'PANIC IN THE STREETS'........THE PLAGUE HITS GROUND ZERO.....MOSTEL.

Panic In The Streets (1950)    You could have such a good time watching this swift, trim noir about an outbreak of Pneumonic plague in New Orleans, you might forget the dark Hollywood history it's steeped in......

             ........because it's directed by Elia Kazan, who notoriously named names to the House On Un-American Activities.......which led to the blacklisting of actors like Zero Mostel......who's one of the stars of this film.

                 Politics aside, Kazan used this film to thoroughly establish his chops as a real movie director, not just a theatrical artist hired only for reverential, unimaginative film adaptations of Broadway plays.....

                 And the film's a breathless, 90 minute corker, kicking off with a stunning night sequence where a fresh-off-the-boat plague-infested crook is stalked and killed by a  lean, mean psycho thug (Jack Palance, at his most unnervingly dangerous.)

                 Palance and his terrified, sycophantic cohort, the blubbery, blubbering Mostel, don't realize their freshly murdered poker-cheating patsy was infected by a lethal disease as easily spread as the common cold.

                  The discovery of the dumped body and its subsequent autopsy bring together two unlikely, combative allies.....a hot-tempered Navy doctor (Richard Widmark) and an irascible world-weary cop (that bulky, gregarious Everyman Paul Douglas, who was the John Goodman of the 1950's),

                Eventually, after much bickering and painstaking detective work, they close in on Palance and Mostel at the New Orleans docks........which leads to Kazan's staging of a sustained, spectacular action sequence featuring the lithe, athletic Palance and the gasping, rotund Mostel......neither of them doubled by stuntmen.

              Trust us, with the possible exception of Tom Cruise,  you will probably never see anything like this in any film today......

                 Years later, Mostel jokingly chided Kazan about the film's jaw dropping finale......having Palance and Mostel in a desperate mad escape across a dockside warehouse, both running, jumping and at one point leaping over vast rows of cargo bags.  (As you watch Mostel struggling for breath, you know he's not kidding.....)

                Not long after the release of "Panic In The Streets",  the blacklist ended Mostel's film career until 1966's "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum".  Kazan, of course, continued to  flourish, generating the lingering anger of  many film folk who refused to stand or clap when he received his Lifetime Achievement Oscar.

                The movie itself still stands as their greatest collaboration together, along with the contributions of tight-as-a-piano-wire Widmark and the comfortably grumpy Douglas.  5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS........don't forget to use hand sanitizer and fist-bump instead of shaking hands........