The Panic in Needle Park is a 1971 American drama film directed by Jerry Schatzberg and starring Al Pacino (in his first lead role) and Kitty Winn.

The film portrays life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in "Needle Park" (a nickname at that time for Sherman Square on Manhattan's Upper West Side near 72nd Street and Broadway).

Helen becomes ill, and Bobby, an amiable small-time drug dealer to whom Marco owes money, shows gentleness and concern for her.

At Sherman Square and Verdi Square—nicknamed "Needle Park" because addicts trade and use drugs there—Bobby introduces Helen to acquaintances, including his brother Hank, who burgles for a living.

Bobby persuades Santo, a major dealer, to let him handle distribution in Needle Park, while Helen turns to prostitution for money.

While on the boat back, they discuss moving away for a fresh start, but Bobby refuses and convinces Helen to shoot up in the men's room.

According to a November 1967 Hollywood Reporter news item, film rights for the novel were purchased by Avco Embassy Pictures and, according to a March 1969 Variety news item, the film rights were bought by producer Dominick Dunne, whose brother and sister-in-law, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, wrote the screenplay.

The studio notes report that makeup man Herman Buchman studied the track marks on the arms of hospital patients and victims in morgues and achieved an authentic look for the actors by using a liquid known as flexible collodion.

[5] Didion and Dunne visited Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, during the recording of the album Waiting for the Sun, for he was considered for the role of Bobby.

Many of these boards' decisions were made due to aspects of the film that are not necessarily pornographic (as was the case with other significant works, such as Hodges's Get Carter, Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (all from 1971) and Boorman's Deliverance (1972).

It is not filled with quick cutting or gimmicky editing, but Jerry Schatzberg's direction is so confident that we cover the ground effortlessly.

"[10] Roger Greenspun of The New York Times stated in a more mixed review that the film "vacillates between expressive slice-of-life and some of the less durable minor conventions of big-city melodrama".

Gritty, gutsy, compelling, and vivid to the point of revulsion yet so artistically perfect one cannot look away, it is an overpowering tragedy about urban drug addiction.

"[11] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 2 stars out of 4, and wrote, "Despite its many closeups of needles puncturing veins, 'Panic' is little more than a traditional love story set in New York's West Side drug culture ...

But if it's a peak, it's also a dead end—that is, it both defines and exhausts the possibilities of the movie which contents itself with describing (however accurately and horrifyingly) the drug milieu and does not choose to go beyond surfaces to causes.

"[13] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Whatever social value The Panic in Needle Park aspired to is effectively canceled by its lack of dramatic interest.