Panic in the Streets (1950) on Netflix
A body found on the New Orleans docks carries pneumonic plague. Clinton Reed of the U.S. Public Health Service must trace the dead man's contacts before the city is infected.
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- IMDb7.2/109,624 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
A man named Kochak, sick with what looks like flu, is killed in a waterfront brawl in New Orleans by the gangster Blackie and two others, Poldi and Fitch. His body is left on the docks. At the morgue a coroner notices bacteria in the blood and sends for Clinton Reed, a doctor with the U.S. Public Health Service. Reed finds pneumonic plague and wants everyone who handled the corpse inoculated and the dead man identified, so that anyone he met in his last days can be found. City officials and the police commissioner doubt him until he convinces them the city has 48 hours. Detective Tom Warren is put on the case, and Reed argues that the newspapers must not be told, or the city will panic.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Panic in the Streets (1950)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The screenplay, first titled Port of Entry, was reworked over several rounds to satisfy the Hays Code: censor Joseph Breen demanded in November 1949 that gruesome violence, and hints that Violet was a prostitute or that police officers had been killed, be removed. By December the film had been renamed Outbreak.
