The Survivalist
Tags: cult, murder

Plot synopsis:
The film takes place when oil production has ceased, which has resulted in a total economic collapse, the fall of society, and a severe drop in the population.
The Survivalist is first seen burying a man's body. He is then shown to be living efficiently in the wild. He harvests crop for food (as animal meat is scarce), forages berries, washes clothes in a nearby stream, grows seeds with semen, lays traps against intruders around his small farm's perimeter, and lives alone out of a small cabin he has built.
One morning, The Survivalist hears noise outside his cabin, and rushes out to find two women. An old woman named Katherine and a younger woman named Milja which Katherine claims to be her daughter, ask him if he could spare any of his crop, and attempt to trade for it too, to both of which he declines while holding them at gunpoint. Katherine suggests they stay the night, implying that he uses Milja for sex in return for food & shelter. The Survivalist agrees, but only for one night.
The following morning, The Survivalist tells the women to take their belongings and leave. After Milja caresses and shaves his face, he agrees to let them stay indefinitely if they help him with the farming. Over a few days, Katherine and Milja secretly conspire to kill The Survivalist in order to reduce supplies being used. The following morning, after Katherine briefly contemplates murdering him, The Survivalist is alerted a footprint in the mud, just as Milja is taken hostage while washing in a nearby stream. The Survivalist is shot in the stomach, but in turn, kills the assailant. Milja and Katherine treat The Survivalist's wound, prying the bullet out and cauterising the wound. After the wound becomes infected, he gathers maggots to eat the infected tissue. As he recovers, temperature drops, and they huddle together in bed to stay warm.
One night, raiders arrive and The Survivalist, Milja and Katherine gather and discuss their options. Six raiders are counted, and the survivors only have a shotgun with 2 shells, a pistol with one bullet, and two knives. They have no choice but to keep quiet while the raiders steal most of the crop and attempt, but fail, to break into the cabin. In the following days, while they work to save the farm, Milja discovers she is pregnant. Katherine again floats the idea of killing The Survivalist due to lack of food, and advises her to attempt an abortion. Milja attempts abortion with a copper rod, but fails.
The following morning, Katherine tells The Survivalist that she and Milja are leaving. Milja tells her she wants to stay, and that she has also poisoned Katherine. Overcome with despair from this, Katherine tells The Survivalist to cut her wrists and bury her after she dies. Following this, The Survivalist finds that one of his bear traps has caught a rabbit, meaning all three could have had enough food to survive. He returns to the cabin, and tells Milja about his brother, Augustus - the man he buried at the film's opening - He tells her they used to steal from camps, and when caught and chased, The Survivalist cut Augustus's Achilles tendon and left him to the pursuers in order to escape. He modestly assures her that she did the right thing in poisoning Katherine.
Eventually, the raiders return to the farm while The Survivalist and Milja are out foraging when they notice the raiders' presence. They sneak into the back room of the cabin for the storage of crop seeds, but Milja alerts them while leaving. The raiders give chase, and The Survivalist tells Milja to run. Drawing the raiders with a harmonica, he kills one and the rest follow the sound of the shot. One stumbles onto Milja's location, but she lures him into a bear trap and makes her escape. The Survivalist is eventually shot with a crossbow bolt - As his dying body is looted next to a large spit and fire made from the cabin's wood, it is strongly implied he is cannibalised by the raiders.
Milja wanders the wild herself over the next few days, and eventually makes it to a survivors' compound, complete with guards, doctors and a large farm. As she waits to be let in, a female guard notices Milja is three months pregnant, and asks if she knows what she will call the baby. As the film ends, Milja answers, "If it's a boy."

Review: This could only have been made in the Cold War 1980s.
Not to be confused with the pulp novel series.
A small nuclear device is detonated in Siberia and sends the world into a cold war panic.
Back in Texas, Jack Tillman (Steve Railsback), a sort of doomsdayer-lite, is fully prepared for the chaos erupting.
He gets his family together to go save his son at a summer camp.
But when his wife and daughter are killed by random roaming ruffians, he is forced to go on the run with his doctor friend Vincent (Cliff De Young) and his wife Linda (Susan Blakely).
Of course, not before offending National Guard nut (and former 'Nam nemesis) Lt. Youngman (Marjoe Gortner), who decides the biggest priority in this worldwide panic is to kill the man who crushed his motorcycle with a backhoe.
This is a film that seems like it could have only been made in the '80s.
Director Sig Shore (producer of SUPERFLY) gets the most out of the barren locations, but ineptly handles the rioting masses (which seem to be about 12 people).
The screenplay is credited to one John V.
Kraft (amusingly, a copyright search finds a script from 1986 with that title credited to an equally pseudonym sounding Louis J.
Mayo...mmmm, Kraft and Mayo) and it seems really confused as if Tillman is the hero.
I assume they wanted this to be a FIRST BLOOD (1982) type flick, but Tillman is so mean to nearly everyone he meets that it is hard to like him.
Railsback is his usually self and the supporting turns by De Young and Blakely are better than one would expect..
Classic survivalist movie!.
This movie is great for many reasons and anyone who knows anything about survivalist issues will enjoy it.
Most liberals will hate this one for it sure tells it like it is.Based loosely on the paperback book series: THE SURVIVALIST.
Railsback brings to life the hero and Marjoe Gortner plays the perfect over the top villain as usual.There is violence and a brief nude scene with Blakely which really does lift the film for its own reasons.If you are a fan of big government or dislike survivalists...stay away from this one.If you like holocaust survival movies or like to see what survivalists are really like..
check this one out.
I do hope they will put this one out on DVD someday..
A lousy movie saved very little by Susan Blakely.
I watched this movie expecting a good storyline and action.
I received lots of action but no story line.
The actors in this movie were better quality than this picture.
David Wayne who played on Ellery Queen as the father is a better actor and so is Susan Blakely.
She has a nude scene in the movie near the end, but I could only give this movie two stars which means it was saved by her endowments and not the storyline.
Do not rent this movie expecting any sense, but lots of lousy action and some steam..
Come, Armageddon!
come!
Come, come, come - nuclear bomb!.
Really corny and bad low budget film that feels more like a piece of confused NRA-propaganda than post-apocalypse.
The world is cast into chaos, violence and confusion after the threat of nuclear war between the US of A and the Soviet union.
Everybody is freaking out, except...
Jack Tillman!
(his name is repeated in absurdum)...
who's a survivalist who's been preparing for this crap and now gets to play with weapons, build campfires and protect his family and blah-blah-blah...
If you are a 40 year old guy in army pants who lives with his mum and have strange ideas about most things, and who's biggest hobby is to hang around in the forest and build knives, this might be right up your alley...
Everybody except that guy and the most tragic of post-apocalyptic movie collectors needn't bother.
A few unintentionally funny scenes and the fact that this ultra-low budget film takes it self 110% serious saves it from being a complete waste of time..
A strictly so-so sci-fi end-of-the-world survivalist flick.
A potentially potent and exciting "Panic in Year Zero"-type premise gets fatally hamstrung by a lackluster execution in this merely passable doomsday thriller.
Steve Railsback (who also toplined in the futuristic Aussie "The Most Dangerous Game" variant "Escape 2000" around the same time) stars as Jack Tillman, a tough and fiercely self-reliant take-charge Texas suburbanite who's more than ready when the news of an imminent nuclear war causes society to degenerate into a barbarous every-man-for-himself mass hysteria state.
Martial law is declared, looters run rampant in the streets, the cops fail to maintain order, and Tillman's wife and daughter are killed in the ensuing violent fracas.
So Tillman makes a perilous cross country trek to the North to find his son before it's too late.
Wimpy idealist doctor Cliff De Young and his more sensible nurse wife Susan Blakely tag along for the dangerous ride.Jack V.
Kraft's neatly though out script offers a few inspired and interesting touches (e.g., vengeful National Guard soldier Marjoe Gortner uses the dire situation as a golden opportunity to track down and kill longtime nemesis Tillman and the National Guard are forced to recruit a rowdy biker gang as deputies out of absolute necessity).
Alas, the promising material is greatly undermined by "Superfly" producer Sig Shore's tepid direction, Tony Camillo's mechanically spare and redundant synthesizer score, and Benjamin Davis' drab cinematography, all of which squeeze the juice out of the solid subject matter.
Moreover, the film's flat TV movieish quality severely diminishes both the sense of vigor and feeling of urgency crucially needed to make the story gripping and effective.
Worse yet, a good cast mostly turn in strictly blah performances: a paunchy'n'pudgy way past his 70's prime Gortner looks haggard throughout and even the usually wired Railsback appears to be cruising on thespic automatic pilot.
Only veteran character actor David Wayne rises above the blandness with his pleasingly crusty cameo as a helpful elderly backwoods gas station owner.
Overall, this picture isn't a really bad movie; it's ultimately just an awfully mediocre one.