User reviews

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.

I'm just going to get this out of the way first. Yes, the main hero in this movie's name is Kirk, and he's a captain in the army. So yes. they refer to him throughout the picture as "Captain Kirk". Now, to me, that's HILARIOUS. i had to rewind the movie just to make sure i wasn't hearing things. And there was even an officer named "O'Brien" later on in the movie. I'm shocked that the monster's name wasn't "Riker". But enough of the good stuff, let's dive into "Panic".

This movie is another on our awesome 50 chilling classics collection at number 26. Now i took a two week break at the halfway mark, and coming back, i'm not so sure WHY i came back. OK, if you looked at the top, i gave this movie a 2. So what's the big problem with this movie you may ask? One word. PACING. This movie's pacing is TERRIBLE. this 90 minute movie has a plot that could either have been resolved in 15 minutes but it also had the plot to stage an entire 90 minute movie if they did it correctly. Sadly, here, they did not. It's really sad when i understand more of the movie from reading the one paragraph DVD sleeve in my Box set, but that seems to be happening more and more with these movies. And this movie is no exception. on the DVD sleeve it says "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." OK. there are 3 problems with that sentence. 1. This movie is Italian, not British. But all the actors are dubbed British so they put in stock pictures of England. Why? I'm not sure. 2. No, i did not accidentally type "Variety" instead of "Virus" That is what actually was printed on my DVD sleeve. and 3. IT NEVER SHOWS YOU THAT IN THE MOVIE. in the film it starts out with some rats fighting in a lab, a guy grabs his face and that's it. i had NO idea what happened. and honestly, i STILL have no idea what happened.

Like i said though. This movie is S-L-O-W. it takes forever to make any point and while the movie has a relatively high body count, all kills are offscreen and in the dark. and they quickly cut away from any sort of interesting nudity. pff. this considers itself a monster mash film? There's at least 3 times in the movie where they could have stopped this monster dude but then...they didn't for some reason? and that just gives them an excuse to have lengthy scenes of them talking. um. yay? I really had to pull out the DS during this movie. it was more than i could do to pay HALF attention to it let alone ALL my attention. But i gave it a good go. i gave it 45 minutes of my undivided attention and there was so little going on i realized that i could do at least 2 more things at once and still know exactly what was going on. and you know what? i was right.

The ending is extremely abrupt with no time for an epilogue and the final scene just makes NO sense. i'm not going to give the ending away but i will say 5 words. "Fire extinguisher? What the crap?" With pacing that could bore Ben Stein, characters that are less enjoyable then a Disney channel sitcom line-up, and an ending more predictable than the ending to "The Village", Panic gets 2 melty faces, out of 10

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.

Panic is a lame monster on the loose tale that suffers from a number of flaws, ranging from obvious production goofs to a terribly paced ending. Its basic premise is that a failed scientific experiment turns a scientist into a blood drinking monster while simultaneously unleashing a deadly virus (although how the virus factors in is something of a mystery, as we see no signs of an epidemic.)

The most comic aspects of the film are how its claim to be set in England clashes with the Spanish / Italian production. For instance, the police and military featured in the film wear Italian style uniforms. Furthermore, large sections of the dialogue are clearly dubbed in. These comic elements are the most enjoyable parts of the film.

Unfortunately, the film's drawbacks more than match its comic value. The monster itself is poorly done, with bad make up and obvious gloves standing in for its hands. The pacing toward the climax is lethargic, so that I had to fast forward out of boredom. Furthermore, you'll be able to guess what happens several minutes in advance.

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.

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.

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!

A professor has been exposed to some nasty virus, and the result is a slimy, toxic, rambling cannibal monster who lives in the sewers.David Warbeck is luring around as he usually does in low-budget Italian shockers. Oh, the military has put a quarantine on the small English town where the whole thing is happening, with plans about total destruction in fear of contamination. In one scene David Warbeck ask some character "have you seen any worse actors?". -And I can only give him a honest "No!" A very slow going film with few values.

Someone hired a few names from the Italian horror field and thought that was enough for a passable thriller.

Boy, were THEY wrong.

Ricci screwed this up in every way imaginable.

The effects looked like the were made by kindergarten kids using finger paints. And the tension was non-existent. The camera work was laughable. Hiding behind furniture does not make a scene suddenly scary.

The idea itself was the only redeeming quality. And I usually like to see David Warbeck or Janet Agren. But the must have needed the money badly to include themselves in this piece of tripe.

Blow this one off.

Eminent professor (Ricci) is transformed into a mutated monster following a scientific accident at a chemical laboratory where germ warfare agents are being covertly developed. When politicians learn of the breach, they enact "plan Q" to annihilate the town where the hideous man-beast is now stalking mostly buxom women to feed his insatiable appetite for blood. Special investigator (Warbeck) teams up with local Sergeant (Lifante) and the Professor's laboratory assistant (Agren) in a vain attempt to capture the beast, administer an antidote then convince the powers-that-be that the threat of contamination has been averted thus saving the town from imminent destruction. All in a night's work.

Sort of a "Quartermass", "Incredible Melting Man" hybrid of Italo-Spanish origin, there's little suspense or intelligence about this gore fest. Ricci's make-up is certainly hideous (as described by others, similar to a pizza with the lot), and his limb-ripping rampage of mostly nude or near nude young women will both thrill and repulse various sectors of the audience. The scene in which he interrupts the canoodling couple has some tension, but it's ultimately inexplicable and so random as to be absurd. Kiwi David Warbeck plies his trade with admirable conviction, but it's wasted effort, while Swedish bombshell Agren's character looks to have been edited down to a mere supporting role.

Buckets of blood, fiery explosions and complex conspiracies involving an array of characters whose purpose I couldn't determine, this B-grade horror has its moments, but loses momentum and drags its heels for the last thirty minutes to a disappointing conclusion.

Tonino Ricci strikes again! If I described Tonino as 'a poor man's Bruno Mattei' you'd know what I mean, right? And that certainly says something about Tonino Ricci (although I will add that Tonino doesn't steal footage from other films as far as I know). I've already watched Tonino's all-over-the-place-but-great 'Night of the Sharks', and his brain damaging action flick 'Days of Hell' (which is worth a look) and clawed my eyes out while waiting for something to happen in 'Encounters in the Deep'. Here, Tonino takes on the horror genre, throws in a mutated scientist and a mutated guinea pig, sets the film in England but films most of it in Spain.

David Warbreck is an MI5 agent and Janet Agren is a buddy of the scientist now growling his way around England, and they're out to stop the guy before the government nuke the town where he's on the loose. Our mutated scientist turns periodically to tear people to pieces, well, at least that's what the cops tell us as we don't see much apart from some bloodied bodies. The (suspiciously Spanish looking) army turn up to lock down the town and the residents aren't happy. Can chain-smoking Warbreck and his nifty coat, and Agren and her nifty afro sort all this nonsense out? What do you think?

Tonino Ricci films are a bit of a hard slog, and although parts of Panic are good (the mutated scientist was pretty groovy), other parts just drag and drag. I thought the film was almost over and then I realised it still had an hour to go. The shots of the obviously in a hangar but supposed to be flying army plane were hilarious, as was the usual sudden ending, but, as we're talking Tonino here, everything is filmed rather flat. It's okay if you're running out of Italian films to watch.

I nearly forgot - the inter-cutting of English town footage with the army driving through a town in Spain was pretty funny too.

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.

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 saw this movie many years ago at TV and I confess that I couldn´t stand it till the end.Why? was it very scary? Was it too goric? Unfortunately not, it was just terribly boring.I recalled the commercial of this movie which I saw when I was a kid and they assured that"Your veins will get frozen because of fear" Really? well, that commercial was the best about this movie. For the rest, special effects are cheesy and the plot is completely incompetent.One curious observation: that exagerated sentence that you could hear in the commercial was also heard in the commercial of "Virus" another Spanish-Italian turkey of similar characteristics although more watchable, I say. For "Panic" and in general for all Tonino Ricci´s movies my rating is 0.

This is only the second film from Tonino Ricci I've watched, but I can already safely say he's one of Italy's worst horror/exploitation directors! With the other turkey being "Thor The Conqueror", this sad excuse for a movie called "Panic" is probably all I'll ever watch from him. For the gorehounds among us, this movie features a handful of gross murder sequences and utterly cheesy make-up effects, but it lacks literally everything else like structure, tension or understandable dialogues. Here we have yet another over-ambitious scientist that falls victim to his own stupid research and mutates into a hideous and bloodthirsty monster. It's his own damn fault! Who the hell, in his right state of mind, experiments with bacteria and lethal viruses anyway? The smooth & womanizing security officer Captain Kirk (Captain Kirk???) starts a search for the monster on the loose, while the army forces consider it to be better to exterminate the whole city and its entire population at once. It's a really lame and boring horror effort with an occasional gory killing. However, DO find the courage to remain watching until the very last minutes, as we only get to see the monster's face at that point. It'll be worth it, since the bloke looks like rotting pepperoni-pizza.

"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

Given some sort of bacteriological event, would things happen this way. It seems like they threw the baby out with the bathwater, deciding to exterminate a whole segment of a city in order to get rid of one random creature. He shouldn't be that hard to catch. This is bad enough, but it is filled with bad acting, unbelievable scenes, and a monster that doesn't really show himself until the very end. The young woman lead figures she can reason with this tub of goo. It does have Captain Kirk (no, not that one). Maybe that's it's main feature. The pacing is horrible and it drags one forever. Like so many of these films, it has either deteriorated or it never was filmed very well. Don't bother.

This movie is just one long drawn out pathetic police drama with a guy on the loose as a "mutated monster". I'm glad we didn't see much of the mutated stupid looking monster but it might have been better if we did.

So this guy is experimenting with rats and guinea pigs... dude gets bit by a rat and becomes a murdering mutant. The experiment on the rats caused them to become extremely aggressive so the mutant man is aggressive. And it turns out to be along police drama and the military called in to help capture the mutant man because of the extent of his crimes and the fact the victims are drained of their blood. La-de-da!

I acquired this one in a film packed called Chilling Classics - and the film is not a classic nor is it chilling. It's one of those films you try to watch once and then move on to the next film.

1/10

Best movie ever made. It's a classic. It's Incredible. It's epic.

Not-bad little sci fi movie about a virus created in a lab, and the researcher who accidentally becomes exposed to it. The results of his infection are truly ghastly, thanks to some marvelous practical makeup effects.

The movie hits the ground running with the scientist's exposure; soon after the opening titles, a couple parks in a dark alley to make out. While in flagrente delictu, they are attacked and killed by the now monstrous scientist.

Soon afterwards, the government assigns their hottest agent, sexy David Warbeck, to work on the case of the missing scientist and the sudden rash of homicides. A search of the scientist's house ends in tragedy, but the monster is just getting started.

The pace picks up about halfway through the movie, with an attack in a movie theater, a bimbo in the shower and - in a genuinely suspenseful and frightening sequence - an attack on the priest and choir boys in a church.

The final 20 minutes are best, as we finally get a good look at the ghastly monster and the search for him leads Warbeck and the cops into the creepy sewers beneath the city. The ending is quite satisfying.

The movie's strongpoints include Mr. Warbeck, and the numerous "woof" shots he provides. Terrific makeup effects and some of the later music cues make the second half a pretty satisfying monster movie. The weaknesses are some pacing issues in the first half of the film, plus the casting of some painfully unattractive actors in the supporting roles (government bureaucrats, police chiefs, etc.).

Watch it with an open mind and, if you're in the mood for a drive-in monster movie, you probably won't be disappointed.