First aired in 1995, Escape From Terror stars Maria Pitillo as Theresa Stamper. When the film begins, Theresa is a naive 23-year-old woman who lives in Oklahoma with her mother (Cindy Williams). She gets a job working as a secretary for Paul Stamper (Adam Storke), the owner of Stamper Oil Company. She soon becomes more than just Paul’s secretary. At first, Paul is charming. He’s a little rough around the edges and he’s quick to get jealous, but Theresa just tells herself that Paul is under a lot of stress and that she can fix whatever’s wrong with him.
Paul and Theresa get married in Las Vegas and things quickly go downhill. Paul becomes physically abusive, along with being emotionally manipulative. He fires her from her job because no wife of Paul Stamper is going to work, especially not where other men can look at her. Theresa continues to tell herself that Paul is just under stress. Everyone else tells her that Paul is clearly on drugs and they point out that he always wears long sleeves, even in the Oklahoma heat. When Theresa eventually catches Paul hanging out at a bar and shooting up heroin in the bathroom, he proceeds to beat her badly enough to send her to the hospital. When Theresa takes her daughter and leaves Paul, Paul goes crazy and shoots her new boyfriend.
Paul goes on the run. Eventually, he’s arrested and convicted, but he manages to escape from prison and then he disappears. Five years later, Theresa starts to get threatening calls and realizes that, wherever he is, Paul is still obsessed with her. What can Theresa do?
How about telling her story to Unsolved Mysteries?
Escape From Terror was produced by Unsolved Mysteries, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when a good deal of the film’s final moments is dedicated to showing just how efficiently the show and its audience were able to track down Paul Stamper. Sheriff Bill Douglas (Brad Dourif), who has been manning the Unsolved Mysteries phone lines, tells everyone in the studio to quiet down after word comes in that Paul has been arrested. “I’ve got one more call to make,” he says.
And yes, it would be tempting to call this movie out for mythologizing the people who produced it, but the fact of the matter is that it is a true story and the real Paul Stamper actually was arrested (and subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison) after Unsolved Mysteries aired a story about him, so the show is probably justified in patting itself on the back. It’s kind of like America’s Most Wanted. As easy as it was to occasionally make fun of the show, it did work.
As for the movie, it’s actually not bad. I’ve spent enough time in rural Oklahoma that the film seems very familiar to me. Maria Pitillo and Adam Storke gave good performances as Theresa and Paul, with Adam Storke doing an especially good job of capturing Paul’s manipulative nature. It was also nice to see Brad Dourif playing a sympathetic character. Dourif may have made his name playing bad guys, but in this film, he’s the ideal small-town lawman.
I might binge Unsolved Mysteries after Horrorthon is over. Who knows? Maybe one of my older neighbors has been on the run since the ’90s. There’s really only one way to find out!
