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A Disappointing Continuation

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

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.

The Driller Killer (1979)* 1/2 (out of 4) Reno Miller (Abel Ferrara) is living in New York City and the slums finally force him into cracking and he goes on a killing spree with a drill.Ferrara's THE DRILLER KILLER somehow became a cult favorite over the years and I honestly don't understand the appeal. I have heard people compare it to the ugly side of TAXI DRIVER meaning that the character in that film had a good job, lived in a good area and had things that could have worked for him but he had a mental issue. They say that the killer in THE DRILLER KILLER is poor, has nothing going for him and is a truer side of the underbelly of NYC.All of that might be true but whereas TAXI DRIVER was a masterpiece this film here is just a mix of art and exploitation but it doesn't neither thing right. As an art film this thing really doesn't work because it's really not all that well-made. I will say that Ferrara had a great eye for bringing to sleaze to the screen and I'd argue that he also managed to give the film a rather weird atmosphere that works in its favor.The problem with this film is that you just don't care about anything you're watching. The characters are all rather one note and none of them are interesting. Even worse is the fact that the killer just isn't really a person you can connect with, feel bad for or even understand for that matter. The first half of the film is basically just watching him wonder around until he finally picks up the drill and we get some violent death scenes.The BBFC banned this film outright and I'm sure this had something to do with the notorious reputation it got. The film became one of those movies that you just had to see for yourself. The first time left me underwhelmed and I must admit a second and third viewing really didn't help either. While there's some good gore scattered throughout the picture there's still not much entertainment to be had.

An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.This is the first great film of director Abel Ferrara, and with him he brings long-time collaborators writer Nicholas St. John and cinematographer Ken Kelsch. Ferrara somehow makes a very low-budget film seem almost as good as a studio film. Perhaps casting himself in the lead was the best budget stretcher of all. That, and using his own apartment as the principal set.Not unlike other genre films, "Driller" followed up a pornographic film, so this works as a transition for Ferrara into the big time. Connecting both films is producer Rochelle Weisberg, who Ferrara describes as "a gangster from Detroit" who has some connection to "Debbie Does Dallas". Apparently someone figured out that it would be cheap to make a horror film, not unlike the wildly successful "Texas Chain Saw Massacre", and Weisberg was ready to finance such a film.Ferrara has also said, "Mean Streets inspired more bad acting than any film ever made." There is no doubt that Ferrara's work is inspired by Martin Scorsese (both "Mean Street" and "Taxi Driver" to name just two), but really the inspiration is New York City itself. In Ferrara's films, New York (especially the area around Mulberry Street) is its own character, the very architecture a personality as big as any other character.The film has a relatively low rating on IMDb, and I have to concur with that rating. While the camera work is great, the acting is adequate, and the killing scenes are some of the best of any horror film of the era... the problem (at least for me) is the running time. Far too much time is spent on the band, the Roosters, who really have no importance to the plot. A cut of five, ten or fifteen minutes... and this would be a fast-paced blood feast that not even H. G. Lewis could match.The Arrow Video Blu-ray is a 4K scan from the negative, making the film look as good as it can -- and much better than the public domain prints floating around. A new audio commentary with Abel Ferrara and his biographer Brad Stevens is available, allowing Ferrara to critique his work thirty-plus years after the fact and tell tales of actresses who became heroin addicts. Apparently it is the second commentary track Ferrara has done for the film, so why the older one was not used is unknown. On top of the commentary track, we have a brand-new interview with Ferrara and a 30-minute visual essay covering his career in some detail, highlighting his themes and even lesser-known works. Perhaps the best bonus of all, though, is "Mulberry St", a full-length documentary by Ferrara on the neighborhood that inspired his films.

You know I came across this movie, I'd be longing to see, I joined up with a video shop, way out of my area, cause I couldn't get this title anywhere else. Knowing it was an Abel Ferrara film, I was expecting this to be much more gorier, (his gore always shocks) watching some nut go around killing people with a drill. Well.... I was almost, stupefied. I couldn't believe what I was watching. It was the drill that let me down, kind of not keeping up his part of the bargain. Abel plays the nut, and does it well I might add. He's a kind of Lou Reed looking character, a struggling and loud artist, sharing a loft with too girls. As pressure from all sides takes it's toll, he snaps, going out there onto the streets, in the dead of night with his mack drill, and killing derelicts. The pizza chomping scene, I remember well in this disappointing unshocker. On the most part, the film actually bores. I'd probably see it again, one day, out of curiosity, just to confirm my analyzation, but I'm steadfast with this one, as I'm rarely wrong.