Panic (1982) review

 

PANIC 1982 aka BAKTERION aka PANICO

David Warbeck (Captain Kirk), Janet Agren (Jane), Roberto Ricci (Professor Adams/Monster), Franco Ressel (Mr. Milton), Jose Lifante (Sgt. O'Brien), Miguel Herrera (Professor Vince)

Directed by Tonino Ricci (as Anthony Richmond)

***WARNING! This review contains images of nudity***

The Short Version: "Terrible" Tonino Ricci is the mindless master behind this Italo-Spanish trash that contaminates slasher, monster, and disaster movie cliches. The fallout brings an inescapable amount of unintentional comedy best appreciated by viewers jonesing for a 90 minute camp crap cocktail. If you've savored any of director Ricci's other celluloid catastrophes you already know what you're ordering on the menu. Italian cinema fave David Warbeck plays Captain Kirk; only not the Federation's galactic Casanova who constantly bluffs his way out of ultimate destruction, but a detective trailing what looks like a cross between the Chlorophyll Monster and The Brainiac. Despite a vacuous script, Warbeck manages to keep his composure. Elsewhere, Euro horror scream queen Janet Agren manages to keep her clothes on. Still, there's gratuitous gore and guffaws aplenty in this minor-league NIGHTMARE CITY so don't PANIC.

When a germ warfare experiment at the incontrovertibly named Chemi-Cal corporation goes awry, a scientist working on the mysterious Plurima Project disappears. Not long after, a mutated half-human monster with claws, shambles around the sewers of a small English village--surfacing to rip its victims apart and drink their blood. A detective and a lady scientist try to find the monster to end its killing spree. Meanwhile, corporate big wigs decide one rampaging rat man is reason enough to implement Plan Q (Plan 9 wasn't available) to bomb the entire town into oblivion.

There's no escaping it. PANIC is a terrible movie--in virtually every way. Imagine NIGHTMARE CITY (1980)--which is basically a minor league version of Lenzi's movie--having to settle with but a single irradiated vampire creature, while never satisfactorily explaining anything, and you have something resembling PLACIDITY more than a PANIC. 

If you're familiar with Tonino Ricci's work, when you see his name in the credits you know what you're getting. Every genre he touches he destroys... but in a good way if you can enjoy atrocious movies. He savaged the Wild West with KID TERROR OF THE WEST (1973); soured SciFi-adventure with ENCOUNTERS IN THE DEEP (1979); pillaged barbarian fantasy in THOR THE CONQUEROR (1983); brought a reckoning to the post-nuke flicks with RUSH (1983); and poached the killer shark sub-genre in NIGHT OF THE SHARKS (1987) to name a few.

With PANIC, he mutilates a few genres at once--melding slasher and 1950s monster motifs with 1970s eco-horror. We have the killer POV shots, the theme of sex equals death, and even a PSYCHO-style shower murder; a decently rendered mutant by Rino Carboni (played by the director's son, Roberto Ricci) inspires comparison with BLOOD ISLAND's Chlorophyll Monster and Mexico's infamous Brainiac; the strain of eco-horror stretches back to George Romero's THE CRAZIES (1973); another film that PANIC resembles in addition to other similarly themed 'viral outbreak' pictures. It's worth mentioning that 1985s WARNING SIGN feels like a bigger budgeted, better written, more stable do-over of Ricci's movie.

The script by Victor A. Catena and Jaime Comas is incredibly stupid even by bad movie standards. Even more surprising than how awful the script turned out is that both Catena and Comas were among the five writers on Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964). They also collaborated with other writers on Lenzi's action-packed SANDOKAN sequel, SANDOKAN, THE PIRATE OF MALAYSIA (1964). With both being the sole authors on the credits of PANIC, their script not only sacrifices logic for thinly veiled political subtext; but it has more holes than the monster's numerous pus-dripping orifices.

Watching the movie, it often feels like two different films were being made; with the "best" of both edited together without any regard for continuity or common sense. PANIC fumbles from one scene to the next with its disjointed narrative; coupled with a budget too low to bring a modicum of justice to the patchwork of better movies it wants to glorify. Ricci's patently lousy direction ensures zero interest by anyone other than the most dedicated Euro-horror aficionados digging deep to find a nugget of bad movie gold; and PANIC accommodates them with a bumper crap of badness. 

Below is a list of PANIC's inept highlights that, if you appreciate movies that are enjoyable because of how terrible they are, should determine whether or not you'll want to add it to your collection.

1. Rats were a prominent feature in trashy Italian movies of this era. Italy's preeminent Kingpin of reprobate cinema, Bruno Mattei, used them in HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980) as a lazy plot device to start the spread of flesh-eating zombie contagion. Mattei struck again in 1984's Post A-crap-alyptic RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR. Like Mattei before him, Ricci and his team can't even conjure up a reason for how his virus escapes; well, the script can't make up its mind if there's even a virus at all.

2. In normal society, if there's a criminal on the loose, it's all over the news and radio. In Ricci's movie, the police hit upon the brilliant idea that keeping news of a "homicidal maniac" on the streets from the press and public will somehow keep people safer.

3. In one of the attack scenes, a hot and bothered couple don't mind having sex among the patrons in a movie theater watching a picture even worse than the one we're watching; it's some guy driving down the road in his car accompanied by a horrendous Casio soundtrack.  The young lady about to be fully naked from the waist up pulls her boyfriend's hand out of her flimsy tank-top and says if he wants anything more he'll have to earn it. She's a cheap date, though, and only requires he get her an ice cream from the shop down the street (an act of mercy considering what's transpiring onscreen inside the theater). Meanwhile, the monster, stumbling around in the back of the theater, hears the awful music of whatever the hell it is the people are watching and rips through the theater screen in a scene DEMONS (1985) did much better a few years later. Everybody flees except for the sultry woman waiting on her ice cream; guess it was worth the risk being mauled by our goop-covered man-rat.

4. The script can't decide if a virus has been unleashed or not. We keep hearing about it and yet everyone killed by our walking pus monster with the pulsating cranium never get up and kill. We hear about the supposedly acidic, radiation-infused green goo the monster has dripping off of him... Captain Kirk (yes, that's the lead character's name) stupidly puts his hands in it, and nearly gets mauled in an attack by the monster; but nothing happens to him either.

5. While that fickle plot point plays out, there's the pharmaceutical company's bright idea of wiping the town off the face of the Earth to protect the company's interests; yet it's just one mutant guy doing all the damage. It's clear none of the townsfolk--living or dead--are affected by the so-called contaminant leak. Wouldn't the clean up and rebuilding cost more money than to simply send a team in to test the inhabitants? The writers seem more interested in clumsily inserted political posturing over a virus that the script can't decide exists or not.

6. When the military cordon off entry and exit to the town, a mob of people attempt to leave anyway. After the military commander tells everyone to go back to their homes, two guys--one of whom is armed with a shotgun--decide to drive through the blockade anyway. Naturally, this doesn't go over very well. The military open fire and the car crashes into some flimsy wooden boards that cause the car to inexplicably explode. The driver doesn't make it out but the flame-engulfed passenger does and is noticeably unfamiliar with 'stop, drop, and roll'. Kirk and O'Brien then leave the guy there while his friend's corpse burns in the car; when asked how the fellow is, Warbeck replies with, "nothing serious!"

7. Sergeant O'Brien, the excellent tactician that he is, decides it's best to flood the sewer tunnels with poisonous gas. Captain Kirk (who, at least on STAR TREK, was a genuinely excellent tactician) agrees with this plan. Both men seem to forget this a few minutes later when they go into the sewers to kill the monster and nearly choke to death in the process.

8. Since bullets prove ineffective against Rat-men (SABATA's Franco Ressel somehow manages to empty 4 shells from a double-barreled shotgun into the monster), Captain Kirk equips himself with a fire extinguisher with a biohazard symbol on it for the maximum in rodent disintegration. Kirk tells Professor Vince he needs "two units of Necron". The professor seems shocked Kirk knows about this apparently Top Secret chemical. We're just as confused as he is considering we've not heard of it till now... and we never do find out what it is. Judging by the final confrontation, Necron has a corrosive effect when it comes into contact with living tissue. Apparently, Necron was used on the script as well.

9. As is always the case in movies where a timer ticks downward, threatening destruction of the protagonists or catastrophe of a larger scale, the danger is averted always within the last seconds; not in PANIC. They have 12 minutes to spare when the bomb drop is called off; the relief on the pilots' faces--two of the worst actors in history--evokes laughter before an end credit card copies the one seen in Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY finale. They even screw up the timer. 4:48am changes to 4:49am thirty seconds after it's supposed to.

10. At one point, the monster literally shows his ass. Displaying plumber's crack while on a sewer sojourn, a minor goof reveals the monster's gluteus maximus is impervious to contamination. As far as movie monsters go, Roberto Ricci does a good imitation of the slow-moving creatures seen in any of your finer of the lesser 1950s monster pictures. As mentioned earlier, Rino Carboni's (who worked on some high profile westerns including some of Leone's and Sollima's best) monster makeup is effective with the stringy white hair and Melting Man appliances--seen to greater effect during the no-holds barred finale.

Amazingly, PANIC does have a few irrefutably good things in it; one of these is the energetic finale where Warbeck squares off against the monster. Further, some of the shots in the sewers are lit remarkably well and afford Ricci's movie some much needed atmosphere.

The director does try for some blasphemous symbolism in one of the attack scenes. The monster lays siege to a church to get at a group of altar boys and a priest. Sacrificing himself so the boys can escape, the priest is killed in a way mimicking Christ on the Cross--impaled on a spike railing through his neck and hands; the camera ascending to show an illuminated cross above him. Aside from these bits, PANIC revels in its inadequacies.

David Warbeck is another bright spot along with cult film siren Janet Agren. Warbeck had a lengthy career working in Europe--particularly in Italian schlock. Some of his Italian horror, action and fantasy works are sublime, while many are just substandard. PANIC has no standards at all. The bacteria-suffering script gives the man little to sustain himself--acting as a half-cooked Dirty Harry Callahan-type character--walking from one scene to the next waving his pistol when he needs attention.

Agren has less to do, rarely leaving the lab set where she's attempting to develop a cure for Adams' mutant malady. Both Warbeck and Agren worked well together and co-starred again in another killer rodent flick, RAT MAN from 1988.

PANIC's dubbed version is a riot, making the schlock oozing from the screen even more palatable. In the original Italian language included on this bluray, the film takes itself deadly serious. Regarding the Italian version, the opening has a narrator setting up the story; unfortunately, no subs are provided for this opening voiceover (but the rest of the movie is subbed with dubtitles). During this sequence on the English track, the opening dialog is replaced by Marcello Giombini's main theme.

In the right mindset, PANIC is a good deal of fun. Having never looked as good as it does on this bluray release helps a lot if you've only ever saw murky VHS releases. If nothing else, Tonino Ricci, the auteur of awful, is not only consistent in making tripe, but entertaining tripe. Mildly engaging because of its silly, Z-grade quality horror, and incomprehensible from start to finish, PANIC's sewer setting is metaphoric of its place in the Euro-sleaze pantheon.

This review is representative of the Code Red bluray. Specs and Extras: 1080p HD 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen; English dubbed version; Italian with English subtitles; trailers; running time: 01:33:22

The Last Kamikaze (1984) review

 

THE LAST KAMIKAZE (EL ULTIMO KAMIKAZE) 1984

Paul Naschy (Sergio Arandar), Manuel Tejada (Christian Parker), Iran Eory (Monica), Leticia Marfil (Irene), Julia Saly (Sylvia del Rio), Lone Fleming (Vera), Mirta Miller (Natasha Bredonda)

Directed by Jacinto Molina (Paul Naschy)

***WARNING! This review contains images of nudity and graphic violence***

The Short Version: Paul Naschy writes, directs, and stars in this celluloid hit job, a Spain/Japan co-pro about two hired assassins waging war between two crime syndicates. The micro-plot gets lost amid plenty of nudity, sex, graphic violence, blood squibs, bodies blown to bits, and a Nazi-haunted Naschy dressing up as bums, repairmen and little old ladies to get at his targets. The movie does take a few brutality breaks to pontificate on the nature of man's penchant for perversion and whether killers are justified in murdering evil human beings. Mediocre at best, the globe-trotting KAMIKAZE comes equipped with inert action sequences and unintentional laughs--like Naschy in drag and assassinating midgets in the middle of L'amour. The sleazy atmosphere is the sustaining factor for both fans of the trashier side of Eurocrime and those of Senor Naschy.

An international crime ring based in New York hires an assassin named Christian (codename: Danton) to take out members of a rival syndicate, the Giovicci Organization. Included on the list is the oppositions own contract killer, The Kamikaze--who happens to be a master of disguise. Since no one knows what he looks like, the ruthless Kamikaze massacres his way to the center of the criminal organization, ultimately leading to Danton, his long-time rival. Meanwhile, as the bloody back-and-forth between syndicates unravels, a secret meeting between members of both crime rings plot to work together and do away with their powerful contract killers.

Naschy is a triple threat--writing, directing and starring as a disturbed, guilt-ridden contract killer hunted by a rival criminal organization and an old nemesis. Unlike the assassins in the movie, the film fails on some important levels: the characters and the action. The picture could sacrifice one or the other but not both. Lacking focus on its intriguing antagonists (there are no heroes here), and unable to pull off even modestly engaging action sequences, the filmmakers instead rely on exploding bodies, blood squibs and bare flesh. For most, THE LAST KAMIKAZE will get by on that alone even if its more ambitious components are unrealized to the full potential of Naschy's penmanship.

KAMIKAZE was one of over a dozen co-productions with Japan--some of which were documentaries made for Japanese consumption while others were motion pictures; and, additionally, three television series'. Naschy's assassin pesudo-epic was the next to last picture he made in collaboration with the Japanese. The first such co-pro was the crime-horror combo HUMAN BEASTS (1980); and ended with the spy parody OPERATION MANTIS (1984)--a financial disaster as well as a film Naschy considered his worst.

Enriched by location shooting--particularly in Egypt--it's possible the travel expenses gobbled up a lot of the budget preventing the time needed for stronger action sequences. In his memoirs, Paul Naschy detailed his desire to see the country of the Pyramids and Pharaoh's so KAMIKAZE held a special place for him. Implementing some of his disquieting experiences in the movie, Naschy's harrowing ordeal while trying to film there sounded far more sinister and engrossing than what made it to the screen. 

Hidden within the written word of Naschy's script is a compelling thriller; even if all we're ever given are mere crumbs of a story. The idea of a tortured, guilt-ridden assassin desiring death makes for a fascinating character study... if only Naschy focused more on that than the futile attempt at making an action picture his budget is incapable of bringing to life, the proceedings could've been taken more seriously. 

The two killers are the main arcs of the plot. One is a hunter, the other the hunted. Both have obsessions that keep them alive. For Naschy's character, Sergio, it's to meet his own doom; for his pursuer, it's to make that a reality. One of these characters is far better realized than the other; it isn't too difficult to discern which one that is.

When he isn't killing clients, Sergio Arandar passes his time as a painter (inspired by Goya!) and collector of fine art. Arandar is one of the actor's most complex characters. Naschy crams every conceivable expository tribulation into Sergio to the point it becomes a detriment to there being any rational audience identification with him. There's little room to negotiate whether or not Sergio is anything less than a psychopath; but late-blooming devices such as his blood money earned being used to care for a retarded daughter we never see (outside of a picture) and a desire to eradicate memories of his Nazi father do little to derive sympathy.

Pretending to run an export business, Sergio keeps his real job a mystery (or so he thinks) to a beautiful woman of wealth (played by Julia Saly) who desires his company full-time. Sergio wishes for her to take care of his daughter for him in the event of his death. There's some good scenes between them, but writer Naschy scuppers sustaining the drama for very long when another tragi-romantic angle is explored with a younger, free-spirited pot smoker named Irene.

Ms. Saly does double-duty on this picture, acting as a co-producer. She acted in this capacity for several other Naschy pictures including NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF (1981; a film which she also starred in as Countess Bathory) and THE BEAST AND THE MAGIC SWORD (1983).

Where the film fails to stabilize its dramatic aspects, Naschy excels in the exploitation department; the bread and butter of the picture, and the only reason to watch it. In so many of his horror pictures he often played multiple monsters like in DR. JEKYLL AND THE WOLFMAN (1972), VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES (1972) and HOWL OF THE DEVIL (1987). As the motorcycle riding Sergio Arandar Naschy is a master of disguise--decking himself out as bums, electricians, and, in a scene that's supposed to be played straight, a pistol-packin' old lady.

One highlight that precipitates a similar occurrence in PULP FICTION (1994) sees him pretending to be an electric repairman so he can mercilessly assassinate an Egyptian criminal while he's taking a shit! And yet another is a Spanish do-over of the brutal poolside massacre from MAGNUM FORCE (1973). In it, Naschy casually rides up on his motorcycle and begins lobbing grenades at the party-goers before mowing them down with his machine gun. The silliest is when Naschy dons a maid's attire--looking like an old queen while firing off two pistols in an attempt to snuff out an Arabic crime boss.

Regarding the bloody shootings and assassinations, there's an air of untended hilarity attached to them. Outside of the above-mentioned sequence where Naschy dresses as the ugliest woman on the planet, these gangsters have the slackest, most anemic security you've ever seen. Sergio has this dark, Zorro-styled label of no one knowing who he is--with an uncanny ability to always reach his targets and elude capture. This skill level amounts to little more than tossing grenades and firing guns basically out in the open and in broad daylight. Considering these mobsters haven't the money to properly finance protective services, it's no wonder Sergio is able to pull off his hits as easily as he does.

Then there's Danton, assassin #2; the one who has a debt to settle with Sergio. Played with little conviction by Manuel Tejada, he's one of the pictures' greatest weaknesses when he should be one of its best assets. An award winning actor of repute in his native Spain, the thespian of stage and screen seems disinterested, performing his bits of action with lackadaisical ease. When the two meet for the last time, this final confrontation has some mild tension, but it's not the sort of set-piece the film demands. 

While Sergio prefers to make lots of noise with explosives and machine gun fire, Danton's lethal arsenal is on the quiet side--compiling canes with retractable blades; darts ejected from a pipe; and golf clubs masquerading as firearms with built-in silencers. This is another area of the script that could've used some bolstering to enhance the rivalry between the two men.

Occasionally, the steady diet of bloody deaths is momentarily halted so the assassins can mourn their lives and whether they're truly insane for murdering the scum of the Earth. In Sergio's case, he blames his psychosis on his Nazi father who tried to brand the vileness of the Third Reich onto his consciousness. In keeping with the picture's gloomy tone, there's brief, gruesome footage of Holocaust victims. There's also a twist ending that hints a new trainee will be raised as the new Kamikaze. It's dramatic, gut-punching instances such as this that could've enabled the picture to thrive had it not laid its focus on half-baked action sequences with virtually zero energy and choreography.

 

For example, a chase scene (best appreciated by bad movie buffs) between Sergio and Danton is among the slowest, least exciting ever put to film; culminating in a lazy crash and burn of some conveniently placed cans of flammable liquids in what is supposed to be a gas station.

One bright spot is seeing three of Spanish cinema's scream queens together in the same movie; these ladies of horror being Lone Fleming (TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD; A CANDLE FOR THE DEVIL), Julia Saly (INQUISITION; THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK), and Mirta Miller (COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE; SANTO VS. DOCTOR DEATH). 

Fleming's role in the movie has an element of surprise surrounding it; she initially seems a vapid female interested only in materialism; later, her participation has a sinister air of ambiguity as just one cog in a purported global network of criminality. The same could be said of Saly--she isn't all that she seems. Ms. Miller is the most open characterization; a duplicitous crime boss whose last scene is arguably the film's trashiest moment. Naschy interrupts her lesbian love session, blowing big holes into both her and her lover with a sawed-off shotgun.

 

If only the budget could sustain them, all the ingredients are here for a really good movie to succeed as either a potent parable on the evil of man; or a trashy throwback to the Italian crime films of the 70s Naschy's movie emulates; the main theme comes from one of the best--Stelvio Cipriani's music heard in the trendsetting classic, EXECUTION SQUAD from 1972. Sold as an action movie, KAMIKAZE comes up short. On a par with the weakest of its Italian antecedents, EL ULTIMO KAMIKAZE's primary targets will be Eurocrime specialists and the most hardened of Naschy-files.

This review is representative of the Research Entertainment All Region PAL DVD. Specs and Extras: non-anamorphic 1.85:1; Paul Naschy Interview (78 minutes); Image Gallery; Biographies; Spanish language only; running time: 01:25:39