The Driller Killer and the humanist behind the blood and sickening crunch

For many, Abel Ferrara will forever be the master provocateur, synonymous with drugs, booze, and tortured Catholicism, obsessed with documenting man’s existential bad faith and tortured quest for redemption, à la Bad Lieutenant. For certain film scholars, however, Ferrara is a kind of Van Gogh, a truly visionary artist whose genius is destined to be ignored in his own lifetime.

To understand the esteem in which he is held, we should begin at the beginning. Helpfully, this month Arrow Films presents a rerelease DVD package of The Driller Killer, complete with a newly recorded audio commentary by Ferrara, an in-depth interview conducted by Brad Stevens (author of Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision), and a visual essay on Ferrara by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, author of Cultographies: Ms. 45. Read more >