In director Elia Kazan’s noirish thriller Panic in the Streets, Jack Palance plays a hoodlum who commits a murder and unknowingly becomes infected with pneumonic plague. Richard Widmark plays the public health expert who is trying to prevent an epidemic by tracking down Patient Zero (Palance); he’s trying to track him down on the down low to preventt causing a panic in the city. Of course, the cops (Paul Douglas plays the Captain) are trying to solve the murder, and the man hunt for the murderer will lead them to the same target.
Jack Palance was nothing if not intense, and he brings the right combination of vicious thuggery and escalating desperation to his performance. This was Palance’s screen debut.
Widmark had already made his indelible mark in film noir with his 1947 debut as the giggling psycho killer Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death and the desperate schemer Harry Fabian in Night and the City (1950). In Panic in the Streets, Widmark plays a solid, action-oriented authority figure, a plain vanilla movie hero.
We don’t often think of Zero Mostel in dramatic roles, but here he plays a Palance henchman.
This is Kazan’s OTHER movie set in a gritty waterfront, and he shot it on location in New Orleans. If you know New Orleans today, it’s great to climb into this 1950 time capsule.
Panic in the Streets plays frequently on Turner Classic Movies and can be streamed from iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.