Shirley Clarke's adaptation of Jack Gelber's play about eight junkies waiting for a fix in a Greenwich Village loft is a classic of American independent filmmaking and of jazz films, with a moody score by Freddie Redd. Within the confines of a single, claustrophobic set, Clarke's camerawork is amazingly inventive--the nervous mise-en-scene is choreographed like a savage dance. The actors--including Gary Goodrow, Warren Finnerty and Carl Lee--are all superb as variously spaced-out characters, rapping, jiving, taunting the camera; and the musicians--Freddie Redd, Jack McLean and others--blow cool jazz. The story of a square documentary filmmaker filming a group of supposedly real drug addicts throws doubt and irony into the ring about the filmic “connection.” “The technique of a film within a film keeps alive an awareness that these may be real addicts.... Many voice vague reasons for being what they are. One says that most people are hooked in some way, and they just happen to have an illegal vice.” (Variety)