The Driller Killer (1979)

To me, this movie is perfection.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I know the fans of director Abel Ferrara are out there. They praise his work and compare him to auteurs from the past all the time. And yet to date I've seen one out of the 42 movies he's directed that I kind of enjoyed. None of the rest do anything for me, including this one.The plot line is fairly simple. Ferrara stars as well as directs here, playing an artist struggling to make it in New York City. He's been working on one project in particular, influenced by the violence and street scenes around him and he's being pushed to complete the project. As he continues working to survive and to create his art he slowly descends into madness. Taking to the streets at night he begins killing people with a power drill.So why does this film get mentioned time and time again, why the notoriety? To being with it was part of the infamous "video nasties", a term designating a list of films that at one time were prohibited from being seen in England. That label guaranteed the fact that people would seek out these movies to watch. With that in mind those movies became ones that were watched more than others and thus gained their fame.The movie has so many flaws it's hard to know where to start. The acting is sub-par for even a low budget film. The cinematography is barely passable. The effects are some of the worst with a bright orange blood used in scenes of carnage. The pacing is so slow you may find yourself dozing off from time to time while trying to watch it. The scenes of New York depict the city at its worst. This is not a place you'd want to visit. But for some they love that sleazier, filthy depiction of the city that way and bemoan the fact that it was cleaned up later on. Sorry, not my thing.In the end I found no enjoyment in watching this movie. I've seen a ton of slasher films and enjoyed many of them. I love horror movies. This one left me longing to go back and watch a good one or at least a passable one. This movie relies on its title and its legendary status to lay claim to fame but as a movie it is one of the worst. Honestly I think I enjoy watching PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE more than this one.All that being said Arrow Video has gone out of their way to provide the best copy of this movie for fans who still love it. They're presenting it in hi def with a restoration from original film elements and extras include audio commentary by Ferrara moderated by Brad Stevens (who wrote ABEL FERRARA: THE MORAL VISION) recorded specifically for this release, a new interview with Ferrara, WILLING AND ABEL: FERRARAOLGY 101 a visual essay guide to the films and career of Ferrara by author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, MULBERRY STREET a feature length documentary portrait of New York by Ferrara and the theatrical trailer.While this may not be my cup of tea it is important that movies of all kinds be kept alive and in the best condition possible. Praise to Arrow Video for making the effort to do so with films like this one.

An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.This is the first great film of director Abel Ferrara, and with him he brings long-time collaborators writer Nicholas St. John and cinematographer Ken Kelsch. Ferrara somehow makes a very low-budget film seem almost as good as a studio film. Perhaps casting himself in the lead was the best budget stretcher of all. That, and using his own apartment as the principal set.Not unlike other genre films, "Driller" followed up a pornographic film, so this works as a transition for Ferrara into the big time. Connecting both films is producer Rochelle Weisberg, who Ferrara describes as "a gangster from Detroit" who has some connection to "Debbie Does Dallas". Apparently someone figured out that it would be cheap to make a horror film, not unlike the wildly successful "Texas Chain Saw Massacre", and Weisberg was ready to finance such a film.Ferrara has also said, "Mean Streets inspired more bad acting than any film ever made." There is no doubt that Ferrara's work is inspired by Martin Scorsese (both "Mean Street" and "Taxi Driver" to name just two), but really the inspiration is New York City itself. In Ferrara's films, New York (especially the area around Mulberry Street) is its own character, the very architecture a personality as big as any other character.The film has a relatively low rating on IMDb, and I have to concur with that rating. While the camera work is great, the acting is adequate, and the killing scenes are some of the best of any horror film of the era... the problem (at least for me) is the running time. Far too much time is spent on the band, the Roosters, who really have no importance to the plot. A cut of five, ten or fifteen minutes... and this would be a fast-paced blood feast that not even H. G. Lewis could match.The Arrow Video Blu-ray is a 4K scan from the negative, making the film look as good as it can -- and much better than the public domain prints floating around. A new audio commentary with Abel Ferrara and his biographer Brad Stevens is available, allowing Ferrara to critique his work thirty-plus years after the fact and tell tales of actresses who became heroin addicts. Apparently it is the second commentary track Ferrara has done for the film, so why the older one was not used is unknown. On top of the commentary track, we have a brand-new interview with Ferrara and a 30-minute visual essay covering his career in some detail, highlighting his themes and even lesser-known works. Perhaps the best bonus of all, though, is "Mulberry St", a full-length documentary by Ferrara on the neighborhood that inspired his 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.

I'd heard all the hype for years surrounding this movie,been banned,scary,video nasty etc etc...i'd never got round to watching it till last month as i saw it for £1 in discount media store so i thought why not? taking into account it's a film from the 70's so cant have too high expectations,as old movies don't have the best acting and special affects do they? well? i was blown away by how bad this movie was???? i mean it has to go down has one of the worse movies i have ever seen in my entire life! I can appreciate it's age but come on? the acting was shocking and the dialogue was even worse? in fact most of that was drowned out by the awful music the movie had in abundance (or should i just call it a loud noise?) and whats a video nasty about it?why was it banned? a few people got a drill to head? with poor affects? i could have made better effects in that decade using a kids play set,compared to movies in that year such as ALIEN,AMITYVILLE,WHEN A STRANGER CALLS,ZOMBIE etc etc.. OK it was a low budget but so have other movies? right? Blair witch? paranormal activity? there is no excuse for the this crap,all evidence of this movie wants to be buried really deep in the nearest land-fill,to be honest when i finished watching it i took it out the DVD player and Frisbee'd it straight out my back door and i think that was way better fun :D or maybe we could post all the copy's back to the director and he can use em to shade his embarrassment. i advise people to stay away from this movie,it is pure AWFUL.