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

I thought this supernatural slasher wasn't too bad. There were a few effective bits, and even a few suspenseful moments. The killings with the dagger are cool, and the bit where Michael is being stalked around the hospital are good. I also got a scare from the part where Virgil suddenly appears at the back window of the car. There are too many boring parts however to make this a good slasher film. If they had used more shots of Virgil stalking Michael and added some more gore, it would have been quite good. The ending is rather cheesy.Still it's better than many slasher films I have seen so if you're a die-hard slasher fan then seek this one out.

Don't Panic (a confusing title which means absolutely nothing by the way) starts by introducing us to Micheal Smith (Jon Micheal Bishof) who recently moved to Mexico with his alcoholic Mother (Helena Rojo). It's the night of Micheal's birthday & the last few guests are leaving his party, or so he thinks. Some of his friends have stayed behind including his best friend Tony (Juan Ignacio Aranda) & a girl from school whom he has the hots for named Alexandra (Gabriela Hassle). Tony, being an idiot, suggests that they hold a séance with a Ouija board he just happens to have, after some goading everyone agrees & the séance begins. Tony talks about a spirit named Virgil & asks him some stupid questions, everyone goes home & that's about that or so everyone thinks... The next day Micheal is late for class but everything is fine. However that night as Micheal is trying to sleep he has a vision, a vision of one of his friends named Debbie (Cecilia Tijerina) who was at the séance, being brutally stabbed to death by an unknown assailant. Oh, & for some unexplained reason Micheal's eye's turn red. At first Micheal thinks that it was just a hallucination but when he hears about Debbie's death & that of another one of his friends at the séance Peter (Mario Ivan Martinez) on the news he becomes convinced that his vision was real. While at school Micheal receives a warning in the shape of yet another vision, a warning which tells him Christy (Melinda McCallum) will be the next to die, Micheal must try & save Christy & his remaining friends who were present at the séance before this unknown source of evil kills all of them...This Mexican American co-production was written & directed by Ruben Galindo as Ruben Galindo Jr. & is one seriously bad film. The script tries to cross supernatural thriller with stalk 'n' slash horror & it predictably turned out to be a complete mess. Don't Panic is a painfully slow & tedious film to watch with only two murders for well over an hour of it's running time & lots of boring exposition & unnecessary character development for the rest of it. The dialogue is pretty bad, the acting is very bad & the character's are awful. The film tries to conceal the killer's identity & to be fair it might work, unfortunately the version I saw revealed the killer on the back of the video box so I knew who it was all along, I doubt it would be that much of a surprise though. No explanation is given to who Virgil is, what he want's, why he's killing these specific teenagers or how he is able to possess people's bodies. Virgil is just 'there' & we have to accept it. The character's are all stupid, the situations Don't Panic depicts are all stupid & as a whole the film lacks any sort of fore-thought or intelligence behind what's going on. The ending is awful as well, both how Virgil is defeated & that sickening & tacky 'this rose will never wilt as long as there is love between us' scene. Despite what you may have read there is actually very little on screen gore, two people are stabbed which Don't Panic depicts by having blood splash over the floor & on the victims clothes, there is a fairly decent slit throat even if I wouldn't just sit impassively in a car as someone stuck their hand in through the window & sliced my throat open with a knife & a scene in which a knife (it's the same knife in all the murder's actually) is stuck into someones chin & it protrudes from their mouth. All the kill scenes are dull with virtually no build up & director Galindo fails to inject any tension, scares or atmosphere into them just like the rest of the film in fact. There isn't even any nudity either, in fact when Micheal & Alexandra have sex it is squeaky clean stuff, Galindo merely shows them kissing each other on the lips while in bed. As mentioned already in other comments the sight of Micheal running around in his babyish pyjama's is both bizarre & very silly looking. Don't Panic is technically average, the cinematography is static & flat as are the production values in general & the horrible music seems very out of place. There are a couple of scenes where a face pokes out of the TV which is quite an impressive effect. Overall there is very little I can recommend Don't Panic by as it's a pretty terrible film all round really, maybe it's good for a few laughs & a decent slit throat but that's it. One to avoid unless it's VERY cheap & your VERY bored.

Part A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, part HALLOWEEN with a little bit of THE BOOGEYMAN thrown in for good measure, DON'T PANIC is a successful crossbreed of those styles which makes for an entertaining ninety minutes of classic slasher frolics.In the outset we meet Michael (Jon Michael Bischof), the star of the movie who's recently moved down to Mexico with his alcoholic mother away from his unsympathetic father in Beverley Hills. He's celebrating with his newly found friends, which include Tony (Juan Ignacio Aranda) - a smart-ass wise cracker - and Alexandra (Gabriella Hassel) whom he has the hots for. It's Mike's seventeenth birthday and as a present the gang have got him an Ouija board (a great gift usually.if people want to get possessed or die!) and even though at first he refuses to take part, the gang force him to join in on one of their séances. They all gather round in a circle and join hands around an eerie looking candle lit table as Tony attempts to call up a medium known as 'Virgil'. He isn't very talkative but lifts up the arrow to point it at Mike in a threatening manor (ooooh, creepy!). All of a sudden, the door flies open and in bursts the birthday boy's inebriated mother who soon sends the group packing and Mickey to bed! Soon after that night Michael begins to have strange dreams that an unseen psycho holding an ancient dagger is viciously murdering his friends. When it's revealed that the teens are actually being bloodily butchered, he begins seeing premonitions of someone warning him who is next on the killer's list. With this knowledge, he is forced to attempt to save them from the maniacal assassin. But who is it that is slaughtering the hapless group and what are their motives?About two weeks before I saw this, I watched the more recent British slasher LONG TIME DEAD. It looks as if this may well have been the inspiration for that flick because the two plots are almost interchangeable. Director Ruben Galindo Junior - who was also behind the 1985 addition CEMETERY OF TERROR - has done a good job in making this an enjoyable thriller with some decent supernatural elements that make a refreshing change from movies such as GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS, which attempted the same sort of thing but drastically failed. Don't expect great performances, because you certainly won't find any here; but what it lacks in thespianism it makes up for in storyline and originality.This was the full-uncut copy that I recently purchased on the UK 'Dark vision' label and it includes some tacky but effective gore to boot. In one murder, some guy gets stabbed in the chin with the giant dagger and it protrudes through his mouth! That's probably the best of the bunch and it even manages to look pretty authentic! There are some interesting chase sequences included too, the one in the hospital being vaguely reminiscent of HALLOWEEN 2 with the killer stalking in traditional slow-mo Michael Myers manner and the downbeat ending truly is unexpected for a film of this genre.great! You wont get bored whilst watching either and in some parts it even borders on becoming pretty exciting. The director gives us the chance to play whodunit for the first half, but doesn't waste time overdoing the investigative factors.Although this is a decent flick, it doesn't manage to escape from being extremely cheesy just like so many of its genre counterparts from this period - the late eighties. For example Jon Michael Bischof spends three quarters of the runtime in a pair of groovy pyjamas, anyone can imagine how embarrassing that must've been for him in his movie debut! They could have at least given him a stylish set of jim-jams to run around in! Also watch out for a whole lot of incredibly silly dialogue and some unintentional tongue in cheek humour. Michael and Alexandra - the third rate Jamie Lee Curtis of the flick - head out on a date in the beginning and although the things they get up to are cheestastic enough, nothing can best the advice that Tony gives Michael when he returns! He tells his buddy that if he really loves her he should 'give her a rose', but not just any such flower, it must be 'the magic rose'! He then walks over to a giant bowl in his room (!), places a towel over the top, removes it and then he pulls out just one single thorn covered stem and offers it to the confused looking character! I mean, what is this guy? Is he some sort of undercover Casanova? Why has he got a bowel filled with roses in his room? Like I said, the cheese is spread thick and fast throughout the feature!It's been a little while since I've watched a slasher that I've truly enjoyed! DON'T PANIC may not be overly scary, but it's been put together with thought and it adds supernatural touches to the age-old slasher clichés better than most. It may not be groundbreaking but it's pretty entertaining in that 'so bad it's pretty good' kinda way! Yeah, I recommend this and it's set me on my so far, pretty unsuccessful search for CEMETERY OF TERROR!