Cult
Epics | Review
by Crites
Notorious
from the moment of its release, THE DRILLER
KILLERis 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."
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.
Already somewhat on edge at
having to deal with bills, rent, the bitchy
gallery owner, the noise and madness from
the street, and a pair of female roommates,
the last thing Reno needs is every tenant's
nightmare – the punk band that moves
in downstairs. Rhodney (Douglas Metro, billed
as Tony Coca-Cola) and the Roosters are
a large and lousy ensemble, complete with
entourage. And what they lack in talent
they more than make up for in volume, rehearsing
at peak level at all hours.
Beset on all sides as he is,
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 by murdering a sleeping
wino. Viciously drilled to death in a doorway,
the man is gouged away at until he lies
motionless, left in a broadening pool of
his own blood.
Somewhat eased by this cathartic
murder, Reno is coerced by Carol into going
to see the Roosters play at Max's. This
event only serves to push him even further
over the edge, and driven out of the club
by the music and his girlfriend's questioning
Reno again takes to the streets and slaughters
his second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh, eighth and ninth indigent victims
in a relentless massacre of frustration.
Some of these are homeless passed out in
one location or another, some are winos
approached in a state of drunken loquaciousness;
some are found hidden away in dark corners
of the city, while some are caught and dispatched
right out in the open, on streets or sidewalks
awash in nighttime illumination. One schizophrenic
and/or stoned individual is seen harassing
people at a bus shelter before Reno walks
up and drills him in the back once the commuters
have caught the late night bus. ("New
York Wins!" declares the shelter's
brightly-lit signage.) Another unfortunate
is a sleeping bum who awakens as Reno drills
directly into his forehead – blood
gushes as the drill bit spins in close-up
right above the man's eye. Throughout the
massacre Reno takes great pleasure in revving
the drill at different speeds, as if playing
it as his instrument of death in his own
one-man concert of destruction in reaction
to the music that's helped drive him out
of his mind.
After
the slaughter Reno returns to the apartment,
his mad bloodlust temporarily sated. His
appetite has been aroused however, and he
consumes a half a can of Budweiser and a
leftover Big Mac with the gusto of a man
who's just survived an exhausting jungle
ordeal. But Reno's victory feast is cut
short, by none other than Rhodney himself.
Through his wasted rock & roll rhetoric
the singer makes it known that he wants
Reno to paint his portrait, and inspired
by the $500 Rhodney is willing to pay Reno
gets started right away. Working through
the musician's awful guitar playing and
his bedding Pamela, Reno finishes the panting
almost overnight. He celebrates with the
particularly brutal murder of the deranged
bum who sleeps in the alley beneath the
studio window.
"The Buffalo" has
been finished as well, and is ready for
a viewing by prissy gallery owner Dalton
Briggs. But instead of showering Reno with
praise and money, Briggs instead angrily
condemns both the art and the artist. "No,
no, no, no. This isn't right... This is
nothing! This is shit!" Reno and Carol,
dressed up in their Sunday finest for the
visit of their esteemed patron, are crushed
as the gallery owner continues to rail away
in his critique before finally storming
out of the apartment in a pissy huff.
Carol takes this defeat particularly
hard – having been supporting Reno
and Pamela in the hope that the sale of
the painting would turn things around for
all of them, in spite of Reno's increasingly
angry and distant behavior, she's now had
enough and decides to move on with her life.
Throughout the film Carol has been in contact
with her ex-husband Steven, lured back in
touch with a fond note containing a $100
bill, and the very next morning she packs
her suitcase and leaves.
Unable to stop her, Reno is
crushed. With his life a violent failure,
and tormented by another bout of brutal
hallucinations, Reno deals with the situation
the only way he knows how. Playing to Briggs'
homosexuality Reno lures him back to the
apartment, and as Pamela parties with the
Roosters below Reno paints himself up, puts
on his best suit, and affixes his longest
drill bit. When Briggs enters the apartment,
Reno lets him have it. When Pamela comes
home and discovers the body, Reno greets
her violently as well. Then he slips out
to pay a visit to Carol and her husband.
"Steven... come here..."
A bit crude, yes, and violent,
absolutely. And therein lies the beauty
and the passion of THE DRILLER KILLER. The
story of a man pushed over the edge by the
mounting pressures of the world is a timeless
one, but never before has the man fought
back with a power drill. Come on, a failed
artist going shit nuts through the streets
of New York with a giant drill? You've gotta
love it. Not only does the movie satiate
the gorehound's appetite, but it also paints
in red a poignant portrait of frustration
and failure that all too many can identify
with. (The fact that mass murder became
ever more common as the millennium waned
says it all.)
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.
One of THE DRILLER KILLER's greatest faults
may lie in Reno's neglecting to gouge Rhodney
to death before the film's conclusion (an
act which would have been additionally symbolic,
given the fact that Ferrara based his character
in large part around his friend Metro, who
played Rhodney). And given the emphasis
on punk music in the film, it's a shame
that THE DRILLER KILLER neglected to include
cameos by local or touring acts playing
around NYC in 1977, something that would
have upped the punk + gore equation in a
way that Troma could never hope to do.
But all of that can be easily
overlooked; 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).
This first DVD in 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. In mumbling NY City lingo
Ferrara rambles away in a hit-and-miss fashion
that's initially a little disconcerting
to hear from such an accomplished director
(dotted repeatedly as it is with the interjections
"UP-sy daisy!" "Wake up!
Time to die!" And my favorite, "Uh-oh,
Spaghetti-os!"). But this patter quickly
grows on you, as not only is it loads better
than some pretentious litany of method and
motif but it provides the feel of watching
the film with the director participating
more as an audience member than a guest
lecturer. Ferrara comments more on the film
than about it, talking more about what's
happening on screen than what happened behind
it, while still interjecting appropriate
commentary about particular shots, personal
recollections, and choice observations.
Throughout Ferrara seems to enjoy the film
as much as any filmgoer, cracking jokes
and laughing with glee at the murders and
with embarassment over certain aspects of
his performance and his directorial choices.
("I forgot how funny this movie was!")
The second DVD contains three
of Ferrara's early short films, along with
a trailer for his first feature-length picture.
This one, NINE LIVES OF A WET PUSSY, is
a 1976 porno directed under the pseudonym
"Jimmy Boy L," and from the hardcore
trailer it looks like this 35mm feature
would stand up to any number of other films
in the era. Sex, violence, rape, pimps,
monster & money shots, the works.
COULD THIS BE LOVE, from 1973,
stars Nadia Von Loewenstein (who also provides
one of the optional commentary tracks to
the short) as Jacky, Dee Dee Rescher as
Renee, and Casandra Cortez as Cathy in a
Greenwich-meets-Manhattan love story. Sort
of. Painter Jacky, wife of well-to-do department
store manager Stephen, and model girlfriend
Renee meet bar whore Cathy while out for
a drink, and the three of them strike up
a fast and fond 'working' relationship.
When the pseudo-bohemians take Cathy to
one of their artsy high class dinner parties,
the true feelings of the upper crusts come
out.
A not-so-subtle or incisive
look at how the snooty and urbane look down
upon and exploit the less fortunate, the
film is shot on grainy 16mm with a handheld
camera and is as full of close-ups, dark
or out-of-focus shots, and abrupt cuts as
you might expect from an early effort. But
it does have a soundtrack by The Rolling
Stones and Dennis Gray.
THE HOLD UP is an earlier
B&W short from 1972. In it Johnny, a
long-haired new parent, is busy juggling
domesticity and a lousy factory job when
some buddies of his introduce him to the
world of crime. There's been a round of
layoffs at the factory, but while Johnny's
been spared thanks to his position as son-in-law
of "The Old Man" he's still offered
a role in a stick up gig. Perhaps out of
guilt, perhaps out of boredom Johnny joins
the crew, and when the novice gang fumbles
the gas station holdup the lot of them get
popped. But the Old Man gets Johnny off,
and his pals stay in prison and serve their
time.
Poorly dubbed and shot in
a style crossing student films with bad
television commercials, THE HOLD UP really
isn't much of a watch. The story, a rather
tepid fable of class difference, is poor,
and taken from a videotape original the
quality of the film is none too great either.
Still, this may be seen as an essential
for true fans of Ferrara as an early entry
into the director's passion for crime and
desperation.
The earliest of Ferrara's
films on record, NICKY'S FILM, is the director's
1973 "silent exercise in paranoia and
surrealism." Apparent drug neuroses
cause disassociation and nervousness for
an aimless unidentified character during
the winter season. Black and white, just
over six minutes in length, this apparent
student film doesn't have even a commentary
track to help justify it.
All in all, a great cinematic
experience. Do yourself a favor and pick
it up.
