Pánik (Panic) is one of the many experimental animated shorts produced at Hungary's Pannonia Film Studio, a frantic video collage directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler. Made in 1978, the animation used to play before Hungarian screenings of the original Star Wars movie for years, making it one of the most widely watched Pannonia shorts.
It is very loosely based on Czech author Karel Čapek's satirical sci-fi novel War with the Newts, animated in a similar style to Reisenbüchler's earlier The Kidnapping of the Sun and the Moon. Like in the novel, humanity discovers and exploits a race of intelligent island-dwelling amphibians. Unlike in the novel, three of them are kidnapped and turned into giant rampaging monsters in an experiment Gone Horribly Wrong. Two get killed but one is left free to wreck humanity's consumerism-driven cities as it tries to find its way back home. While the novel tackles many crucial societal matters, the short is mainly just a giant jab at modern urban life, unethical science and commercialism.
Tropes featured:
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Monstrous, mutated formerly-humanoid newts. The military and air force of course retaliate to their rampage.
- Beast Man: The newts are humanoid creatures with vague animal features.
- Deranged Animation: It's a Reisenbüchler film, so of course the animation is wild and highly surreal.
- Flying Saucer: Humans kidnap the newts with one.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: After their abduction, humans zap three newts into giant monsters for some reason. They're shocked as the beasts tear free and wreak havoc on civilization.
- Good Old Ways: The final surviving newt monster just wants to destroy the city standing in his way and return to its peaceful old home where life was simple.
- Green Aesop: The short's main message is "nature over tech." To drive the point fully home, the last remaining newt monster shrinks back to his original form from the natural sunlight of his home island.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: From the newts' perspective, humanity is a horrific, invading force. They even have a Flying Saucer that abducts their kind to experiment on them.
- In Harmony with Nature: The newts on their island.
- Inspired by…:
- The short is at best tangentially related to War with the Newts, though it was cited as an influence.
- As Reisenbüchler had traveled to Japan some time before making this short, it is likely he took some inspiration from their giant monster movies. Though film databases also suggest the American King Kong (1933) as its source.
- Kaiju: What the three newts are turned into via an experiment of undefined purpose.
- Transformation Ray: What turns the newts into monsters.
