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.

I remember watching this movie shortly after release. It was screening in a Sunday night double feature with another druggie movie the title of which is lost in the mists of time "Reefer Madness" maybe. The theatre which was jam-packed with gazillions of 1970's ne'er do wells was had an atmosphere more redolent of a rock festival than a movie screening. I remember the scene well simply because Panic demonstrated two 'qualities' that Hollywood took to heart. Firstly that this movie which was one of the first films exclusively devoted to contemporaneous drug culture made a lot of money and a new genre was born. The second was that "Panic" featured a lot of tropes about the evil and general inhumanity of heroin addicts that are still Hollywood standard issue despite the fact they are clichés. Few movie or TV makers question those tropes even though they are wrong. e.g. A junkie will sell his mother to cop a blast and all junkies are snitches with no sense of honour who never tell the truth.If anyone reads this review there is about a 99% chance what is written here will not penetrate their indoctrination.

Jerry Schatzberg's grim film about junkies circa 1971 New York has become something of a classic due in large part to the fact that it contains Al Pacino's first starring role. Pacino is indeed a dynamo as Bobby, a heroin addict and petty crook (he's better at being a junkie than he is at stealing). He's well matched with Kitty Winn as his girlfriend, a free-spirited would-be artist who also succumbs to shooting up. It's so extremely realistic d and shot on the same grimy NYC streets as Paul Morrissey's TRASH, that it's sometimes hard to believe a film crew was even at work. Pacino & Winn are excellent and so is Richard Bright as Pacino's entrepreneurial brother (he's a pusher who wears a suit and tie). Raul Julia, Alan Vint (perfect as a duplicitous narc) and Kiel Martin co-star. Winn won the best actress award at Cannes. The script is by John Gregory Dunne & Joan Didion.

This film is one of the rare few that shows heroin addiction in a realistic manner. None of the horrors are left out but there is also a refreshing lack of the usual over-the-top harping on the subject. Al Pacino is absolutely at his best (in his first major role)... little surprise that he was cast in The Godfather shortly thereafter. The drug scenes and situations are true-to-life. The way the relationship between Bobby (Pacino) and Helen (Kitty Winn) is portrayed is especially moving. They truly love each other but are trapped having to do whatever it takes to get their fix. Heroin addiction becomes a trap in which you must continue repeating the same routine daily no matter what happens. This is illustrated well when Bobby turns back to look at Helen and says, Well? and the viewer is left with the impression that nothing is going to change.