Event

NIGHT TERRORS: AMERICAN NIGHTMARES on 16mm

16mm print courtesy of Mitch Davis of the Fantasia International Film Festival and director Buddy Giovinazzo.

Made on a modest budget and shot in the nightmarish squalor of Ed Koch's New York City, COMBAT SHOCK falls somewhere between Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER and David Lynch's ERASERHEAD. It imagines the kind of loser Travis Bickle would have truly been had he not been handicapped by Scorsese's Catholic guilt as he stumbles through a decaying New York that would give Henry Spencer nightmares. Its central protagonist -- under no circumstance can we ever truly be allowed to call him a hero -- is Frankie, a vet barely able to care for himself let alone those around him. He wanders from misfortune to misfortune as he tries (and fails) to care for his newborn child, as much creature deformed by the residual effects of Agent Orange as human. Along the way he encounters a collection of junkies, cheats and scumbags... it is 1980s New York, after all.

COMBAT SHOCK is the kind of unflinching, fearless brand of filmmaking that deserves our attention. On April 29, 2015, 40 years to the day America evacuated the last of its personnel from Vietnam, it will get its due as lowculture and Vivisections International Horror Shorts team to screen an early 16mm print of COMBAT SHOCK under the alternate title of AMERICAN NIGHTMARES. Whether an unusual coincidence born of perfect timing, or maybe through an act of cosmic vindication, the screening will take place at PhilaMOCA, a former showroom for tombstones and the perfect venue to experience this anti-human tragedy.

"...this is one uncompromising picture, a movie so eccentric and so relentless that no mere profit motive could possibly explain it." - Dave Kehr, The New York Times

"It's a true American original, a portrait painted in the scum, sweat, and the fears of both its subject and its supporters." - Bill Gibron, PopMatters

"...outsider art of the first order..." - Phil Nobile, Jr., Badass Digest

$10 admission

PhilaMOCA
531 N 12th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19123