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 one seriously bad film. But on the plus side, it's one of the funniest, most watchable bad films I've ever seen. Unfortunately, my rating scale does not account for such minutiae, and I have to assume it was designed to be an entry in the 'horror' genre. And by that definition, it's beyond the pale. Having said that, if you want to see a bunch of actors stitched up to say and do things which will haunt them for the rest of their days... Well, my friend lets catch the last train to crazyville.There's this Ouija board, see? And some Mexican friends who somehow thought it would be a lark to try out American accents, give it a go. Needless to say, they unleash DARK SPIRITS THAT THEY CANNOT CONTAIN. But first, we have a love montage of our main protagonist going out with a girl he's known for all of a few hours. They try on stupid hats, go for a pedal-boat ride and hold hands on the boardwalk, while a cheesy 80's pop song blares out. This is far more horrifying than anything that follows.After all that romance crap is over, we FINALLY get to the good stuff... the lead character running around in his dinosaur pyjamas at night to warn someone at a hospital they're about to become brown bread. The truth is, one of his buddies at the satanic ritual the other night was possessed by a renegade spirit, and is now wearing a stupid mask and speaking with A VERY DEEP VOICE. The soul of the individual who was taken over now dwells in a television set, and relays information through a static screen in which his face appears, which is a bit annoying when you want to watch Corrie. Our hero is the ONLY ONE who can make sense of all this mumbo-jumbo. Everyone thinks he's nuts, though. Just because he crawls around on his hands and knees, makes stupid noises while pulling faces and rips all his posters off the wall. How on Earth did they reach that conclusion? So, all who were present at the seance get killed one by one courtesy of THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE (Thanks, Elvis). so they all stumble straight into his grasp every time, like they've had a lobotomy. Maybe they did in real life too, to sign up for this dismal nonsense.Ultimately of course GOOD WILL ALWAYS TRIUMPH OVER EVIL, though our permed hero has to sacrifice himself to save THE WOMAN HE LOVES. (You know, the one he met just the other day) Arr, shucks. Not to worry though... before he shuffled off this mortal coil, he was given a rose... and as long as that rose is in full bloom, he will always be with her. Said flower is as dead as he is at his funeral right at the end, but it comes back to life again just as his beau chucks it into his grave to prove that THEIR LOVE IS ETERNAL. Then, as she smiles, her hair in blown back by an invisible breeze. The ending credits roll. I am not making any of this up.What this review fails to do, is encapsulate just how dreadful the acting is, the fact that no-one behaves like any human you've ever met throughout, and the completely pathetic attempts at scares. Sure, we can laugh. But someone GREENLIT this script. Someone PAID people to make it. And when it was over, someone saw it and thought it was FIT FOR RELEASE. The mind boggles... 1/10

Nice guy Michael (winningly played by the affable Jon-Michael Bischof) gets an Ouija board as a gift for his 18th birthday from his smartaleck best buddy Tony (the solid Juan Ignacio Aranda). Michael summons the lethal and evil spirit of Virgil, who takes possession of Tony's body and starts bumping off Michael's friends. Writer/director Ruben Galindo, Jr. trots out all the expected endearingly hokey 80's teen fright feature clichés: we've got a couple of false scares, a corny lovey dovey montage set to infectiously bouncy 80's rock music, a generic spooky'n'shuddery ominous score by Pedro Plascencia Salinas, a tasteful make-out scene, and even the always amusing psycho in the back seat of a car bit. Moreover, the basic plot blatantly emulates the second "A Nightmare on Elm Street" movie, the pace really kicks into gear and rarely lets up after the rather leisurely opening third, the 80's clothes and hairstyles are hilariously hideous (Michael's silly blue pajamas are especially sidesplitting!), and Galindo, Jr. gleefully pours on the blood by the gallon with several pleasingly brutal murder set pieces. Additional accolades are in order for the mostly sound acting from the personable cast. The stunningly gorgeous and adorable Gabriela Hassle in particular impresses with her warm and charming performance as Michael's sweet gal pal Alexandra. Screaming Mad George's funky special effects and the reasonably polished cinematography by Miguel Arana and Daniel Lopez both hit the spot as well. A fun little flick.

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.