Pânico na Cidade

Agent Pomeroy (Howard Duff) is called in to crack a bunch of saboteurs planning an atomic explosion in LA. Another cheapie which kept us (slightly) entertained while we pointed at the screen and wondered 'who's that?' Howard Duff is one of those actors who was rarely off our screens in our younger years but somehow we never can remember his name or what he was in. Linda Cristal was the pretty young wife in 'The High Chaparral' and who do we have here but a very youthful Dennis Hopper! Probably much to his chagrin he gets bumped-off early on, perhaps to get started on Easy Rider (or did Hang 'em High come first?). Whatever, this was a good story that moved along nicely but was obviously a bit short in the funding department. On the plus side, we get to see the seamier, workaday reality of the city that is mostly shown in other movies as a glamorous, high-rolling place, and we found that quite refreshing and 'real'.

I am somewhat surprised that it is even available to purchase -- since it is not the kind of kitschy-bad that can earn a movie cult status, nor notable as any popular achievement either. Its chief virtue is a sort of understated competence.

"Panic..." is plotted as a stereotypical doomsday thriller and the characters are almost, but not quite, cut from cardboard templates. But decent performances and some unusual casting choices for that era give it a certain tragic power.

A romantic subplot between a white middle-aged G-man and Latina doctor is spare, with none of the histrionics you might expect from a low-budget thriller of this sort.

The film's presentation of Los Angeles is a mostly unglamorous town of vacant lots, auto machine shops, shabby apartment complexes, and sterile hospital waiting rooms. The choice of locations adds considerably to its bleak tone. The conspirators operate in this vacant environment, and literally work themselves to death constructing an atomic bomb to use on the city. The nearly-as-anonymous protagonists do not fare much better in their efforts to find and to stop them.

Made in the 60's and in color, but staged more like a 40's "B" picture, "Panic in the City" is not exceptional, but it is not half bad.

One of the earliest made for TV films that I recall is Panic In The City which is a no frills thriller about some rogue Soviet agents assembling a bomb in the city of Los Angeles. Nehemiah Persoff is our rogue agent and he's got pretend defector scientist Oscar Beregi on the job. This is something that has been years in the making.

When one of the scientists as he's later identified collapses on an LA street and is brought to the hospital he's diagnosed with a hopeless case of radiation poisoning. But someone breaches security to kill this man afraid of what he might spill. That brings the FBI in the person of Howard Duff and and his immediate superior Stephen McNally on the job.

There are a couple of good female parts. Linda Cristal as a doctor who diagnoses the original victim and conceivably could get something romantic going with Duff if things weren't breaking so fast. Also all American Anne Jeffreys who played perky Marion Kerby on Topper is in a totally different kind of part as a Russian agent.

It is a bit slow but really picks up the pace in the last third. As for the climax, all I will say is nuclear bombs should really be built in proper facilities and not someone's basement.

When a European scientist working in the US falls, nearly dead, on the street from radiation poisoning, FBI agent Dave Pomeroy (Howard Duff) is given the task of tracking down the source of the radiation. Before he gets a chance to question the dying man, he finds that he has been murdered in his hospital bed by a hired assassin (Dennis Hopper).

The assassin was hired by August Best (Nehemiah Persoff), the leader of a cell from a secret cabal of European spies who have infiltrated various institutions in the US. The leader is a mad scientist Dr. Strangelove type character who has mutinied his cell and started to assemble a Nuclear Bomb in the basement of a home in a suburb of Los Angeles, with plans on blowing it up in a major US city.

He has blackmailed another member of the cabal, Dr. Cerbo (Oscar Beregi Jr)- a Nuclear Scientist- into assembling the bomb. All while Pomeroy and the FBI are hot on the case of tracking them down, though seemingly always a few minutes behind...

This doomsday thriller/mystery is spun together with a love story, between Pomeroy and the sexy Dr Paula Stevens (Linda Cristal), a radiologist from the hospital.(y'know...for the ladies) What at first begins as a utilitarian relationship quickly develops into something deeper as the film progresses.

When Best's handler denounces his insane plot and tells him the cabal's plans to place him under arrest, he goes nuts, killing his handler and running off to put his scheme into action. He forces Cerbo to quickly finish and initiate the bomb. As the the fission reaction begins, Best shoots Cerbo, only to be shot by Pomeroy, who finally manages to track them down via FBI cunning, seconds later....but it's too late...the reaction has begun and it is only a matter of time before it explodes...will Pomeroy be able to stop the bomb from exploding as people watch from their front lawns and windows? or will his efforts be in vain...?

A decent, not great, but solid enough Euro Spy vs FBI pre-apocalyptic thriller from the height of cold war era tensions. While the finale is pretty bizarre and will probably have you laughing...i'd say it is definitely worth a watch, though the quality of the DVD is poor- like a bad VHS transfer to DVD from the late 90s.

The film has very nice framing and mise en scene from director Eddie Davis, nothing overly symbolic but at least it is visually appealing. As far as I'm concerned, it's worth it alone for Dennis Hopper's cameo, the 60's bathing suits, and the hilarious finale. 7 out of 10 cause I love this kinda stuff. It's good for what it is.

The cover of the DVD box for this forgotten movie trumpets one of the actors in it, which happens to be Dennis Hopper. Actually, Hopper (who is almost unrecognizable) only plays a minor role in the movie. That didn't give me a problem. Watching the movie itself, one will be struck by how much it resembles a made-for-TV movie of the era, with its limited production values and flat loot. But that didn't give me a problem. What did give me a problem was the story. Actually, the first twenty or so minutes of the movie aren't that bad - there is some mystery and intrigue that kept me interested. However, after those twenty minutes are over, the next 45 or so minutes will put many viewers to sleep, with endless talk and an investigation that makes little progress. Things do pick up again in the last 25 or so minutes, but many viewers will have abandoned ship long before this part of the movie comes across. The movie also suffers from the fact that we never learn why the bad guys are doing what they are doing. Had there been more tension and action in the middle, as well as explanation for the bad guys scheme, we might have had something here. But as it is, it's more or less a disappointment.