The Driller Killer. (18.)
Directed by Abel Ferrara. 1979.
Starring Abel Ferrara, Carolyn Marz, Baybi Day, Harry Schultz, Alan Wynroth, Peter Yellen, Maria Helhoski. 94 mins.
Driller Killer, or rather The Driller Killer, is a film full of anguish and torment. New York Painter Reno (Ferrara under the pseudonym Jimmy Laine) has a lot on his plate: he's behind on his rent, he's has two women living with him, a punk band has moved in next door and his dealer is pushing him to finish his latest painting. The only thing that could make his life worse is if he was forced to sit and watch the film of his life.
DK is notorious for its work in contributing to the great Video Nasties moral panic of the early eighties and for being the breakthrough film of the erratic and wayward talent that is Abel Ferrara. What is generally kept quiet about is how boring and amateurish it is. Basically it is a fly on the wall look at the New York punk scene in Manhattan of the time. And New York punks, as opposed to the fine upstanding London punks of that time, were some of the most unbearable people on the planet. Driller Killer (I can't accept that definite article at the beginning) is a little like an Andy Warhol film where people get drilled to death every now and then, just to break up the ennui; which is better than an Andy Warhol film where nobody gets drilled to death every now and then but it still means you get to spend a lot of time with Ferrara acting badly in his studio apartment, or stoned punks playing at being rock'n'roll stars or shots of derelict Manhattan back streets.
The streets are scuzzy, the people are scuzzy and the camera work is scuzzy, so there's distinct theme going on in this film. After twenty minutes I flipped on the director's commentary for a bit of relief, and there was Ferrara wailing about how dull it all was, how terrible his acting is and when are we going to get round to drilling somebody. Nothing happens and then eventually somebody is drilled. Then lots more doesn't happen, and then somebody gets drilled, and the time between these actions get progressively shorter as we go on. Why Reno goes out and murders people isn't really explored in any traditional sense, other than he is a bit put out by a few things. This is an exploitation film so at some point exploitative events must happen, beyond that no motivation is offered.
It does have a striking and disorientating opening. A card tells us that This Film Should Be Played Loud and then we are in a tiny little Catholic church where Reno approaches a strange man, who touches his hand causing him to run out of the church. As he leaves a nun says that he has your name and number, and in the cab afterward his girlfriend says he had your name and number written on a piece of paper in his pocket. It's an interest peeker OK but the opening is never referred back to again.
There is no tension in the film, but plenty on the commentary track. Brad Stevens, a reviewer who has written a proper book about Abel Ferrara and his Moral Vision, is trying to engage his hero about his themes and technique: does his use of dissolves suggest a kind of dream state, does he think he influenced Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho? Ferrara, who seems to be finding watching the film vaguely torturous, is not interested in any of this. All he wants to talk about is how stoned his cast was and which of the girls he was into: “There she is, high as two kites,” he says lovingly of Baybi Day at one point, “That's a ****ing junkie freak, right there.”
There is much literature and study about the notion that drilling a hole in you skull can relieve frustration or make you permanently high. In DK though the drill murders don't have any great impact. They break up the boredom, but are oddly anodyne. There's plenty of blood splattered around but as violent acts go it lacks fury. Drilling is a static motion, and once the novelty value has gone it isn't any more visually compelling than your usual bits of DIY. The title is a misnomer, because I'm pretty sure a lot of those people would be maimed or crippled rather than killed.
I remember seeing DK back in the eighties sometime after the fuss had died down and finding it to be a nice black comedy. I think that version was a lot shorter though. Today we like to scoff at those silly moral guardians and the fuss they made over video nasties and their ability to corrupt our youth, but I think in the case of this film they may have a point. A teenager watching a standard slasher film, if they don't fwd to the gory bits, is engaging with a narrative. There is nothing to engage with in DK, other than a few mundane killings. There is something genuinely disturbing about a teenager who could sit through this film just to see a few moments of banal violence.
Extras.
Other than the commentary track, there is a useful 35 minutes run though of his filmography by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
There is a recent interview with Ferrara.
Ferrara's full length documentary Mulberry Street.
Directed by Abel Ferrara. 1979.
Starring Abel Ferrara, Carolyn Marz, Baybi Day, Harry Schultz, Alan Wynroth, Peter Yellen, Maria Helhoski. 94 mins.
Driller Killer, or rather The Driller Killer, is a film full of anguish and torment. New York Painter Reno (Ferrara under the pseudonym Jimmy Laine) has a lot on his plate: he's behind on his rent, he's has two women living with him, a punk band has moved in next door and his dealer is pushing him to finish his latest painting. The only thing that could make his life worse is if he was forced to sit and watch the film of his life.
DK is notorious for its work in contributing to the great Video Nasties moral panic of the early eighties and for being the breakthrough film of the erratic and wayward talent that is Abel Ferrara. What is generally kept quiet about is how boring and amateurish it is. Basically it is a fly on the wall look at the New York punk scene in Manhattan of the time. And New York punks, as opposed to the fine upstanding London punks of that time, were some of the most unbearable people on the planet. Driller Killer (I can't accept that definite article at the beginning) is a little like an Andy Warhol film where people get drilled to death every now and then, just to break up the ennui; which is better than an Andy Warhol film where nobody gets drilled to death every now and then but it still means you get to spend a lot of time with Ferrara acting badly in his studio apartment, or stoned punks playing at being rock'n'roll stars or shots of derelict Manhattan back streets.
The streets are scuzzy, the people are scuzzy and the camera work is scuzzy, so there's distinct theme going on in this film. After twenty minutes I flipped on the director's commentary for a bit of relief, and there was Ferrara wailing about how dull it all was, how terrible his acting is and when are we going to get round to drilling somebody. Nothing happens and then eventually somebody is drilled. Then lots more doesn't happen, and then somebody gets drilled, and the time between these actions get progressively shorter as we go on. Why Reno goes out and murders people isn't really explored in any traditional sense, other than he is a bit put out by a few things. This is an exploitation film so at some point exploitative events must happen, beyond that no motivation is offered.
It does have a striking and disorientating opening. A card tells us that This Film Should Be Played Loud and then we are in a tiny little Catholic church where Reno approaches a strange man, who touches his hand causing him to run out of the church. As he leaves a nun says that he has your name and number, and in the cab afterward his girlfriend says he had your name and number written on a piece of paper in his pocket. It's an interest peeker OK but the opening is never referred back to again.
There is no tension in the film, but plenty on the commentary track. Brad Stevens, a reviewer who has written a proper book about Abel Ferrara and his Moral Vision, is trying to engage his hero about his themes and technique: does his use of dissolves suggest a kind of dream state, does he think he influenced Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho? Ferrara, who seems to be finding watching the film vaguely torturous, is not interested in any of this. All he wants to talk about is how stoned his cast was and which of the girls he was into: “There she is, high as two kites,” he says lovingly of Baybi Day at one point, “That's a ****ing junkie freak, right there.”
There is much literature and study about the notion that drilling a hole in you skull can relieve frustration or make you permanently high. In DK though the drill murders don't have any great impact. They break up the boredom, but are oddly anodyne. There's plenty of blood splattered around but as violent acts go it lacks fury. Drilling is a static motion, and once the novelty value has gone it isn't any more visually compelling than your usual bits of DIY. The title is a misnomer, because I'm pretty sure a lot of those people would be maimed or crippled rather than killed.
I remember seeing DK back in the eighties sometime after the fuss had died down and finding it to be a nice black comedy. I think that version was a lot shorter though. Today we like to scoff at those silly moral guardians and the fuss they made over video nasties and their ability to corrupt our youth, but I think in the case of this film they may have a point. A teenager watching a standard slasher film, if they don't fwd to the gory bits, is engaging with a narrative. There is nothing to engage with in DK, other than a few mundane killings. There is something genuinely disturbing about a teenager who could sit through this film just to see a few moments of banal violence.
Extras.
Other than the commentary track, there is a useful 35 minutes run though of his filmography by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
There is a recent interview with Ferrara.
Ferrara's full length documentary Mulberry Street.
