The Driller Killer (1979)

“You should let him stick it up your ass once. Use KY jelly. It won't hurt."

This is the original video nasty which, in this country at least, led to a nightmare of Thatcherite censorship for many, many years. So what's the fuss about? Well, the deaths are extremely violent with loads of blood, as one might expect, as our anti-hero Reno Miller (the artist as Travis Buckle, if you will) is driven mad by poverty and rejection of his art, But the young Abel Ferrara, directing and starring, gives us a far more arty and far more philosophical work than that may imply, although there's also plenty of black humour.

The first scene worried me a little. I saw Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant many, many years ago, in my pre-blog days and indeed very possibly in my pre-Internet days. I hated it. I couldn't stand the crude, didactic, overdone Catholic imagery that was being constantly fetishised by the camera. So the opening scene, with similar use of religious iconography, worried me a little. Fortunately there's no more of this, just some nicely done handheld camerawork, naturalistic acting, proper rotary telephones, and blood. Lots and lots of the latter. And a rather good punk band which reminds me very much of the Damned.

The killings themselves are graphic and violent, but take up relatively little screen time. Instead we mostly get a low budget but very nicely shot version of Taxi Driver where the protagonist is a struggling artist, and where the art criticism can be as violent as the killings. A surprisingly and genuinely good film.