ChicDragon
It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
Orla Zuniga
It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
Calum Hutton
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
kijii
This movie garnered an Oscar for Edna and Edward Anhalt's writing of the original story for a motion picture. And, WHAT a great idea for a story this is--even today. It was shot completely on location in what used to be a truly great and important gulf port city, New Orleans, Louisiana. This movie ingeniously teams up a crotchety, skeptical policeman (Paul Douglas) with a totally devoted doctor (Richard Widmark) from the US Public Health Service, a regular branch of the service that doesn't get enough attention for ITS service to our country. Here, we get to see Widmark as the good guy for a change. He is workaholic family man— struggling to make ends meet--who doesn't have enough time for wife (Barbara Bel Geddes) and his young son.As the movie opens, we see a group of gangsters playing cards in some cheap hotel room. Blackie (Jack Palance) is the boss of the gang, Fitch (Zero Mosel) is his go-for guy, and Poldi (Guy Thomajan) is another gang member. When Poldi's cousin wants to drop out of the card game because he is sick, Blackie doesn't want him to leave since he is too far ahead in the game. When he does leave, the gang chases him though the city and down to the train tracks where he is shot and left. The police discover his body the next day and have it taken to the Coroner's office for an autopsy.... We first get to know Lieutenant Commander Dr. Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark) and his family in the next scene. 'Clint' and his wife, Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes), have money problems (and bill collectors) which worry them. But, right now, Clint is trying to take some time off from work to spend it his young son who he hardly ever sees because of his job...When the coroner's autopsy reveals that the man's body is loaded with pneumonic plague---a disease related to bubonic plague but more serious since it can be so easily contracted from sneezing, sputum, or simple contact--the Coroner's office calls in Clint to handle the possible effects of a ravaging plague epidemic. Clint immediately calls for help from the NOPD. He needs them to help quickly find, and contain, the source of the plague before it spreads.Clint is teamed with a cynical Police Captain, Tom Warren (Paul Douglas), who doesn't care much for doctors or Navy men. (In fact, though Clint's uniform may look like that of a Navy officer, the US Public Health Service and the Navy have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.) Tom and Clint soon learn to work together as they realize each other's roles in the almost impossible mission of finding where the dead man came from while keeping their search 'under wraps' to prevent any possible panic. Added to the difficulty of finding where the dead man came from is the fact that his body, and therefore the dead man's ID, was immediately incinerated to prevent contagion. Also, they have to work fast since the incubation period is only 48 hours.As Clint and Tom chase down clues, they are eventually led to a restaurant in a Greek neighborhood. They find out that the restaurant owner's wife had suddenly died of a high fever. This brings them closer to the plague's source than they had ever been; it brings them close to where Poldi in now lying sick in his mother's apartment. Poldi's mother had ordered a nurse, who had reported his symptoms to a local hospital and ordered an ambulance.On the other hand, when Blackie and Fitch find Poldi, they believe that he and his cousin had been into something with a VERY big payoff. (After all—in their minds--why else wold the whole police department be looking SO hard to find Poldi and his cousin?) Blackie assumes that Poldi's cousin must have been in on a huge drug haul and Poldi must know about it. They try to pump Poldi for information before he dies. But, he is too sick to tell them anything. As Blackie and Fitch try to carry Poldi out of his mother's upstairs apartment, they meet Clint and Tom on the steps, throw Poldi down the steps, and are chased by the police.The final running foot-chase sequence, with the police in hot pursuit of Blackie and Fitch, is one of the best of it kind in film noir! The foot-chase takes us to the docks and in the warehouses and back streets of New Orleans. The two gangsters are seen on the levees, structures, and substructures of the once-famous gulf port city.The noir shots of Blackie and Fitch (Palance and Mosel) running across structures, popping up and dropping down from one level of a coffee and banana warehouse to another is almost visually poetic. In fact, they remind us of rats crawling along beams, bridges and other structures (occasionally falling in the swampy water only to get up and run some more). The rat analogy reminds us of the plague that ships sometime bring into ports and refocuses us on WHY the two are being chased in the first place: to stop and control an possible plague epidemic. After Fitch has been shot dead, the final rat-plague analogy is brought home as we see Blackie climbing a fruit freighter's line. He falls to his death, not by a bullet from the police, but by the line's rat catcher.
MisterWhiplash
This was Jack Palance's debut in films as an actor (or should I say "Walter" Jack Palance, for some reason that's there in the credits), and he eats up every second of film he has. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in a way it helps to lift up a character who has little dimension. He doesn't need it, you could argue: he's a thug who wants his money, that's it, and will do anything he can to get it (this may include killing, of course, which we see very early on as the thing that kicks off much of the story). He is imposing too physically, with that chiseled face and tall frame - at one point he talks to someone who is quite short and the difference between the two is like night and day - and he also is believable to the point where you realize why Zero Mostel (also very good as the talky-kinda-dumb lackey) is so subservient. Not much depth, no, but who needs depth when Palance can kick your ass any way to Sunday? In this story it's a film-noir but unique in that it's focus is not about a man-hunt only for the killer, but because of a plague (not the Bubonic plague, the other one the Numonic plague or other, the one that you just need to know is around now), and Richard Widmark plays the stalwart, headstrong doctor who will get his job done to catch the people infected (or even those, especially those, who may not be yet) into quarantine and given shots and so on. He's up against cops (including a sometimes-sympathetic-sometimes-not Paul Douglas), and a bevvy of other cops and reporters.Some of the early scenes with Widmark's family is pretty standard - he has a nice and loving and family, OK, that's fine - but once that's out of the way the story kicks in and it has a natural momentum to it. An outbreak or contagion-type of story is intrinsically dramatic because it brings people together - or, on the flip-side, it drives people apart and shows what self-interested idiots people can be some/most of the time. I don't know if Kazan meant for this to have deeper sociological meaning like On the Waterfront. Maybe the hunt for the people who've come in contact with the infected is a euphemism for Communism, or maybe not, it doesn't seem as cut and dry to me as in the latter film.In any case Panic in the Streets is engaging and enjoyable as a no-frills thriller, a picture that uses human nature and the lack of speaking up about something grave and dangerous as a way of forward momentum - who will speak up first, who won't - and if you want a simple cops and criminals chase story you get that also. I think it holds up most of all due to the performances though, even including the story, since Widmark, Panace, Mostel et al beef up the material with the kind of emotion that I'm sure Kazan was great at coaxing out of his actors (whether it was making them relaxed enough or getting them into the 'method' of it in the case of Palance I don't know).
tavm
If you've read my reviews for the last several days, you know that I'm on a kick to watch the available movies/TV shows of various original "Dallas" cast members-both recurring and regular-in chronological order during this summer of the new "Dallas" show now airing on TNT. So it's now I decided to watch Ms. Barbara Bel Geddes in 1950 co-starring above the title with Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas in this, a thrilling crime drama directed by the great Elia Kazan entirely in the city of New Orleans which is a two-hour drive from where I currently live in. Ms. Bel Geddes plays Widmark's wife and as such, doesn't really have many scenes in the movie that would be worthy of her billing but she did the best she could with what she was given with Widmark who plays a doctor that's looking for anyone who's come in contact with a killed victim since that victim had the plague that could contaminate the city. Paul Douglas is the cop who initially wants the doc to stay out of his way but reluctantly allows the investigation. As good as Widmark and Douglas are, it's really the thugs played by Zero Mostel and especially Walter Jack Palance-who'd eventually drop the first of his name-in his film debut that make the most impression. I also loved the atmosphere that one could only get from location shooting not to mention the cool background music of the Jazz sounds that originally came from the Crescent City. Really, I can't get over how much I loved this movie for the most part. So on that note, that's a high recommendation of Panic in the Streets.
sol
***SPOILERS*** Spine tingling big city horror drama with the local police and US Government Health Srevice trying to prevent the spread of a deadly virus, Pneumonic Plague, from engulfing the entire city of New Orleans.It's when Armenian seaman Kochak's,Lewis Charles, body was examined at the city morgue that it was found, besides having two bullets in it, to be infected with the deadly Pneumonic Plague virus! It's now the job of the police and Lt. Cmdr. Clint Reed, Richard Widmark, of the US Public Health Service to find who Kochak came in contact with and have them immediately inoculated before the disease spreads into the general population!Reed with the help of New Orleans police Captain Tom Warren, Paul Douglas, gets very little help from the public in that in order not to cause a panic he can't reveal the real reason for tracking down anyone who came in contact with the now dead Kochak. This causes a number of persons who had anything to do with him come down and die from the contagious and deadly disease that Kochak gave them!It's in fact the person who murdered Kochak Blackie, Jack Plance, and his two henchmen Fitch & Poldi, Zero Mostel & Tommy Cook, who get the wrong impression in what all this hoopla about Kochak is really all about! They think that he was sneaking in a load of illegal drugs, not Penumonic Pleague, into the city and want to get their greedy hands on it!****SPOILERS**** Exciting final with Blackie on the run from the police making his way to the city docks with Reed and Capt. Warren hot on his tail. Trying to escape on a fruit boat headed towards South America the dirty and murderous rat, Blackie, is prevented from getting on board by the ship's rat shield causing him to end up in New Orleanes Bay where he's eventually captured by the police. Blackie should consider himself lucky at that in that he can now be treated for the deadly disease he unknowingly caught off his murder victim Kochak!P.S The dangerous rope climbing scene at the end of the movie was done not by a stuntman but by actor Jack Palance himself! It was in fact Palance who was the only person on the set who was capable of doing it!
