Panic in the Streets

Sweaty clock ticker from Elia Kazan.

A doctor and a policeman in New Orleans have only 48 hours to locate a killer infected with pneumonic plague.

An effective and class, little thriller directed by Elia Kazan that blends documentary realism with a race against time pulpy heartbeat. Set and filmed in and around New Orleans, Panic In The Streets is taken from the story Quarantine, Some Like 'em Cold by Edna and Edward Anhalt who won an Oscar for original story. It also boasts a fine ensemble cast that deliver top rate performances for their director. In turn, Richard Widmark (bringing the method a year before Marlon did for Kazan in A Streetcar Named Desire), Paul Douglas, Jack Palance (as Walter Jack Palance) & the wonderfully named Z...

As of March 2020, a rather apposite story of a New Orleans murderer who has a deadly plague. It falls to Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas to track down this walking petrie dish before his contagion spreads through the whole of the country. What follows is quite a quickly paced thriller with Barbara Bel Geddes as Widmark's rather pretty, but soporific gal and Jack Palance, menacing and thoughtless, portraying "Blackie" who, with Zero Mostel, is trying to help his toxic pal escape the clutches of his pursuers. The problem is that the cast are pretty wooden and don't gel especially well; it's a super story but told in an act-by-numbers style. It suffers from a mediocre, interfering score from Alfred Newman used way too much by Elia Kazan and t...