Murder mysteries mostly follow the “who did it?” storyline in various settings and situations. But Jack B. Sowards’ story Cry Panic, directed by James Goldstone, presented an entirely different case where the person who killed someone was being asked to forget about it.
Trouble in the story starts in the opening scene as David Ryder (John Forsythe) is driving by a small town and accidentally hits a man dead. But when he returns to the accident scene after making a phone call from a woman’s house in the town, the body is gone. The mystery gets deeper and complex as the townsfolk seem unwilling to accept David’s story of the alleged incident and instead ask him to simply leave town and forget about it. He must find out why.
The viewer could cite Cry Panic as an example of a tightly written plot that follows the protagonist’s journey through trouble; only in this case, he happens to be someone who wants to clear the fog surrounding his act of unintentional killing thus clearing his guilt but the people supposed to be curious are instead dismissive. Equally contributing to the conflict in the story is its small town setting where Ryder is a stranger with no friends to fall back on, thus making him the most vulnerable character.
Coming from the golden age of TV movies, Cry Panic qualifies for a quality mystery/thriller classic with some noir elements but falls short of the line marking the noir territory. The ending with closing credits rolling alongside the testimony of Claudia McNeil’s character puts the perfect cap on the story’s resolution. Sowards and Goldstone truly created a gem in this one.
