Yes, there have been successful prison escapes, but this one seems doomed at the start. Singing Johnny Desmond has refused to aid old pal Richard Devon in an attempt escape, but Devon needs Johnny, a former pilot, to fly the plane which is located on an airfield right next to the San Quentin prison farm they are working in. Devon uses that old bait (alcohol) to get Desmond to agree to his plan, guessing even a drunken pilot is better than no pilot at all. The poor older prisoner who wants to join in on the escape gets the brunt of Devon's violent behavior when trying to escape with him, and later, after landing on a highway to avoid the cops waiting for them at a local airport, Devon kills a kindly old man who stopped to help them. The film just proceeds to get more and more violent, ending up, first in Los Angeles, and later in Mexico, and culminating in a motel room just outside of Oceanside.
Gripping, if somewhat unbelievable, this still grabs you and never lets go. Somehow, Peggy Maley, the blonde actress playing Desmond's bitter estranged wife isn't billed anywhere on the IMDb for this film, but the second billed Merry Anders (as Desmond's sister-in-law) is, and provides chilling reminders of how the innocent are sometimes manipulated into situations beyond their control and how one mistake in somebody's life can almost end up costing them their life. This is an above average prison/crime drama with a cast of mostly unknowns who help make this a plane ride to hell with the help of a few automobiles on the way. Just too bad the train ride was missing to complete the threesome.
Gripping, if somewhat unbelievable, this still grabs you and never lets go. Somehow, Peggy Maley, the blonde actress playing Desmond's bitter estranged wife isn't billed anywhere on the IMDb for this film, but the second billed Merry Anders (as Desmond's sister-in-law) is, and provides chilling reminders of how the innocent are sometimes manipulated into situations beyond their control and how one mistake in somebody's life can almost end up costing them their life. This is an above average prison/crime drama with a cast of mostly unknowns who help make this a plane ride to hell with the help of a few automobiles on the way. Just too bad the train ride was missing to complete the threesome.