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DRILLER: (1984)Cindy Cirile, 60 min
An X-rated horror musical inspired by Michael Jackson’s THRILLER, starring Taija Rae and a pop superstar named Mr. J. DRILLER could only have happened in 1984—and even then, somebody really had to want to make it.
Adult-film veterans and lifelong horror fans Joyce James and Timothy Green Beckley wanted to make something different, and the enormous cultural impact of THRILLER gave them their way in. Taija Rae plays Louise, an obsessed fan whose fascination with Mr. J carries her from a pop concert into a handmade Gothic nightmare. What begins as an unmistakable riff on Jackson and John Landis gradually wanders deeper into horror-movie territory, with original songs, choreography, transformation effects and smoky monster-movie atmosphere assembled with the resources and ingenuity of an independent adult production.
The distance between THRILLER’s Hollywood spectacle and DRILLER’s lovingly threadbare recreation is part of its charm, but James never treats the idea as a throwaway joke. She commits to it, building the parody into a strange little world with a personality entirely its own.
More than forty years later, DRILLER remains a perfect artifact of its moment: Golden Age adult filmmaking colliding head-on with MTV, the early-’80s horror boom and the biggest music video on Earth. Rough, playful and wildly ambitious, it’s the work of filmmakers who wanted to make something unusual and followed that impulse much further than anyone could reasonably have asked. There is only one DRILLER.
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4405 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA 98118-1372, United States
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