In fact, the mad concoction of blood, gore, and boobs makes the film what it is one big guilty pleasure. Such scenes (and more) are absolute gold, the key to the film's almost accidental success. A nude beauty meets her end by the swimming pool, a young woman sun tanning gets way more than a tan, a kindly lady gets slaughtered in an elevator, and yes, some girl even gets the bottom half of her body sawed off creating one of the most famous - or infamous - stills from the entire movie. High on gore and low on logic there are some fantastic kills to be found here, if you find yourself able to survive through the thick much that is the story and the dialogue first. My favorite aspect of the film was the murder sequences. It does indeed only get one thing right (the gore effects, which are outstanding), but if you're as twisted as me, that's essentially enough to satisfy. However, if you can distance yourself from the said flaws, it's the kind of crappy movie that's so bad it's kind of good, or even great. So basically, it's a critic's worst nightmare. It's a movie of corny dialogue, terrible dubbing, mediocre performances and even worse emotional reactions, poor plotting, and uninvolving character development. "Pieces" would not be an entertaining film if it weren't so goddamn bad. All you need to know is that the identity of the killer is terribly (or rather, terrifically) obvious from the start. There's a plethora of characters, although they're all so unnecessary any one of them could be the killer, but the film throws so many red herrings and false alarms in our face that we stop caring about the little implications of the story. Fast-forward about forty years later, and we've got the college campus with a killer on the loose, hacking his way through the students, not much unlike what the kid did to his poor (and unnecessarily frustrated at the time) mother. The police arrive shortly thereafter and discover the horrific remains of the incident. So yeah, the madness all begins back in 1941 when a young child is piecing together a puzzle that his mother finds crude and inappropriate thus causing her to throw a big fit, threatening to burn anything else in the kid's room that she deems unsuitable for his age group. I was very entertained by it, and while it's not my favorite Grindhouse film, it's still pretty solid for what it is. It's not the most populace pleasing film out there, but it's unique and easy-going enough. It belongs in the collection of most avid horror fans, and it deserves to be seen perhaps there's still an audience out there that we're not aware of, because they have yet to discover this violent, gruesome gem. All-in-all, I'm pretty glad they brought this long-lost exploitation/sleaze classic back from the dead. To others, they'd be good reason to stay far away.īeloved by some, and surely despised by a good many "Pieces" has been re-issued and restored by Grindhouse Releasing, and if you happen to get the chance, it can be found on DVD (courtesy of both Grindhouse and Box Office Spectaculars). It's cheesy, unnecessary, vile, and gross but when you frequent the Grindhouse side of cinema, those are merely charms and simple pleasures. It's a sleazy, morally and artistically irredeemable celebration of exploitation and schlock. But then again, anyone watching this film will most likely leave all complaints at the door, ready to just go along for the ride because that's really all this movie is. What you get is a cross-breed of slasher and detective narrative clichés something that's not so much a story but more like an experience. Most of the film takes place at a New England college campus where a chainsaw-wielding psychopath is joyously slicing and dicing his way through pretty men and women, although preferably and mostly the latter. The posters and advertisements for Juan Piquer Simon's "Pieces" claim that you don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre and so you don't.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |