THE DRILLER KILLER

Director: Abel Ferrara

Starring: “Jimmy Laine” (Abel Ferrara), Carolyn Marz, Baybi Day, Harry Schultz

The Driller Killer, Abel Ferrara’s crude movie about a low-life New York artist driven to murder, is one of the few titles to have earned its reputation as a video nasty. It returned to retailer’s shelves, still dogged by its notoriety. As suspected, the UK DVD is missing almost a minute of gore. The listing on the BBFC’s website doesn’t mention the cuts, because they were made by the film’s new distributors, Visual Entertainment, before the film was submitted to their offices. The print otherwise seems identical to the one available from American company Magnum Video, as the end credits sequence on both is prematurely truncated. A six-minute scene that was missing from the version released here on VHS by Vipco is small compensation for the neutering of a cult classic.

The DVD format only serves to spotlight the flaws in the print being used, which has ugly NTSC-like colours and very poor contrast, rendering many shots virtually incomprehensible. The film is presented in full-frame format. The sound is relatively robust, but has lip-sync problems. If you follow Ferrara’s admonition to “play this film loud” you’ll certainly notice a lot of snap, crackle and pop. The disc has a bare minimum of bonus features: a two-frame filmography, a worthless five minute “Introductory Commentary” by Xavier Mendik and four edited trailers (Atolladero, The Washing Machine, Possession and The Holy Mountain).