Panic Beats (1983)

That damned Alaric de Marnac! He’s the 16th-century knight who caught his wife in flagrante delicto, so he beat her to death with a mace. Not content with that act of revenge, he rises from the tomb every 100 years to kill any Marnac woman. Or at least that’s the legend told to Geneviève (Julia Saly, Night of the Werewolf), a wealthy woman with a dire heart problem. She’s been brought by her husband, Paul (writer/director Paul Naschy), to his childhood “holiday home” to rest comfortably, away from the hustle and bustle of civilization.

After all these years, the swanky spread is still taken care of by Maville (Lola Gaos, Blood Castle), the elderly maid, who now has (reluctant) help from her orphaned niece, Julie (Pat Ondiviela), a former drug-doin’ prostitute. From the start, Geneviève witnesses what others brush off as hallucinations: a snake in her bed, a hobo in her bathtub — why, it’s almost as if someone is trying to scare her to death!

Spoiler alert: As John Cougar Mellencamp once sang, “I need a lover who won’t drive me crazy.” If I got as much action as Naschy gives himself in Panic Beats, my unit would be worn to a nub. As befitting of such a sex-fueled, greed-driven set-up, it’s as if everyone has an evil-off in a race to be the last asshole standing.

The whole bloody affair ends with a predictable comeuppance, but a perfectly gory one. Bright and colorful, the Spanish splatter is amped up in an effort to keep pace with the era’s slasher films of the other hemisphere. Although no stupid teenager, Naschy makes for a strong-willed presence in front of the camera, and clearly has a ball behind it, orchestrating one gruesome scene after another, at a pace faster than his more famous efforts. If you’re into the man at all, just Beat it. —Rod Lott

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