Watch Combat Shock For Free

A Masterpiece!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Combat Shock (1984)*** (out of 4)Frankie Dunlan (Ricky Giovinazzo) returns home from Vietnam after some bizarre experiments were done on him and he's hit a string of bad luck. His wife is pregnant and also trying to take care of their deformed one-year-old son. Frankie has lost his job, all three are starving and the future doesn't look too bright but he heads out one day in search of something better.Buddy Giovinazzo's COMBAT SHOCK is without question one of the most raw, depressing and bleak character studies ever created. The director stated that the film was meant to be something in between TAXI DRIVER and ERASERHEAD and that's the best way to describe it. The movie isn't the best made film that you'll ever see and it's certainly very raw in regards to various technical things but at the same time there's just something so wrong and so off about the subject matter that you can't help but be drawn into its nightmare.The film certainly has a lot to say about mental illness as well as the troubles that faced vets when they returned home. The film is extremely bleak to say the least as there's not even a glimmer of comedy or even a brief smile to be bad. You certainly wouldn't want to show this film to anyone suffering from a depression because it would probably push them over the edge. The flashbacks to Vietnam are all that convincing and there are other technical problems with the film but at the same time this is a lot deeper and a lot more troubling than what most filmmakers would try on a $40,000 budget.Giovinazzo does a very good job in the lead role as he's certainly believable as this broken man who really is at the very end of things. He certainly comes across as a real person and this helps give the film a more realistic approach to the dark material. The direction is spot on and this is certainly true during the incredibly disturbing final fifteen-minutes of the picture.

Certainly lacking in wise-cracking rubber monsters and outlandishly- dressed brain-dead punks, Combat Shock - a serious, if extremely low- budget drama/psychological horror by writer/director/producer Buddy Giovinazzo - proves that Troma Entertainment occasionally took their movies seriously. The shell-shocked Vietnam veteran story had been done many times before, and certainly a lot better, but never quite as unsettling. Far from a masterpiece, and riddled with terrible production values, Combat Shock nevertheless is a glowing statement as to just what scraping-the-piggy-bank film-making can sometimes offer.After an event during the Vietnam War that left a village dismembered and massacred, Frankie Dunlan (Rick Giovinazzo - brother to Buddy), struggles to adapt to civilian life. Living in poverty, unable to find work, and saddled with a whining wife (Veronica Stork) and a deformed baby, he is about the have the worst day of his life. Owing money to a group of drug-dealing punks, led by Paco (Mitch Maglio), Frankie wanders the battered streets of his native New York, coming into contact with various low-lives and looking for any way to make a buck. Seemingly without hope, and terrified to go back to his starving family empty- handed, he resorts to an act of violence.You could imagine running a finger along the negative of Combat Shock and immediately needing to wash your hands afterwards. The movie seems awash with grime, and the streets Frankie wanders down have an almost apocalyptic quality. This is utterly depressing stuff, nearly entirely devoid of laughs, where the types of people Frankie befriends are gun- wielding junkies or child prostitutes. It's sometimes laughably pessimistic, a journey into utter depravity, and combined with some extremely amateurish production values and an occasionally plodding narrative, can be a bit of a slog to get through at times.Yet for all it's sloppy editing and wide-eyed, over-the-top thesping, it is at times extremely effective. The baby, horribly disfigured due to Frankie's exposure to Agent Orange, looks cheap, but the way it moves and sounds, combined with the dump that surrounds it, is just as disturbing as Eraserhead (1977). There is also a horrible moment when a junkie, unable to find a needle for his fix, opens his damaged arm with a coat hanger and pours heroin into his black, bleeding vein. Some will find it's relentless depravity too much to take, but there's a gritty honesty here, going deep into the dark heart of a post-Vietnam America, where traumatised Vets were hung out to dry by a country that had forgotten them.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Combat Shock is a seriously downbeat and bleak flick. I knew this going in, as it's been on my radar for a long time, so I was well-prepared for a depressing flick. And on that front, my expectations were met. I also had expectations that I would enjoy it. Those expectations were not met. The film is just not a fun movie watching experience. It's not entertaining either. But it has appeal with it's ugly atmosphere, surprisingly good dialog, and realistic telling of a Vietnam vet's tortured life.I don't like admitting that the film bored me, but it did. On paper describing it would do the scenes more justice. But with a style very similar to the gritty and depressing 'Last House on Dead End Street', another film I didn't really like, there is a unique feeling this type of movie gives off. One that I don't like. Since it does affect me in this way, I do give it points for that. But phewy, it's slow-going, unlikeable, and altogether ugly. But with it's ridiculous finale, the message it delivers, the baby, and things I mentioned above, it's a film that I will recommend...carefully.

A former POW ( Ricky Giovinazzo) has troubled memories of his past back in Vietnam as now he's a family guy with a nagging wife and a weird deformed son in New York City. He's also looking for a job to help his family as he begins to now work for a drug dealer with a gang if he can get them the money he owes them until one day he finally snaps and gets revenge even on his wife and kid.A disturbing, bleak and interesting action drama that feels as a mix of both genres which is also a character study in it and it's one of the more serious "Troma" distributed flicks, it's also a interesting movie as well. There's plenty of drug use, gore and violence to propel the film especially on the troubled former hero of the picture with his nature of course and it's one of the most underrated war-related movies yet that has gained a cult following.A must see movie! Also recommended: "Men Behind The Sun", "Saving Private Ryan", "Rambo Trilogy", "Troma's War", "Red Dawn", "Day of the Dead", "The Toxic Avenger", "Hostel", "Cannibal Apocalypse", "The Exterminator", "Taxi Driver", "Eraserhead", "Dawn of the Dead (1978 and 2004)", "Cannibal Ferox", "Surf Nazis Must Die", "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", "Eraserhead", "Cabin Fever", "Full Metal Jacket", "Apocalypse Now", "The Hills Have Eyes ( 1977 and 2006)", "Mother's Day", "Caligula", "Uncle Sam", "Cemetery Man", "Black Christmas", "Freddy vs. Jason", "Terror Firmer", "Jungle Holocaust" ( a.k.a. Last Cannibal World), "Mountain of the Cannibal God", "Black Hawk Down", "Born of the 4th of July", "Empire of the Sun", "Basket Case", "Reservoir Dogs", "Kill Bill", and "Battle Royale".