Candy (2006)

Genre: Romance/Drama

Director: Neil Armfield Starring: Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish

Summary:

A fatherly chemistry professor indulges two young lovers in their ever-increasing heroin habits. Eventually, the pair, an artist named Candy and an aspiring poet named Dan, become caught in a harrowing downward spiral of drug dependency and failed efforts to get clean.

Reason to Watch:

Heath Ledger Depressing, toxic love

Scenes from Candy

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9/10

NAKED LUNCH ( 1991)

Genre: Sci-fi/Drama

Director: David Cronenberg Starring: Judy Davis, Peter Weller, Roy Scheider

Summary:

Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee (Peter Weller) and his dead-eyed wife, Joan (Judy Davis), like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider), Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.

Reason to Watch:

Based on 1959 novel by William S. Burroughs

Extremely disturbing

Scene "Mujahideen" from Naked Lunch

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10/10

THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK ( 1971 )

Genre: Romance/Drama

Director: Jerry Schatzberg Starring : Al Pacino, Kitty Winn

Summary

Bobby is a heroin addict who lives in "Needle Park," the nickname for an area on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where junkies congregate. He meets Helen, a lonely homeless girl, and they fall in love. However, Bobby also introduces Helen to heroin, and she eventually becomes addicted, too. As Bobby and Helen become more and more dependent on each other and on heroin, their need for money to feed their habit grows, resulting in crime, desperation and betrayal.