Friday Night Feature: The Driller Killer
In this week’s Friday Night Feature, we take a look at the 1979 classic The Driller Killer starring Abel Ferrara and Carolyn Marz. At first glance this movie appears to be simply a story about a man with a power drill and a chip on his shoulder, but the movie goes much deeper than that. A starving artist is living paycheck to paycheck while attempting to complete his masterpiece, a large painting of a buffalo. He slips deeper and deeper into insanity as he meets the stress of taking care of two female roommates and dealing with a loud punk-rock band that has moved into the apartment below his. His delusions increase until one day he purchases a portable power pack and uses a drill to kill people, mostly the homeless. At this point the movie goes from a simple murder movie to explore the plight of the homeless in New York City in the late 1970s. Many of the main character’s poor victims are asleep in a drunken stupor when they are murdered with the drill. What do the police do about the homeless slayings? Nothing. This shows that society as a whole didn’t care about the homeless and was willing to have them murdered without regard to their human liberties. I am sure this movie was an important step in securing rights for the homeless.
Overall, the movie wasn’t terrible. The gore was redeemable but not over the top which is what I expected. There is a nice scene involving two lovely ladies and a shower that just pops out of nowhere but is very nice nonetheless. This movie isn’t a must see but if you have the film and the time, pop it in, you won’t be disappointed.
