INFLUX MOVIE REVIEWS

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Killer is a Cinematic Experience Still Powerful After Nearly Three Decades
MOVIE: The Driller Killer

DIRECTOR: Abel Ferrara

CAST: Jimmy Laine, Baybi Day, Carolyn Marz

THE QUICK HIT:

Notorious from the moment of its release, The Driller Killer is a standout film in a number of respects. It’s an early slasher picture by a noted and prolific director, it’s a ‘power tool massacre’ film, and it takes place within a uniquely vibrant scene, that of the New York arts community in the 1970s. And, as it says onscreen before the credits even roll, “This Film Should Be Played LOUD.” GRADE: B+

THE BIG PICTURE:

Reno Miller (director Ferrara, billed as Jimmy Laine) is the archetypal starving tortured artist. Living in near poverty in an NYC apartment with his bisexual girlfriend Carol (Carolyn Marz) and their young playmate Pamela (Baybi Day), he struggles daily to finish his latest masterpiece, “The Buffalo,” a painting he hopes to sell for big gallery money. But Reno’s also working against a number of personal and domestic issues, including artistic insecurity and the demands of his uptown girlfriend, not to mention the jarring distractions of NY streetlife.
Reno soon begins experiencing headaches and violent blood-soaked visions. (Right around this time his lady friends, drifting farther and farther away from him, share a warm encounter in the shower.) These nightmarish hallucinations soon drive Reno to the streets, where with an electric drill and the battery-powered “Porto-Pak” (as seen on TV!) he vents his mounting rage.

But the film does a lot more than simply put a blood-crazed guy on the street with a dangerous weapon; it takes violence in a number of its different forms and passes them through the filter of Reno’s experience to provide a look into the broad spectrum of personal horror. While unexpectedly grotesque gestures such as the super’s slaughter of his pet rabbit, and his presentation of the skinned animal to his favorite tenants as a dinner gift, accentuates the inescapable and surreal nature of the film’s all-encompassing violence, Reno’s savage treatment of the bloody carcass is both an indicator of and a primer for his later behavior. Even small conflicts take on a more brutal aspect in the scope of the film, such as when a dismissive comment by Reno leads to Carol smashing him in the face with a greasy slice of pizza, leaving him almost as shocked and violated-looking as any of his victims. Gruesome newspaper stories help illustrate the film’s violent tension, as they later would in the work of NY author Madison Smartt Bell, and these along with the behavior of the inebriated and disenfranchised citizens exemplify the distraught, desperate and debaucherous personality of the city. It truly looks at points as if everyone within it is going mad, and The Driller Killer is just one chapter of a much larger and more tragic story.

And as the star of such the young Ferrara, with his Quest For Fire face, perfectly typifies the violent and primitive young dude from the streets. Invoking the muse of art in the hope that it will enable his shamanic transformation into something more than a grimy nobody, elevating him from the daily grind and into the high life he sees others enjoying all around him, Reno is literally a subhuman in the eyes of society. It’s not at all surprising that he goes crazy, even before his simple dream is not only shattered but shat upon and what’s left of his life falls apart along with it.

Granted this uncut edition includes perhaps too many scenes of Rhodney and the Roosters; in fact the footage and noise of the abominable band is almost relentless in this presentation, and so pervasive as to actually carry the attendant irritation and frustration Reno feels right off the screen and into the viewer’s experience.

The film is given the gritty widescreen presentation it deserves, one that impressively showcases a film melding the nihilism of violent city streets with the prime of punk’s equally nihilistic heyday – junk-fueled music and murder, all in full bloody color. And the Italian gothic horror soundtrack by Joseph Delia, loaded with the piercing notes of a church organ, accentuates not only the murders but also the themes of romantic and interpersonal anguish that run through the film (not to mention providing a subtle counterpoint to the raucous noise produced by Rhodney and the Roosters). Check it out at www.cultepics.com.

TECHNICAL MUMBO JUMBO:

The limited edition double-DVD set comes with a brief psychotic trailer for the film, the movie’s silent B&W commercial for the infamous “Porto-Pak” ($19.95!), a filmography listing Ferrara’s numerous shorts, features, pilots, TV episodes and music videos, and the option of subtitles in French or Spanish. It also comes with a director’s commentary, which in this case is an interesting and unusual feature.

Review by Tom Crites

INFLUX MOVIE REVIEWS www.influxmagazine.com
	*Killer is a Cinematic Experience Still Powerful After Nearly Three Decades* MOVIE: The Driller Killer
	DIRECTOR: Abel Ferrara
	CAST: Jimmy Laine, Baybi Day, Carolyn Marz
THE QUICK HIT:
Notorious from the moment of its release, The Driller Killer is a standout film in a number of respects. It’s an early slasher picture by a noted and prolific director, it’s a ‘power tool massacre’ film, and it takes place within a uniquely vibrant scene, that of the New York arts community in the 1970s. And, as it says onscreen before the credits even roll, “This Film Should Be Played LOUD.” GRADE: B+
THE BIG PICTURE:
Reno Miller (director Ferrara, billed as Jimmy Laine) is the archetypal starving tortured artist. Living in near poverty in an NYC apartment with his bisexual girlfriend Carol (Carolyn Marz) and their young playmate Pamela (Baybi Day), he struggles daily to finish his latest masterpiece, “The Buffalo,” a painting he hopes to sell for big gallery money. But Reno’s also working against a number of personal and domestic issues, including artistic insecurity and the demands of his uptown girlfriend, not to mention the jarring distractions of NY streetlife. Reno soon begins experiencing headaches and violent blood-soaked visions. (Right around this time his lady friends, drifting farther and farther away from him, share a warm encounter in the shower.) These nightmarish hallucinations soon drive Reno to the streets, where with an electric drill and the battery-powered “Porto-Pak” (as seen on TV!) he vents his mounting rage. But the film does a lot more than simply put a blood-crazed guy on the street with a dangerous weapon; it takes violence in a number of its different forms and passes them through the filter of Reno’s experience to provide a look into the broad spectrum of personal horror. While unexpectedly grotesque gestures such as the super’s slaughter of his pet rabbit, and his presentation of the skinned animal to his favorite tenants as a dinner gift, accentuates the inescapable and surreal nature of the film’s all-encompassing violence, Reno’s savage treatment of the bloody carcass is both an indicator of and a primer for his later behavior. Even small conflicts take on a more brutal aspect in the scope of the film, such as when a dismissive comment by Reno leads to Carol smashing him in the face with a greasy slice of pizza, leaving him almost as shocked and violated-looking as any of his victims. Gruesome newspaper stories help illustrate the film’s violent tension, as they later would in the work of NY author Madison Smartt Bell, and these along with the behavior of the inebriated and disenfranchised citizens exemplify the distraught, desperate and debaucherous personality of the city. It truly looks at points as if everyone within it is going mad, and The Driller Killer is just one chapter of a much larger and more tragic story. And as the star of such the young Ferrara, with his Quest For Fire face, perfectly typifies the violent and primitive young dude from the streets. Invoking the muse of art in the hope that it will enable his shamanic transformation into something more than a grimy nobody, elevating him from the daily grind and into the high life he sees others enjoying all around him, Reno is literally a subhuman in the eyes of society. It’s not at all surprising that he goes crazy, even before his simple dream is not only shattered but shat upon and what’s left of his life falls apart along with it. Granted this uncut edition includes perhaps too many scenes of Rhodney and the Roosters; in fact the footage and noise of the abominable band is almost relentless in this presentation, and so pervasive as to actually carry the attendant irritation and frustration Reno feels right off the screen and into the viewer’s experience. The film is given the gritty widescreen presentation it deserves, one that impressively showcases a film melding the nihilism of violent city streets with the prime of punk’s equally nihilistic heyday – junk-fueled music and murder, all in full bloody color. And the Italian gothic horror soundtrack by Joseph Delia, loaded with the piercing notes of a church organ, accentuates not only the murders but also the themes of romantic and interpersonal anguish that run through the film (not to mention providing a subtle counterpoint to the raucous noise produced by Rhodney and the Roosters). Check it out at www.cultepics.com.
TECHNICAL MUMBO JUMBO:
The limited edition double-DVD set comes with a brief psychotic trailer for the film, the movie’s silent B&W commercial for the infamous “Porto-Pak” ($19.95!), a filmography listing Ferrara’s numerous shorts, features, pilots, TV episodes and music videos, and the option of subtitles in French or Spanish. It also comes with a director’s commentary, which in this case is an interesting and unusual feature.
Review by Tom Crites