“...designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half-hour of high adventure...”

 

While similar shows focused on mystery and suspense, Escape concentrated more on tales of high adventure — war, westerns, supernatural horror and science fiction. Esteemed authors like Rudyard Kipling, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad provided much of the source material for the program, setting Escape apart from most of the other dramatic anthologies on the air at the time.

 

Escape adapted several short stories written by Nelson Bond - the most famous of these being ‘Conqueror’s Isle,’ which first aired on Escape back in March 5, 1949. What made ‘Conqueror’s Isle’ a compelling radio adventure drama on Escape is that the good guys did not win against a race of human-looking aliens – which went against the grain of good being triumphant over evil in the end.

 

Many of the shows, including ‘Conqueror’s Isle’, dramatized on Escape have established permanent residence in the memory of a multitude of fans: ‘Zero Hour,’ an eerie science-fiction tale about the end of the world; ‘Evening Primrose,’ in which a misfit removes himself from the rest of society by hiding out in a department store...and discovers to his horror the strange creatures that roam there after hours; ‘Poison,’ a tense allegory on prejudice that develops when a man awakens to learn that a deadly snake has joined him in his bunk. ‘A Shipment of Mute Fate’ was another of Escape’s all-time classics - an African bushmaster gets loose on a passenger ship, much to the dismay of both travelers and crew. Also well remembered is ‘Leinengen vs. the Ants,’ in which a stubborn plantation owner must fight off an army of African ants. Perhaps the best remembered tale aired on Escape is ‘Three Skeleton Key,’ in which a group of lighthouse keepers find themselves besieged by ravenous rats.

 

Here is the complete content of this 6 hour, 6 CD collection of Escape, Volume 11 fully restored by Radio Archives.