Combat Shock
| Combat Shock | |
|---|---|
Film poster
|
|
| Directed by | Buddy Giovinazzo |
| Produced by | Buddy Giovinazzo |
| Written by | Buddy Giovinazzo |
| Starring |
Ricky Giovinazzo Veronica Stork Mitch Maglio Asaph Livni |
| Music by | Ricky Giovinazzo |
| Cinematography | Stella Varveris |
| Edited by | Buddy Giovinazzo |
| Distributed by | Troma Entertainment |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
90 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $40,000 (estimated) |
Combat Shock is a 1986 action war drama film written and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo and distributed by Troma Entertainment.
The plot of the film takes place in Staten Island, and follows an unemployed Vietnam veteran living in total poverty with his nagging wife, his deformed baby due to Ricky having been exposed to Agent Orange that the US was spraying as a defoliant over Vietnam, and junkie friends. Unable to get a job and surrounded by the depravity of urban life and crime, he begins to lose his grip on sanity. The film received mixed reviews when it was released. Film Threat's Christopher Curry praised the film for its gritty realism, and Troma president Lloyd Kaufman calls it one of the company's true "masterpieces"; however, shockcinemamagazine.com called it "one of the ugliest, nastiest, most depressing movies of the decade" (though the review itself was a positive one), and Videohound described the film as "relentlessly bleak... you won't find a more depressing film outside an art-house cinema".
Tagline: Fighting, killing, maiming... Agent Orange and the torture cages were the easy part!
The film begins with stock footage scenes of warfare in Vietnam. An American soldier named Frankie is seen running alone through the jungle as his voice narrates. He explains that he "goes back there every night" right before he wakes up in bed with his wife in their squalid NYC apartment. The distorted cries of his baby are heard, and his pregnant wife wakes up to tend to the boy. They argue over Frankie's unemployment and their son's health. The baby is a mutant, portrayed by a puppet. Frankie assumes it was a result of chemical weapons used during the war.
The bulk of the film consists of long sequences of urban blight underscored by Ricky Giovinazzo's synthesizer soundtrack. A junkie scores from the local kingpin, Paco. Frankie waits in line outside the unemployment office. The junkie desperately searches for a needle to shoot up with. Frankie kills time entertaining a child prostitute. The junkie resorts to dumping the drugs directly onto a wound he opens in his arm and passes out. A random woman comes upon him and steals his gun and ammunition, putting them in her purse.
...
Wikipedia