Escapes (1986)

Director: David Steensland

Starring: Vincent Price, Todd Fulton, Jerry Grisham, Michael Patton-Hall, John Mitchum, Roelle Mitchell

More info: IMDb


Plot: An anthology of five tales of terror, each originally produced for video. The titles are "Something's Fishy," "Coffee Break," "Who's There," "Jonah's Dream," and "Think Twice."

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.

I tried something interesting the other night.  I've got thousands of movies and sometimes it's a chore to decide on what to watch so I set some parameters at www.random.org to generate a random integer and whatever the number, I was going to watch it.  This one turned up and it didn't turn out too badly after all.  ESCAPES looks like it was shot on a VHS camera which makes it look cheap (not that some of the actors didn't contribute - OH!).  Vincent Price shows up to give us the guidance we need to get through this horror anthology.  He's always fun but he's mostly resigned to sitting at a large table throwing some dialogue our way.  The first story about a fisherman getting the tables turned was kind of neat and thankfully very short (it's a one-joke sketch).  The second was a lot more fun thanks to Jim Mitchum.  He goes from acting like shit to gettin' shit done in seconds.  He was a hoot and is the big reason to watch this 69 minute movie to begin with. The other stories are OK but pale next to the Mitchum bit.  Price comes back to give us the big twist, making the wraparound story a story on its own.  It's an interesting low budget 80s curiosity that fans of horror anthologies would probably like on some level.