Panic Movement was a collective formed by Fernando Arrabal

Fernando Arrabal

Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...

, Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky, known as Alejandro Jodorowsky, is a Chilean filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comic book writer and spiritual guru...

 and Roland Topor

Roland Topor

Roland Topor , was a French illustrator, painter, writer and filmmaker, known for the surreal nature of his work...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in 1962. Inspired by and named after the god Pan

Pan (mythology)

Pan , in Greek religion and mythology, is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music, as well as the companion of the nymphs. His name originates within the Greek language, from the word paein , meaning "to pasture." He has the hindquarters, legs,...

, and influenced by Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...

 and Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...

's Theatre of Cruelty

Theatre of Cruelty

The Theatre of Cruelty is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible...

, the group concentrated on chaotic performance art

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 and surreal imagery.

The Panic Movement performed theatrical events designed to be shocking, as a response to surrealism becoming petite bourgeoisie

Petite bourgeoisie

Petit-bourgeois or petty bourgeois is a term that originally referred to the members of the lower middle social classes in the 18th and early 19th centuries...

 and to release destructive energies in search of peace and beauty. One four-hour performance known as Sacramental Melodrama was staged in May 1965 at the Paris Festival of Free Expression. The "happening" starred Jodorowsky dressed in motorcyclist leather and featured him slitting the throats of two geese, taping two snakes to his chest and having himself stripped and whipped. Other scenes included a staged murder of a rabbi, a crucified chicken, a giant vagina giving birth to Jodorowsky, naked women covered in honey and the throwing of live turtles into the audience.

Arrabal and Jodorowsky later started to work also on film. Arrabal is well-known for his 1971

1971 in film

The year 1971 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 8 - Bob Dylan's hour long documentary film, Eat the Document, premieres at New York's Academy of Music...

 film Viva la muerte and 1973

1973 in film

The year 1973 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces his second wife, Barbara Blakely. Blakely would later marry actor/singer Frank Sinatra....

 film I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse. Jodorowsky achieved even greater popularity and a cult

Cult following

A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...

 status with Fando y Lis

Fando y Lis

Fando y Lis is a film adaptation of a Fernando Arrabal play by the same name, and it is Alejandro Jodorowsky's first feature length film. Arrabal was working with Jodorowsky on performance art at the time...

, El Topo

El Topo

El Topo is a 1970 Spanish language allegorical, cult western movie and underground film, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky...

and The Holy Mountain.

Jodorowsky dissolved the Panic Movement in 1973, after the release of Arrabal's book Le panique.