9/29/06: The Driller Killer (1979)Before
King of New York and
Bad Lieutenant, maverick director Abel Ferrara starred in his own sleazy tale of a deranged artist trying to cope with punk rock. It’s New York City in 1979 (plus older footage shot in ’78), and
The Driller Killer remains a pristine time capsule of idiocy.
Reno Miller (Ferrara) has a nice apartment, but he’s facing a killer ConEd bill. He’s got two female roommates running up the long-distance charges. The gals are also wasting the hot water while they soap each other up in the shower. That doesn’t seem so bad. The real problem is that Carol (Carolyn Marz) is a shallow slumming divorcee, and Pamela (Baybi Day) is an addled drug casualty.
Things get worse when the punk rockers move in downstairs. (“We’re a violin band,” they tell the landlord.) Tony Coca-Cola and the Roosters is a perfect representation of every Lower East Side rock band that figured they could con Polydor into signing them. After all, Pere Ubu had a record deal.
Reno is soon enduring 2 a.m. rehearsals where the Roosters massacre Stonesy crap into an approximation of punk rock. The landlord doesn’t care. Carol simply comments that the band’s record sounded better.
Says a baffled Reno, “These guys have an album?”
And here’s more from Reno’s artastic life: The only dealer interested in his paintings is tired of waiting for Reno to finish his masterpiece. The creep’s main interest seems to be something besides Reno’s brushstrokes. Pamela wonders why Reno hasn’t already had sex with the dealer. “Use KY-Jelly,” she says. “It won’t hurt.”
Reno finally snaps and starts killing homeless people with an electric drill—most likely because it makes for a cool movie title. He’s able to do this through the miracle of a portable power supply. (This is before
the internet, so Reno has to learn about the Porto-Pak via the sickly blue light of a late-night TV commercial.) The rest of the movie is pretty much more of the same, except with an occasional bloody hobo.
So what does this have to do with conservative politics? Well,
The Driller Killer had a big impact on young RightWingTrash. As we sat in the theater and marveled at Reno’s meltdown, we learned an important lesson. We learned that it’s okay to have an interesting career and hang out with decadent girls and indulge a fondness for lowlife pursuits—and still be driven absolutely crazy by the airheads and slimeballs and irresponsible jerks who populate what should be a paradise and turn it into a waking nightmare.
The Driller Killer made us realize it was okay to admit that we were ready to become a first-time voter for Ronald Reagan. Thanks, Abel.
Moronic punks are still driving us crazy. Today's entry and the one before were inspired by the (eventual) closing of New York’s legendary punk club CBGB’s. Another lowlife den also closed its doors this month, and The Continental went out with a more telling bang.
This is the kind of aging rebellious dot-brain we now have to endure at a show. If only Reno had gotten to her first…
Make it your own: Choose from plenty
of DVD editions, but we prefer the squalor of our crappy $1 disc from
EastWest DVD. Their version deletes the opening card that declares, “This Film Should Be Played LOUD.” (The truly talented Joe Delia came up with the most intrusive soundtrack in film history.) It’s still a decent print with mono sound, and also includes 1976’s
Drive-In Massacre—which is fitting, since neither movie bothers with an ending.
