Escaping using a secret passage is a staple of film. In the first series of Blackadder, a comedy, Blackadder accidentally discovers and uses a secret passage, except the knights sent to kill him already know about the secret passage and follow him. Has this happenned in any serious film? For real?
Does gay porn count as “serious film”?
Depends on the cinematography.
If I believe my college history professor’s version rather than wikipedia’s, King Alexander Obrenovic and Queen Draga of Serbia hid in a secret passage during a coup by the Karageorgovic’s in 1903. When the plotters couldn’t find them, they went around the palace calling out that the couple were guaranteed safe passage. However, when the two emerged they were slaughtered.
Wikipedia says they were hiding in a cupboard in Draga’s apartment, and makes no mention of the false promise of safety.
Given that the Obrenovics and Karageorgeovic’s are the plain and star-bellied sneeches of Serbia, squabbling to this day, wikipedia’s version might be as neutral as possible; one which works better with a cupboard than a secret passageway.
Both the American Underground Railroad and various Europeans hiding Jews during the Nazi era made good use of hidden rooms and secret passages.
See Ann Frank for an example of one that eventually failed.
The House of the Seven Gables (the actual real-workd house, not the book) has a secret passage, although I don’t know if it was ever used for anything exciting.
More than one castle in medieval Europe had a secret exit. If the castle was beseiged, a messenger or a raiding party (or worst come to worst, the lord and his retainers) could try to sneak out at night.
I was going to talk about English Protestants being hidden from Catholic persecutions (and later vice versa) when I found a reference to it on a Wikipedia page of Secret Passages.
There are several whole books on the subject, but none appear to have any additional information on Amazon.
However, titles include History in hiding: The story of Britain’s secret passages and hiding-places, by Stewart Ross and Secret passages and hiding-places, by Jeremy Errand.
Secret passages are very real; history has guaranteed danger for many groups.
Yes, all these are good, but I’m not asking about secret passages per se, I’m asking if someone, in a film or for real, has used a secret passage as an escape, and then we (the audience) find that the attackers already know about the secret passage, hence the, “Oh, they must have taken the secret passage.”
I’m not sure if his movies really count as “serious films,” but I seem to recall an incident in one of the Miles O’Keeffe** Ator the Invincible ** movies where his adventuring party sneaks into the Castle of the Evil Overlord by using “the secret passage”-- which turns out to be a spacious, torch-lit corridor with multiple guard patrols. Obviously if the “secret passage” had actually enabled them to avoid the guards, then there would have been no fight scene, and where’s the fun in that?
Not exactly a serious film, but one of the endings of Clue requires the use of the secret passages between kitchen and study and lounge and conservatory. Anyone who’d played the board game knew about the secret passages ahead of time.
If you twist it around real hard this almost fits the OP.
But not really.
Never mind, I’ll shut up now.
Is this the same dark-ages “secret passage” that had a new invention called “hand rails”?
-Joe
Pain-in-the-ass nitpick- The phrase is “if worse comes to worst.” Sorry, but it’s right up there with somebody saying “for all intensive purposes.” Drives me insane…
Carry on.
:smack:
Huh. Go figure… damn pot-smoking English prof!
