Pretty Good

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This grim, grimy and utterly depressing film was banned in Britain for 20 years before being released on video with 54 seconds of cuts. Supposedly its lurid cover compelled the authorities to outlaw "video nasties", and since then avid horror fans have been buying any copy available to watch the graphic violence on screen. Indeed, there is some violence in the film, but for the most part it's a very slow moving, character study of despair and growing insanity. These features bring it very close to the film TAXI DRIVER, as both movies have a central character who becomes disturbed by the conditions and people in his life and who finally snaps, going on a murder spree. But while TAXI DRIVER saved the violence for the closing moments, THE DRILLER KILLER drops it in intermittently.The violence, when it comes, is well done, considering the low budget. The murders are all staged with relish, we even get to see heads and stomachs being bored into by the drill bits while blood sprays everywhere. While these scenes themselves seem to be at home with the "video nasties", the rest of the film sits disjointedly with them. It feels like director Abel Ferrera decided to add the gore in to make the sleazy aspect of the film much greater, which he succeeded in doing, but potential fans may come away feeling a bit cheated.The film's low-budget graininess adds to the squalor of the surroundings; a dingy, dirty flat is where much of the film takes place. It's a totally horrible life which our main character leads, full of uncertainty, boredom and a lack of hope. The central role is taken by director Ferrera under an alias, and he succeeds admirably in portrayal a man who goes through a breakdown, and can only find a release in cold-blooded murder. Ferrera's image is unnerving, yet he remains a sympathetic and understandable character, even when he commits the foul crimes. The other acting totally fits the feel of the film, it has to be said that not much acting was really needed. These people are real, that's all there is to it. There are no theatrics or double-faced characters, just lifelike portrayals of life's losers. THE DRILLER KILLER is an oddly touching film which succeeds both as a "video nasty" and also as an accurate portrayal of madness.

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.

When I first watched this, I absolutely hated it. I still do to this day. I posted a comment on Youtube on the full movie and everyone seemed to hate me for it. I was telling the truth when I said this movie was garbage. They just don't seem to understand good taste.Ironicly, This film wants you to turn the volume up on your TV at the beginning of the film. But doing that is like getting yelled at by someone that blames you for something that you didn't do.This film has little to no plot. Its just a artist killing a bunch of stupid people who seem like aliens. The gore and blood looks OK but not as good as something like Evil Dead (The Original).At least this movie is rewarding at the end... kind of. You are still left in the dust with all your precious minutes wasted but in the end all the people you hate die.This film is inept.41/100 D+

From director Abel Ferrara (King of New York), I had heard about this film for being one of the films of the late seventies and eighties listed as a "video nasty", along with films like The Evil Dead, I Spit On Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust, I had to see if it deserved that placing. Basically New York artist and painter Reno Miller (Ferrara) is finding it difficult to pay the bills for the lost he shares with his girlfriend Carol Slaughter (Carolyn Marz), originally married to Stephen (Richard Howorth) who she dumped, and their roommate Pamela (Baybi Day). With his obsession to complete a masterpiece, his lack of success to sell and display his art works, constant arguments with his girlfriend and lack of sleep mean that his anger increases gradually. This eventually causes Reno to snap, have a breakdown and go insane, and to take out his rage out in many random people, most being homeless tramps, using his household drill to kill them. That's really all there is to say about the plot. Also starring Harry Schultz as Dalton Briggs, Alan Wynroth as Al the Landlord and Maria Helhoski as The Nun. This obviously borrows from the concept of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a murderer using a household power tool, but obviously we get to see more of the deaths with blood spurting, but they are not enough to save this film from being complete rubbish. The acting is lacklustre, the story is terrible and boring, the deaths that do appear are not horrific enough for "video nasty" quality, and the whole film feels like a straight to video romp, all in all it is an absolutely awful horror. Pretty poor!