Total Sci-Fi’s Guide to the Incredibly Strange and Obscure in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Movies

The Facts

Written by Guerdon Trueblood
Directed by Paul Stanley
Produced by Wally Burr, Steve Shagan
Music: Paul Glass
Cast: Vince Edwards, Richard Basehart, William Shatner
Running time: 87 minutes
Also Known As: N/A

The Plot

Five survivors of a crashed World War II bomber haunt their plane, while investigators clash over the fate of the doomed flight 17 years later…

The Lowdown

Sole Survivor may be a little-known early-1970s TV movie, but for anyone who did see it at an impressionable age, it was unforgettable.

The story was based on the real-life discovery of the remains of a B-24 Liberator bomber in 1959 in the Libyan desert. The ‘Lady Be Good’ had crashed in 1943 following a bombing raid on Naples. As well as this TV movie, that discovery formed the basis for the Twilight Zone episode ‘King Nine Will Not Return’, which people often mistake for Sole Survivor when recalling “the TV movie about the ghost airmen”.


Shot in the El Mirage Dry Lake in California, the majority of the movie takes place in the one location, around the wreck of the bomber aircraft (the exception being some establishing scenes of the crash investigators assembling, shot during a rain storm as an effective contrast to the dry heat of the desert scenes).

The core of the film’s success is the well-drafted script by Guerdon Trueblood (an early work from a writer who often wrote on military or flight-related subjects: he was the grandson of a founder of the US Air Force). Trueblood deftly draws the characteristics of each character into the drama (whether ghost or investigator) through the dialogue: we learn enough about each man to get a handle on him, and the characters are defined through their actions and moral viewpoints. This is most effective, perhaps, with William Shatner’s investigator. Two years from retirement and a military pension, he’s happy to go through the motions and give the military brass the outcome they want, rather than make any effort to get to the truth of the crash.

Director Paul Stanley does his best to liven things up, resulting in a few very effective and haunting moments. He makes the most of the sparse desert location and the TV movie’s biggest prop — the wreck of the bomber itself.

Cult Cast

Cult icon William Shatner came to Sole Survivor following the cancellation of Star Trek after three seasons, playing a pivotal but supporting role. Perhaps in an effort to bolster his leading man credentials, Shatner whips his top off at least twice during this movie: considering it is set in the heat of the Libyan desert, it’s surprising that he’s the only cast member who does so… Shatner’s most significant role in recent years has been playing Denny Crane in legal drama The Practice and its spin-off Boston Legal.

Richard Basehart plays the title character — the navigator who bailed from the flight early and survived, leaving his comrades to die in the crash. He’s best known for his role as Admiral Harriman Nelson in Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. His career included many films and much television, but he’s probably remembered by American audiences for his documentary narration work. He died in 1984, aged 70.


Director’s Cut

Paul Stanley was a journeyman American TV director who died in 2002. His work included episodes of Have Gun — Will Travel from 1957 to the Richard Dean Anderson-starring MacGyver in the mind-1980s. The TV movie Sole Survivor was just another work-for-hire job, but it’s probably the production he’ll be remembered for. Stanley did make an effort to give the film some visual verve, given the limited setting and budget.

Cult Moments

There are a couple of lovely moments that offer the kind of frisson only cult movies can deliver. The opening 10 minutes or so are great as it slowly becomes clear, through what the downed crew are saying to each other, that they’re dead. There’s no pussyfooting around with a surprise twist here: the characters are dead, and they know it, and the viewer knows it within a few minutes of the film beginning. The second sequence comes when a distraught Richard Basehart, guilty as he survived, recalls the crash and we get a flashback of events from his point-of-view.


WTF? Moment

Haunted by his abandonment of the crew, Richard Basehart’s guilty navigator is literally haunted by the fallen airmen. Having been invisible to everyone else throughout the movie, they become visible to a drunken Basehart near the end, driving him to confess to his deceptions and lead the investigators to vital evidence that uncovers the truth of the crash. First, Basehart sees the crew in their positions on the plane, only for their ghosts to then become visible in front of him. The most memorable moment for many viewers is the end, as one-by-one the crewmembers vanish as their bodies are discovered and laid-to-rest at last.

Behind-the-Scenes

El Mirage Dry Lake in California has been used in a host of movies including recent productions There Will Be Blood, Transformers and modern classics like Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Creators Talk

“I have been searching for well over 30 years for a copy of this Made for Television Movie. I loved the script when I first read it, and although I had a very small part (the British Co-Pilot who discovers the grounded remains of the plane), it was a memorable shoot. I am sure it is in some vault somewhere. If I ever run into William Shatner I will ask him if he has a copy. Or Patrick Wayne. There are just a few of the actors still kicking around and in those days getting a copy of our work was hard. Taping machines were rare.” —Ian Abercrombie


Availability

Not officially available, except as a long OOP VHS tape. Sole Survivor can be found on the internet if you know where to look…

Online Resources

http://shatnerstoupee.blogspot.com/2010/01/sole-survivor-toupological-analysis.html [An unusual analysis of William Shatner’s career through his varying toupees]

Remake

Besides the TV movie and the Twilight Zone episode, a similar plot was played out in the James Herbert novel (and subsequent film) The Survivor. No remake seems to be on the cards.

The Bottom Line

Well remembered by those of an impressionable age when they saw it, Sole Survivor may seem pedestrian now after The Sixth Sense. However, it’s an entertaining, effective and well-written tale worth tracking down…

By Brian J. Robb