Latidos de pánico

Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of Panic Beats; here's the breakdown of my ratings:

Story: 1.00 Direction: 1.25 Pace: 1.25 Acting: 1.25 Enjoyment: 1.25

TOTAL: 6.00 out of 10

Panic Beats is a definite Paul Naschy vehicle. Not only does he star, but he has written and directed this Dark Thriller come Horror flick. The lucky thing for the audience is that Naschy's accomplished in all of the principles.

The story's been written and filmed many times. Boy meets girl and falls in love - Love turns to despisement - Disdain germinates into murderous notions - People die. What provides the story with a breath of freshness is the motivations and complications of its characters. Naschy litters the tale with red herrings, both scripted and visually on screen. However, I still found it easy to surmise who the killer was before two-thirds of the story was complete. Luckily Naschy adds extra interest with his characters and background mythology, so I never lost my involvement.

The filmmaking is a tad simpler than the narrative. Naschy opts for basic camerawork, which works well. He tries to get creative with light and shadow and more engaging camera angles, usually when the scenes demand it - like when he uses special effects. Though, more inventiveness would only have added power to the picture. The one thing he excels in is controlling the pacing. He keeps the storytelling to a steady trot but gets it up to a gallop or a sprint when the action starts and the jump scares spring forth. And when he wants you uneasy, he adds the creepiness by prolonging the scene. One of the worst things about the filming was the FX heads. I loved the idea of the human heads mounted on the walls in place of the stags. What would have shoved the nightmare into awesomeness would have been realism. They looked so cheap and fake that they were laughable. It's sad because there aren't that many effects in the movie.

Naschy and the cast are outstanding in their performances. Each actor and actress play their part to the full. Only one actress stood out for me, Lola Gaos as Mabile. I believe it's because I liked her character the most, and Gaos superbly nails the servant woman come surrogate mother's persona.

Panic Beats is a watchable and enjoyable movie. You can use your detective skills to derive the murderer's identity or merely sit back and savour the film. Thanks to the story and film construction, either works well. Definitely worth one watch.

Please feel free to visit my Killer Thriller Chillers, Absolute Horror, and The Game Is Afoot lists to see where I ranked Panic Beats.

Take Care & Stay Well.

This entertaining effort from 1983 has everything you would expect from a Spanish horror movie: a) Paul Naschy, b) a low budget, c) a curse from the past and d) gratuitous gore to satisfy splatter freaks.

Even though the production values are rather low key, the film is always entertaining and keeps you interested from beginning to end. There are enough twists to develop a decent plot filled with surprises. And, as mentioned before, there are also a handful of gory moments that are well crafted and really nasty (but don't expect a movie focused on blood and guts).

The most remarkable aspect of the plot is its mix of crime thriller and ghost story elements, which fit together surprisingly well. And this is one of those movies, where Paul Naschy's character is NOT the ill-fated Valdemar Daninsky!

Recommended for all friends of European horror.

Paul Naschy was quite an important contributor to the industry of European horror films, and I'm an unusually big fan of his work and persona, but he undeniably never accomplished anything major or classic during all his years of film-making. The titles in his repertoire provide large portions of gore and sleaze (thumbs up for that!) but his screenplays are generally uninspired and too often revert to the same old and repetitive basic premise. Apparently, Mr. Naschy just loves to play his own descendant in stories that revolve on ancient folklore legends and family curses. The entire "Hombre Lobo" cycle is based on this principle as well. "Panic Beats" is sort of like a re-telling of Naschy's earlier film "Horror Rises from the Tomb", as both films feature a murderously mad 16th Century knight - Alaric de Marnac - who supposedly returns from the grave to slay unfaithful women. In this film, 20th Century sleaze-ball Paul uses the petrifying myth to scare his wife to death, inherit her family fortune and marry a young & viral beauty. But, unfortunately for Paul, there's a lot more treason going on behind his back and he also never took into consideration that the myth of his malevolent ancestor might have some truth in it. The plot of "Panic Beats" is overall very dull and it doesn't feature a single story-element or twist that you can't see coming from several miles away. Every dire cliché and stereotype you can think of regarding isolated country mansions and medieval curses is predictably processed into the script, including the loyal old servant and the knight's armor that seemingly moves all by itself. But hey, as usual it was the high gore & sleaze factor that eventually convinced me to reward "Panic Beats" with a positive rating after all. There are a handful of truly nasty murders, committed with axes and other typically medieval armory. Beautiful feminine nudity is provided by luscious women such as Silvia Miró and Paquita Ondiviela, who both go full frontal without hesitating. I just wished Paul Naschy didn't insist on showing so much of his own naked and unusually hairy torso. Oh well … Recommended to all fans of trashy euro-horror, and the Mondo Macabro DVD is a real treat full of phenomenal extras!

This is out on DVD from Mondo Macabro, and I confess I own every DVD they've put out, even the UK-issued PAL ones. Well, one exception: I did not get O Ritual dos Sádicos (1970) AKA Awakening of the Beast, since I'd seen it already in Image Entertainment's Coffin Joe box set and I absolutely hated it. I'll also admit to the fact that I get a kick out of watching horror movies that have relatively few user ratings on the IMDb (less than 100, less than 20). So of course I bought Panic Beats when it came out!

The lead in Panic Beats is played by Paul Naschy AKA Jacinto Molina, a very prolific Spanish actor specializing in horror. In spite of his many films, I think the only ones I'd seen previously were La Orgía de los muertos (1973) and Dr. Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo (1972), the latter of which was one of Mondo Macabro's PAL DVDs. So far, I don't see the appeal of him as an actor. He looks a little like the late John Belushi, but seems to lack the humor and charisma. Naschy's acting, particularly in Panic Beats is very stoic, very nearly expressionless.

Panic Beats starts off energetically, with a scene set in the past with a knight chasing down a fully nude woman and killing her with a mace. The knight is Alaric du Marnac, a Gille de Rais-type character Naschy'd played before in Espanto surge de la tumba, El (1973).

After that, it's in the present day. Naschy is married to a nervous woman prone to nightmares. He takes her to an isolated home owned by his family, and their trip is not without incident. At the home is an old family servant and a pretty young relative of hers. The movie's pace is pretty slow for some time after their arrival, and it becomes evident that Naschy intends to "gaslight" his wife (Naschy, as the film's writer/director was consciously drawing from Gaslight, and Rebecca, the novel of which is mentioned by a character). Also being referenced is Les Diaboliques (1955), particularly in one scene stolen from that film, and poorly imitated here.

Much of the terror of the film is supposed to come from what is supposed to be a ghost of du Marnac, dressed in armor. Naschy, as writer/director again thought the idea of a knight moving like a tank through a modern home to be terrifying in itself. Given the incongruity, perhaps it could have been, but it is not here. It doesn't help, for example, that the house is already filled with several sets of armor; gone the incongruity - this is no "clown at midnight" to borrow Robert Bloch's phrase. The armor is also quite plain and shiny, which I didn't think helped either. And for myself, I'll add that I more or less immediately thought both of the knight in Scooby Doo, and the rubber-chicken wielding knight in Monty Python's Flying Circus TV series. An example of a terrifying knight in a modern context that worked would be the knight in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King, so the idea is not without potential.

Naschy has lovers, and confidants, and people outside his plot yet within his circle, so there is the potential for things to start going wrong. The movie gets more interesting when this happens. There is some gore, but really not a lot. There is some full frontal nudity, and you also get to see rather a lot of Naschy who for an ex-weightlifter looks more burly than muscular.

I found the movie to be disappointing. I did like the special features, though. There is one on Spanish horror films, making particular mention of Naschy, Jess Franco, Jorge Grau, and Amando de Ossorio. There is another that is an interview with Naschy. Both are quite interesting, and made the movie not seem like such a bad purchase.

"Panic Beats" or "Latidos de pánico" is a movie made just well enough to be an OK watch. However, storywise, it's more reminiscent of an episode of soap opera than a horror movie, which isn't necessarily bad, but it's surely not an achievement. Horror parts of the movie are nothing special and rely on gore to be shocking. There are no tense moments and there are no cool chase scenes and the opening and ending music theme of the movie absolutely doesn't fit into a horror movie. However, the movie looks and feels OK, there is some decent nudity thrown in the mix and, all in all, there are far worse movies for a horror movie genre fan to spend time on. I give it 6/10, but I recommend it only to the most hardcore genre and Naschy fans, because the rest won't find anything worth their trouble here.