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Chosen One of the Day: Darrel 'Panic' Lumley from 1993's Ticks
The 1993 film Ticks is everything you could want in an early-'90s B-horror movie. A group of teens and a couple of adults go on a camping trip in the woods and things slowly begin to take a bad turn, and then everything gets severely get worse before you’ve even started your popcorn. Also, this movie stars Seth Green and Alfonso Ribeiro. Ribeiro plays a character named Darrel "Panic” Lumley who happens to be the best part of Ticks for all the wrong or maybe the very right reasons. He is the perfect token Black character in a horror film.
The character Darrel “Panic” Lumley is who you get when you force Carlton Banks to give up Tom Jones for the fictional rap group CB4. Or this at least that's clearly what Alfonso was going for, because a teddy bear wearing a bandanna and sunglasses would have been more intimidating. This doesn’t stop his character from bullying Seth Green’s Tyler Burns though. Tyler waits on an abandoned basketball court while Darrel looks on in the distance ominously. He is dressed in colorful MC Hammer pants, sunglasses, and a long raincoat he probably borrowed from his dad. His dog is even cute.
Somehow though, Tyler is still shook when Darrel jumps down from his perch and threatens him with a butter knife. Well, it’s not really a butter knife but it might as well have been because there is absolutely nothing frightening about Darrel. Even the reason behind his nickname “Panic” is more embarrassing than anything else. They call him Panic because he never does. Except that he totally does when things get real. From CB4 back to Tom Jones in a minute flat.
