When I received a copy of American Home Treasures’ recent DVD release “Gripping War Escape Movies”, I was pleasantly surprised to find three full length features on a single DVD. I should have known from the title--not many single features use the plural “movies”--that I was in for greater value than the standard DVD fare. Indeed, with a retail price of only $9.98, I would have been happy with pretty much any combination of movies (remember, some people are actually shelling out the same amount to see “Kangaroo Jack”!). While the three movies included in “Gripping War Escape Movies” may not be “classic” masterpieces, they are for the most part above average quality features, albeit a bit dated, with several recognizable names from recent cinematic history.

Thanks to the image quality and resilient storage capacity of DVD, older and otherwise forgotten films are getting a second lease on life. “Gripping War Escape Movies” introduces three such features to our DVD players on one handy disc: “Escape from Sobibor”, “Pacific Inferno”, and “Samar”. The compilation boasts nearly 300 minutes of full length movie viewing enjoyment, not including the DVD special features. While the video quality and consistency of the movies taken together is questionable (there is even an onscreen warning for this reality before the root menu loads), it is understandable given the oldest of the three movies was produced in 1962 and the most recent in 1987.

“Escape from Sobibor”, the most recent of the movies, is also far and away the best of the three. “Escape from Sobibor” is actually a TV movie, making it all the more commendable given the high production quality. One wonders if the movie had been released as a feature film whether we would be able to view it on a “3 for 1” compilation DVD. Regardless of its format, the movie deals with the very real and unsettling historic account of a mass escape from Poland’s Sobibor Nazi death camp. Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer give tremendously moving performances in this gritty reenactment of the atrocities carried out by the Nazi’s. There are a few troubling scenes in the movie which are difficult to watch knowing that such events and worse took place on an incomprehensible scale. If you only watch “Escape from Sobibor”, your money will have been well spent on “Gripping War Escape Movies”.

“Pacific Inferno”, starring Jim Brown and Richard Jaeckel, is not nearly as intense as “Escape from Sobibor”, making sequential viewing of the movies far more enjoyable. The story follows a team of U.S. Navy divers held captive in a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. Their Japanese captors exploit the divers’ underwater skills to recover sunken coins from the bottom of the sea. Jim Brown soon finds himself aiding the local Filipino resistance at the expense of his own escape. “Pacific Inferno” ventures very little from this path, as it is a rather forgettable movie of mediocre quality. Most scenes take place in the sparsely designed POW camp, on a barge, or underwater. I wouldn’t normally recommend “Pacific Inferno” for stand alone viewing, but to harp on the entertainment value once again, I got my money’s worth from “Escape from Sobibor”, so everything else is gravy.

“Samar”, as mentioned above, is the oldest of the three movies making up the “Gripping War Escape Movies” DVD. George Montgomery and Gilbert Roland star in this tale of an American doctor (Montgomery) as he becomes involved in a mass escape from a Spanish prison colony in the Philippines. As the title implies, the film is set on the cinematographically beautiful--yet hostile--island of Samar in 1870. I appreciate the addition of “Samar” to the “Gripping War Escape Movies” DVD as it represents George Montgomery’s relatively successfully stint in a series of low-budget action films based in the Philippines. The story may have landed “Samar” a spot on the “Gripping War Escape Movies” DVD, but the action and attractive locations overshadow the simple plot and contribute to the movie’s overall enjoyment.

The “Gripping War Escape Movies” DVD special features include biographies, selected filmographies, and a feature describing a number of “Great Escapes of the Twentieth Century”. The “Great Escapes” feature was an interesting read; however, I would have really enjoyed a short video feature on the subject, something akin to what one might find on the Discovery Channel or TLC (if I wanted to read, I wouldn’t have bought a DVD player).

“Gripping War Escape Movies” is an interesting collection of older films brought together by the shared premise of escaping the confining institutions of war. “Escape from Sobibor”, “Pacific Inferno”, and “Samar” are uniquely bound together thematically, yet represent a diverse sample of cinematic history. The very fact that three enjoyable movies are included on one inexpensive DVD is the epitome of entertainment value.