Escape to Athena (Blu-ray Review)
Director
George P. CosmatosRelease Date(s)
1979 (May 27, 2026)Studio(s)
ITC Entertainment (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B-
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]
Thanks in no small part to Kurt Russell, the reputation director George Pan Cosmatos has suffered a bit over the last couple of decades. Granted, Cosmatos was a boisterous and even somewhat abrasive personality, and there were already stories of friction on a few of his sets, but that’s hardly unique in the film industry. (Plenty of directors like James Cameron have made successful careers out of being insufferably obnoxious.) But the year after Cosmatos passed away in 2005, Russell told an interviewer that he was the one calling the shots on Tombstone, and Cosmatos was just a “ghost director” (an easy claim to make after Cosmatos was no longer around to defend himself). That led to speculation that Cosmatos had been essentially just the “beard” on other films like Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Russell happily fanned those flames.
The truth is that Cosmatos wasn’t afraid to step into troubled productions like Tombstone after the original directors had left, and despite his inherent brashness, he was more than willing to accommodate the wishes of strong-willed lead actors. Yet he also spearheaded some interesting projects of his own like Escape to Athena, a raucous World War II film with a split personality that perfectly mirrors the larger-than-life persona of the man who made it. It’s The Guns of Navarone mixed with Kelly’s Heroes, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and James Bond, in more or less equal measures, with an anachronistic Sonny Bono thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, it happened to be a WWII flick released two years after Star Wars, so it was a bit of an anachronism of its own that ended up being an expensive flop for Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment. But it still became a staple on syndicated television, where it usually played under the title The Golden Raiders.
Escape to Athena is set on an unnamed Greek island in 1944 (although it was primarily shot on Rhodes, and much of the scenery is unmistakable). The action takes place in a German prisoner of war camp, where commandant Otto Hecht (Roger Moore) is forcing the prisoners to excavate valuable Greek artifacts for the fatherland—even if he’s secretly shipping the best items to Switzerland for his own use. Hecht has been threading a needle between his archaeologist prisoner Professor Blake (David Niven), the brutal local SS officer Volkmann (Anthony Valentine), and the leader of the Greek resistance on the island, Zeno (Telly Savalas). But when recently captured USO performers Charlie Dane (Elliott Gould) and Dottie Del Mar (Stefanie Powers) join the camp, it sets a plot into motion for the prisoners to take over the camp and steal Byzantine treasures from a monastery atop the nearby Mount Athena—where naturally there’s more going on than meets the eye. Escape to Athena also stars Claudia Cardinale, Richard Roundtree, and the aforementioned Sonny Bono.
Escape to Athena was one of several different story ideas that Cosmatos kept in his back pocket, just waiting for the right opportunity to develop them into feature films. Richard S. Lochte and Edward Anhalt fleshed it out into a screenplay, incorporating whatever wild ideas that Cosmatos had in mind while throwing in the kitchen sink for good measure. As a result, Escape to Athena isn’t exactly a model of narrative coherency, but to be fair, it was never intended to be. While the SS are on hand to provide just enough brutality to raise the stakes, Escape to Athena is a rollicking, lighthearted action-adventure that was never intended to be taken seriously—and to make sure that no one misses that point, Cosmatos even threw in an in-joke cameo from William Holden reprising his role as J.J. Sefton from Stalag 17. (Holden was seeing Powers at the time, so he was hanging around the set anyway.) And it’s filled with anachronisms like silencers that only make Hollywood “pew” noises and German frogmen wearing aqualungs with Émile Gagnan and Jacques Cousteau’s twin-hose regulators that weren’t mass produced until after the war (real WWII frogmen used rebreathers instead). So, Sonny Bono actually fits right in with the rest of the anachronistic madness.
Bono or not, Cosmatos assembled a great cast for the film (even if the mix of accents is a little less than convincing), some of whom clearly took the roles on a lark as a way to collect a paycheck while vacationing in Rhodes on Lew Grade’s dime. But the whole film is a lark, so they fit right in. Cosmatos included plenty of sweeping helicopter shots to show off that Grecian scenery, and he assembled a stunt team led by Vic Armstrong that produced some fine action scenes, especially a kickass motorcycle chase that deserves to be ranked higher on the list of all-time great chase scenes. Like many others on the set, Armstrong occasionally butted heads with Cosmatos (in his 2011 book The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman, Armstrong said that Cosmatos was “a wonderful guy, don’t get me wrong, I loved him, but oh my God, very trying.”) But sometimes the clash between thesis and antithesis produces memorable synthesis, and that’s what happened with all of the action in Escape to Athena.
Take all of that, throw in an equally raucous score by the great Lalo Schifrin, and what more could audiences want? Well, in the post-Star Wars pop culture ethos of 1979, apparently much more than that. So, Escape from Athena bombed, and it bombed hard, too—although the worst was yet to come for Lew Grade and ITC, but that’s a story for another day. Yet it did indeed find new life on television as The Golden Raiders, which is where I first encountered the film. While it hasn’t achieved the kind of cult movie status that posterity has granted to Kelly’s Heroes, it’s still a wildly entertaining (if somewhat silly) WWII action/adventure/comedy that’s fondly remembered by those of us who caught it back in the day (one way or the other). It may not a great film, but it’s great fun, and proof positive that George Pan Cosmatos was perfectly capable of delivering quality entertainment without needing an actor to tell him what to do.
Cinematographer Gil Taylor shot Escape from Athena on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. There’s no information about the 1080p master used for this release, but it looks like the same one that’s been floating around for a while now. And given the fact that it was produced by the now-defunct ITC Entertainment, it’s unlikely that the original camera negative was involved. Fresh scan or not, it’s still a solid if unexceptional transfer. There are some light scratches, speckling, and other minor blemishes visible, and there’s also some ringing visible at times, especially when objects or characters are framed against the sky. But regardless of the source element, there’s plenty of detail visible in those fabulous Rhodes locations, while facial textures and costuming are also nicely resolved. Color reproduction is quite good, with natural-looking flesh tones but plenty of depth the greens of the vegetation and the bright red of Stefanie Powers’ lipstick. In lieu of a brand-new 4K restoration—and don’t hold your breath on that one—this Blu-ray version will do.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. The sound is a bit thin and tinny, with no appreciable low end, but there’s little in the way of noise or distortion and the dialogue is generally clean and clear. Schifrin’s score (which mixes pseudo-Mediterranean stylings with quotations from The Battle Hymn of the Republic and When the Saints Go Marching In) does suffer a bit from a lack of bass, but it still provides plenty of energy, and you’ll be humming his title theme all day after watching the film.
Via Vision’s Limited Edition Region-Free Blu-ray release of Escape to Athena is #599 in their Imprint Films line. Limited to 1,500 units, it includes a slipcover featuring alternate theatrical poster artwork (different than the one that appears on the insert). The following extras are included:
- Commentary by Lee Pfeiffer, Hank Reineke, and Paul Scrabo
- The Joker in the Deck (HD – 8:49)
- Interview with Elliott Gould (SD – 4:31)
- Interview with Roger Moore (SD – 1:48)
- Interview with Sonny Bono (SD – 4:00)
- Interview with George Pan Cosmatos (SD – 19:48)
- Interview with Jack Wiener and David Niven Jr. (SD – 15:24)
- Interview with Claudia Cardinale (SD – 9:11)
- Interview with Stefanie Powers (SD – 13:36)
- Interview with Telly Savalas (SD – 5:56)
- Interview with Anthony Valentine (SD – 5:42)
- TV Spot (SD – :30)
- Theatrical Trailer (HD – 2:49)
Via Vision has added two new extras for this release, starting with a commentary featuring Lee Pfeiffer, editor of Cinema Retro magazine, alongside contributor Hank Reineke and extras producer Paul Scrabo. (At the time of recording, Reineke was working on an article about the making of Escape to Athena for Cinema Retro, and he draws from those notes for the commentary.) They’re a little apologetic at first, unnecessarily so, but they do quickly get into the spirit of the proceedings. Naturally, that means addressing the extraordinary locations on the island of Rhodes, as well as the cast and crew. And yes, they delve a bit into the fascinating background of Escape to Athena and the somewhat more enigmatic background of George Pan Cosmatos. They tell plenty of stories about the wild production, including the expensive monastery set on the mountainside that was nothing more than a shell inside a quarry and required caution for anyone working on it. It’s a good track, even if they do occasionally fall back into apologizing for the fact that they enjoy the film.
The Joker in the Deck is a new interview with Elliott Gould—two interviews, actually. Gould ended up talking about Escape to Athena while discussing unrelated films in 2024, so Kremer includes that clip first, with the actor detailing his work with Lew Grade during that period and reminiscing about a few of the other cast members. The second clip is from a telephone conversation that Kremer had with Gould in early 2025, this time intentionally focusing on Escape to Athena. Gould dives further into the other members of the cast and the locations. He also says that he liked Cosmatos a lot, but that the director talked too much.
Aside from the theatrical trailer and a TV spot, the rest of the extras consist of interviews that were shot on the set of Escape to Athena. Presumably they were conducted to provide material for a promotional film, but it’s unclear if one was ever produced. But the raw interviews confirm that the experience was indeed a bit of a lark for some of the cast members, especially since they brought their families along for the trip (and they have their children interview them for the cameras, Chaz Bono included). And Cosmatos appears with his ubiquitous cigar in hand, a sad detail given that he eventually died of lung cancer.
It’s nice to have some new extras even if it would be even better to get a new transfer based on a fresh scan, but let’s face it: when it comes to films like Escape to Athena, beggars can’t be choosers. This is a fine set from Via Vision that handily trumps all previous Blu-ray releases, so it’s an easy recommendation for fans of the film—and it’s a good introduction for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, provided that they can watch it with an open mind.
-Stephen Bjork
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