Extraordinary Movie & Video Guide

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Panic Beats. Spain 1983. Directed by Jacinto Molina

Paul Marnac, the offspring of Alaric de Marnac (of Horror Rises from the Tomb aka El Espanto surge de la tumba, 1973) takes his ill wife Genevieve on a vacation. Marnac family's manor hides an terrible history beneath, and after awhile it seems that something evil has risen from the past. At the same time, young woman Julie is going to have an affair with Paul. It looks like either a cruel plot against innocent Genevieve or something unnatural.

Panic Beats stars legendary Spanish horror actor (known of his numerous werewolf films) Paul Naschy in charming but two-faced ladies man role. Naschy wrote and directed the film with his real name Jacinto Molina. Panic Beats (aka Latidos de pánico) begins with nude woman running away in the woods and trying to escape the wrath of armoured evil. After this promising premise, you will have to wait serious action for a long time. Instead, Molina decides to pay attention to moody atmosphere with creepy sound effects and scary hallucinations.

This almost turns against itself, but unexpectedly Panic Beats shocks the viewer with completely surprising gory killing. Molina keeps the strings in his hands, though, and the cruel tone of the film is left mostly psychological. Simple but stylish camera work combined with vivid colours is very close to 60's era of Hammer Films' classics. But like Naschy in his lead role, the whole film contains fun and foolish camp tone in it, and therefore cannot be taken seriously. Panic Beats may not be the classic of Euro-Cult genre, but it is nevertheless a must for every Paul Naschy fans out there. And for the rest of us, it's a curiosity that deserves a good look.

DVD by Mondo Macabro is once again absolutely recommended. A very sharp picture (anamorphic 1.78:1) seems to be taken from the faultless master and what's the most important : the colours are p-e-r-f-e-c-t. Audio track comes with stereo mix from the original mono, and the dialog is very crisp through the film. You can find highly interesting extra material like 20-minute documentary (produced by Mondo Macabro) of Spanish horror cinema, containing the interviews of Amando De Ossorio and Jorge Grau, to name a few. Paul Naschy tells about his career and themes of Panic Beats in half-an-hour interview. It's always delighting to see that some distributors pay attention to content, even with lesser-known genre productions.