Gringo

A great little film that shows up many of its larger-budget peers with its realistic depiction of drugs in New York City. We follow Gringo as he skates his way through the nightmarish drug dens that he calls home, all the time letting the viewer deeper into the mental and physical hell of his life.

Combining actual interviews with recreations of events from Gringo's life, Story of a Junkie achieves a level of realism and emotional impact that Trainspotting and its ilk cannot match. This is a truly dirty, depressing film that does not attempt to glamourise drugs. Its just a bunch of junkies trying to survive, but it works very, very well.

It's really great that Troma have released films like Story of a Junkie that would otherwise have been forgotten. With its low budget and difficult subject matter, this is the kind of movie that can unfortunately fall between the cracks. As it is, viewers have the chance to watch this fine piece of cinema in their own homes, safely away from the filthy, drug riddled streets of mid-80s NYC.

This movie has real drug abuse and bad acting scenes. May be worth showing your suburban kids if they know nothing about heroin abuse. It is a scary and depressing film, and can get very boring.

The VHS edition contains an interview with Lech Kowalski (the director) by Lloyd Kaufman (Troma Studios President). It's on a street corner like he's catching her on the way to the store. It's a very poor addition to this garbage. Gee, I wonder if I should ge the DVD for more exciting additions to this trash.

Kaufman said it was better then "Train Spotting". I would definitely suggests "Train Spotting" rather than this film.

i bought this movie about a year and a half ago but i didnt watch it untill about two weeks ago. i thought that it was a real great film about drug use. i have never used drugs in my 21 years on this plant and watching a film like this makes me remember why i dont. i love the TROMA TEAM for getting these small indie films out to a bigger audiences. and if it wasnt for Troma, i would have probally never seen such obscure films as Combat Shock(with is my favorite film ever), Killer Nerd, and so on. so i would ask you all to check this film out and other films that TROMA distributes. LONG LIVE TROMA!!!!!!!

A Semi Documentary about the Drug Addicts in New York. Practically infamous with pretty worrying moments of possibly real drug taking.

The aesthetics is really great and bordering to 'documentaric'. If you just raw dog it without reading any kind of information, you might actually think this is a real documentary. Its unnaturally grimy and nitty gritty.

But the story is such a slag - given its short length. I wish it had a more cohesive arc to be honest. Its just too all over the place for my taste. Clearly this is a film meant to be half exploitation and half PSA, it just is never found its footing. It repeats itself at worst.

Actually seems to be classified as a fake doc. The staged looking parts were mildly annoying and jarring, but big deal. The spirit of it is all real. And some nice filmmaking, creative photography. We see the real down and out impoverished streets, the total drug neighborhood. The music is raw and primitive. Like the clothing styles too. The filmmakers got very intimate with the characters in the film.