christopher-underwood This is a very loud film. There is a suggestion at the start that the film should be played loud but it would seem loud however you played it. First and foremost an Abel Ferrara film of the punk era. The music, the manners and the lifestyle. Let's rip it up and start again! And let's add some loud electric drill to the soundtrack. It all adds up to an uneasy film to watch. There is some of Repulsion with the dead rabbit and the whole 'going mad' thing. There is some Taxi Driver with the filth on the streets and there is a Warhol feeling in that improvised and appropriate performing is preferable to long rehearsed perfection. And there is Ferrara's New York, this is not the New York of Woody Allen, whose Manhattan opened around the same time, a sentimental love letter as opposed to this 'play it loud' remonstration against pretty well everything. Difficult but important first film (excluding the porno film) that would, some would say surprisingly, set the director up for a fine, fruitful and largely successful run that continues today.

Mr_Ectoplasma "The Driller Killer" follows Reno (Abel Ferrara), a struggling artist in late 1970s New York City. He lives with two female companions who are lovers, and the three struggle to pay their bills. As tensions rise within Reno, they are exacerbated by a no wave band incessantly practicing in his building, and he slowly loses his sanity. To cope with matters, he purchases a power drill and a battery pack, and begins drilling through the heads and torsos of anyone who crosses his path.Often credited as Abel Ferrara's first proper film, "The Driller Killer" eluded me for years. It seems to be an extremely polarizing film, with people either lauding it or calling it the worst film they've ever seen. While it's not a grand slam masterpiece, I'd question anyone who called it the "worst film they'd ever seen." It is in an extremely similar vein as Joe Spinnell's 1980 New York psycho character study "Maniac," though slightly less gory; that said, it does depict some startlingly realistic murder scenes that are even enough to provoke a wince to this day.The film captures the late-seventies sleazy side of Manhattan, a world long gone but nonetheless notorious. The cinematography is rather impressive, and there are multiple hallucinatory sequences that give the film an art-house feel to it. The script is straightforward, charting Reno's Dostoyevskyan descent into madness, but the film's gritty style gives it a bit more of a punch even when it is lulling in places. The acting is a mixed bag, though Ferrara's performance as the troubled Reno is compelling. The remainder of the cast are unknowns, and though they aren't standout performances, they are serviceable, especially given the type of film this is. I watched the pre-theatrical cut of the film so I am not sure how much it differs from the theatrical cut, but based on what I watched, the film had a bizarre and downbeat ending that was utterly appropriate to all that preceded it.Overall, "The Driller Killer" is a solid psychothriller that has been either maligned or much-loved. I thought it was a rather good film; a nice blend of grimy slasher elements, scuzzy late-seventies New York aesthetics, and a psychological character study. It's not really a slasher film, though it does take on that role, especially in the last act. It's a gritty film, something I'd liken to other grindhouse thrillers like "The Last House on Dead End Street" or the aforementioned "Maniac." For what it is, it's very solid—well shot and sufficiently disturbing. 8/10.

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.

Tim Kidner The version I saw (or tried to) was on The Horror Channel and for most of the time, I could not even make out what I was seeing, let alone relish in the supposed notorious gory 'video-nasty' bits. I might as well have not worn my spectacles (I'm strongly short-sighted) for the difference they would have made.Darkness came across as giant globules of pixelated olive green instead of black and it all must have been recorded with the microphones still in their boxes, as it's muffled, dull and horribly distorted.Any potential tension originally intended has long been evaporated by the sheer strain of trying to follow it, though the "story", such as it was, is trite, mostly domestic and very boring. It was only that the presumed promise that more vital drilling into live people would make watching further less of a chore that I didn't simply switch off.