Pânico

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.

Because of an accident in the laboratory of a British chemical company simply named Chemical which joins the government's so-called Prurima Plan, one of the leading researchers, professor Adams, becomes a fresh-eating monster, and attacks a local teenager couple of Betty and her boy friend, Lucas. And then, the government decides to order the RAF to use the mass-destructive weapon... Although I believe I am one of the Italian-horror-film-lovers, I have to say this Italian film is as sadly bad as the notorious MIAMI GOLEM. The story of the film seems to be trying to express the biological and/or chemical crisis of the city of Newton where the ex-professor monster is, but the film itself has no tense atmosphere from beginning to end. And the pizza-faced monster effects which created by Rino Carboni are not only simply cheap but also problematically unrealistic; at least his face seems to be too swollen to eat raw human fresh. And to make matters worse, this film has, as other reviewer already pointed out, not a few badly independent and almost meaningless scenes. For instance, in the first one third part of the film, Captain Kirk and Sergeant O'Brien find a giant pizza-faced mouse in a manhole of the old factory, and the Sergeant says OH, MY GOD! And that's all there is to it. Since then the composite-photograph-like mouse never shows up, and no one mentions it. In addition, this film has NIGHTMARE-CITY-like crazy credits; at the very ending part of the film, with the cheap TV-like music by Marcello Giombini, one can see WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN MIGHT REALLY HAPPEN...PERHAPS IT ALREADY HAS!

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.

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.

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.