The Driller Killer

Abel Ferrara's feature debut, a grimy, hallucinatory descent into urban madness shot on 16mm in New York's Union Square. Ferrara himself stars (credited as Jimmy Laine) as Reno Miller, a struggling artist driven to madness by poverty, noise, and the pressures of city life. He vents his rage by stalking derelicts at night with a power drill. The film blends punk rock energy with Catholic guilt and Expressionist horror, anticipating the themes of sin and redemption that would define Ferrara's later work in Bad Lieutenant and King of New York. The Driller Killer was one of the notorious "video nasties" prosecuted in the UK under the Obscene Publications Act, giving it a notoriety that overshadowed its art-house ambitions. The film is in the public domain.