5. The Panic In Needle Park (1971)
Al Pacino's second screen performance, The Panic in Needle Park portrays the lives of a bunch of skag addicts who hang out in Needle Park - the nickname for Sherman Square in NYC's Upper West Side. The bulk of the film is concerned with Bobby's (Pacino) and Helen's burgeoning romance. Bobby is a young drug addict and hustler but Helen finds him charismatic - so much so that she follows Bobby into smack addiction and soon the both have huge raving habits. As they slide into the mire, life gets very tough indeed for the pair. Another smack addict picture which gets the cinema verité treatment and definitely shows us that drugs are bad mkay? The movie is unflinching in the realism it portrays - it is squalid, dark and dirty. In no way does it glamourise heroin. If you were ever ambivalent about heroin, The Panic in Needle Park will nix that notion straight away. Kitty Winn's performance as Helen is absolutely spot on as the woman who has what she wants but loses it all for a heroin problem. It is so unnerving to watch ordinary people turn into desperate skag addicts. The brutal, raw feel to the film accentuates the horror.