Panic (1982)

You can be sure that the panic in "Panic" was positively pathetic.Yep. Any sort of panic generated in this z-grade, Sci-Fi, "experiment-gone-wrong" picture was strictly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff and that rendered Panic simply worthless as viable entertainment.Any intended urgency or relevance in regards to the viral infection (which afflicted Prof. Adams and sent him on a murderous, flesh-eating frenzy) was truly laughable beyond words.I thought that it was totally hilarious when one minute the hideously mutated Prof. Adams was stalking victims in the very heart of the city and the next moment he was up to no good way out in the tranquil suburbs.I honestly don't think that a horror movie could possibly get much worse than this piece of garbage. Not only that, but this hunk of junk (which was an Italian production) contained the absolute worst dialogue dubbing imaginable.Unfortunately, the unintentional laughs in Panic were just too few and far between.Enough said.

I am working my way through the Chilling Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection and PANIC is the second movie on disk 7.I was watching this before vacation; and, made it to the 55 minute mark. I took a week break; and, finished it today.What would I find wrong with this movie, besides a slow pace, a ridiculous premise, a lead scientist who "guesses" about everything. The British government's plot to kill its own citizens due to a failed experiment it commissioned? Oh, I don't know... How about miserable monster effects? No one being able to stop this monster, despite repeated attempts by the police, the military, and others? The aborted bombing mission that ends so quickly you don't even realize they made radio contact? No epilogue whatsoever; and, hardly any back story, short of two rats fighting in the lab. It was just bizarre! And, could have been so much better.Niggling mistake: Big Ben has TWO different types of chimes -- one long BONG; and, something close to the correct version; but, not quite.

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.

"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. The exposure transforms the scientist into a hideous, flesh-eating monster and he begins a rampage in the local community that has the government considering whether or not to destroy the entire town to contain the problem," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.David Warbeck (as Captain Kirk) and Janet Agren (as Jane Blake) are dumbed and dubbed as they try to stop a bacteria (or virus) from taking a bite out of everyone in the city. The monster, "Professor Adams", worked with Ms. Agren; so, beauty has some intuition regarding the beast. At first, people think "Professor Adams" has gone fishing; and, in a sense, he has. Some of the sewer shots, later in the film, look okay - but, it's not enough of a redeeming quality. "Bakterion" (or "Panic") is simply not a competent film. * Bakterion (1976) Tonino Ricci ~ David Warbeck, Janet Agren, Jose Lifante