By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Electric drill relieves stress.
Reno (Abel Ferrara) is a New York apartment dweller who frets over his inability to pay his bills and the constant noise coming from a punk band next door who perform at all hours of the day and night and to which his landlord (Alan Wynroth) refuses to do anything about. The pressures to finish his latest painting, which he hopes to sell, become too much, so to alleviate the tension he takes a power drill out onto the streets and kills random homeless people with it late at night. For awhile this is enough but he eventually decides to use it on other people in his life who he feels have wronged him, which includes not only his girlfriend,but an art gallery owner (Harry Schultz) who refused to purchase his painting.
This is a definite step above the usual horror fare and seems in many ways like an arthouse film. It’s ability to capture New York’s dark urban underbelly gives the viewer a strong taste of what the main character is going through until you almost feel like you’re trapped there alongside him. The talky segments that come in-between the killings, which are usually the boring parts in most other horror films, are surprisingly captivating as they vividly convey all the reasons why Reno is so angry and give the viewer much the same feeling.
When the killings finally do start to happen it’s not so much the graphic violence that’s disturbing, but the fact that we relate to the man who’s doing it. We’ve understood his pent up rage by seeing how the unrelenting, impersonal urban system continually works against him making the murders act like a stress reliever not only to the killer, but the viewer as well as it breaks both us and him away from the never ending challenges of everyday life, which the film essentially portrays as being the real horror. Instead of being repelled by the bad guy we connect to him sending this movie into a far darker psychological realm than most.
While Ferrara shows a gifted ability as a director the film almost defeats it’s unique edge by dwelling too much on the urban hell hole theme as it makes its point and then drags it out by hitting-it-home again and again. The footage of the punk band becomes excessive too until it almost becomes more like a musical docu-drama. The killings aren’t very imaginative either as one quickly becomes like the other eventually making them seem like throwaway scenes that quickly lose their impact.
The film’s ending is particularly disappointing as it fades out before we know what happens to either the main character or his girlfriend (Carol Slaughter). A good horror film needs a strong finish and this one cops-out like it didn’t know how to end it, so it just leaves it up to the viewer to guess. While I commend its effort to take the genre into a more complex and unusual area I still felt it could’ve gone even further with its warped premise than it does.
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: June 15, 1979
Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes
Not Rated
Director: Abel Ferrara
Studio: Navaron Films
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 