Three of Al Pacino’s Strangest Movies!

Panic in Needle Park:  This could have been one of his first movies.  He was so young there with co-star,         Kitty Winn.  Needle Park gets that name because it is a Park where Junkies (Drug Users) shoot up.  He is in love with a naive woman that falls in love with him and becomes addicted. During their  highs together,  he promises to love and marry her.  It’s odd that he stays so zonked out that he he doesn’t see the unlikeliness of it all until she betrays him and makes him look at her as dirty “I was gonna MARRY YOU”  Such a clever look into the Drug Culture………..

The Panic in Needle Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cover of The Panic in Needle Park

Dog Day Afternoon:   Don’t underestimate the strangeness and power another early Al Pacino work, right after God Father.  He plays a legally married man who marries a transgendered female and decides to rob a bank with his pal Sal, played by the late Robert Cazale who played Fredo in the God Father movies, to pay for her sex change surgery.   The Bank heist is only to last a few minutes but goes into about four hours.  When the Helicopter that they demand arrives, I believe the two (with Al as the leader of the Duo) demands to go to Algiers.  Poor Sal asks “Is that in Las Vegas” or something.  The Federal Agents pick up on poor Sal’s weak mental abilities…….

Cover of Dog Day Afternoon

The Scent of a Woman:  This is a movie that is strangely glorious and bad at the same time.  Al Pacino proves that with age, his Acting only got better.  He plays a Blind ex-Marine, heavily decorated.  He is a renegade and daring person and makes the most of his life as he loses all of his sight after an accident, that is actually no one’s fault but his own.  He is lovable, generous, tough, mean and with one of the healthiest appetites for women that one has ever seen.  But more than anything, he is filled with Honor as he protects and Defends the young College Student who has been his Guide during his last romp through New York.  It’s all about Honor here, and dependability and morals when you get down to the final scene!

Cover of Scent of a Woman [HD DVD]