the plot: Artist Reno Miller (Ferrara) can’t catch a break. He’s struggling to finish a painting for fickle art dealer Dalton Briggs (Shultz) and, in the meantime, can barely afford to pay the rent for the apartment he shares with his girlfriend Carol (Marz) and her friend Pamela (Day). Carol wants him to finish the painting, but Reno refuses to compromise his artistic integrity. As he wanders New York City, he sees homeless derelicts wasting away in alleys and muggers randomly knifing people on the street. Meanwhile, a punk band has moved into the apartment next door, and the incessant rehearsals have snuffed out any of Reno’s artistic motivation. He grows more depressed and despondent—that is, until he sees a late-night TV advertisement for the Porto-Pak, a battery pack that clips on to a belt. Reno buys a Porto-Pak, hooks a power drill up to it and begins putting his increasingly homicidal thoughts into action on the streets of New York.

why it’s good: “The Driller Killer” is known mostly for its reputation as one of the first movies targeted by the “video nasty” campaign in the U.K. in the early 1980s. Vipco, the U.K. distributor of “The Driller Killer,” promoted the film using full-page ads featuring a homeless guy getting a drill right in the forehead. As it is, “The Driller Killer” is just an edge above mediocre, a plodding piece of trash cinema that can’t really get out of its own way. There’s potential here—Ferrara is a decent actor and a capable filmmaker, and the script, by Nicholas St. John, has the seeds of a few good ideas. Is Reno actually mad, or are the pressures of life in the city driving him insane? And what’s the connection between Reno’s art and his murderous impulses? In the span of a few scenes, Reno watches derelicts struggle on the street and witnesses terrible crimes. It seems that he’s lashing out at the cruelty of the city—until he starts randomly slaughtering the homeless. It takes a while for all that bloodshed to happen, though, and the first hour of the film drags, often ignoring Reno in favor of subplots involving Carol and Pamela’s lesbian affair and the tribulations of the punk band next door. If there’s anything “Driller” does well, it’s capturing that late ’70s New York punk aesthetic. The movie opens with a title card that reads, “This film should be played loud,” and for all the cheap production value and bad acting, it seems like Ferrara and St. John were trying to make some sort of statement here. It just got lost beneath the frantic whining of a power drill.

why you should own it: Cult Epics’ collector’s edition of “The Driller Killer” features an uncut version of the film, along with a bonus disc featuring Ferrara’s early short films. Grindhouse completists most likely have “Driller” in their library already. Otherwise, it’s rental-worthy.