Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Foreverisacastironmess When I first watched this, I assumed because it had the Troma label stuck on it that it would be the usual lovably gross crazy crap that they put out, but boy was I wrong there. It was thankfully only distributed by them, and there was nothing farcical or lighthearted about it, but it was one of the grimmest, most hard-edged pictures that I'd ever seen. It pulled no punches and was so brutal and disheartening, that poor guy needed a break so bad, just the tiniest bit of luck to help him out, but he truly had nowhere left to go but down as he aimlessly wandered a decrepit cityscape where the citizens no longer cares about each other or even for themselves in uncertainty and dead-end boredom in the kind of frightfully hungry, empty and completely hopeless life that all sane people dread to be trapped in... And I loved it, I was goddamn blown away. I knew it would be my kind of movie and something special as soon as I saw the squalid presentation and heard the music and the blunt interactions as Frank gets up to a day that's truly from hell. There weren't any pretensions about it, it had a real energetic downbeat energy and raw honesty about itself. It was so visually gripping to me that I plain couldn't take my eyes off it, all the urban decay of the miserable ghetto in which he simply exists, the cracked overgrown walkways, the old disused railway tracks leading the nowhere, the abounded darkened old buildings, how it looked and the atmosphere of the setting just oozed appeal to me, I found it oddly captivating, it was to me beautifully desolate. It's the same kind of tone that I've loved before in other movies like Basket Case, The Driller Killer, The New York Ripper, Maniac, Street Trash, and recently Taxi Driver. I also liked it because it had a slight touch of the weird and offbeat to it at points, not so weird that it was surrealistic or anything, it had a coherent plot and a level of depth to the main character, but it had its bizarre elements, the main one being the grotesque mutant baby that looks like an alien ghost and constantly moans in an eerie electronic-sounding cry. I didn't like the baby though, for me it took away from the stark reality too much. They should've done it so that, that was how he saw and heard the thing but nobody else did, it would've made the effect a lot creepier, not to mention what he eventually does to it far more disturbing. The soundtrack was amazing, composed by the star himself! Some find that the synth music themes clash with the story but for me it definitely added a certain something. I thought Rick Giovinazzo in his only ever acting role gave an excellent strong performance that really holds it all together and he gave a brilliant portrayal of a man at the end of his rope and hanging onto his sanity by a thread, before going through a total mental breakdown and only finding a solution to the nightmare through cold-blooded murder. Until the end I found him a sympathetic and understandable character. The saddest part of the film comes when Frank makes a desperate phone call to the estranged father who thought he was dead for years to ask him for a loan, only to learn that the once wealthy old man has nothing left and is dying. It's a heartbreaking exchange as his dad apologises for the falling out they had years earlier and says that he doesn't want to go back to the painful past anymore... Rick tries to be the honourable guy and help out his old junkie friend and talk sense to a heartless stereotypical pimp, but it's all to no avail and as the day drags on and he's battered and pushed more and more he just crumbles under the weight of all the unbearable stresses and crushing hopelessness in everything around him. And what really pushes him over the edge is when he's forced to shoot dead the gang of crooks that he owes money to. He then returns home beaten and bloody to his nagging but concerned wife and gazes into the flickering haze of the broken television like a zombie and perceives strange visions of his past in Vietnam and finally remembers what really happened to him there and the dark secret that he's blacked out of his head for so long, which causes his mind to completely shut down to the point where he can no longer tell the difference between the phantom 'enemies' of his jungle nightmares and his own family. And the excellent way that scene is filmed you realise what he's going to do just as he does. And what follows is ugly and unpleasant and it was a shocking and powerful ending to an already disturbing movie. A great movie too, not for everyone and not easy or nice viewing but I loved it. It was a diamond in the rough, and a f*cking classic!

Gmork76 I had never seen This movie it somehow slipped by me until i found it on DVD recently (both versions). I gave it full ten stars because it is a masterpiece in its own kinda bizarre way. It captures the poor Vietnam vet's daily life back in the world, the poverty, hopelessness and horrors of a nagging wife and a horrific mutant son (and that boy has a whine that made me sick) A so simple yet shocking sound effect... The details of the interior of their apartment is truly sickening, from the filth on the walls to the overfilled malfunctioning toilet. What struck me most about this movie is that i can relate to it. I have gone trough some similar back to the world experience. The utterly total hopelessness! And a screaming 24/7 little kid too....As for quality it is what you might expect of a full frame DVD, 4:3, mono sound and no extras except two versions of the movie.A deeper look at the absolute bottom of decay a highly recommended buy if you can find it on DVD.

angelsunchained 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.

Darth-Helmet 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".