“Combat Shock” has clearly been influenced by “Taxi Driver,” but there is no mournful Bernard Herrmann score to romanticize Frankie’s quest and no sensuous slow-motion shots of the city’s mean streets to aestheticize his degraded environment. As one commenter observes in the accompanying making-of documentary, “this film smells” — but not in a metaphorical sense. [...]

Legendary grindhouse sleaze-festival Combat Shock will do things to you. Unpleasant things. For nominal protagonist Frankie, time served in the Vietnam War brings back memories, Combat Shock brings back memories for me, too, though I've never served in the military. Maybe those memories will help us process this outlandishly bleak, tragic exercise in low-budget nihilism – so dedicated to its convictions it'll pretty much burn up your television with bile. Read the review…

As bleak and desperate a film as anything else out there and far more grim than you can probably imagine, Combat Shock (or, if you prefer, American Nightmares in its director's cut) is an incredibly depressing slice of life. Shot on a miniscule budget with an amateur cast, the film lets its authentically seedy locations stink up the film with the aroma of piss and garbage. It's a gritty, dirty, ugly film that hits you like a brick but it's also incredibly well made and remarkably effective, particularly when you consider that the film, at its core, is really little more than a man walking across town for ninety minutes. That said, it's the voyage and not the destination. Read the review…

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