(1974)3.5Nathan SouthernOriginally screened as a CBS prime-time telemovie in 1974, Cry Panic united three heavyweights from the realm of longform: Dynasty godfather Aaron Spelling; the late director James Goldstone, who gained recognition for his epic TV miniseries (Studs Lonigan); and screenwriter Jack B. Sowards, a Bonanza veteran who would go on, in time, to author Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982) for Nick Meyer. What emerged from the meeting of these minds is a dazzling little gem that may well qualify as the most ingeniously crafted TV suspenser of all time -- its status rivaled only by Spielberg's Duel, with which it shares innumerable qualities. Cry Panic's most pronounced strength is its narrative structure -- beginning with a universal, Hitchcockian situation, and expanding ever so imperceptibly into a sticky, complex web of deceit, violence, and paranoia. Holding it all together is John Forsythe, with a performance of unbridled intensity; sweating profusely, voice trembling, he wins us over from his first few moments onscreen, and we begin to search with him for a means of escape as he feels the chamber walls closing in. But equally impressive is the immediacy of the enterprise. Shot in memorably drab yet hyper-specific (and credible) mid-'70s period environs, such as suburban homes, motel rooms, and a dusky bar, and peopled with eccentric character actors whose strange faces (and accusatory glances) loiter in one's mind long after the final frames (witness the shady town postman, for example, and the sloe-eyed, laconic black housemaid), it is difficult to believe that this town and these people are fictional. In fact, Cry Panic draws much of its impact from sheer credibility; it recalls real-life horror stories about the American South such as Peter Jenkins's tale (in his memoir A Walk Across America) about being blackballed from a small Southern town by gun-thirsty locals who "disapproved" of his appearance and latched onto him as a pariah.
Unfortunately, the picture's only weakness is a considerable one that may point to the reason for its esotericism: the ambiguity of Cry Panic's open-ended conclusion meshes poorly with the meticulous, jigsaw-like narrative that precedes it. The film is indeed calculated so carefully until the credits roll that it feels as if producers truncated the last act, to make the picture fit into a TV time slot. One wonders if an extra 30 or 40 minutes of footage mightn't actually exist, buried in the CBS network vault. Even after the credits roll, viewers may find themselves staring at the screen in disbelief, incredulous that the picture is actually over. Yet astonishingly, the performances, Southern dialogue, plotting, direction, and sense of time and place are nonetheless so vivid and so finely tuned that one can almost completely disregard the film's frustrating final lapse, making Cry Panic well worth seeking out and its arrival on DVD a pleasant surprise.
In this made-for-TV movie, a driver is involved in a hit-and-run accident. By the time the guilt-ridden fellow returns to the accident scene, the body has mysteriously disappeared.
