User reviews

"The Panic in Needle Park" is an incredibly unpleasant film...which is what you'd expect about a film that centers around two heroin addicts living in New York. So, if you are looking for a film to make you smile or a good date film, do NOT see this movie! In fact, that is the biggest problem with the picture...most folks won't wanna see two people slowly destroying themselves. Most folks watch films to be entertained. Now I am NOT saying it's a bad film and it might be a good one to show teens, as it shows how wretched a life hooked on drugs can be...though there are a few more recent films which make drug use seem a lot more unpleasant, such as the brilliant but hard to watch "Requiem for a Dream".

The film has very little in the way of plot. It simply shows two addicts who are in love, Bobby and Helen (Al Pacino and Kitty Winn), as they slowly degenerate...sinking lower and lower and lower through the course of the movie. At first, Bobby is very glib...and fun to be with and Helen seems rather innocent. Naturally, this doesn't last and both sink deeper and deeper into their habit. Bobby claims he's a 'chipper' (a casual user who is not addicted) but after a while he's dealing and overdoses. Helen begins turning tricks to buy their next fix.

Unpleasant, to be sure, but mostly realistic. When they shot up, it looks real...and the language is street language...nasty and crude. But the only problem I saw is that both LOOKED healthy through the course of the film and the makeup could have been better...enabling them not only to act like addicts but to look more like them. Well made but I am strongly warning you...it's not a movie for kids or for the squeamish.

A year before Al Pacino got his career role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather he and Kitty Winn got great reviews as a pair of junkies in The Panic In Needle Park. This film is a brutal and realistic look at the New York's nasty world of the narcotics addict as seen through Pacino and Winn.

Even in this world romance can bloom even among these folks on the bottom most rung of society. Still the need for the needle overrules all, a fact that narcotics cop like Jesse Vint exploits to the max.

Richard Bright who plays Pacino's older brother who is a burglar by trade and not a junkie delivers a good performance. My one criticism of he Panic In Needle Park is Bright's willingness to take Pacino in on a job. Any good burglar wouldn't rust a junkie even if he was family.

The scenes showing the heroin use are brutally realistic. One scene that jolted me was the efforts to save Pacino from a hot shot dose of pure heroin. Done by his fellow narcotics peers without any professional medical help.

Not much has changed in the junkie world in the intervening half a century since Needle Park came out. The real tragedy of this film.

The Panic in Needle Park (1971)

Wow. This is as close as American Hollywood gets to cinema verite. The way it's filmed, the subject matter itself, and the acting by the whole cast, especially the two leading actors, is astonishing and gripping. Like many reality-based stories, this one lacks only a driving narrative thread. As disturbing and terrific as it is, it also gets slow, and could have been edited down with the same effect.

But less of it. By that I mean, if you can just settle into this world of 1970 heroin abuse in New York City, with close ups of shooting up and some very convincing rushes and rides, with squalor and hopelessness and indifference, with prostituting and stealing and a wide cast of people down and out, you'll want it to keep going. There is nothing quite like this movie, even as it lacks propulsion.

Al Pacino is so good, so convincing, as Bobby, you can almost picture the movie is a documentary and this slightly charming junkie is a real guy who was willing to be filmed. His girlfriend Helen played by Kitty Winn is also perfect, at first as a kind of tagalong who isn't comfortable with this world but who seems to have nowhere else to go so she sticks with Bobby. But she falls into the lifestyle, and her clean innocence is gradually worn down, almost before our eyes, and the two of them go through all the stages of addiction and desperation. They have no money, they sometimes have nowhere to live, but they stumble along, stealing or pulling tricks (sexual ones) to get their fix.

If anyone harbors any sense that heroin must be terrific, watch this movie. Even the famous euphoric rush is so internal it can't be appreciated, and people on their several hour high just seem to be sleepy all the time. And then the rest of their lives are absolute hell. I guess you don't care about everything else, so it may as well be hell, but from the outside, it's something to avoid.

And in that sense, the movie is perfect. It is so truthfully frank it's a masterpiece of some kind of cinema that we could use more of, but which is so raw and unappealing you can see why there isn't more. It's not a fun movie. And when it does get a little slow and repetitive you might even give up on it, or zone out like one of its characters. But watch at least part of it to appreciate what's been done. Here's the great Pacino in his first major role (and his second film), and Winn (also her second film) in an award winning performance.

Sherman Square is in NYC on the West Side at the intersection of Broadway and 72nd Street. It is known as Needle Park for its heroin addicts. Petty criminal addict Bobby (Al Pacino) is a friend to artist Marco (Raul Julia). Helen (Kitty Winn) is in the hospital after a bad abortion from relations with Marco. She is homeless and looking to go back to Indiana. She moves in with Bobby and slowly drifts into the dark world of drugs.

This is very 70's. It's indie. It's grim and it's grimy. The two leads are compelling. It doesn't flinch away from the needle work. It's not pretty Hollywood but rather an ugly closeup vision. It is a bit slow and the plot meanders. There is a grinding inevitability to their predicament. It wallows in the gutter.

One of the rawest images of drug addiction ever shown in a movie ! "Drugstore cowboy" and "trainspotting" turn into cartoons by seeing this film. Pacino and Wynn : what an impressive performance. One of the best ever ! The film shows a horrifying image of the junk life in the city of New York in the seventies. This motion picture does not have the sparkling colors and action, of expensive Hollywood productions nowadays and that is just the beauty of it ! It's the brutal reality that makes us realize what harder drugs can do to a persons life. Every fourteen year old kid should see this film because of the damage hard drugs can do. Forgive me, English is not my native language i hope people understand what i am trying to say. Anyway great movie and it should be better known ! What in the name happened to Jerry Schatzberg ?

This movie is not for people with sensitive nerves. Its harsh realism is very breathtaking, at times almost overwhelming. It concentrates in showing what drug addiction does to people in a relationship and succeeds in doing that. That's also the reason for its timelessness and artistic value.

Al Pacino and Kitty Winn, who plays the two main characters, Bobby and Helen, are very realistic in showing the ups and mostly the downs in the life of a drug addict. Especially the way they at times put their craving for drugs above each others needs.

The first time I saw the film I was 15. It was shown at my school and it made a very strong impression on me, especially its portrayal in the miserable life of a drug addict. I can therefore, among other things, recommend it as a preventive film for young people.

So I finish my Pacino's DVD with his 1st guest-star movie. It's funny to see how great actors begin their career by playing small losers (see our national French Gégé Dipardiou) and how her fine co-star won prize at Cannes festival and has actually disappear in limbos.

The first half hour is great as we see a young Pacino, lively, funny, in love but as soon as the couple starts going into dope, the movie turns too much shabby for me. The movie spares nothing about drug addiction, especially the crude injections, the terrible health and social effect and the more terrible need and run for cash to buy it.

I never understand why people turn into drugs and the movie doesn't offer an explanation as well: considering all those bad sides that they can notice on their friends, why aren't they disgusted about it ? Maybe they face a biggest pain but it's not very clear...

The director has a good eye as the street of NYC hasn't been so energized and the interior shots close to claustrophobic. It's not a surprise that he came from photography and had the same feeling that Lynch with his paintings: moving the frame to tell a story!

When I first saw this film, Al Pacino was an unknown actor, yet to play in the Godfather. I usually just enjoy the movie, but I was surprised by how fine an actor the star was. I wondered why I had never seen this guy before.

Pacino has made many fine films, but this one is actually one of his best..and very few people have ever heard of it. It used to be available on VHS, but has been out of print now for about twenty years. I was finally able to get a very expensive used copy from an internet vendor specializing in hard to get film.

I just hope that this comes out in DVD.

This film begins with a small-time thief named "Bobby" (Al Pacino) living in New York City and having to steal in order to feed his increasing heroin addiction. He subsequently meets a sick and emotionally frail young woman from Indiana named "Helen" (Kitty Winn) and they fall madly in love. She soon becomes addicted to heroin as well and when the supply of the illegal drug becomes more scarce they each become more even more desperate. And it's then that they descend into a nightmare world and test the limits of the law by committing acts they never would have contemplated otherwise. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a realistic and depressing film which captures the plight of those suffering from addiction only too well. I especially liked the performances of the aforementioned Al Pacino and Kitty Winn with the latter winning the award of "Best Actress" at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. Again though, it's a depressing film and one which can certainly be appreciated but is not easy to enjoy. Slightly above average.

I lived on 73rd Street, just west of the Ansonia Hotel about eight years after this movie was released, but the neighborhood hadn't changed that much. You could still find discarded needles in the tired dirt of Sherman Square and the triangle at the south end of the IRT station, and the Ansonia was still a Single-Room-Occupancy hotel in which old men in cheap hats sat on tired furniture in the water-wrecked lobby. The remnants of the Silver Fox District held out on Riverside Drive and the Schwab House, and my landlord was trying to rehab the building piecemeal, but it would be another decade before the G.D. Yuppies recolonized the area.

Nowadays you wouldn't recognize the place, but when I was there, it looked just like it does in the movie. I didn't pay much attention. The entire City was bottoming. Now, almost 50 years later, the movie looks almost quaint in its depiction of two junkies destroying themselves. The screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne and a first starring role (his second screen appearance) by Al Pacino, along with approval by Cannes, made it seem hip and cool, like TRAINSPOTTING did a quarter of a century later. To me, it feels more like REEFER MADNESS.

This is one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. It is very real and grisly looking, not polished with the horrible artificial lighting you see nowadays in films. Bobby and Helen are addicts whose lives are going nowhere, they just can't get out of their destructive lifestyle. The scenes of the characters shooting up, tricking, and hanging in the brutal streets of 1970's New York are very realistic. Makes "Trainspotting" look like a Disney cartoon.

Until the mid-Fifties, the taboo theme of drug addiction in films was either fleetingly mentioned - as in MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) - or ridiculously overblown as in the REEFER MADNESS (1936) school of movies but, with the appearance of films like Otto Preminger's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1955) and Nicholas Ray's BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956), Hollywood producers showed that they had learned to treat it in an objective, mature and sensitive way. But, with the the runaway box office success of EASY RIDER (1969), the subject got its own unexpected little niche and the general public was for the first time allowed to wallow in a no-holds-barred view of the junkie lifestyle; of course, I am discounting films like Shirley Clarke's THE CONNECTION (1961; which I've never watched myself) and the Andy Warhol Factory movies which are anything but mainstream Hollywood products.

I can't say I've watched many of those 1970s drug-related movies and, off hand, only John G. Avildsen's JOE (1970; with Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon) and Ivan Passer's BORN TO WIN (1971; with George Segal and a young Robert De Niro) come to mind. Even so, I'd say that THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK is arguably the bleakest, grittiest and most realistic screen portrayal of drug addiction I've ever watched - at least, until Darren Aronofsky's REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000); for one thing, while most films of the era made extensive use of the contemporaneous rock scene, this one has no musical underscoring at all.

Frankly, I've had the film on VHS recorded off Cable TV for over 10 years and only now managed to catch up with it because my father rented it on DVD (and, subsequently, turned it off before long)! Indeed, the scrappy first half-hour is rather off-putting and dreary and it wasn't until the main protagonists - Al Pacino (already superb in just his second movie) and Kitty Winn (who would go on to win the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film festival for her work here) - really got together that I started to genuinely care about their plight; perhaps the most moving scene they share is their short-lived idyll in the country where the couple even purchase a dog with the little money they have (but lose it almost immediately through negligence when the urge for the drug habit kicks in once again). Subsequently reduced to prostitution, Winn is watched over by a sympathetic young cop but soon he's demanding that she turn Pacino over to the law. At the end of the film the couple are reunited, but it looks like their relationship has nowhere to go.

So I was scrolling through a Borders outside of London one day, looking at all the expensive R2 DVDs I didn't have enough money for, when I spotted a movie I had never even heard of starring Al Pacino - "The Panic in Needle Park." It had the same front cover (style-wise) as "Scarface," which was an obvious marketing ploy. It had a quote from Francis Ford Coppola, which claimed he chose Pacino for "The Godfather" after seeing the film and screening it to Paramount execs.

It had piqued my interest and it was only five pounds (roughly ten dollars) so I thought, "Why not? If it's awful it's still only five pounds." I bought it, went home later that night and watched it.

I was blown away because it was easily one of the more interesting character studies I'd ever seen. It's got unlikable characters, for sure, but there's still a connection to them which allowed me, at least, to relate to their struggles. (And no, I don't use heroin.) The film stars Al Pacino in one of his very first roles as a heroin addict living in New York City, an era dubbed "Needle Park," where all the junkies hang out. (I believe I saw the exact same park in another drug movie released the same year, called "Born to Win," starring George Segal and Robert De Niro.) Pacino gets a girlfriend and gets her hooked on heroin. Essentially the film just examines her downfall from prosperity to hellish misfortune - they both live for their next hit.

The movie is unflinching. It's raw, brutal, and uneasy. (I recall reading they actually hired heroin addicts for the "shoot-up" scenes, something that would never be allowed today.) I can understand how some people might be put off by the slow pace of the movie and say, "How can I be expected to enjoy a movie with such vile characters?" However, I thought it was handled well - it's on the verge of exploitation sometimes (primarily the scenes which show the junkies shooting up) but for the most part manages to walk a careful line between exploitation and study.

Pacino's performance is one of his best ever, which is a shame because he never receives credit for it. It's one of the only roles where he isn't in control and although he does yell a few times, for the most part he's more calm and subdued - Michael Corleone as a drug addict.

"The Panic in Needle Park" is a great, underrated film and I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they can handle the content. It's not a rewarding experience in the typical sense but after spending two hours with miserable heroin addicts, it will make you feel better about your own lifestyle.

Addiction is such an incomprehensible phenomenon to those who don't endure it, that making a film which portrays with such a gripping realism, not only the devastating effects but the reasons that push people to destroy themselves, is an accomplishment that deserves respect. "The Panic in Needle Park", from the director Jerry Schatzberg is not only one of the most significant films of the 'New Hollywood' era but a slice of New York's early 70's life with an undeniable documentary value.

The film follows the lives of heroin-addicted people in the intersection between Broadway and the 72nd, the only place outside Harlem, where you could get the drug : Sherman Square aka 'Needle Park' during a severe panic, which, in the business jargon, refers to a period where there's no supply. Schatzberg's direction is austere : no music, no innovation à la Martin Scorsese, only a camera following a bunch of young people in New York streets, confined claustrophobic houses, hospitals, sordid bedrooms but allowing us sometimes to breath in a green area. The camera works as the eye of the viewer and I challenge those who'd doubt the authenticity of the images not to cover their eyes during the close-ups, where you can witness a needle piercing a vein and injecting the stuff and all the immediate effects : rolling eyes, turning heads, licked lips, the horrific graphicness making you wonder why so much people fall in that spiral.

To answer this question, the movie needed to detach itself from its own tone, and provides a story; it did even better with a romance, and quite a poignant and realistic one. The characterization of Bobby and Helen is admirably handled by both Kitty Winn and Al Pacino, in his first starring role : you can see in very touching, yet subtle moments, the chemistry growing between them. Bobby is so cocky and fun, you know he overacts his own personality in order to seduce Helen, and he's so over the top, Helen can't resist. And whenever you doubt Helen's feelings, just look at her eyes, they tell everything and Al's eyes don't say less : in the most poignant and defining scene, Bobby plays baseball with a group of kids in the street, then turns a sudden look at Helen, and realizes she took it. A long and powerful silence follows and his reaction is a love gesture that definitely places these two characters in a warm place inside our hearts. Bobby understands Helen's act less as curiosity than a deliberate will to join his way of life, so both could be in the same wavelength. It's a tragic declaration of love, in the same vein than the booze-driven romance between Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick in "Days of Wine and Roses", another great film about addiction.

Of course, the romance takes a sordid course, leading us to the discover the junkies' underworld and get all its tricks. And you know the realism works when it mirrors some of your own experiences. The film reminded me of my current addiction to the water-pipe, or oriental pipe, and how the meticulous preparation provides a sort of pre-excitement before the consumption. I take time to clean the water jar, to insert the body, to use some Kleenex to fix the hose correctly. It may sound ridiculous but this is what addiction is about, habits, and rituals that elevate you to early steps of pleasure until the final and rewarding pay-off. And one day, I broke the bowl, I literally panicked and had to go at night to buy a new one because I needed it. Addiction's effects reveal to be more vicious when the stuff is missing, driving you crazy to an obsessive point, and there's nothing that can stop you once you have it hooked on mind. But as a neutral documentary, the film is not about judging, condemning or even curing the psychological spiral of addiction but simply understanding it. Understanding why people rat, why women become hookers, why some crimes are committed. Addiction inevitably leads to a destructive alienation, where even death doesn't scare. Every junky accepts this eventuality, and when one is having an overdose, there's a disturbing mix of humanity when the friends are trying to awake him and hostility when the house locater who doesn't want troubles.

Bobby, Helen and the others are all regular people, with families, babies, living in lively neighborhoods, but they're caught in a horrific spiral that undermines any attempt of regular romance and the relationship between Bobby and Helen survives to all the difficulties, because their relationships is not totally disinterested : Helen can get the heroin from Bobby, and if he's in jail, she can get it from his brother Hank, played by Richard Bright. And if Bobby needs money, he can get it from Helen's hooking. Talk about a sordid romance's basis, but the relationship is no less sincere and powerful in the way it makes us feel sorry for two pitiful and endearing characters. And the acting is crucial here, Kitty Winn, who won the Cannes Award for Best Actress, is heart-breaking in this role, as her eyes, looks, cries and laughs convey the mix of vulnerability of a girl who still wants to be legitimate, and the toughness of the drug-addict who finally knows the ropes. Al Pacino delivers one of his most brilliant performances as Bobby, the street-wise, goofy dealer, who completes Helen's introversion. Both actors are wonderful, and a honorable mention to Bright who illuminates his scenes, with a character so unlike the laconic Al Neri.

Yes, it's hard to believe both Pacino and Bright, would work together again in one of the greatest movies ever : "The Godfather", so if not for the beautiful romance and the extraordinary portrayal of New York's heroin-addiction, the movie launched one of the most successful movie careers and just for Al Pacino, I say : thank you, Mr. Schatzberg !

At face value, "The Panic in Needle Park" might just look like a before-they-were-famous situation for Al Pacino. But I wish to assert that it is definitely more than that. He plays heroin addict Bobby, who hooks up with homeless woman Helen (Kitty Winn) and gets her addicted. The movie mostly focuses on how their addiction affects their relationship in various ways. There are some pretty grim, ugly portrayals of what the addiction does to them; this movie is as far from sugar-coated as can be (you have to admit that even "The Godfather" sort of glamorized mafia life). But don't get me wrong. The gritty portrayal is what makes the movie so good. I do recommend the movie to everyone, although you should avoid if you have a weak stomach. The only other recognizable cast member is Raul Julia.

The film is a real throwback to the 1970's. It captures the pervasive feeling of nihilism perfectly well, particularly on the subject of drugs.

The not so great colour and sound strangely add to the experience in making the film seem more documentary than a tale of two young people caught in the vortex of addiction.

Pacino and Winn both play remarkably believable leads.

It may not be an uplifting experience to watch the film, but in watching it, you cannot help feeling that it's a privilage to watch such mastery of directing and acting.

Another early 1970s classic off my list that was quite well worth waiting for: Raw, stripped-off and deeply affecting account of young girl (Winn) in NYC who falls in love with a street hustler & drug user (a pre-Godfather Pacino), and slowly falls into addiction herself. With prostitution, theft and a steady descent into low-life misery as consequences, the everyday struggle of The Big Apple's drug addicts cliques, is indeed no light affair to witness...

It's refreshing to see an anti-drug message without too much simplistic morality preaching as here, where not even the narc police utter a word of "how bad it is to take drugs" - that is clearly seen on its main characters' demise as it is. No music score, naturalistic dialog and fragmental, jumpy storytelling technique do their bit for an almost documentary-, low-key feel. Alas, that latter also becomes the films' one weakness, as the connection with its characters gets cut off a few times too many... Understandably hailed and daring, however and one can clearly see its impact on "Requiem for a dream" e.g, with smashing performances from its two leads. The ending is wide open for interpretation, too...

7 out of 10 from Ozjeppe

Al Pacino stars as Bobby, a grungy heroin addict, who's living a seedy existence in NYC. Kitty Winn plays Bobby's girl, Helen. Helen becomes romantically involved with Bobby, and he initiates her into the sordid world of heroin use.

This film is shot to look like a documentary. As a result, the viewer can better envision the squalor of the characters, and their desperate quest to keep themselves supplied with enough heroin. Overall, the film is engrossing, and yet has a repulsive quality. The characters in this film, are very pitiful. They manage to invoke both sympathy, and contempt at the same time.

You may likely feel glad when the film is over, because you don't have to witness the wretched suffering of the addict characters anymore. Al Pacino is amazingly talented. His performance in this film, is the only reason to see this otherwise depressing movie.