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.

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War - what is it good for? Especially the trauma and the PTSD we hear so much about. This low budget movie explores that or as some have said, Taxi Driver meets Eraserhead. If that sounds like something you want to watch ... well what are you waiting for? But remember this really did not have much money and it shows (aging wise too).

So depending on your taste you will have either a rather good time/enjoy yourself or be quite annoyed. The movie has some fine ideas and the plot moves forward nicely. But as the director himself is admitting, there are quite a few flaws. And if you can bare in mind that this is just the start and the circumstances and all that ... again, it will depend with what mood you go in. It's also Troma, so ... you know what to expect ...

Unhinged traumatized Vietnam veteran Frankie Dunlan (strongly played with jolting conviction and intensity by Ricky Giovinazzo, who also composed the wonky, yet still fitting and effective synth score) struggles to keep his steadily eroding sanity, lives in miserable squalor with his whiny, fed-up, and overbearing pregnant wife Cathy (a perfectly shrill portrayal by Veronica Stork) and his constantly mewling malformed baby (the result of Frankie's exposure to Agent Orange during his tour of duty),tries to find a job, and runs across a gang of local thugs while wandering around the dismal Staten Island neighborhood he resides in. Writer/director Buddy Giovinazzo delivers a pungent and unflinching evocation of severe urban decay that's rife with an overwhelming sense of pain, angst, despair, and utter hopelessness. Indeed, this picture's unsparingly bleak and depressing tone along with its fierce undiluted nihilism and pessimism give it a raw unsettling potency that's like a vicious kick right to the gut. The grimy locations, colorful array of lowlife characters, and the rough unpolished cinematography by Stella Varveris all further enhance the overall grungy verisimilitude. Packed with startling moments (a desperate and pathetic junkie uses a coat hanger to mainline heroin!),thick with a brooding gloomy mood and a harrowing grasp of the foul bitter reality of down-trodden American existence, and capped off by a shattering downbeat conclusion, this dark and ugly, yet still riveting powerhouse deserves its sterling cult reputation.