Don't Panic

Ruben Galindo is one of those sneaky Mexican exploitation directors who makes quickie-movies for the the American market. The cast is filled with fresh American faces and premise as well as atmosphere are typically US high school-like. Only... the production is entirely Mexican! This technique saves the makers a few extra bucks and the fans of this type of cinema mostly don't notice the difference anyway. However, what you can't but notice about "Don't Panic" is the amateurism. The screenplay makes no sense at all as it attempts to blend the mysteries of the occult (an Ouija-board) with an ordinary high school slasher plot. A group of brainless friends summon a demon (named Virgil...not exactly a petrifying name, if you ask me) and this demon soon after possesses one of the kids. How did this Virgil ended up inside the body of the kid?? Who knows... Why does he think it's necessary to butcher everyone who joined the Ouija game?? Not explained, neither... There's no tension and no sense of humor to detect anywhere in the script. Well...at least not intended humor, because the stupidity and incompetence definitely will make you chuckle more than once! Also, if you plan to watch this film, you're better not allergic to atrocious acting. No matter how hard these teen-actors try, they have no acting skills at all. The best part about "Don't Panic" is – as usual – the gore! Screaming Mad George went nuts again and literally stuffed this film with repulsive massacre and entire buckets of blood. I'm not an expert but I sincerely doubt that an average human body contains so much blood. Oh well, if it wasn't for these gory moments, "Don't Panic" would be completely worthless. In conclusion: this probably is one of the only films ever that feature the hero (supposedly 17 years old) battling evil whilst wearing a ridiculous and utterly childish pajamas. Respect!

I thought it was a low-budget horror flick. Well,I was wrong because it`s a no-budget kind of film. Anyway,let`s just say it`s not as bad as it seems. SCREAMING MAD GEORGE(make-up wizard of "SOCIETY","BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR",among others)did the visual effects here. The story(which was told in a better way in "LONG TIME DEAD")centers around a bunch of teens playing with this ouija board. Through this they invite a supernatural killer known as virgil. Director RUBEN GALINDO tries hard to shock audiences but it doesn`t go beyond what we`ve seen already before.

DEDICATED TO HORROR GEEKS ONLY(i`m proudly one of them).

I thought this supernatural slasher wasn't too bad. There were a few effective bits, and even a few suspenseful moments. The killings with the dagger are cool, and the bit where Michael is being stalked around the hospital are good. I also got a scare from the part where Virgil suddenly appears at the back window of the car. There are too many boring parts however to make this a good slasher film. If they had used more shots of Virgil stalking Michael and added some more gore, it would have been quite good. The ending is rather cheesy.

Still it's better than many slasher films I have seen so if you're a die-hard slasher fan then seek this one out.

The '80s was the decade in which low-budget horror movies often traded logic and originality for sheer zaniness, many of them making very little sense but delivering a lot in the way of OTT effects, gratuitous nudity and a general sense of the absurd. Mexican supernatural slasher Don't Panic certainly doesn't waste any time or effort on a innovative story, its Ouija board plot device being as old as the hills, the whole 'teenagers in peril' angle being incredibly hokey; unfortunately, it doesn't quite deliver enough in the way of excessively entertaining schlock to adequately compensate for the predictable narrative.

There are few bloody kills courtesy of make-up effects man Screaming Mad George, best one being a knife pushed up through the victim's jaw into the mouth, but they're generally not creative enough to distinguish the film from countless other slashers, and with far too much time spent on developing the sappy relationship between teenagers Michael (Jon Michael Bischof) and Alexandra (Gabriela Hassle) and following a confused Michael wandering aimlessly around in his dinosaur pyjamas, the film is far less fun than it needs to be.

For me, the most entertaining moment was when the line 'Do you believe in Satan?' came up in my subtitles as 'Do you believe in Stan?, which speaks volumes about the film as a whole.

This is a generally unsuccessful attempt by low-budget Mexican filmmakers to ape the "Nightmare on Elm Street" sequels, but although it is pretty incompetent it is much more lovable than most of those overblown American cash-ins. Instead of "Fredddy" we have "Virgil" who is a Roman epic poet. . . no wait, different "Virgil"--this one is basically the Devil (or something) who has possessed the best friend of the protagonist after a Ouija board session at the protagonist's birthday party , and is using him (for some reason) to kill everyone else who was at the session, including the hero's new girlfriend. So it is up to protagonist to rescue all his friends from evil. Luckily, he has a rose that has special powers because he gave it to his girlfriend out of pure love (something like that).

This movie tries really hard to be an American movie, making the protagonist a transplanted American attending an American school in Mexico City. The school has all kinds of ridiculous signs in English, like one promising to expel any tardy students! (So naturally when they're tardy, the hero and is girlfriend decide to skip school entirely which apparently is much more acceptable). But my favorite part is the English teacher who goes on and on about Percy Blysshe Shelley, of all people, who she inaccurately says went crazy (as someone who once worked as an English teacher in Mexico, my head was left swimming). There's also a scene where the protagonist starts sharing visions with "Virgil" when he kills people, so his alcoholic mom takes him to an optometrist(!) where she confesses to the good doctor, apropos of nothing, that she has a drinking problem.

Although it matches the characters lips and is pretty (unintentionally)funny, the English dub track is actually pretty hard to take after awhile. The voice of the girlfriend (played by an actress who is basically, to paraphrase "The Simpsons", the non-union, Mexican equivalent of Heather Langenkamp)is like nails on a chalkboard and it eventually drove me to watch it in Spanish, lip sync be damned! It also has some pretty promiscuous teen sex (on only the second date!), but it's strictly PG-rated sex with nary a nipple, while the violence is maybe a hard PG-13. Ironically, despite an obviously great effort to market this in the US, it got much more of a release in the UK, but thanks to recent "Horror from South of the Border" bargain box set we can finally now, uh, enjoy it north of the Rio Grande.