Survive!

source: Survive!

Supervivientes de los Andes

Disney later remade this film and called it ALIVE and hired many white casts(?!). At least SURVIVE is true to real life as they were mostly Mexican on that plane). In a sense it is true, as most of these actors on the plane are Mexicans. Yes, there's white people in Mexico also. So the Mexican actors where also "white casts". LOL. In real life they were (are) Uruguayans. (they were the Uruguayan rugby team of that year). If you go to Uruguay, you'll see how that country is a nearly pure white country. United States is a "cafe au lait" one. Come to the Big Apple! So don't be surprised. I'm not saying white is good or bad. It is just the stereotype of some comments. They're all over.

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.

One of the worst things a film studio can do is exploit the tragedies of others, commercializing a 'shock' or 'gore' factor in order to sell tickets to be able to buy their Birch a new diamond necklace. Another worst thing is to totally misrepresent the true facts of an incredible saga by fabricating events, dialog and images to the director's own liking. Lastly, one of the worst things a film studio can do is to use bottom-of-the-barrel actors and shoot it all on a sound stage that was rented for fifty cents a day. All three of these travesties the makers of this film are guilty of. This is, hands-down, the worst movie I have ever seen, and I've seen thousands. A score of '1' is too good for this waste of celluloid. Not only should the filmmakers be ashamed for making it, they should be ashamed for negatively exploiting the heroes of this story, which are the people who experienced this tragedy firsthand, both the living and the dead.

After reading somewhere that this film was never released in the UK, I thought I'd write & let you know that after reading the book by Piers Paul Reid ( which was the only book ever to make me cry ) full of emotion, My friend & I went to the Odeon in York to watch this film which in the 70's was very graphic for the time, you have to put it into perspective of the time, we had St Johns ambulance active in the cinema when the Exorcist was shown, sex & violence were censored heavily let alone cannibalism, anyway my mate fainted but to this day Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa have been hero's & an inspiration to me since the 70's

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.

This movie made so much money for Paramount Pictures that it made the producers went on to produce many big films. All they did was pick up a Low-budget Mexican film, clean it up, and ad some scenes and released it wide all across America. The plot is based on a true story of the Andes Mountain Plane crash where the survivors had to eat human flesh to survive. (Disney later remade this film and called it ALIVE and hired many white casts(?!). At least SURVIVE is true to real life as they were mostly Mexican on that plane). The so-called graphic violence is cheap and cheezy and is shown un-cut on Tv alot. Recommened if you are into these type of film. The director went on to make Universal tons of money in GUYANA CULT OF THE DAMMED 4 years later.

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...?