Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

hrkepler I'm someone who's not familiar with the British video nasties list or whatever that is. 'The Driller Killer' is not that nasty. Compared to it's slasher genre contemporaries 'The Driller Killer' is rather low with spurting blood and cut off limbs. It is Abel Ferrara's feature debut, although uneven and the low budged shines through in each frame, it shows his raw talent as a filmmaker. Ferrara himself plays the lead (not a bad job, actually) as a artist starting to lose his grip. Having hard time with finishing his painting, low on many and a fear to turn into a bum finally drives him into killing spree. Intriguing premise that is dragged down with uneven script and directing.'The Driller Killer' is not gory enough to attract regular slasher fans, or deep enough to gain much appreciation from art-house crowd, but it definitely pleases hardcore Ferrara fans.Plus, it features cool backdrop into 1970' New York punk scene.

rooee "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.

Rainey Dawn Well the story started out OK... a guy who is an artist and his girlfriend and there is another female roommate living there with them. They can barely pay the rent and phone bills. The girlfriend is mainly paying everything with her alimony checks, the other girl I'm unsure of and the guy is trying to complete his next piece of artwork for some money. A punk rock band moves in the apartment building and plays the music loudly and it's getting on the artist's nerves the art dealer hates his finished art, rejects it and refuses to pay him anything for it. The guy snaps and gets a drill and starts killing with it.The film was fine up until I saw the first murder and realized it definitely is not my kind of film... I figured that already but gave the film a whirl and I was right to begin with, it's not my thing or should I say style of horror film.Punk Rock music was fine -- just not my style of horror that's all!1/10

Scott LeBrun 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.