Panic in the Streets

Panic in the Streets (1950) is an Elia Kazan noir thriller you can watch online on iFILM. A body turns up on the New Orleans waterfront, and the autopsy delivers news worse than any murder: the dead man was carrying pneumonic plague.

Public health officer Clinton Reed has forty-eight hours. Stop the outbreak before it swallows the city — which means tracking down the killers who, without knowing it, have become walking detonators. Reed and a stubborn police captain comb the docks, flophouses and ship holds for a small-time crook who has no idea what he's spreading. Richard Widmark plays the doctor, Paul Douglas the cop, and a young Jack Palance the gang leader, in his very first screen role.

Kazan shot on the real streets and piers of New Orleans, and that documentary grit tightens the suspense more than any studio set could. Its story landed the Oscar for Best Motion Picture Story. It's a rare epidemic picture that runs like a lean ticking-clock manhunt. Stream Panic in the Streets (1950) online on iFILM.