Movies
The Driller Killer
While growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, and still not of R-rated age, I used to fantasize what the new adult horror releases were like. I’d cut the movie one-sheets out of the newspaper and paste them onto my bedroom wall – on Fridays usually, when the black and white posters were big – sometimes full page. After two or three years, Id collected a wall full of yellowed newspaper clippings with classics like Madman, Chopping Mall, etc. (it goes on forever), and one that perplexed me for years – a poster with a man getting his forehead drilled to death with a long, merciless drill bit. For years until I saw the film, it mesmerized my imagination, and my splatter loving heart would swell when Id wonder what horrible, skin churning, hole boring terrors it could possibly behold.
The film was none other than Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer, a slasher movie by every sense of the word, released just about a year before Friday the 13th and Halloween made the claim to the sub-genre. When a young New York City artist Reno Miller (played by director Abel Ferrara) inadvertently meets his indigent father in a local church, a combination of stress and fear and a nightmare that he himself will end up on the street goes into motion. A fear that ignites homicidal, psychopathic behavior once pushed over the edge, after a punk band Tony Coca Cola and the Roosters move into his building and practice all night long – night after night – destroying the peace of mind he needs to finish his painting, so he can pay his backed up rent. All of these factors eventually boil over and drive him to murder.
The Driller Killer is low budget by every sense of the word, shot in and around the dark, bum ridden, late seventies streets of New York City circa Ferrara’s Union Square lair at the time. But where it lacks in production, it makes up for with some interesting, if not absurd, characters. Reno Miller looks like a cross between Krug Stillo (David Hess) from Last House on the Left and Frank Zito (Joe Spinell) from Maniac. Tony Coca Cola (D. A. Metrov) and his pseudo New York Dolls band party with lesbians, practice bad sets, and wig out on drugs. Just about every character in this film is a sleazy sight to behold, and accurately reflective of the Mayor Koch era, when the scum of the underground was literally pouring out into the general public of the city.
One night Miller sees a Porta-Pack being advertized on a television commercial. It allows the user to go mobile with plug-in electrical appliances. Of course, his inner psychotic self knows enough to buy one for his drill. After dealing with countless nerve frying hours of bad music, Miller goes over the edge and stabs the shit out of a skinned rabbit head (which is real, and a meaty disgusting moment) – and eventually he hits the street to put his power tool fantasy to the test. Before long, a local bum is thrashing on the sidewalk, with a drill bit boring its way deep into his heart. Bright red blood flows strong and splashes everywhere.
Later all characters converge at the live show for Tony Coca Cola and the Roosters, where several of Miller’s issues come to a head and explode. This is where he runs into the streets and begins attacking at will. His homicidal killing spree claims eight people that night. While the kills are aggressive and spill a lot of arterial fluid, it’s a bit hard not to laugh amidst the wincing, as Miller’s vulgar display of power really does nothing to better the situation that drove him mad.
If the film were made nowadays, with the way plots are tweaked out the ass to try and make them “perfect”, the mad artist would have gone after his landlord who wanted the rent, his employer who treated him like shit and snubbed his work, his girlfriend and her lesbian cheating, and/or that entire band and its groupies – the people ruining his life and deteriorating his mind. But in 1979’s The Driller Killer, per the actual nature of a maniac, he jumps random strangers at bus stops and department storefronts, whether they be bums or locals. There was something about this that felt true to the psychotic behavior that took over. He becomes an actual homicidal maniac. The result is a gritty, semi-realistic street tale of an unstable man who snaps and takes it out on the people around him via an electric drill, whether he knows them or not.
Abel Ferrara’s street grit piece about a man who goes over the edge sweating his rent and his possibly desolate future in a punk dense 1970’s NYC ends up as low budget slasher artistry – reflecting the New York City punk rock underground and its slithering society against a contrast of judgmental Catholic religiousness, gifted works of art, and nude scenes of lesbianism. While initially banned in the UK (and quite possibly responsible for initiating the British “video nasty” ban list), and most notably remembered for the one-sheet with the man being drilled through the forehead, most of its cult status was achieved from these factors, and not from the film’s final product being anything of extreme offensiveness or legendary distress. Hearts pop and necks are leaked, but its almost always done through insinuation and clothing, and doesn’t get much worse than imagination plus bright red paint. Still, in some odd fashion, it’s the Clockwork Orange of pre-Halloween, low-budget slashers, and the title that landed Abel Ferrara in the center of the horror map.
Ghostface is back on the big screen this weekend… well, sort of… with the release of Scary Movie, which marks the Wayans brothers’ return to the horror spoof franchise for the first time since Scary Movie 2 back in the day. It’s likely to be the talk of the horror community for the weekend, but don’t overlook the other six genre movies that were freshly unleashed today.
Here’s all the new horror that released on Friday, June 5, 2026.
The horror spoof franchise is back with Scary Movie now playing in theaters!
Marlon Wayans (“Shorty”), Shawn Wayans (“Ray”), Anna Faris (“Cindy”), and Regina Hall (“Brenda”) reunite for the new Scary Movie, with the cast also including Dave Sheridan, Lochlyn Munro, Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott, Jon Abrahams, Damon Wayans Jr., Gregg Wayans, Kim Wayans, Benny Zielke, Cameron Scott Roberts, Heidi Gardner, Olivia Rose Keegan, Ruby Snowber, Savannah Lee Nassif, Sydney Park, and Felissa Rose.
Twenty-six years after outrunning a suspiciously familiar masked killer (“Ghostface”), the Core Four are back in the killer’s crosshairs and no horror movie IP is safe…
Scary Movie will slash through reboots, remakes, requels, prequels, sequels, spin-offs, elevated horror, origin stories, anything with the word legacy in it, and every “final chapter” that absolutely isn’t. A whole lot has changed in the horror genre since the Wayans Brothers were in charge of the franchise; their involvement ended with Scary Movie 2 back in 2001!
Michael Tiddes (A Haunted House) directs Scary Movie 6 from a script written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, original Scary Movie director Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans (Scary Movie 2), and Rick Alvarez (A Haunted House).
From IFC, shark attack movie Chum is now available on Digital.
Alice Eve (Haunting of Queen Mary) stars in shark attack movie alongside Eric Michael Cole, Jim Klock, Elle Haymond, Lisa Yaro, Johnny Gaffney, and Sarah Siadat.
This one sounds very similar to last year’s Dangerous Animals…
Here’s the plot: “A newlywed couple joins friends on a Mediterranean yacht excursion, only to find themselves caught between a predatory shark and a psychopathic killer in their midst-transforming a sun-drenched escape into a fight for survival.”
Jonathan Zuck directs Chum, from a script by Jonathan Zuck and Joe Leone.
Samara Weaving (Ready or Not 2: Here I Come) and Kyle Gallner (Strange Darling) come together in Carolina Caroline, a sexy crime thriller now playing in theaters.
It’s not a horror movie, mind you, but it’s worth a mention here all the same.
Kyra Sedgwick (Family Movie) and Jon Gries also star in the romantic crime thriller.
Director Adam Carter Rehmeier’s film stars Samara Weaving as Caroline Daniels, whose desire to leave her small Texas town brings her into the orbit of a charismatic con man (Kyle Gallner), and together they weave a path of crime and passion across the American Southeast.
Adam Rehmeier previously directed the films Dinner in America and Snack Shack.
Tom Dean wrote the screenplay for Carolina Caroline.
Similar to Steven Spielberg’s upcoming big screen blockbuster Disclosure Day, Signal One explores humankind’s enduring question: what if we aren’t alone in the universe?
The sci-fi thriller is now available on Digital.
Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan), Josh Hutcherson (Five Nights at Freddy’s), David Thewlis (Harry Potter), Raoul Bhaneja (Possessor), Emma Ho (“The Expanse”), and Dennis Quaid (The Substance) star in Signal One from director Jonathan Sobol (The Art of the Steal).
When tech billionaire Sam Houston (Quaid) hires the brilliant computer scientist Annika (Fuhrman), she ventures to an isolated facility run by the brilliant, nihilistic creator of LITTLEMOUTH, a machine which can communicate with alien intelligence.
Annika soon learns some humanity-altering facts: that we are not alone in the universe, that alien intelligences are communicating around us at every moment, and that we are likely too primitive to even remotely understand what they are trying to tell us.
When the goal of the endeavor shifts from listening to talking back, the project rapidly devolves into chaos. With contact comes consequences, and soon Annika and the team must work to ensure the very survival of our species.
A schoolyard dare becomes an urban legend in the creepypasta-inspired horror anthology The Summoning. The indie film is now available on Digital from Brainstorm Media.
“A babysitting gig becomes a nightmare of urban legend when three teens summon Baby Blue. Survival depends on uncovering the past to escape a mother’s wrath from beyond the grave.”
Felipe Vargas (Rosario, Hive), Sergio Gonzalez, Brandon Piskorik, Corey Benson Powers, and Brian Sepanzyk direct the segments. Valeria San Martín, Justina Ceballos, Daniela Flombaum, Nannu Spannauss, Agustín Olcese, and Giovanni Onetti star.
The Summoning is written by Camilo Zaffora.
Happy Death Day actress Jessica Rothe stars as a mom struggling to keep her grip on her sanity and memory in the mind-bending Affection, now available on Digital at home.
In Affection, “Afflicted by a mysterious condition that resets her memory, Ellie becomes trapped in a cyclical nightmare with a man who claims to be her husband. She soon must uncover the horrifying truth of her existence—before she forgets it all again.“
Joseph Cross (“Big Little Lies”) and Julianna Layne (“Chicago P.D.”) also star in the sci-fi horror thriller. Affection marks the feature debut by writer/director BT Meza.
Daniel Kurland wrote in his review out of the film’s premiere, “Affection is steeped in existential questions and fears that plague modern society, while it embraces the ethos of the ’80s through bold body horror. Add to that Rothe’s revelatory performance, and Affection is a hidden gem that will connect with your mind, body, and soul.”
Lucile Hadžihalilović’s latest dark fairy tale, The Ice Tower, loosely reimagines Hans Christian Andersen’s fable “The Snow Queen,” and it’s now streaming on Shudder.
In the ’70s set film, “Jeanne, a 15-year-old orphan, witnesses the shoot of a film adaptation of the fairy tale The Snow Queen, and she becomes fascinated by its star Cristina (Marion Cotillard), an actress who is just as mysterious and alluring as the Queen she is playing.“
Clara Pacini stars as Jeanne. August Diehl and Marine Gesbert also star in The Ice Tower, and look for a cameo from director Gaspar Noé (Climax, Irréversible).
“For me, The Ice Tower solidified Lucile Hadžihalilović’s place amongst the most fascinating creators of fairy tales today,” said distributor Yellow Veil Pictures co-founder Joe Yanick.
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