With the Cold War kicking into gear, this movie – in a way, like the Body Snatchers movies that followed it – focuses on the chaos of panic, here brought about by a deadly disease, a plague. Tense and at times terrifying, Panic in the Streets is electric gold as far as the genre is concerned. It's tightly written, although viewed through the glass of 2013 a little simplistic at times (see below), and expertly acted.It all starts when a man is smuggled onto a boat that docks in New Orleans. The man then visits a poker game with his cousin and winds up winning a lot of money from a gangster named Blackie (Jack Palance, in his debut). When the man, rather than risk his winnings to give Blackie a chance to win them back, takes off, he's cornered by Blackie and his henchmen, then shot to death and dragged into the river, where he's discovered the next morning.But when the coroner examines the body, he finds something suspicious. Yes, a bullet ended the man's life, but he was already dying. Enter Health Inspector Clint Reed (Richard Widmark), who immediately recognizes the disease as pneumonic plague, which – and I don't know this to be scientific fact – is extremely contagious. Reed must find the man's cousin, the Patient Zero, before he can unwittingly pass the illness – which is fatal – along to the rest of the city, even the world.He's teamed up with crusty police chief Tom Warren (Paul Douglas), who's not sure the doctor's right but is smart enough to follow orders anyway, however reluctantly. It doesn't take long for him to be convinced that there is cause for panic and that the city as a whole must be quietly quarantined, if plausible.The chemistry between Douglas and Widmark drives the script. Palance is a terrific menace, as he would go on to be in countless movies. Zero Mostel is on hand as one of his henchmen; Barbara Bel Geddes plays Reed's wife. The men are in a race against time, figuring they have less than 48 hours to find their Patient Zero. Warren's police work and Douglas' medical knowledge help them retrace the smuggled man's footsteps and those of the newly infected as well.If I'm going to gripe about anything, it's the ease with which Reed eradicates the disease. What's that, you say? You may have encountered the sick man? Here, we'll inoculate you, all better. Not sure that's how inoculation works, really, but I'll suspend disbelief for this movie on the grounds that it was a lot of fun to watch.

If you've read my reviews for the last several days, you know that I'm on a kick to watch the available movies/TV shows of various original "Dallas" cast members-both recurring and regular-in chronological order during this summer of the new "Dallas" show now airing on TNT. So it's now I decided to watch Ms. Barbara Bel Geddes in 1950 co-starring above the title with Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas in this, a thrilling crime drama directed by the great Elia Kazan entirely in the city of New Orleans which is a two-hour drive from where I currently live in. Ms. Bel Geddes plays Widmark's wife and as such, doesn't really have many scenes in the movie that would be worthy of her billing but she did the best she could with what she was given with Widmark who plays a doctor that's looking for anyone who's come in contact with a killed victim since that victim had the plague that could contaminate the city. Paul Douglas is the cop who initially wants the doc to stay out of his way but reluctantly allows the investigation. As good as Widmark and Douglas are, it's really the thugs played by Zero Mostel and especially Walter Jack Palance-who'd eventually drop the first of his name-in his film debut that make the most impression. I also loved the atmosphere that one could only get from location shooting not to mention the cool background music of the Jazz sounds that originally came from the Crescent City. Really, I can't get over how much I loved this movie for the most part. So on that note, that's a high recommendation of Panic in the Streets.

Lt. Cmdr. Clinton (Richard Widmark) is a military doctor who has the ungrateful duty of tracking down the killers of a mysterious foreign man who carried a deadly plague and now this disease might be spreading around the city, and Clinton must find everybody who had contact with the deceased in less than 48 hours before the news and the disease cause panic in the streets. Elia Kazan's "Panic in the Streets" is a good and original story at the time of its release about the difficulties of medical, political and law enforcement institutions in their mission of controlling things before they get out of control. In the story, Widmark's character not only has to find these guys, but he has to deal with bureaucracy among politics, journalists who sees in this case a great story to be published and that might alarm the people in a bad way, and the only help he's gonna get is with some people in the crowd who might have known the mysterious man, and help of a chief of police (Paul Douglas) who's not much cooperative at first so it's gonna take time to solve things but they don't have enough time to fulfill their task.The treatment given to the story wasn't too much interesting with its division of characters and situations. The chase for the "infecteds" was the most thrilling and interesting part of the plot; while the others involving Clinton's family and the bad guys played by Jack Palance and Zero Mostel, almost dragged the film into a boring and tiresome experience. Looking at the film in its surface it's very plausible but with some arguable problems. These guys are out there, they had contact the infected man, they walk to several places, talk to other people and they're spreading the plague, so how come only they had the disease and almost no one else does it too? I mean, the script was too much light and positive (yeah, I know it's the 1950's so they couldn't be so depressive showing that a disease could devastate a whole city), it wasn't realistic enough in this matter and it should be. People complain about the energetic "Outbreak" (1995) but that was a more effective film than this one, it had action, suspense, and also a run against the clock in order to stop a disease that was killing thousands of people. The climatic ending was great, with a long chase in the docks; and some dialog exchange between Douglas and Widmark was brilliant, funny and thoughtful. For what it tends to do it is a very good film and nothing more than that. But we know that Kazan has better works than this. 7/10

This is a real good thriller with Richard Widmark working for the Health Department as a physician. The usually sinister Jack Palance does well as the killer of someone who came into the country with pneumatic plague. There is an interesting performance by Zero Mostel as Palance's foil.The picture also brings up the issue of how much the media should know in a crisis and reveal to the public.Barbara Bel Geddes is the dutiful wife to Widmark, who for a change, was not the heavy as was the case in his early films. Paul Douglas fits the bill as the police officer involved in the case. The movie also shows how much resistance the police and others can incur when depending upon help from the public in an emergency. Palance's greed ultimately does him in.