The Driller Killer (1979)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Abel Ferrera who directed this film also plays the main character Reno Miller who is a struggling artist with two female roommates (Carolyn Marz & Baybi Day). You can tell quite early he is unstable. After Ferrera completes his descent into madness, with his power drill in tow he starts knocking off derelicts in the NYC streets late at night. The couple good things about the film were that Ferrera did do a good job in showing a dirty, grimy, scummy side of life. The film actually always leaves you in that setting. The other was the music by The Roosters (which perform their music next door to his apartment). The music alone brings my mark up one point. Yes, that is how much I didn't enjoy this movie. Without the music it would have been 2/10. I wouldn't really suggest this movie to anyone as I did find the opening 20 minutes confusing, but once my mind got into Ferrera's way of telling this story it clicked better, but it didn't help improve the story. I also found it as scary as a warm summer day. I certainly will see Ferrera's other work after this one, but I do hope they get much better than this one.

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.

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+

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.