Drill To Thrill

The Making of Driller Killer

- Simon Hooper

It’s hard to reconcile the image of a Catholic raised New Yorker and recent convert to Buddhism as being the same person who directed the notorious UK banned video nasty, Driller Killer yet that’s how Abel Ferrara, dubbed the, ‘skid row Scorsese’ first came to the public’s attention.

Growing up in the Bronx area of New York he made friends with Nicholas St John who became his regular screenwriter and long time collaborator. Together the pair started making their own films on Super 8mm throughout their school and college days where Ferrara arranged a student exchange and got himself over to London. Whilst there he made the acquaintance of an employee at the BBC and managed to get hold of some 35mm filming equipment to try out a few ideas. Returning to New York he shot several short films and by 1973, during his final year in college, he shot the film, Could this be Love? about two young women who bring a prostitute back to a party being held by one of their husbands. The film included what would become a regular preoccupation in his films, namely sex, which would crop up frequently throughout his career but most obviously in his next film, the 1976 less than subtly titled, 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy. To no one’s surprise it was a hardcore porn film. Running at an hour long it also featured the director as an actor in a scene where he gets naked with one of his female co stars. It was never his intention to appear on-screen but his original male star… um… pulled out at the last moment. It was his first and last porn film and was a job he only took to earn some money as well as the chance to broaden his filmmaking skills.