I like to think I’m fairly well acquainted with obscure bad movies but tonight I’m watching part of a treasure I’d never seen before: Escape to Athena – a 1979 “caper” movie set in WWII and but still oh so wonderfully steeped in the late 70s in fashion, hairdos, speech – the whole package. It’s sort of a ripoff of Kelly’s Heroes yet a weak attempt (IF intentional?) at campy humor/ action ala the worst 70s Bond movies (Octopussy perhaps?).
BUT what a cast! – Telly Savalas, Richard Roundtree, Elliot Gould AND (wait for it)…Sonny Bono! And then they class it up with David Niven and Roger Moore (as a Nazi / art lover???) and sex it up with Claudia Cardinale and Stephanie Powers. What more could you ask for? Everyone hacking or snoozing their way through bad accents, scripting or just biding their time for the paycheck and a nice dinner and bottle of wine after probably interminable day of set-ups and “OK, what the hell…good enough: print it!”
Clearly they spent SOME money on this production; apparently mostly on flying and putting up the B+ list cast & crew in Greece for the shoot. (Shouldve saved their money and used a cheaper Turkey…or even a faux Greek revival mansion on a SoCal beach like an episode of the old Mission Impossible TV show).
But one thing I really liked was where they eschewed using the professional stuntmen for various action scenes and instead had the stars themselves struggle through awkward, anticipatory fight scenes (where the Star either woodenly marches through rehearsed moves, or, just flails away while a REAL stuntman lurches and desperately attempts to avoid being actually – potentially fatally – struck by Stephanie Powers wildly swinging a grappling hook). Deeeelightful!
All of this and I only saw like 30 minutes of it! I can’t wait to see the whole Chalupa. Let’s hear it for old movie cable channels in the time deadly viruses!
– Knute Rimkus
There are 51 stills for Escape to Athena, all of them classic on IMDB!
Here’s the entire movie:
Here’s some of the action:
ESCAPE TO ATHENA 1979 Behind the scenes
Roger Moore David Niven Elliott Gould Stephanie Powers and Arlene Phillips pic.twitter.com/S4v9GERClG— PETER OXLEY (@oxley264) September 20, 2017
