Very disappointing...

Let's be realistic.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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

Come on! This "shock" film is nothing but a series of rip-offs and stereotypes and is pure TRASH! The film tries to present a bleak look at "Viet-Nam Vets" who can't fit back into society following their combat experiences. Themes stolen from Midnight Cowboy (bleak New York City), The Taxi Driver (crazed vet shoots it out with three thugs at the end), Rolling Thunder (crazed and disturbed P.O.W. haunted by wartime nightmares), and Soldier Blue (hacked up bodies, severed heads, in a war setting) are chopped together to make this dull, and boring mess. Each character is too over-the-top and all come across as cartoonish. The acting is terrible and stiff. Honestly, the whole cast looks like heroin addicts. The mutant baby was borrowed from the horror film, It's Alive!. I'm sure the movie was made with good intentions to show the plight of Vets exposed to Agent Orange and Shell Shock, but it just doesn't get it's message across. Instead of wasting your money and time on this trash, you should rent The Best Years of Our Lives or Coming Home.

However, very boring throughout the entire middle of the movie. Seriously, after the first 10 minutes of the film's start (which was the most interesting part of the movie) we are treated with watching a man walk around town for like an hour. Wow, that was so exhilarating just watching this guy walk around and talk to people, it had me on the edge of my seat! The only time it gets exciting is at the end. And I won't say that it was worth the wait, but nevertheless, it was the highlight of the movie.I thought the "baby" character was.....special. The wife was decent. The main lead was, like his "baby",...special.Not Troma's worst film, but definitely not their best on either.

You have read all about the plot, so here is something a little deeper. I just wanted to clear up a few things, I have read a lot of comments on this film and read it was filmed in New Jersey. This is incorrect. This movie was shot in my neighborhood of Port Richmond on Staten Island, New York. Google it, its not NJ, guys. I work a block away from the rail yard that is shown very often in the film, and actually hung out down there in my teens. Because of this, the movie really hit home and stayed with me for a while. I just watched Combat Shock for the first time in 2008 at 28yrs old. And Port Richmond sure did look bleak back in 86, apocalyptic is more the word. I recognized most of the streets and it was depressing, and nostalgic for me to see my neighborhood in such ruins. Port Richmond ave has now populated much more, 90% by illegal immigrants. Most of the businesses that are run down in the film are now active with furniture shops, Mexican food joints and 99 cent stores. But the rail yard remains the same, though non functional for the last 20 years. A total run down abandon hole in the ground ravished with graffiti, bums and littered with empty drug baggies. I thought the film was great, and was even better being a sort of time capsule for me. I can't get this movie out of my head. It was like a window into the darkest crevices of my town, the places I would think about and fear growing up.