Panik

Remember back in school when you would get a tedious math assignment like long division or multiplication and instead of actually doing the work you turned to the trusty calculator and just wrote the answer in prompting the teacher to scribble across the top of the paper in red ink "show your work please". Well, Panic/Bakterion is the personification of that scenario in movie form and much like that math assignment I turned in it too will receive a big fat F.

Let's get this out of the way quickly. Yes, David Warbeck plays Captain Kirk with phasers on stunningly boring. The movie opens with two rats locked in mortal combat, an alarm sounding, and then some nameless individual screaming with green makeup on his face. This is supposedly how Professor Adams becomes Pizza the Hut or some monster that really resembles him. Another side effect of the contamination besides the resemblance of Italian cuisine is a thirst for human blood. At least this is what we are told as Kirk and the Professor's assistant Jane always manage to find the bodies after the fact. This entire film never once shows any visual "red meat" as all the kills are done either off screen or cut to another scene entirely. The monster even attacks a crowd of people in a theater watching the most mundane movie on earth (even worst than this one trust me!) before having the screen go black for some inexplicable reason. This gets old real fast.

Once the attacks start to increase in regularity the town starts to "panic" or to be more accurate become slightly agitated because a cabal of secret government agent don't want the virus to spread so they quarantine the entire village. Not once does anyone show any signs of infection from contact with Professor Adams as the government is planing to go ahead with Operation Q which is the eradication of the town populace. You think this would be important yet Kirk, who is in contact with the government agents, never relays this information to them. Stoopid! Instead he hunts down the beast with a fire extinguisher. You'll get what I mean if you watch. How this movie ends is so abrupt it's downright insulting. If you must watch this awful movie at the very least skip to the last two minutes. Otherwise quarantine Panic to the island of bad cinema.

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.

Panic is dreadful. I the only reason I watched it was to see David Warbeck and Janet Agren (with silly perm) and have a few laughs. Indeed the only thing one can do with a film like this is laugh. Chuckle at the attempt to match stock footage of streets in England with the streets of Spain. Roar with laughter at the cinema scene in which the lights go out and all we see is black for a good minute as the monster attacks the audience. Frown at the huge rat that makes an appearance in the sewer only to never be seen again for the rest of the film? There are so many goof in this film it is unbelievable, the best one has to be a Police Rover driving to the scene of one of the murders and the car which arrives is a Ford Cortina. Oh the pain of watching Panic, I still don't think I've fully recovered from the experience.

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.

Eminent professor (Ricci) is transformed into a mutated monster following a scientific accident at a chemical laboratory where germ warfare agents are being covertly developed. When politicians learn of the breach, they enact "plan Q" to annihilate the town where the hideous man-beast is now stalking mostly buxom women to feed his insatiable appetite for blood. Special investigator (Warbeck) teams up with local Sergeant (Lifante) and the Professor's laboratory assistant (Agren) in a vain attempt to capture the beast, administer an antidote then convince the powers-that-be that the threat of contamination has been averted thus saving the town from imminent destruction. All in a night's work.

Sort of a "Quartermass", "Incredible Melting Man" hybrid of Italo-Spanish origin, there's little suspense or intelligence about this gore fest. Ricci's make-up is certainly hideous (as described by others, similar to a pizza with the lot), and his limb-ripping rampage of mostly nude or near nude young women will both thrill and repulse various sectors of the audience. The scene in which he interrupts the canoodling couple has some tension, but it's ultimately inexplicable and so random as to be absurd. Kiwi David Warbeck plies his trade with admirable conviction, but it's wasted effort, while Swedish bombshell Agren's character looks to have been edited down to a mere supporting role.

Buckets of blood, fiery explosions and complex conspiracies involving an array of characters whose purpose I couldn't determine, this B-grade horror has its moments, but loses momentum and drags its heels for the last thirty minutes to a disappointing conclusion.