And somehow they still manage suspense at the end!
check out Open Water
Based on the true story of two scuba divers accidentally stranded in shark infested waters after their tour boat has left.
Well done movie with a very chilling premise
I like that one because it’s soo unusual to see the rich old man emerge as the can-do hero.
Some really good ideas here, thanks everyone! This should keep me busy for awhile.
Second this one. The book was harrowing, and so was the movie.
Not a movie, but a book: The Long Walk about Sławomir Rawicz. He was a Polish officer dragged (literally, through the snow chained to a truck) to a Soviet Gulag, escaped with other Poles through Siberia, across the Gobi desert, over the Himlayas, to British India. (probably not a true story, but still a good read).
Definately a true story, but also a book not a movie, Eddie Richenbacker’s Seven Came Through. In 1941 he was on a airliner that crashed as it landed in Atlanta. Broken bones and one eye hanging out of the socket. Less than two years later he was touring the Pacific in a B17 when it ditched in the ocean, and he survived over two weeks in a life raft.
Not quite survival but effectively subsistence living in Alaska while studying wolves: Never Cry Wolf
I remember the first time I saw that, I’d never read the book or even heard the story. Even now I can’t really describe the depth of my amazement at the whole scenario. Hopeless situation gets more hopeless by an order of magnitude…and then the other guy cuts your rope.
Now the situation is so far beyond hopeless that there’s hardly any way to describe how hopeless it is. And then, after a ray of hope, a hopeless 5 mile crawl over a broken glacier and boulder field with a broken leg.
Only to make it back to camp just as the guy who had a relatively easy go of it had recouped for a few days enough to burn your clothes and was just hours away from leaving you for dead after all that.
Damn. Damn. Hard to watch that and feel like anything but a pussy over any obstacle in life.
The Earthling.
William Holden’s last (really) leading role, just him and Ricky Schroder for +90% of the film. Interestingly, given a major element of the plot,coming to terms with your own death, both the director Peter Collinson and Holden died less than two years after the film’s release. (Film July 24, 1980, Collinson December 16, 1980 (of cancer same as the protaganist in the film), Holden November 12, 1981)CMC fnord!
Haven’t actually seen it, but you could try Frozen. About a trio of kids trapped in a skiing chairlift. When I saw the trailer it looked seriousloy silly, so much that I was half-convinced that it was a parody.
I’m also thinking about Deliverance, which should count as it’s not exactly survival horror a la The hills have eyes.
Oh, and up-and-coming movies dealing with the subject: Danny Boyle’s 127 hours (James Franco is a climber who gets his arm stuck in a rock) and Ryan Reynold’s next film Buried, where he wakes up inside a coffin.
Zulu is the true story of a small British command that defended itself at Rourke’s Drift against a Zulu army of far superior numbers. It was Michael Caine’s first really significant role. In his interview about the film, he said the hardest thing for him was figuring out what to do with his hands in any given scene. It’s a very engaging film and the scenes with the Zulu warriors are stunning.