Review of Driller Killer, The

Introduction

Driller Killer, Abel’s Ferrera’s infamous film made over 20 years ago, has finally been given a release in a BBFC shake-up that has seen other notorious films such as Salo released on DVD.

Abel Ferrara, using his stage name Jimmy Laine, stars as well as directs in this story of a man driven to insanity and murder. The punk band downstairs keep him up all night, he has bills to pay and his latest painting - which he considers his best - is denounced by his art dealer. When he can take no more, he wreaks revenge in the manner the title of the film suggests.

Video

The picture is awful: grainy and soft, with obviously poor source material used. Even so, some remastering would have made a great difference; instead it seems no effort was made. The DVD is watchable, but the producers seem to have been unforgivably lazy.

Audio

The film opens with a screen saying “This film should be played loud”, and that is probably because otherwise you will not hear a word of dialogue clearly. The soundtrack crackles and hisses its way along to the awful scoring and poor sound effects.

Features

First, the mediocre: a trailer and filmography of Ferrara are included.

Now, onto the truly terrible – the director’s commentary. I’m not quite sure what Ferrara was experiencing at the time, be it illness or hallucinogens, but this has to be the WORST commentary of all time. Although at the beginning he attempts to tell some half-amusing anecdotes, pretty soon he starts mumbling and slurring his way through the movie. He is at time incomprehensible and bears a fine resemblence to a 3 year-old child, but that may be a blessing as what he says is totally valueless. I cannot explain the true horror of this commentary. At first it is very amusing, but as soon as the novelty wears out (very quickly) you will feel like smashing your head against a brick wall. To prevent myself doing this I stopped listening to it, and I suggest you do the same if you are either unfortunate or curious enough to find yourself listening to it.

Conclusion

I was really looking forward to watching Driller Killer when I put the disc into the tray of my player; 96mins later I can safely say this feeling was terribly mistaken. It seems the only reason this film is known as a ‘great horror film’ at all was because it was banned for extreme violence. It should have been banned on the grounds of quality instead. The gore factor really isn’t that high, having minimal screen time and hardly appearing at all until the last half hour. The acting is truly painful, and Ferrara proves he is as bad a director (in this anyway, as I’ve heard his later films show signs of competence and even brilliance) as an actor – most shots are poorly framed, there is so little lighting that many scenes are in shadow, and there isn’t even a creepy Carpenter-esque score to save the movie.

Driller Killer isn’t even redeemed by a sympathetic character. His only troubles are that a band downstairs plays too loudly, he is a lousy artist and he has a few bills – which his girlfriend pays for. And instead of killing the band straight away, sparing us perhaps the worst music in the world, he spares them. Why??! There is no logic at all to his character, and instead he picks on innocents such as the homeless and tramps. But worst of all, the movie is simply boring – at least some ‘bad’ horror movies can go right around and end up in the ‘so bad, it’s good’ category if they are exciting and scary. Driller Killer is neither. I was sorely disappointed with this movie, and the DVD is equally awful, with poor picture and sound, and extras which might have well been nonexistent.