Driller Killer (1979/USA) by Abel Ferrara

Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer Joins the Auteur Cinema Archive

The Auteur Cinema Archive is proud to announce the inclusion of The Driller Killer (1979, USA) by Abel Ferrara—a gritty, unflinching portrait of urban decay, psychological unraveling, and artistic desperation. Infamous for its violence, banned in the UK during the "video nasty" era, and revered for its raw filmmaking, The Driller Killer stands today as an essential early work of a singular American auteur.

Ferrara directs and stars as Reno Miller, a struggling painter slowly driven to madness by poverty, artistic failure, and the oppressive chaos of 1970s New York. Living in a rundown Union Square apartment with his girlfriend Carol and her lover Pamela, Reno is haunted by trauma, financial pressure, and a sense of spiritual isolation. As he slips further into delusion, he begins prowling the streets at night with a power drill—unleashing violence on the city’s homeless as a twisted outlet for his repressed rage and despair.

Curator Kris De Meester on the film’s significance:
"The Driller Killer is punk cinema at its most blistering. Ferrara didn’t just shoot a horror film—he captured the psychosis of a decaying city and the fractured ego of a man lost inside it. The budget is low, the energy is manic, and the style is unmistakable. This is Ferrara announcing himself not with polish, but with fury."

Shot on 16mm guerrilla-style in Manhattan, The Driller Killer is a time capsule of a vanished New York—a place where art, noise, faith, and violence collided in cramped tenements and neon alleys. Its experimental structure and fractured edits reflect the protagonist’s disintegrating mind, blurring the line between social commentary and psychodrama.

With this inclusion, the Auteur Cinema Archive recognizes The Driller Killer not only as a cult classic but as a formative expression of Abel Ferrara’s uncompromising voice—an artist who, from the beginning, showed no interest in flinching.