Panik

Tonino Ricci is certainly one of the worst Italian film-makers, also responsible of the terrible post-atomic romp "Rush". This one is a drwaback to "monster on campus" time : an infected scientist turns into a pizza-faced monster and terrorises (?) some bare-breasted starlets. A dubious hero tries to stop the contamination before the army nukes the whole town. In fact, the "bomber" is actually a (very) obvious model kit in front of some lava lamp impressions ! Ricci's no Argento or even Lenzi, but nobody could have done a masterpiece on such a no-budget. He did. Now, you take the same premise and turns it into a mega-bucks turkey like "Virus", and nobody is the merrier.

A professor has been exposed to some nasty virus, and the result is a slimy, toxic, rambling cannibal monster who lives in the sewers.David Warbeck is luring around as he usually does in low-budget Italian shockers. Oh, the military has put a quarantine on the small English town where the whole thing is happening, with plans about total destruction in fear of contamination. In one scene David Warbeck ask some character "have you seen any worse actors?". -And I can only give him a honest "No!" A very slow going film with few values.

Horror movie about fantastic experiments lead to disastrous consequences. A scientist : Roberto Ricci helped by his assistant : Janet Agren undergoing weird experiments resulting in a deadly bacteria creates a horrible personal mutation , leaving him extremely deformed. Along way, David Warbeck and a group of cops set out to find the unknown whereabout in which the monstrous being is carrying out his criminal spree . Pray it doesn't happen here !. The Monstrous Man Runs Amok His Town!

Terror movie in the fiffies style with the usual cannibalistic monster, who's really a man horribly disfigured caused by scientific experiments , subsequently undertaking rampage, slaughter and grisly killings. This Panic : Deadly Bacteria (1982) contains chills, thrills, horrifying scenes and lots of blood and gore. Stars David Warbeck giving a passable acting in his usual stoic style, at the time he played several Italian films in all kinds of sub-genres for the ordinary directors as Lucio Fulci and Anthony M Dawson or Margheritti . Being an Italian/Spanish co-production here shows up secondary Spaniard actors as Jose Ruiz Lifante, Fabian Conde, Pepe Ruiz and Italians as Janet Agren who perfomed a number of sex comedies , regular nasty Franco Ressel, Roberto Ricci who bears a decent make-up, Goffredo Unger who was direction assistant as well, among others

Made in medium-low budget by producer Marcello Romeo and the Spanish Victor Andres Catena and Jaime Comas Gil , both of whom writers too, who produced notorious films in the 60s, such as : A fistful of dollars, Sandokan, as well as financed various Tonino Ricci films as Rage , Shark Hunter, Encounters in the deep. It displays a thrilling and frightening musical score by Marcello Giombini. As well as atmospheric cinematography by Giovanni Berganini. The motion picture was middlingly directed by Tonino Ricci, as it has several shortcomings, flaws, gaps and failures. This mediocre Italian filmmaker Tonino Ricci made all sorts of genres with a certain skillness and commerciality enough, as he directed the following ones : Vietnam and wartime movies as "Rush", "Rage" . Adventures : "Predators of the magic stone", "Robin Hood is my name" , "Shark Hunter," Thor the conqueror", "Buck and Tim" , "Buck and the magic bracelet", "Zama Blanca", "Encounters in the deep" . Softcore : "Passion" . Mafia and Poliziesco sub-genre : "la Gran Familia", "Cross-current". Spaghetti Western : The Great Treasure hunt", "Bad kids in the West" . His best and first film was the WWII movie titled "The Liberators" with George Hilton and Klaus Kinski. Rating : 3.5/10 .Only for Italian Horror completists.

I'm just going to get this out of the way first. Yes, the main hero in this movie's name is Kirk, and he's a captain in the army. So yes. they refer to him throughout the picture as "Captain Kirk". Now, to me, that's HILARIOUS. i had to rewind the movie just to make sure i wasn't hearing things. And there was even an officer named "O'Brien" later on in the movie. I'm shocked that the monster's name wasn't "Riker". But enough of the good stuff, let's dive into "Panic".

This movie is another on our awesome 50 chilling classics collection at number 26. Now i took a two week break at the halfway mark, and coming back, i'm not so sure WHY i came back. OK, if you looked at the top, i gave this movie a 2. So what's the big problem with this movie you may ask? One word. PACING. This movie's pacing is TERRIBLE. this 90 minute movie has a plot that could either have been resolved in 15 minutes but it also had the plot to stage an entire 90 minute movie if they did it correctly. Sadly, here, they did not. It's really sad when i understand more of the movie from reading the one paragraph DVD sleeve in my Box set, but that seems to be happening more and more with these movies. And this movie is no exception. on the DVD sleeve it says "A British research scientist is working with various forms of bacteria when he is accidentally exposed to a deadly variety due to a lab accident." OK. there are 3 problems with that sentence. 1. This movie is Italian, not British. But all the actors are dubbed British so they put in stock pictures of England. Why? I'm not sure. 2. No, i did not accidentally type "Variety" instead of "Virus" That is what actually was printed on my DVD sleeve. and 3. IT NEVER SHOWS YOU THAT IN THE MOVIE. in the film it starts out with some rats fighting in a lab, a guy grabs his face and that's it. i had NO idea what happened. and honestly, i STILL have no idea what happened.

Like i said though. This movie is S-L-O-W. it takes forever to make any point and while the movie has a relatively high body count, all kills are offscreen and in the dark. and they quickly cut away from any sort of interesting nudity. pff. this considers itself a monster mash film? There's at least 3 times in the movie where they could have stopped this monster dude but then...they didn't for some reason? and that just gives them an excuse to have lengthy scenes of them talking. um. yay? I really had to pull out the DS during this movie. it was more than i could do to pay HALF attention to it let alone ALL my attention. But i gave it a good go. i gave it 45 minutes of my undivided attention and there was so little going on i realized that i could do at least 2 more things at once and still know exactly what was going on. and you know what? i was right.

The ending is extremely abrupt with no time for an epilogue and the final scene just makes NO sense. i'm not going to give the ending away but i will say 5 words. "Fire extinguisher? What the crap?" With pacing that could bore Ben Stein, characters that are less enjoyable then a Disney channel sitcom line-up, and an ending more predictable than the ending to "The Village", Panic gets 2 melty faces, out of 10

This has to rank as one of the poorest Italian genre pictures that I have sat through. It's about a virus that turns a scientist into a rotting homicidal maniac, leading to government plans to bomb the town where he is at large. Really, this is a disappointment, seeing as even Z-Grade Italian products usually succeed in at least being entertaining. Sadly Panic is not one of those films. It's pacing is awful, as it drags on and on with little development or plot structure. And to add insult to injury, there's really no tension or scares either. Another bugbear for me is the fact that this one is set in the UK, despite being an Italian production. Many Italian genre films do this but it's rarely convincing and was clearly done in an attempt to appeal to the Anglo-American market. But, frankly, sun-kissed Italian locations are just more preferable to me, so this factor just makes things even more dreary.

Logic isn't a defining feature of Italian movies in general and this one is no exception. Quite why the government come to the decision to obliterate the town off the face of the planet because of the presence of a lone toxic madman is really never fully explained. Neither are the events at the beginning of the movie where the virus breaks out detailed clearly at all. A swat team is called in and we briefly see a scientist with his hands over his face covered in green goo. And that's it. It's rubbish and incomprehensible. Admittedly it seemed obvious that the version I saw was cut of violence and nudity, which hardly helped, but really that would only account for a small amount of missing material. Ultimately, the film is wrapped up in a seriously underwhelming manner too.

Panic does not come recommended. It's just so shoddily put together and it's unlikely to impress too many people. The only point of interest in it is that the lead character is called Captain Kirk without even a hint of irony.