Panic (1976) Reviewed By Ragnarok Also Known As: Bakterion Cast & Crew credits Normally I love anything genre-related that came out of Europe in general and Italy specifically in the 1970’s. That said, I was delighted to see that this movie fit all three of those bills when I stuck it in the player (the great thing about these Mill Creek box sets is that I’ve only heard of about 50% of the movies they contain, the other ones are total surprises when I put the disc in – it’s like Christmas…you might get a Corvette, or you might get some underwear from your grandma, but finding out is half the fun). And then, I was betrayed. For the first time I can remember, I was truly betrayed by a 1970’s Italian horror flick. This movie is fucking boring, and trust me folks, I have a very high boredom threshold with 70’s Eurosleaze. Professor Adams has been doing some work with a new strain of bacteria. It is accidentally released in the lab, turning Adams into a rampaging monster, but actually he’s just insensible and in great pain, and kills out of agony and confusion. Oh, and David Warbeck plays Captain Kirk (no, not that one), who, with the help of Adams’s colleague (dammit!) Janet and Sergeant O’Brien, must track the monster to his sewer lair and stop him. Yes, folks, it’s The Incredibly Boring Melting Man, which is really saying something, because The Incredible Melting Man is pretty fucking boring too. At least that had Rick Baker FX. This stupid movie even hints for a brief second that the monster is going to be some kind of giant mutant rat man, which would have been awesome. There is one effectively creepy scene, where a priest and some choir boys (goddammit, get your mind out of the gutter you sick fucks, it’s not creepy like THAT) are trapped inside a darkened church, surrounded by flickering candles, while the monster wheezes and howls and pounds on the door outside. And then, like a hooker blowing all her hard earned fuck money on cocaine and fake nails, the movie pisses all that great atmosphere down its leg in about ten seconds and just goes back to being boring. Seriously, there isn’t even any good gore in this thing. Man, I’m getting bored just writing about it. Enough of this. See it if you have to, otherwise, enjoy some killer nutria-man action in Terror in the Swamp, a movie that delivers on murderous rodent/human hybrids and won’t try to skull-fuck you to death with a giant cock made out of boring.