A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a traveling magazine sales crew, and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.
A group of ruthless Chicago mob enforcers are sent to Kansas City to settle things with the owner of a slaughterhouse who has taken money that is not his to keep.
An ex-convict sets out to uncover who framed him for an armored car robbery.
Set during World War II, an upper-class family begins to fall apart due to the conservative nature of the patriarch and the progressive values of his children.
A frustrated young man, separated from his younger girlfriend, gets involved in a juvenile gang.
A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.
In downtown Kansas City, a bunch of drunk bums get strangled with a radioactive chain of mutation.
The titular cackling machete-wielding nuthouse escapee prowls around the city killing people.
In 2012, two students, Gary and Matt, set out on their graduate thesis to prove one thing: paranormal existence is simply a figment of ones imagination. To conduct their experiment, they sent six volunteers as subjects into a notoriously haunted house in the West Bottoms area of Kansas City and recorded their every move. They hypothesized that if subjects knew the house’s history of unexplained deaths and the frequent paranormal sightings, the subjects would begin to experience “ghostly encounters.” After what started out to be a flawless experiment, things quickly started to get out of control.
In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.
Rosie and Marie are wisecracking Kansas City manicurists. Marie is an unabashed golddigger but Rosie would like to marry her gangster boyfriend Dynamite, who's given her an expensive ring. When she loses the ring, both friends have to flee Dynamite's wrath; their adventures include masquerading as girl scouts and taking an ocean voyage to Paris.
Nelly Don the Musical Movie is a true Kansas City story about Nelly Don, a trailblazer who ignited a fashion revolution in the early 1900s to become a global sensation. Yet on the coattails of her success, drama ensues from an abusive husband and affair with a US Senator to the fake adoption of her biological son and her mobster-linked abduction. History comes alive with music, propelling the sensational story of her meteoric rise to fame in the fashion industry.
Formed in 1979 in Wichita, Kansas, the so-called "blister pop" band the Embarrassment played major U.S. cities and garnered praise from the likes of Allen Ginsberg, John Cale and Jonathan Demme, but their refusal to compromise their vision made success elusive. Through archival interviews and concert footage, this documentary draws a portrait of the oft-overlooked post-punk legends.
Escapist proudly presents Our World, featuring Sean Malto, Mikey Santillan, Shaun McKay, Joseph Lopez, Josh Crane, Josh White, Bryant Doerfler, Keelin Austin, Scotty Laird, Rod Harper, Ernie Torres, Dillon Aguilar, Garrett Olinger, Mike Webb, Ryan Pearce, Max Chilen and Jesse Doan. Edited by Ryan Lovell. Filmed by Tyler Krupski, Dylan Burke and Ryan Lovell in Kansas City, LA, Japan and Puerto Rico.
The film shines a light on Kansas City’s less glorious past when it was a major distribution hub for heroin in the 1930s and 1940s. Black Hand Strawman explains how Kansas City’s Mafia exercised control over the Teamsters Union Local 41 from the 1950s into the 1980s.
Coming back during Winter, Alex Powell explores both the places and personal connections found in his hometown and how they've changed. “Guide to a Midwest Hometown” explores what makes the barren places at home feel sentimental and special, and the good and bad feelings that come when being back home. Inspired by "How To With John Wilson".
Documentary film detailing the history of Kansas City jazz.
A feature documentary about Kansas City, as its people tell us how they got through the pandemic and look back at what they lost.
Set during the height of the Great Depression, a young man gets a job as a photographer and comes face to face with a test of his morals.
In 1913 Congress created the Federal Reserve to bring financial stability to the nation after a number of banking panics, with a mix of regional banks and a central bank board. Congressmen Robert L. Owen and Carter Glass helped pass the Federal Reserve Act with the help of compromises led by President Woodrow Wilson. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City was begun in 1914, led by Jo Zach Miller, Jr., along with local bankers such as William T. Kemper. With the bank rapidly growing, about 1920 a new 21 story building was built at 9th and Grand that at one time held the offices of the Bureau of Investigation and President Harry S. Truman.