The plot of the film takes place in Staten Island, and follows an unemployed Vietnam veteran named Frankie Dunlan living in total poverty with his nagging wife and his baby (who is deformed due to Frankie having been exposed to Agent Orange that the US was spraying as a defoliant over Vietnam) and junkie friends.

Unable to get a job and surrounded by the depravity of urban life and crime, he begins to lose his grip on sanity.

As his voice narrates, he reveals that he "goes back there every night" before waking up in his rundown New York apartment, next to his wife Cathy and their deformed infant son.

The junkie cuts open his arm and poors drugs in it before passing out as a random woman comes upon him and steals his gun and ammunition, putting them in her purse.

Frankie lays the baby's corpse in the oven and turns it on before pouring himself a glass of spoiled milk, drinking it and shooting himself in the head.

Combat Shock was released to mixed to negative reviews, with many treating the film with extreme skepticism over its purported depictions of posttraumatic stress disorder and the Vietnam War.

[citation needed] Writing for The New York Times, Vincent Canby dismissed the film as a 'family affair', which "means to be shocking but it more often prompts giggles.

"[1] Dennis Schwartz from Ozus' World Movie Reviews rated the film a grade C+, writing, "Director Buddy Giovinazzo pours on his misgivings about this bad war, and offers his unbridled pretensions of it.