Credit: Dangerous Minds / Rochelle Films

So, I’m a huge fan of horror films, and I have been for years. It’s an art form that gets an unfair reputation for producing cheap shlock when a number of the greatest directors alive, from Alfred Hitchcock to Steven Spielberg to Jordan Peele, got their start with horror pictures.

However, I can’t help but feel that sometimes, the genre brings on the disrespect itself. With all the love in the world, I can’t help but think of something like the Terrifier movies. The whole point of the adventures of Art the Clown is that they’re proudly nothing more than gore-filled shockers, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s not my cup of brain matter, but to each their own. However, getting on your high horse about people calling your shlocky gore-fest a shlocky gore-fest isn’t a particularly good look.

The people who can take issue with this attitude are those who unfairly have their pictures painted as exploitative by a culture that doesn’t know any better. The furore that painted the likes of Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as nothing more than gore-fest shockers aimed at the lowest common denominator was clearly powered by people who hadn’t seen either film. Both are actually pretty bloodless films where the horror comes from suggestion and atmosphere over everything else.

However, movies are a business. Before you can get butts in seats, you’ve got to get people talking about your picture. Fundamentally, people talk more about a fucked up, grotesque horror picture flying in the face of good taste than they do good filmmaking. It’s not nice, but it is true. However, there is still a case of one horror picture doubling down on a super-graphic marketing campaign so hard they inadvertently shoot an entire wing of the UK film industry in the foot.

The first step is admittedly a pretty hard one. It’s accepting that a film called The Driller Killer is actually a pretty subdued psychological thriller at its core.

Why did The Driller Killer set horror filmmaking back?

Directed by and starring the legendary Abel Ferrara, seen recently stealing every scene he’s offered in Marty Supreme, The Driller Killer is an underground classic of its era. A purposefully uncomfortable mish-mash of slasher movie (except with a drill instead of a knife), raucous black comedy and dark, psychological character study, The Driller Killer is a much more cerebral picture than it seems on the surface. Focusing as much on the way that poverty warps a person’s mind as much as the giallo-inspired violence.

The issue was that when the time came for the movie to be promoted, the film’s UK distribution company, Vipco, decided to go straight for the money shot. Taking out full-page advertisements for the film, consisting of one image and one image only.

A blood-soaked shot of a guy screaming while getting a drill stuck straight into his noggin. Not one to second-guess a creative choice when it’s working, Vipco also decided to make said image the cover of the film’s VHS release. Their intention was to get people talking, and, well, it did do that. You can’t say it didn’t.

The problem was who the people talking to were talking to, namely, the Advertising Standards Agency. The Driller Killer, or rather its marketing campaign, caused such an uproar that it inspired a tabloid campaign against the so-called “Video Nasties“.

Films released without a rating from the British Board of Film Classification often contained uncesnsored violent or sexual content. This campaign led to Parliament passing the Video Recordings Act 1984, which banned the distribution of tapes and motion pictures not certified by the BBFC.

The independent film scene in the UK barely recovered over the course of the 1980s, and there’s something genuinely poetic about an entire film industry being kneecapped not because of a film, but because of the mere idea of it.