Driller Killer

I first saw this in the early 90s on a vhs.

Revisited the 101 mins uncut version recently.

Imagine u have to share an apartment with ur girlfriend n her drug addicted lesbian friend.

Imagine u live in a neighborhood full of derelicts.

Imagine ur girlfriend n her lesbian friend makes huge telephone calls n u r unable to pay the bills.

Imagine u r unable to pay the rent n ur landlord gives u a skinned rabbit for dinner.

Imagine u have neighbors in the form of a band called Roosters n its lead member named Tony Coco Cola and the group constantly play loud music while u r trying to concentrate on ur living aka paintings.

Imagine seeing huge electricity bills.

Imagine the art gallery owner mocks ur painting n refuse to buy the piece or bail u out.

Imagine if ur girlfriend leaves u for her bald ex husband.

Imagine ur girlfriend has a nasty habit of reading sadistic news from the newspapers.

News : "A lady gave her poodle a bath and being late for a beauty parlor appointment placed the dog in a microwave oven to dry it off.

When she turned the oven on, the poodle exploded."

Imagine ur girlfriend is persuading u to listen to the same band which constantly plays in the apartment next to u but this time in a club.

Ur reaction : "I hear em play day n nite."

Ur girlfriend's answer : "It's nothing like hearing em in a club."

U babbling, "Yeah, at least in a club, one can walk out."

Just imagine the plight of the lead character, Reno Miller in this movie going thru all the above mentioned stress.

Ok, i get it. Reno Miller is lucky not to go thru this pandemic lockdown too.

Despite of its reputation and the repulsive sounding title, Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer is more of a social drama about life in the big city than it is a horror shocker. Ferrara himself stars as Reno, an unbalanced painter slowly going crazy due to financial troubles, the noisy punk-band next door, demanding employers and housemates, and non-stop images of the pauperized city. He buys a tool and unleashes his fury on the numerous homeless in the area. Driller Killer is truly grim and as much shocking as the classic film it's clearly inspired on (namely: Taxi Driver) but it lacks a fitting tone and a appropriate background drawing. The film opens with a very confusing sequence in which the protagonist is standing at an altar while being approached by an elderly man. This footage is extra since the 1999 re-release and it looks like Ferrara wanted to supply his film with some kind of spiritual depth. It leads nowhere, though. In fact, take out the killings and you're left with a somewhat boring urban portrait. Driller Killer was included in the infamous list of 'video-nasties' and therefore automatically received a controversial cult-status without people even seeing it. Although the substance matter doesn't belong amongst the other titles in the list, The Driller Killer often wanders on the thin border between trash-exploitation and art-house cinema, as it features voyeuristic elements (a gratuitous lesbian shower sequence) as well as sheer close-ups of blood-puddles and whirring drills.

Abel Ferrara without a doubt is one of the most remarkable directors in American cinema history. I'm a huge fan of most of his films like 'The Addiction', 'Bad Lieutenant' and 'The Funeral'…It's not that I didn't like 'the Driller Killer', I just think that the poor production values really show off and that Ferrara did not yet had the professionalism and talent to make up for it by adding the trademarks that made his later films so brilliant. If you're interested by the repertoire of this often discussed director, you better don't start by watching Driller Killer. You're appreciate it a lot more after seeing some of his 90's films.

"This film should be played LOUD," insists the pre-credits card at the beginning. And not simply to feel the full force of The Roosters, or the squeal of the titular murder weapon, but also because Abel Ferrara's zero-budget slasher is all about anger in need of expression.

Ferrara himself plays Reno, a struggling artist desperate to complete a painting that will earn him enough to pay the rent. He lives with a couple of girls, one of whom is kind of his girlfriend but neither of whom particularly likes him, and he's being driven mad by those damn Roosters downstairs. All his repressed rage and his inability to empathise with fellow humans is taking its toll. Then he sees his release: take it out on the New York homeless using a power drill and a Porto-Pak(TM).

Reno's disgust of transient men betrays a profound male anxiety: the inability to provide. Furthermore, his "masterpiece" is a painting of a bison – both a icon of masculine power as well as a symbol of hunter-gatherer sustenance. He barks impotently at his indifferent girlfriend, who later turns to their female flatmate for her physical satisfaction.

Moreover, Reno is unable to communicate with his artist peers. Even the members of the band who aren't musicians are full of extrovert self-expression. Reno, meanwhile, is a wholly internalised recluse, harbouring a growing loathing of other people.

Then there's Dalton Briggs (Harry Schlutz II), a gallery owner who, like a Roman emperor, holds the power to give a thumbs-up or down to Reno's future. In the deliberately theatrical Dalton scenes (a realist style is employed elsewhere) Ferrara scores with Clockwork Orange- style electronic classical music; and indeed there is a hint of Kubrickian absurdity in the juxtaposition between Briggs' high art pretensions and Reno's degenerate world.

That world, shot on location around Ferrara's own haunt, is at times as potent a snapshot of post-Vietnam New York's underbelly as Scorsese's Taxi Driver. The depiction of madness and desperation amongst the homeless is pretty broad, although it doesn't stray into the sort of farcical territory we would later see in J. Michael Muro's Street Trash.

The Driller Killer is one of the original "video nasties" – a select group of films banned from UK home video in the 1980s for fear of corrupting malleable minds. Apparently, the complaints were based solely on the poster, depicting the famous head drill victim. To be fair, the actual content here more than lives up to that marketing promise. This is a grotty and gory film, the cheapness of whose effects is offset by being shot mostly at night.

Smart directorial choices, neat editing, dark humour, and a unique setting elevate The Driller Killer above many of the slashers of the late-70s/early-80s period. It may not be the most fun – think of the intense grimness of Maniac or Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – but it's surely one of the more memorable.

Actually, I think it's excellent. The only reason I'm contributing a review is because there are so many negative ones here, and I think it's because it's been miscategorized. One reviewer here said you'd be better off watching "The Evil Dead". But Abel Ferrara didn't aspire to make a horror movie. Instead, he made a disturbing personal statement. I'm seeing this problem a lot of people have with trying to place films into tidy genres. I'm making up this term on the spot: The Blockbuster Syndrome. This should be avoided; it's what made Hollywood so boring.

It has an exploitive title and a reputation as a slasher film, so it hasn't found the right crowd. Psychotic 16-year old boys, its most likely audience, will be disappointed for it not being gory enough, and intellectuals will avoid it because it seems lowbrow. But get over it. There's a great Punk Rock atmosphere, Ferarra throws himself into his role, and those are some cool surrealist paintings. More importantly, it's an honest and troubling portrait of an artist who's driven over the edge by his own fear of failure, loud neighbors, getting dumped by his girlfriend, and all the other stress of the big city. Unable to channel these frustrations through his paintings, he turns to killing innocent derilects (In the opening scene it's suggested that is father is homeless, and he's afraid of ending up the same way). And then there's the ambiguous and haunting ending, which will stick with you for a while. Yes, it's technically lacking. But filmmakers are more than technicians. I would rate this alongside Taxi Driver as a brutal portrayal of alienation.

This early feature length effort from cult filmmaker Abel Ferrara is interesting, to say the least, if not for all tastes. While it might appeal to some slasher fans for its respectable body count and surprisingly decent gore, it does have more in common with "Taxi Driver" than, say, "Halloween". It's an incredibly gritty, crude, yet appreciably surreal urban drama about Reno Miller (played by Ferrara himself, using his acting pseudonym "Jimmy Laine"). Reno is a struggling young painter, who lives with two sexy female roommates, Carol (Carolyn Marz), and Pamela (Baybi Day). Renos' hold on reality is steadily slipping away. His mental state isn't helped by the fact that his landlord has let a punk band move into his building, and their constant rehearsals drive him nuts. Soon, he's out and about murdering the derelicts of NYC streets with a power drill.

This may be hard to stick with for some viewers. Admittedly, it's VERY thin on story. The acting, while amateurish, gets the job done, with Ferrara doing an amusing job in the lead role. "The Driller Killer" also is fascinating for the way it captures the punk scene of NYC in the late 1970s. The omnipresent music (score by Joe Delia, songs by Tony Coca Cola and the Roosters) is often insidiously catchy. The screenplay is by frequent Ferrara collaborator Nicholas St. John, who creates a fairly vivid portrait of one persons' mental decline. There is some memorable imagery here, such as Renos' painting of a buffalo. Use of various unsavoury NYC locations is excellent.

Worth a look for aficionados of 1970s cult cinema, but Ferrara didn't really hit paydirt until his next film, the great "Ms. 45".

Six out of 10.