{"id":30195,"date":"2026-02-22T15:27:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattshorroraddiction.com\/?p=30195"},"modified":"2026-02-22T15:27:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:27:26","slug":"combat-shock-scared-to-death-vamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/?p=30195","title":{"rendered":"Combat Shock, Scared to Death, Vamp"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Combat Shock <\/strong><\/em>– 1984, US, 91m. Director: Buddy Giovinazzo. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scared to Death<\/em><\/strong> – 1980, US, 95m. Director: William Malone. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vamp <\/em><\/strong>– 1986, US, 92m. Director: Richard Wenk. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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COMBAT SHOCK<\/em><\/strong> (1984)<\/em> There have been many films dealing with the repercussions the Vietnam War had on American troops\u2014The Deer Hunter<\/em>, Apocalypse Now<\/em>, Born on the Fourth of July<\/em>. But none of those are as grim as Combat Shock<\/em>, a miserable movie depicting the last day in the life of a soldier, years after returning home from the war. The vet in question is Frankie Dunlan (Ricky Giovinazzo), an ex-POW who lives in the slums of Staten Island with his nagging wife and deformed baby (the result of Frankie’s exposure to Agent Orange). Frankie loses grip on sanity after dealing with the loan sharks, drug addicts, and child prostitutes that infest his poverty row neighborhood. Like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver<\/em>, Frankie grows tired of the depravity that surrounds him and blows the scumbags away with a revolver. Having lost all sense of reality, he tries to save his family by shooting his wife, cooking the baby in the oven, and committing suicide. There’s a fine line between thoughtful character study and gratuitous violence, but Combat Shock<\/em> can’t differentiate between the two. Genuinely grotesque\u2014recommended only to those with a stone cold disposition. Not released commercially until 1986. C<\/strong>–<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SCARED TO DEATH<\/em><\/strong> (1980)<\/em> The opening shots of this film resemble those of Halloween<\/em>\u2014POV of a killer looking at a nubile woman through the window\u2014making the viewer believe they’re about to watch another ripoff of the Carpenter film. Instead, Scared to Death<\/em> takes its cue from another influential movie, Alien<\/em>, by having a genetically engineered creature stalking the sewers that run underneath a suburban California neighborhood. The monster surfaces at night to maim and kill helpless passersby, which puts the population into a panic thinking the mutilated victims are the work of a Jack the Ripper-type serial killer. A super detective-turned-pulp novelist (John Stinson) is asked by the cops to help in their investigation when the clues dry up, but not before a roller skater is suffocated by the creature’s extra-long tongue. Scared to Death<\/em> doesn’t have the best production values you’ll ever see\u2014the low grade film stock looks like it belongs to a 1960’s stag flick\u2014but it’s competently acted, and slickly directed by William Malone (1999’s House on Haunted Hill<\/em>), who even manages to squeeze in a couple of scares. B<\/strong>–<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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VAMP<\/em><\/strong> (1986)<\/em> Friends encounter a hotbed of vampires inside a night club in this moderately amusing take on movies like Fright Night<\/em>, Night of the Comet<\/em>, and other horror comedies of the 1980s. Looking to acquire a stripper for a college party, two frat pledges (Robert Rusler and Chris Makepeace) and a tag-along (Gedde Watanabe) invade the After Dark Club, where the ogling of T&A is interrupted by vampiric dancer Katrina (Grace Jones), who literally puts the bite on Rusler and turns him into a zombified bloodsucker. Makepeace escapes and runs into a pack of albino street punks lead by The Untouchable<\/em>‘s Billy Drago. Vamp<\/em> is flashy and often funny, but the characters don’t have a lot to do\u2014especially Jones, whose charismatic presence is wasted in a throwaway role. The late Greg Cannom, who supplied the film’s makeup effects, also worked on The Lost Boys<\/em> (1987) and Fright Night 2<\/em> (1988), making him the reigning expert on eighties vampire carnage. C<\/strong>+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Combat Shock – 1984, US, 91m. Director: Buddy Giovinazzo. Scared to Death – 1980, US, 95m. Director: William Malone. Vamp – 1986, US, 92m. Director: Richard Wenk. COMBAT SHOCK (1984) There have been many films dealing with the repercussions the Vietnam War had on American troops\u2014The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matt.doppiavvu.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}