Combat Shock
Encyclopedia
Combat Shock is a 1986 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 ending is as extreme as it gets.
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 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.
There is no work for Frankie at the unemployment office. Typical of the movie, unexplained arbitrary things happen, such as one social worker asking another if he's seen his Veg-O-Matic
. Frankie's social worker spaces out during their meeting and says, "Life is hot, and because life is hot, I must take off my jacket." He then resumes the meeting, imploring Frankie to go back to school because he has no marketable skills. Frankie is desperate for work, having been unemployed for four months.
He calls his father to ask for money. His father thinks the call is a prank, because he believes his son died in Saigon. Frankie explains that he was reported killed 15 years ago but he made it out alive and spent three years in an army hospital recuperating. He tells his father that his wife is pregnant again and they are being evicted, but his father claims that he is also broke and about to die from a heart condition.
Seemingly broken, Frankie comes across the woman who stole the junkie's gun and steals her purse, an out of character criminal act for him. She screams for help. Paco and his thugs chase Frankie. When they overcome him, they mercilessly beat him. The gun falls out of the bag during the pummeling. When Paco goes through the bag, he finds the bullets and realizes there must have been a gun in it. He turns around to see Frankie standing with the gun.
Frankie shoots all three men in a daze. He has been beaten to a pulp, and his voice over explains that his father was right: he had died in Saigon. He explains that his company had come upon a village where everyone had killed themselves to avoid being raped and murdered by the US soldiers. He realizes that he must similarly 'save' his family, and he returns home.
His wife is horrified by his appearance and briefly tends to his wounds. He is catatonic and hallucinates in front of the TV. Eventually, he reloads the gun and prepares to kill himself, but another hallucination reminds him of his purpose for returning home. Frankie walks into the bedroom, tells his wife that he loves her, and then shoots her in the stomach. As she lies on the ground, he shoots her three more times, yelling at her to die. He shoots the baby once and then picks it up from the crib. He cradles it and walks into the kitchen with it.
Frankie lays the baby in the oven, and turns it all the way to the cleaning setting. He then pours himself a glass of spoiled milk and drinks it before committing suicide.
section of Staten Island, where the main character dwells in apocalyptic squalor. It's Port Richmond's gritty streetscapes that assist in getting Giovinazzo's desired point across. The film has often been hailed for its raw depiction of inner city life, the struggles of poverty and the plight of veterans returning home from war.
The movie was shot on a modest budget causing the battlefield scenes to be shot in marshland across from the Staten Island Mall.
, Vincent Canby dismissed the film as a 'family affair', which "means to be shocking but it more often prompts giggles. You don't often see movies as passionately, sincerely misguided as this." Reviewing the DVD release of the film in the same paper, Dave Kehr was more affectionate, admiring the film's gritty honesty, but admitting, "The entire world of Combat Shock seems to have aged beyond its sell-by date, an olfactory metaphor that Mr. Giovinazzo drives home with an unforgettable image involving a carton of spoiled milk."
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
written and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo
Buddy Giovinazzo
Buddy Giovinazzo is an independent filmmaker and author who is known for his gritty-low budget debut film, Combat Shock, and his collection of harrowing short stories of low urban life in his 1993 novel, Life is Hot in Cracktown....
and distributed by Troma Entertainment
Troma Entertainment
Troma Entertainment is an American independent film production and distribution company founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974.The company produces low-budget independent movies that play on 1950s horror with elements of farce...
.
The plot of the film takes place in Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
, and follows an unemployed Vietnam
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veteran living in total poverty with his nagging wife, his deformed baby due to Ricky having been exposed to Agent Orange
Agent Orange
Agent Orange is the code name for one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth...
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 ending is as extreme as it gets.
The film received mixed reviews when it was released. Film Threat's
Film Threat
Film Threat is a former print magazine and, now, webzine which focuses primarily on independent film, although it also reviews DVDs of mainstream films and Hollywood movies in theaters. It first appeared as a photocopied zine in 1985, created by Wayne State University students Chris Gore and André...
Christopher Curry praised the film for its gritty realism, and Troma president Lloyd Kaufman
Lloyd Kaufman
Lloyd Kaufman is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and occasional actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet. Kaufman also serves as...
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!
Plot
The film begins with stock footage scenes of warfare in Vietnam. An American soldier named Frankie (Ricky Giovinazzo) 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.
There is no work for Frankie at the unemployment office. Typical of the movie, unexplained arbitrary things happen, such as one social worker asking another if he's seen his Veg-O-Matic
Veg-O-Matic
Veg-O-Matic was the name of one of the first food-processing appliances to gain widespread use in the United States. It was invented by Samuel J...
. Frankie's social worker spaces out during their meeting and says, "Life is hot, and because life is hot, I must take off my jacket." He then resumes the meeting, imploring Frankie to go back to school because he has no marketable skills. Frankie is desperate for work, having been unemployed for four months.
He calls his father to ask for money. His father thinks the call is a prank, because he believes his son died in Saigon. Frankie explains that he was reported killed 15 years ago but he made it out alive and spent three years in an army hospital recuperating. He tells his father that his wife is pregnant again and they are being evicted, but his father claims that he is also broke and about to die from a heart condition.
Seemingly broken, Frankie comes across the woman who stole the junkie's gun and steals her purse, an out of character criminal act for him. She screams for help. Paco and his thugs chase Frankie. When they overcome him, they mercilessly beat him. The gun falls out of the bag during the pummeling. When Paco goes through the bag, he finds the bullets and realizes there must have been a gun in it. He turns around to see Frankie standing with the gun.
Frankie shoots all three men in a daze. He has been beaten to a pulp, and his voice over explains that his father was right: he had died in Saigon. He explains that his company had come upon a village where everyone had killed themselves to avoid being raped and murdered by the US soldiers. He realizes that he must similarly 'save' his family, and he returns home.
His wife is horrified by his appearance and briefly tends to his wounds. He is catatonic and hallucinates in front of the TV. Eventually, he reloads the gun and prepares to kill himself, but another hallucination reminds him of his purpose for returning home. Frankie walks into the bedroom, tells his wife that he loves her, and then shoots her in the stomach. As she lies on the ground, he shoots her three more times, yelling at her to die. He shoots the baby once and then picks it up from the crib. He cradles it and walks into the kitchen with it.
Frankie lays the baby in the oven, and turns it all the way to the cleaning setting. He then pours himself a glass of spoiled milk and drinks it before committing suicide.
Filming
The movie is set in and was largely filmed in the Port RichmondPort Richmond, Staten Island
Port Richmond is a neighborhood situated on the North Shore of Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, United States. It is along the waterfront of the Kill Van Kull, with the southern terminus of the Bayonne Bridge serving as the boundary between it and Mariners Harbor, the...
section of Staten Island, where the main character dwells in apocalyptic squalor. It's Port Richmond's gritty streetscapes that assist in getting Giovinazzo's desired point across. The film has often been hailed for its raw depiction of inner city life, the struggles of poverty and the plight of veterans returning home from war.
The movie was shot on a modest budget causing the battlefield scenes to be shot in marshland across from the Staten Island Mall.
Critical reception
The initial theatrical release was met with severe skepticism. Writing for The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Vincent Canby dismissed the film as a 'family affair', which "means to be shocking but it more often prompts giggles. You don't often see movies as passionately, sincerely misguided as this." Reviewing the DVD release of the film in the same paper, Dave Kehr was more affectionate, admiring the film's gritty honesty, but admitting, "The entire world of Combat Shock seems to have aged beyond its sell-by date, an olfactory metaphor that Mr. Giovinazzo drives home with an unforgettable image involving a carton of spoiled milk."