's a minor quibble though, as day-for-night shot this way was common for the time.
All in all, this is a melancholy meditation on death, guilt, the mistakes we make in our lives and how we learn to live with them. Everyone in the film is haunted in some way by his past and the presence of the ghosts only enhances that, making a metaphor literal for Baseheart's Hamner.
Paul Stanley was already a prolific director (and occasional producer) and would continue to be so for many years to come, working on dozens of famous TV series. He died in 2002 at around the age of 80. Guerdon Trueblood died in 2021, aged 87. He would work on a number of low grade horror films (including the infamous
Jaws 3D), as well as the the miniseries adaptation of John Jakes's
The Bastard from Jakes's
Kent Family Chronicles series of novels. Trueblood was the grandson of Colonel William 'Billy' Mitchell, the 'father' of the US Air Force.
The first time I saw Vince Edwards and Richard Baseheart was in the 1980s when they were both in the pilot of
Knight Rider, although they didn't share any scenes. Edwards was a familiar face on countless TV shows and low budget films (I particularly remember
Space Raiders, which was a Roger Corman cheapie that reused the special effects and music from
Battle Beyond the Stars.) Richard Baseheart's fabulous voice was familiar to me throughout childhood as the voice of Wilton Knight on
Knight Rider. Basehart was another prolific actor whose film career kicked off in the 1940s and he happily alternated between TV and cinema. He died in 1984.
Lou Antonio - an Actors Studio alumnus - appeared in Cool Hand Luke a couple of years before this film and remained a familiar face for decades to come on film and in TV. He still around in his 90s. Lawrence P Casey, another face you've seen dozens of times on film and TV, is in his 80s. Patrick Wayne (the second son of
the John Wayne) has also seemingly been on our screens forever. He's now in his 80s.
Cinematographer James Crabe went on to lens, among others,
Rocky,
The China Syndrome and
Night Shift. He received an Oscar nomination for Rocky director John W Avildsen's film
The Formula.
William Shatner... I have no idea what happened to him: the guy just vanished off the face of the Earth!
The real life story the film is inspired by (and the
Twilight Zone episode) is that of the 1958 recovery of the B-24D Liberator Bomber 'Lady Be Good'. The plane disappeared in 1943. The crew - who had never flown together before and only recently arrived in Libya - are believed to have flown past their base in Libya during a sandstorm and continued to fly for hundreds of miles until their fuel ran out. After bailing out, they walked on until they died of dehydration. It makes you think... we all live such secure lives in the West, yet a couple of generations ago, men like us could wind up dead in a desert, our desiccated corpses left undiscovered for years.
Sole Survivor is available on Blu-ray here in the UK. The picture quality is pretty good - not reference quality and not restored in any way - but I actually like the occasional bit of dirt and hair in the gate to remind me I'm watching real celluloid film. The sound is fine for a late 1960s TV production.
The film is more than worthwhile hunting down. It's dramatic, deeply melancholy and perhaps a little cathartic too. I highly recommend it.