FVI WEEK: Survival Run (1979)

Chip (Vincent Van Patten) and his friends Stephanie (Susan Pratt), Brian (Robert Weaver), Angela (Robert Weaver), Sal (Cosie Costa) and Dianne (Randi Meryl) just wanted to head out to the desert, get drunk and probably have sex. Then they crashed their van and have to walk through the hot sands to get help, running into Kandaris (Peter Graves) and Professor (Ray Milland), who seem like good guys but nope, they’re not. Everyone is in trouble. You are too, because that poster looked so exciting and then this movie just seems like it’s grinding you into pure ennui.

Yes, Larry Spiegel directed and wrote this (he also made Evil Town a few years later) and you start to feel like this is the kind of movie that they keep on hand for when you have panic attacks and need to calm down and finally get some sleep. Maybe I’m letting you in a bit too deeply into my life. And I hate writing about a movie just to tear it down, but this film has Graves and Milland in charge of a Mexican drug gang while some kids just want to have soft swinging while camping in a van.

Oh yeah — Spiegel also produced Death Game, so that’s where I recognize him from.

I wish I could report this was better than it was. But…it isn’t.