Panic (1997)

Prolific Canadian director Bashar Shbib ingeniously layers three suspenseful tales on top of one another in the arthouse thriller Panic (1997). In one of the stories, a dowdy writer captures overheard conversations on a tape recorder, using the snippets of dialogue to invent imaginative tales of murder and intrigue. As it turns out, however, the writer’s merely a conceit––a character in a pulp radio drama conceived by a transvestite host. It gets tricky keeping track of what’s fact and what’s fiction, but with bombshells like Alexandra Woodward in the cast, it’s possible to skip the details and simply soak up the skin shots.