10 Brutally Violent Films The Censors Tried To Ban
3. The Driller Killer (1979)
From being hounded by Britains moral watchdogs, who blamed the movie and its type for declining social values, through to its uncut release in 2002, the history of The Driller Killer is more interesting than the film itself. Far more attention-grabbing than the narrative was the videocassettes cover, which showed a drill boring into a mans skull beneath the caption, The blood runs in rivers.and the drill keeps tearing through flesh and bone! After numerous complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, the film was banned in 1984 and ultimately caused the government to intervene. According to Mike Bor, Principal Examiner for the BBFC, The Driller Killer was almost single-handedly responsible for the Video Recordings Act. If you were a kid in 1984, then the artwork had a very different effect it transformed you into a lifelong horrorphile.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
