10 Best Escape Scenes In Movies Or Television

Not for nothing, but The Warriors is pretty much one giant escape scene. This 1979 Walter Hill action-thriller stars Michael Beck and James Remar as members of the street gang, the Warriors. When they are framed for the murder of Cyrus, the leader of the most powerful gang in New York City, they have to somehow make their way back to their home turf in Coney Island.

The movie is filled with one escape after another, many of the scenes intense and violent as the Warriors continue their trek home. One of the best escape scenes is when the Warriors are first framed for Cyrus’ murder, they attempt to escape for home.

The Turnbull ACs, another nasty gang, jump in their modified school bus, trying to run the Warriors down as there has been a hit put out on them.

For those who are fans of the television series Game of Thrones, you know the two things the series never did skimp on – gratuitous sex and violence. One more thing GoT didn’t skimp on was some very exciting escape scenes, like the one where Daenerys Targaryen had to endure to get out of the House of the Undying.

The House of the Undying is located in Qarth and represents the Warlock’s headquarters. Daenerys, along with Jorah and Kovarro have arrived in search of Dany’s dragons.

As she enters, she begins to have horrible visions. Danys eventually finds her dragons chained up in a room but she is soon chained up by the warlock Pyat Pree who says he intends to keep her chained up forever.

But Dany’s dragons are not muzzled, so she is able to command them to burn Pyat to death.

Argo is an Oscar-winning film by Ben Affleck and tells the story of the rescue of six Americans during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis that lasted 444 days. Affleck directed and stars in the movie with it culminating in a very intense escape scene as rescuers are trying to fly the six out of the airport in Tehran.

After terrorists took hostages, six found a way to hide and not get caught. To get them out of the country, a plan was created where a group would arrive in the country under the guise of a film crew shooting a movie.

They would then grab the six and take them out of the country with them. The tense escape scene came toward the end of the film when the rescuers were told to abandon the plan, instead choosing to move forward with it.

A couple of last-minute occurrences barely helped the plan along and just as the escapees board the plane, airport authorities discover the plan.

Jurassic Park is the 1993 Steven Spielberg film that showed us what it would be like to live when dinosaurs lived. These apex predators knew only one thing – how to hunt for their food. In this wonderfully executed escape scene, two young kids find themselves trapped in an industrial-sized kitchen while being hunted down by a group of velociraptors.

In a film that is filled with thrilling escapes, this one is probably the most tense. Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards star as brother and sister Tim and Lex Murphy and find themselves on the run from the Raptors after they have made their own escape.

The raptors constantly surround the kids while the kids use everything possible, as well as their smarts, to avoid becoming a Raptor meal. It is an immensely tense scene that will have you on the edge of your seat.

No Sanctuary is considered to be one of the best episodes ever produced on the long-running zombie series, The Walking Dead. And it also features one of the best escape scenes in a series that is filled with escape scenes.

This one comes in the fifth season premiere episode and features Rick Grimes and his entire group attempting to escape Terminus when they discover its inhabitants have been resorting to cannibalism to survive and they were next up on the menu. The escape begins when Rick, Daryl, Glenn, and Bob are led into the blood-letting room so they can be prepared to be served to the people of Terminus.

Thankfully, Carol and Tyreese are on their way to help Rick and the group out of their sticky situation, but not after some death and zombie munching.

The Fugitive is a 1993 film starring Harrison Ford that is based on the television series of the same name. It involves Ford’s Dr. Richard Kimble, who has been wrongfully accused of the murder of his wife. The intense escape scene in question (there are many) is where Kimble is being transported to prison and must find a way not to get killed in a train wreck.

Kimble finds himself in a bus on his way to prison when fellow prisoners attempt their escape. During the attempt, the driver and two prisoners are killed, but the bus falls over a ravine and onto the path of an oncoming train. Before the train hits, Kimble is able to save a guard and barely get out of the bus before it gets destroyed by the train.

Papillon tells the true story of Henri Charrière, a thief in 1933 Paris who is wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to life in prison in a jungle prison camp. The film stars screen legend Steve McQueen as Papillon and Dustin Hoffman in a memorable role as prison-mate Louis Dega.

Papillon is noted for not just one thrilling escape scene, but multiple ones. The first comes when Papillon defends Dega from sadistic guards, only to run into the jungle to escape. He is eventually caught and sentenced to two years of solitary confinement.

Another escape scene has Papillon and Dega on a boat to Honduras, where again, they are captured with Papillon sentenced to five years of solitary confinement. Devil’s Island is Papillon’s final stop and it is here that his escape attempt finally makes him a free man.

Steve McQueen got his start in escape films when he co-starred with an ensemble cast in a true story of soldiers who staged a mass escape from the German POW camp Stalag Luft III. The film also starred James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Donald Pleasance.

This epic film built itself around the final escape scene, which was lengthy and exhilarating. The setup included small escape attempts as a way to keep the German soldiers occupied while the true escape was being planned.

The final escape scene was noted and memorable for Steve McQueen’s attempt to flee by way of motorcycle, which he drove across the countryside while being chased by German soldiers. Some POWs made it, others, unfortunately, didn’t.

Prison Break was an action television series that ran for five seasons from 2005-2009 and then in 2017 for its revival. It starred Dominic Purcell as Lincoln Burrows and Wentworth Miller as his brother Michael Scofield and finds Burrows sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit. The first season of the series all led up to the “prison break,” an escape scene that had Scofield devising an elaborate plan to break his brother out of prison.

The escape, which comes in the penultimate episode of season one, has not just Burrows and Scofield (who gets himself placed in the same prison as his brother) escaping, but six others as well. It is a gut-wrenching scene that includes handcuffs, the key to said handcuffs being swallowed, and then a hand getting cut off to free one man from the other.

The Shawshank Redemption is based on a novella written by prolific horror novelist, Stephen King, and has one of the most nauseating escape scenes on record. The story follows Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who finds himself in Shawshank prison for murders he didn’t commit. Helped by prison mate Red (Morgan Freeman), Andy endures all sorts of prison horrors while trying to keep his sense of humanity.

Finally, when the escape scene comes, it comes as a massive surprise. Not that it happened, but how Andy pulls it off. We follow Andy as he has taken decades to dig a hole to the prison’s sewage system. When Andy breaks through the raw sewage pipe and drops into it, you know just how determined he is to escape.