Auf Leben und Tod

We stayed up late to watch this film, and never have I laughed so much! The script was poor and, appreciating it was based on a true story, the attempts of the family to escape, for me simply descended into hilarity, where it should have been a more serious film. For example, the ironically funny scene where they stupidly break the oars to use as crutches, not thinking that where there are oars, there is surely a boat! Watch only for amusement....

Based on a true story, this television drama was filmed along Canada's west coast, in winter. The cast and crew worked in icy waters and freezing rain. It was a miserable "shoot" but so was the horror of the real people involved. You will notice a very young and green Matt Leblanc in a roll years before "Friends". Robert Conrad was very strong and real...a true professional.

Richard Long

I lived in Juneau, Alaska in 1978-79, the winter that this originally happened to the family in the film. A friend read a newspaper article about it to me and I cringed. The accident happened during the worst February we had had since I could remember, and I was born and raised there. They were actually stranded for the entire month, not a few days or a couple weeks, and the fact that they survived amazed me. I don't know of anyone in these dire circumstances that would NOT "whine" a bit.

Granted, this film took some poetic license as all films based on true stories do. I felt that Matt LeBlanc was a poor choice for the son. He looked nothing like the rest of the family. But in spite of that, I was impressed with the performances and the way the family clung together. This is not a film for the weak hearted. The reality of it was all too real for me, as I knew first hand the sub-zero temperatures and high gale winds that were present at the time of this accident. Only true Alaskans would ever have survived this experience and my heart goes out to the family to this day.

All in all, the film was excellent at portraying the harsh circumstances the family faced. That was not made up. The relationships that they shared were also well portrayed. I have often wondered how they all were today, what, if any, lasting affects the experience had on them. As far as films based in Alaska, this was perhaps the most true to life of any I have seen. Excellent film.

A Canadian-American disaster survival TV film drama; A story about a carpenter and his teenage children who spend weeks ashore freezing and starving, shipwrecked off Alaska. The film is based on the ordeal of an author and his three teenaged children in the winter of 1979. The film's theme about the power of positivity matches what the coastguards believed helped them. It creates sufficient tension and has a good enough story and the performances of the cast are good, portraying the family members and the mistakes they believed they were making to do the right thing.

This is quite a good TV movie of a family stranded in cold alaska. The father and son go looking for help and the two sisters cant do anything but wait to live or wait to die. The older sister eats cold seaweed with worms it in. Worth watching about once.