Combat Shock (2015)

Sadly Over-hyped

Instant Favorite.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

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

this must be on the the most well done low budget films of all time, not in entertainment, but it just good film making. the movie centers around a nam' vet who, after coming home, sees his friends have gone to poverty, and searches for a job to help his wife and mutated baby. the war scenes are shot well, and some interesting effects were used to show flash backs, such as projecting footage onto the actors face. the end is were the movie really peaks, as our "hero" returns home to "save" his family, by killing them. do not watch this film if you are depressed, or become depressed easily. if you are a fan of low budget film making, or you want to get a new look on war movies, check this film out. 10/10

I didn't think so, LOL!!! Are you kidding me? Combat Shock is hands down, the most depressing movie I have ever seen, yet laughing just kind of came natural, but I would imagine you would need a rather dark sense of humor to see any humor in this at all, but believe me, it is totally there, it's just that it's overshadowed by the morbid, nightmarish, grittiness of it all. Never has the portrayal of the effects of war and poverty come off so devastatingly hopeless. Not only dealing with memories of war and other atrocities, but having to live in filthy Staten Island, having to support a freakish infant who will apparently never get strong enough to grow or even age and a wife with a nagging voice and repulsive physical appearance, not to mention bills, along with debts to a guy who wants to kill you, no food, no work and zero money, never mind the fact that your'e "this close" to going insane. To me, Combat shock is funny in a Blood Sucking Freaks kind of way, just a little more subtle, or maybe it's the soundtrack that makes you feel like you're watching something humorous, almost like the cheap-sounding repetitive theme song is taunting the shell-shocked Vietnam vet as he walks up and down Staten Island looking for something... anything positive.Just to break it down, Combat Shock makes Taxi Driver look like Mr. Deeds. Troma really struck gold with this one. Recommended to anyone looking for a depressing nightmare of a swell time. If you're looking for something more upbeat and redeeming, try out Eddie Murphy's next project. I'm sure it'll be cute. Even though I feel they could have taken the shock value just a tad further. I give Combat Shock 9 stars, for possibly being one of the top 5 most powerful films of all time.

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.