Escape Stories
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Peter Swain
Andrew Lewis
Michael T. Weiss
Jonathan Oliver
Alex Samuels
Evan James
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Documentary that tells the stories of escapes and the individuals who risked all for freedom. "Great Escapers" tells the true story behind the movie "Midnight Express," which depicted the Turkish prison in which Billy Hayes found himself, and visits the Moscow exile home of Cold War spy George Blake, to relive his breakout from a grim British prison to East Germany. Also, Betty Mahmoody describes her escape from Iran with her 7-year-old child, an event captured in the film "Not Without My Daughter." Finally, ABC News Correspondent Charles Glass shows how, in 1987, he gave his Lebanese captors the slip. "On the Run" introduces Chris Ryan, a British SAS commando who tells how he made military history with his 200-mile Persian Gulf War escape across war-torn Iraq. The program travels to Rio de Janiero and the 70th birthday party of Britain's "Great Train Robber," Ronnie Biggs, who tells the sometimes comic story of how he gave Scotland Yard the slip. Finally, the program revisits the story of the enigmatic skyjacker, D.B. Cooper. "Home Run" tells the story of the biggest mass American breakout from a World War II Japanese POW camp. Marine General Austin Shofner tells how he engineered the escape from Davao Prison in the Philippines. The program also features U.S. Air Force veteran General Albert Patton Clark, who flew British Spitfires in World War II and wound up in the notorious Stalag Luft III POW camp. Finally, it describes the exploits of Luftwaffe hero Baron Franz von Werra, the only German to escape from a British POW camp. "Triumph Over Tyranny" celebrate the success of two Cold War escape bids from East to West Germany. In the first, a young couple drove their open-top sports car under the barriers of border guards at Checkpoint Charlie. In the second, a whole family hid inside the icy interior of a butcher's truck to avoid detection. Polish-born New Yorker Kristine Keren tells the tale of how she, a Jewish child caught in the Holocaust, survived the Nazi terror by hiding with her family in a sewer for 14 months. Finally, the program tells the story of Orestes Lorenzo, a Cuban Air Force pilot who escaped the island in a MIG jet, then flew back in a light plane two years later to get his family.
