Chosen Survivors (1974)

chosensurvivorsI’m not going to, but one could make an infographic with all the numbers Chosen Survivors throws at you in its opening scenes:
• one global thermonuclear war
• 214˚ F heat on Earth’s radiated surface
• 168 men and women selected by the U.S. government to be saved
• for confinement terms of five years
• across 12 locations
• 1,758 feet underground
• in an 18,000 square-feet space
• with a shitload of vampire bats

Okay, so “shitload” is a little vague, but those bloodthirsty bastards move too damn fast — even the fake ones! — for the viewer to count. Let’s call it “thousands” and leave it at that. Besides, they’re not supposed to be there; it’s important that the 11 humans residing in the bunker (in which the film is set almost entirely, save for a disorienting elevator ride at its bookends) repopulate the planet. Mostly unlikable, they receive the lowdown via prerecorded bits read by an inexpressive blonde woman (Kelly Lange, Spy Hard) who provides instructions and activity tips as if she were Julie, Your Dystopic Cruise Director.

chosensurvivors1Played by such names as Jackie Cooper (Superman’s Perry White), Bradford Dillman (Joe Dante’s Piranha) and Richard Jaeckel (John Carpenter’s Starman), these handpicked sperm donors/receptacles are largely scientists of one specialty or another, except for the one African-American man who happens to be an Olympian (Lincoln Kilpatrick, Stuart Gordon’s Fortress), because somebody’s gotta do all the rock climbing in the climax.

In one of his scant few movie gigs, prolific TV director Sutton Roley (Snatched) displays the guiding hand of someone who appears to be as disengaged as you or I. Whether thousands of bats or millions or billions, those creatures only get you so far through the dull stretches of bickering, and that unscientific distance is not very far for a thriller as confining — both physically and creatively — as its sterile-white sets. What Roley’s doomsday picture doesn’t convey — yet absolutely should — is claustrophobia. Chosen Survivors is too mundane and stuffy to approach such low-hanging levels of tension. —Rod Lott

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