Synopsis

The Escape marks the first "serious" full-length Tokugawa Picture. It has a very straightforward story which is told via flashbacks, fifty-year time jumps, and heavy narration from the character of Robert (played by David Benjamin). For the sake of simplicity, here is the plot in a chronological nutshell:

In 1998, NASA, in increasing its efforts to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence, develops a nearly perfect AI (Artificial Intelligence) program which it incorporates into its Voyager IV probe. Like all the other probes, this one is sent into space and is never intercepted by alien life... or is it?

A few years later, NASA detects the probe returning to Earth, but it is out of their control.

Soon, the corrupted AI program inside Voyager IV is able to remotely control all electronic machinery on Earth, and launches nuclear weapons strategically in order to eliminate the larger half of the Earth's population. Cut to the year 2048... Most of humanity has been wiped out by the entity, and whoever is left is enslaved by the machines and robots that now rule the world.

One man, Robert, who is the son of the man responsible for the AI computer, has escaped from the robots' underground complex, but was captured and punished. Now, sensing the danger to the human race, he instructs a young man on how (and how not) to go about an escape, and why it is direly necessary. As a result of his counseling, Robert is tortured and killed, and his student, James (Clark Kirkman), makes his escape. On his way out into the unknown wilderness, the sunlit ground he has never experienced, James learns of his enemy's larger plans: the eugenic advancement of the human population followed by cranial implants, allowing the entity to occupy the human populous rather than machines. James also learns that he is alone in the outside world, and the only way humanity can continue to exist is if the people captive in the complex are set free. And to do that, James sacrifices his life to destroy the Voyager IV probe itself.

This movie was filmed, like its predecessor DP2, out of order, but very little of it was shot "on location." Other than the forest which represents the outside world and a house that James runs into at the end of the movie, The Escape was filmed in sets largely constructed out of cardboard in various parts of Mr. Benjamin's house. The sets include: James' living quarters, the interrogation room, the solitary confinement room, the work room, a robot computer room, and a ventilation shaft. This last set was nearly twenty feet long and had an opening of about two square feet. For the filming of these claustrophobic scenes, both Clark Kirkman and David Benjamin (as the cameraman) had to stuff themselves into this small space, and discovered just what was meant by confinement. Additional color-filter work was put into the DVD version of this movie, which can be seen in the images on this page.