The first time I ever heard the word 'chipping' as it relates to using drugs sporadically was just a day ago, and it wasn't in this movie. It's what Marianne Faithful told Mick Jagger when he saw her strung out on smack, and she tried to lie about it without much success (from the book 'Mick Jagger' by Phillip Norman). So now, a day later, I hear the same word in pretty much the same context when Helen (Kitty Winn) tries to tell Bobby (Al Pacino) that she's not hooked on heroin. These moments of spontaneous serendipity never cease to amaze me, which is why I make note of them when they happen.
Well this is about as depressing a movie as you're likely to find, and not really presented for entertainment value. It portrays the seedy world of drug use on the West Side of Manhattan in an area formally known as Sherman Square, but called 'Needle Park' by it's drug addled inhabitants and frequenters. One gets an idea how bereft of humanity the principal characters are when Bobby's first impression on Helen is to steal a television set off the back of a repair van. Pretty dismal.
It gets worse though, as Helen, who's clean when the film starts, succumbs to the depravity of drug life when she takes her first hit of smack and never looks back. While watching, it's difficult to understand why someone like Helen doesn't simply ditch her low life boyfriend, but never having experienced the kind of dependency she displays here, one's at a loss to explain it.
When I first heard about this title, I presumed that it most likely referred to the panic that accompanies a bad experience with drugs resulting in violence and death. In this case, the 'panic' related to a brief period experienced by the addicts in Needle Park when heroin wasn't available on the street, and even the cops stopped hassling the low level dealers for a while. I guess if you think about it, a heroin junkie who can't get his fix does experience something like panic. And when your habit reaches eighty dollars a day in 1971 dollars, it brings a whole other level of degeneracy into play.
Well this is about as depressing a movie as you're likely to find, and not really presented for entertainment value. It portrays the seedy world of drug use on the West Side of Manhattan in an area formally known as Sherman Square, but called 'Needle Park' by it's drug addled inhabitants and frequenters. One gets an idea how bereft of humanity the principal characters are when Bobby's first impression on Helen is to steal a television set off the back of a repair van. Pretty dismal.
It gets worse though, as Helen, who's clean when the film starts, succumbs to the depravity of drug life when she takes her first hit of smack and never looks back. While watching, it's difficult to understand why someone like Helen doesn't simply ditch her low life boyfriend, but never having experienced the kind of dependency she displays here, one's at a loss to explain it.
When I first heard about this title, I presumed that it most likely referred to the panic that accompanies a bad experience with drugs resulting in violence and death. In this case, the 'panic' related to a brief period experienced by the addicts in Needle Park when heroin wasn't available on the street, and even the cops stopped hassling the low level dealers for a while. I guess if you think about it, a heroin junkie who can't get his fix does experience something like panic. And when your habit reaches eighty dollars a day in 1971 dollars, it brings a whole other level of degeneracy into play.