
1950 · noir · thriller
Directed by Elia Kazan1h 36m1950
A medical examiner discovers that an innocent shooting victim in a robbery died of bubonic plague. With only 48 hours to find the killer, who is now a ticking time bomb threatening the entire city, a grisly manhunt through the seamy underworld of the New Orleans Waterfront is underway.
Our read: Panic in the Streets (1950) reads as a sombre, breathless, grounded noir · thriller entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Sombre, breathless, measured noir / thriller, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured.
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Availability in the UK · via JustWatch




Each axis is scored by hand, not from votes or genre averages. The bar uses the film's own colours.
“You want ticking-clock noir dread as plague threatens a whole city tonight.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if epidemiology procedurals and 1950s noir pacing feel too dry.
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