Escapes (1986 Video) User Reviews

Very mild genre anthology.

[Hey_Sweden · 5/10 · 6 July 2017]

The legendary Vincent Price is the star attraction of this collection of fantastic tales, appearing as both an aged mailman and a host for this anthology. As the mailman, he delivers an unsolicited VHS tape to a young man named Matthew Wilson (Todd Fulton). Matthew figures "what the Hell" and sits down to watch the tape. Price appears in this movie- within-the-movie to provide an introduction, ruminating on the entire idea of how thin the line is that separates reality from fantasy.

One. "Hobgoblin Bridge". Young boy Matt must navigate a covered bridge that is supposedly watched over by a tiny little demon.

Two. "A Little Fishy". A fisherman (Jerry Grisham) learns what it's like to be on the other end of the fishing line.

Three. "Coffee Break". The best segment in "Escapes" details what happens as an obnoxious young delivery driver (Michael Patton-Hall) finds himself trapped in the environs of a tiny town named Harmony.

Four. "Who's There?" A jogger (Ken Thorley) is menaced by monsters that are supposed to be genetic experiments that escaped from a biological preserve.

Five. "Jonah's Dream". Mary Tucker (the appealing Shirley O'Key), who's been panning for gold for years on her private mountain, receives a strange, otherworldly visit.

Six. "Think Twice". A mugger (Rocky Capella) takes a mysterious crystal from a bum (Gil Reade).

Writer, producer & director David Steensland creates some enjoyable atmosphere from the various California locations that he uses, and he's good at generating some suspense here and there. Overall, however, his stories are mostly uninspired, and not all of them have a very strong payoff. "Coffee Break" is a standout, offering a neat 'Twilight Zone' kind of tale. Steensland doesn't pace himself that well, either. "Jonah's Dream" especially takes too much time to get where it's going.

Price is unfortunately rather wasted. It's sad that, in the final dozen or so years of his career & life, he couldn't have headlined some pictures more worthy of his screen presence. But at least he also did "From a Whisper to a Scream" during this time period, and that one is more worth your time.

This obscurity / curiosity still merits a look if you're a die hard fan of Price and/or the horror and fantasy genres. Don't expect any real scares at all, though.

Five out of 10.

Escapes

[Scarecrow-88 · 4/10 · 18 September 2016]

A teenager receives a videotape in the mail he didn't order. He calls up friends looking for an active evening, but multiple attempts fail because most are busy. So he tears off the wrap to the tape and pops in the VCR. A hall with running human parts (upper torso, arms and head in motion) embedded in the walls leads to a room where Vincent Price awaits, ready to introduce the anthology of tales which make up about an hour. Price returns at the end to close it out. Clearly, Price was approached for a quick payday and couldn't resist.

"A Little Fishy" deals with a guy fishing at a lake, eyeing an apple that draws his appetite, taking some bites, finding, much to his alarm, a hook line which drags him by the throat (he swallowed it while chewing into the apple) into the water. What set this in motion is not known. The fisherman becoming the fish, with the apple tossed out in the hopes of luring another human to the lake. "Coffee Break" has this speeding delivery van driver lost in some backwoods rural community of Harmony, pulling up to an old timer's home for directions. Because his van blares loud rock music and temperament is rude and harried, the kid doesn't exactly ingratiate himself to the local who tells him he should slow down and have a nice cup of coffee up the road at Harmony Café. Undeterred, the kid takes varies roads in front of him with the same results: he returns to Harmony seemingly unable to escape this neck of the woods. If he'd just stop and have that cup of coffee… "Who's There?" follows a plump jogger taking the scenic route who walks upon a woody area with creatures having escaped from a wildlife preserve somewhere nearby. Is his life in danger or are they not as dangerous as it seems? "Jonah's Dream" features a prospecting widow toiling away in the hopes of that gold find on her mountain. While the locals in the nearby town think she's wasting her time, nonetheless, the widow continues on. Well, one night a noise from her barn sparks interest, and the widow finds a peculiar spaceship having crashlanded on her property, leaking fuel and steam, seemingly about to explode. But through this the widow just might find her gold… "Think Twice" has thief encountering baggage bum in urban squalor, stealing the man's diamond which glows at his breath, providing him what he so desires. The thief doesn't realize that the diamond isn't meant for him, paying a price for crossing the bum and taking what was his. Matthew, the teenager watching the video tape, is actually addressed by Price after the tales are over from the television screen. Matthew looks at the box and sees his name introduced under Price's, with a nightmare featuring several of the characters he just watched. Matthew can't just turn Price off…he won't allow it. Price, in postal uniform, giggles because another "customer" will be chosen for his "wall".

The tales did little for me, I must admit. I didn't necessarily mind any of them. I was just rather underwhelmed. Price's involvement, especially at the end, is fun if slight. "Escapes" won't have me forgetting what Price done much better in "From a Whisper to a Scream" a year later. The 80s didn't offer Price anything of particular significance, but his appearances give those few films he was a part of some rub just because of the value of his name and association attached to them. He offers a sinister laugh at the end of "Escapes" but you see him for perhaps approximately seven or eight minutes, not enough to salvage uneventful stories with little in the way of thrills.

Notable only for Price

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 1 November 2018]

ESCAPES is a very cheap horror anthology from 1980s America, notable only for featuring Vincent Price in one of those brief, sitting-at-a-desk performances. He introduces the stories, which are presented via a guy watching a videotape - a nice bit of self-referencing for anyone who bought or rented this at the time. Sadly, the stories themselves are strictly ordinary, very cheap-looking, and nothing stands out. There's a fisherman who hooks a killer catch, a delivery guy who winds up in the middle of nowhere after annoying the locals, a baby Bigfoot in the woods, a UFO encounter, a robbery victim who gains phenomenal powers, and a brief segment with Price himself. It's the kind of film you'll forget mere hours after watching.

Dire compendium

[Skint111 · 2/10 · 21 September 2006]

Hackneyed, shapeless anthology from the bargain basement. The six tales (that's six on my tape) are all shot outside, all dialogue-lite and all appalling. They were clearly made by people who'd only just found a video camera. Indeed, you actually see the camera twice reflected in surfaces. Vincent Price must have taped his contribution in a single morning and probably didn't remember it a week later. Waste not your time on this. The box says on the back 'in the tradition of The Twilight Zone' - in their dreams. How about saying 'In the tradition of a particularly bad, 80s, made for television scatty fantasy horror which are deeply tedious and insignificant'?

This film is the textbook example of bad film-making.

[Whiles · 1/10 · 10 July 1999]

> Escapes is the textbook example of bad film-making. Whenever you've seen a > movie that you feel was horrible, see this one and realize what true garbage > is. One can only guess that Vincent Price was blackmailed into being > involved in this mess. Two bright spots about this film were that it has no > sequel, and that it has a "Mystery Science Theater" quality about it. To me > the most frightening thing about this movie was that I paid .99 to rent this > dog. >

Sad that Vincent attached his name & image to this

[jh2002 · 1/10 · 21 September 2002]

It is sad to see the previously great Vincent Price attach himself to the front and back end of this amateurish production of silly & sad non-spooky shorts. He's in there briefly at the front, and briefly at the end, but the stuff inbetween was made by hacks.

A film of mystery and compelling curiosity...

[stardial · 15 October 2005]

Actually, the only mystery that engages me is how I came to be credited as the actor playing "Large Creature"! I didn't have anything to do with this picture, and from the sound of it, I'm glad I wasn't. Very strange.

Hmm, 1986? I was playing a singing King Mark in a dopey Equity-waiver musical production called "Knightly Pursuits", during which I met my wife-to-be, Emilie, to whom I've been happily married to for 18 years now. I asked her about my ever playing a Large Creature. She just smiled.

Meanwhile, the other IMDb listing for me is correct: I do co-star in the Ralph Bakshi/Frank Frazetta 1983 production of "Fire & Ice" which has just been re-released on DVD. (Yay!) Included on the disc is a special feature in which I narrate from a personal diary I kept during filming. The producer of the special feature dug up production stills of me on the set that I had never seen before. That was a treat. Anyway, "Fire & Ice" is sort of my "I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf". Not a great film, but my own.

Sean Hannon --- a.k.a. Nekron, the evil Ice Lord

Vincent Price can't escape his '80s destiny

[Coventry · 5/10 · 1 October 2015]

Vincent Price was arguably one of the greatest actors that ever lived and inarguably the greatest horror protagonist of the 1950s and 1960s. But the horror genre changed drastically in the year 1973 (mainly due to the release of "The Exorcist") and, all of a sudden, there weren't many roles anymore for an actor of Price's caliber. Gothic and Grand Guignol horror movies suddenly weren't popular anymore and got replaced by raw and gritty exploitation movies. Throughout the rest of the '70s, the almighty Vincent Price was a bit lost, but in the 1980s he gave his career its final boost by briefly appearing as the typically sinister host in low-keyed anthologies or as the narrator in macabre fairy-tales, for example his legendary contribution to Michael Jackson's "Thriller". The very modest and inconspicuous made-for-TV anthology "Escapes" is another title that probably never would have caught any attention if Price's name wasn't attached to it. Price only briefly appears at the beginning and the ending of the wraparound story, but his stern voice and sinister laughter are doing all the necessary work. Furthermore "Escapes" is not much more than a cheap attempt to cash in on the successes of "Creepshow" (1982) and "Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983). The short segments, five in total, are child-friendly but definitely not childish, and the least you can say is that they offer unpretentious good fun! None of the stories are frightening, not even remotely, but they are interesting enough and the atmosphere of the film is exactly right. The first two segments are my favorites, notably because they are both fairly ominous whereas segments three and four are sillier and more fantasy-like. In "Something Fishy", a fisherman physically experiences how the rules of his favorite sport are turned upside down, and "Coffee Break" gives a whole new and uncanny meaning to the term "slowing down"… This second segment mainly benefices from the creepy performance of John Mitchum as the seemingly friendly local yokel who advises a stressed-out delivery boy to relax, enjoy the scenery and stop for a good cup of coffee... The third segment involves a chubby jogger and three bizarre creatures that escaped from a medical lab. Apart from a fairly admirably attempt to build up suspense, there's very little to say about this short story and the denouement is just too silly for words. I didn't like the fourth segment "Jonah's Dream", as it reminded me too much of a Walt Disney story. Being more of a fan of raw and gritty horror anthologies, I personally very much prefer the '80s outings "From a Whisper to a Scream" (also starring Vincent Price), "Deadtime Stories" or "Screamtime", but I certainly don't consider watching "Escapes" as a waste of my (not-so-precious) time

Old SciFi

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 15 August 2021]

This shot on video anthology film was chopped up and played in between shows on the Sci-Fi Network, when that was a thing before SyFy. So if one of these stories sounds familiar to you, that could be why.

Vincent Price plays the mailman and host of these stories, as a man opens a package and puts in the video tape that has all of these horrific little tales on them. From a fisherman getting his just desserts to bad directions, werecats chasing a larger man through the woods, alien crash landings, a bridge haunted by hobgoblins, magic crystals, frightening dreams and the horror of living in the city, this movie is all over the place yet not every frightening or well-made.

Writer/producer/director David Steensland only made this one and done film, but at least he had the sense to hire Price for a single day

Intervision put this out on a double DVD with Dark Harvest. It's out of print, however.

cheesy, but a lot of fun

[tbyrne4 · 9/10 · 1 March 2011]

I have a soft spot in my heart for Escapes, mostly because it was filmed around my hometown of Sacramento and also because it's a horror anthology (and what horror film buff doesn't love a good ol' cheesy anthology once in a while). I first saw it around the time it came to video and watching it reminds me of the countless happy hours I spent in mom and pop video stores (so sad they're all gone now!) where a curious movie lover could find the most obscure and wondrous garbage imaginable on those dusty video shelves. Especially horror movies.

Escapes is a wraparound tale (with intro and outro by Price) involving a young guy who gets a video tape in the mail, which happens to be exact same Escapes tape the viewer is watching (how meta!). Each of the stories is basically Twilight zone/Tales from the Darkside type stuff. There's one about a fisherman who gets the surprise of his life. Another about an obnoxious young deliveryman who ignores the advice of a local while trying to find his way home. And another about a jogger who is menaced by creatures that may have escaped from a scientific laboratory. I think there's one or two more but I can't remember.

Anyway, these are really good. But they have special meaning to me because when i watch the video it reminds me of where I grew up. Good times.

A Lot of Fun

[robpaseo · 10/10 · 12 November 2001]

I liked this film. Not really heavy, just a lot of low budget fun stories. I have seen some of these stories on HBO, but it was fun to see them all together. If you want a light, enjoyable bit of entertainment, watch this.

Deserving of a better reputation

[BobbyHazardX · 8/10 · 2 July 2022]

Especially for Hobgoblin Bridge, which I found scary in the way it was shot and directed. The goblin wasn't cheesy like I expected, but disturbing; the way it moves across the bridge and stalks the boy is unsettling. The rest of the stories aren't perfect and they were clearly working with a tiny budget (I imagine most of the budget went to Vincent Price) but I also enjoyed Coffee Break. The main guy I think got a bad rap. He just wanted to do his job and was in a hurry. I know he was a bit demanding with the way he asked for directions, but he just didn't have time for coffee. The other stories were okay too if a bit forgettable. I didn't think the short ones were super necessary but they had a quality. The fisherman being caught by something in the water could have made a good longer story. It's kinda creepy thinking about what was in the water. That said it's just too short to make a lasting impact like the great anthology stories out there do. The last story with the homeless guy and the jewel could have been more interesting than it was but it's still watchable. I think the good thing about anthologies is if the story is weak it's over pretty quick so you don't mind them as much. I personally didn't have a problem watching any of these and thought it had an atmosphere. Vincent Price hosts the wrap around and I'm sure he was only here cause he had a bill to pay. Maybe he needed a new car.

If you like anthology movies, I'd recommend it. I liked it more than most people on imdb.

Enjoyable horror anthology opus

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 14 June 2017]

Jerky yuppie Matthew Wilson (a nicely obnoxious portrayal by Todd Fulton) receives an unsolicited VHS tape in the mail. Wilson decides to watch said tape and soon finds himself caught up in a scary alternate world full of dread and danger.

Writer/director David Steensland relates all the stories at a snappy pace, crafts a fun ooga-booga spooky atmosphere, brings an engaging earnest quality to the material, and tops everything off with an amusing sense of dark humor. The segments contained herein are: A hobgoblin stalking a little boy on a rundown bridge, a fisherman receives a fitting comeuppance, a rude delivery man stumbles across a remote rural café which exists in some kind of perpetual limbo, an overweight jogger is chased through the woods by a hairy monster (this one has an especially funny punchline), a stubborn old widow prospector (a touching performance by Shirley O'Key) refuses to leave her home, and a mugger gets his just desserts. Vincent Price handles his host duties with trademark plummy aplomb. John Mitchum likewise registers well as amiable yokel Mr. Olson. Gary Tomsic's polished cinematography boasts a few snazzy visual flourishes and makes neat occasional use of a crane. Todd Popple's shuddery synthesizer score hits the shivery spot. A nifty little fright flick.

Just Doesn't Have Enough Going for It

[Michael_Elliott · 30 October 2016]

Escapes (1986)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Vincent Price hosts six horror tales. 'A Little Fishy' has a man going fishing and when he tries to catch a bigger fish he becomes the target. 'Coffee Break' takes place in a small town where a man is trying to get directions to the interstate but the old man makes him promise to stop by the local diner for some coffee. 'Who's There' has a man going for a job only to realize that something is watching him. 'Jonah's Dream' deals with a poor woman who refuses to give up on her dead husband's gold mine even though it isn't paying off. 'Think Twice' has a thief stealing the wrong item. The sixth and final story is basically a wrap-around segment dealing with a man who is watching ESCAPES and gets to join in on the terror.

David Streensland wrote, produced and directed this anthology film, which was clearly trying to capture the mood and spirit of recent films like CREEPSHOW and TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE. In fact, it's easy to see that The Twilight Zone was an influence on this because all six stories are different from one another in tone and for what they are trying to do. Obviously the director wanted to try and deliver something memorable but sadly the majority of the films range from really boring to just bland.

If I had to pick a favorite then I'd probably go for 'A Little Fishy' but I will freely admit that the twist itself is quite stupid. 'Coffee Break' comes the closest to reaching a Twilight Zone like vibe but sadly it drags on too long and the ending just doesn't give much of a punch. 'Think Twice' was hands down the weakest in the film but 'Who's There' and 'Jonah's Dream' just didn't do much for me. All six episodes feature fair to poor acting and there's no question that everything was done on a very small budget.

These direct-to-video films are interesting to watch but I'm going to guess that the behind-the-scenes stories would be a lot more interesting than what's actually on the screen. I'm not sure how Price got involved with this but he only appears in a couple minutes worth of footage but I will admit it was somewhat fun seeing him dressed as a mailman and delivering some packages. ESCAPES is a mildly interesting movie that thankfully only runs 70-minutes.