Pieces

Trailer—Pieces

source: Pieces

Film takes place in Massachusetts (obviously it was shot in Spain). It starts in the 1940s with a mother catching her young son putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman. She freaks out, yells at him and orders him to get a plastic trash bag (which didn't exist in the 1940s). He leaves, comes back in with an ax and hacks mommy to pieces. That's the OPENING SCENE!!!! Then it cuts to 1983 at a college where somebody is hacking young female students into pieces. But who...and why? You won't really care. Aside from Christopher George and Lynda Day George all the actors are (badly) dubbed (I love how the dean of a MA college has an ENGLISH accent). The story doesn't make a lick of sense, the gore is explicit and pretty sick (this was released unrated in the US) and it's surprisingly dull at times. Even the casting was way off--one of the characters is (purportedly) the school stud but he's played by a short, below average looking guy with no body whatsoever! There's a sequence with him and a woman in bed which is hilarious. Basically this film was made to show off tons of blood and gore. I have no problem with that at all--but that's all the movie has. Supposedly the dreadful dubbing was purportedly done badly so people would laugh at it....but it's kind of hard to laugh at any movie which is shoving VERY explicit gore in your face. I saw it in a theatre in 1983 and no one laughed once. The stupidest murder has to be when one girl is decapitated by HEDGE TRIMMERS--in broad daylight--on a college campus--and NOBODY SEES ANYTHING! That's about when I gave up on the film--they're treating the audience like they're full of idiots. And the final revelation of who the killer is was predictable and there's a truly pathetic "shock" at the end. A very sick, nasty, stupid, dull horror film. For gore completists only

Thank you, Juan Piquer Simon! First I'm delighted by your wondrous "E.T." rip off "Pod People", then your amazing killer slug movie, the aptly titled "Slugs". But now I've seen the one that tops those classics and then some: your take on the chainsaw massacre genre, "Pieces". What an amazing, totally hilarious, totally entertaining movie! After seeing a little kid hack up his mother with an ax (and the subsequent arrival of the police who have no reaction whatsoever to the woman's severed head lying in a closet), we jump to "forty years later" at a college campus in Boston. We know it takes place in America, because there are American flags, maps of the United States, and pictures of Ronald Reagan everywhere. It's obviously NOT Spain. Anyway, this totally-American-and-not-Spanish-at-all killer is on the loose, collecting various body parts for his human jigsaw puzzle. There's tons of great gore as the unseen killer's chainsaw rips through necks, arms, torsos, you name it. But what's just as good is all the scenes between the gore scenes in which the cops try to hunt down the killer. First of all, one of the cops is the guy from "Slugs" who yelled "You don't have the authority to declare Happy Birthday!". He gets an equally stupid line in this movie with "Right now we're just buying clothes without labels and trying them on for size." He enlists the help of Kendall, a well meaning student who is played by the guy who says "It stinks!" in "Pod People". Kendall is of no help at all except for the fact that he stumbles on the corpses minutes after the killer leaves the scene and he romances the tennis pro/cop who's hunting the killer undercover. These scenes are creepy because the actress is old enough to be Kendall's grandmother. Watch for the scene towards the end where she's lying down and Kendall touches her face, then in the next shot he's in the middle of the room, nowhere near her. Also enjoy the fact that the cops find the killer's bloody chainsaw, but he somehow magically has it back for the next killing. Enjoy the scene where a girl on a skateboard smashes through a mirror for no reason, and is never heard from again. Enjoy the scene where a character we've never seen before jumps out of the shadows, does some kung-fu moves, and then leaves, never to be seen again. But most of all, enjoy the out-of-nowhere insanity of the film's closing moments. I won't spoil it here, but it has to be seen to be believed- actually, even then you might not believe it. "Pieces" is a totally enjoyable movie going experience if you are a fan of enjoyably bad movies and good gore.

Juan Piquer Simon's "Pieces" is one of the most hilarious slasher movies ever made.In the early 1940's a little boy is caught by his mother while he is assembling a puzzle with a naked lady on it.The boy gets mad when his mother takes his puzzle,so he kills her with an axe.40 years later somebody butchers random college chicks with a chainsaw."Pieces" is a highly entertaining gore trash filled with enough blood to satisfy horror fans.There is for example a lopped off arm,a severed flying head and a knife through the mouth murder scene.The ending is incredibly surprising and hysterical.There is also a violent kung fu teacher and death by mirror.So if you're a slasher/giallo fan give this one a look-you won't be disappointed.8 out of 10.

'Pieces' is a wonderfully entertaining trashy slasher movie. Dumb, but lots of fun. It has impeccable exploitation credentials - directed by the guy who gave us 'Slugs - The Movie' and co-written by both Dick Randall (assorted kung fu and Emanuelle movies) and shlockmaster Joe D'Amato, director of the legendary 'Antropophagus'(a.k.a. 'The Grim Reaper') to name the most notorious of his 150+ movies. Plus the star is Christopher George ('The Exterminator', Fulci's 'City Of The Living Dead'). George plays a cop sent in to investigate some bloody slayings on a college campus (the movie is Spanish but tries to pretend it's American). The viewer knows the killer is obsessed with female bodies and there is a recurring motif involving jigsaws and mirrors. As in most slasher movies there are plenty of suspects to choose from, including a scary looking gardener (cult favourite Paul Smith, 'Midnight Express', 'Crimewave'), a Professor of Anatomy (Jack Taylor, who appeared in a few Jess Franco classics like 'Succubus' and 'Eugenie'), and the Dean (Edmund Purdom, 'The Fifth Cord', 'Ator'). The lovely Lynda Day (Christopher George's wife) plays an undercover tennis coach(!) and spaghetti western veteran Frank Brana is George's sidekick. If you approach 'Pieces' with the right frame of mind you'll have a hell of a good time. It's bloody, completely illogical and contains the most unexpected martial arts scene in the history of horror movies (yeah, I know...)

Juan Piper Simon, the same sweet, subtle, sophisticated gent who blessed us with "Slugs," delivers an astoundingly crass and repulsive slasher opus which might very well be the grossest, goriest, most sexist and objectionable entry in the kill the collegians academia-set body count slice'n'dice sub-genre that was highly fashionable throughout the early to mid 80's. A depraved, heavy-breathing, chainsaw-wielding misogynistic psycho lunatic viciously murders and dismembers assorted pretty young harlot coeds at a Boston university, gathering up their body parts so he can make a grisly composite of the perfect woman! It's up to a ramrod jerk detective (gruffly played with mucho macho muscle by the incomparable Chris George) and a gutsy undercover lady cop (George's hot real-life wife Lynda Day) to nab the twisted sicko. Probable suspects include stuffy dean Edmund Purdom, dweeby gay professor Jack Taylor, and hulking creep handyman Paul Smith. This marvelously rank scuzzfest really delivers the greasy'n'grungy goods: a hefty plenitude of sleazy sex, gratuitous nudity and hideously explicit splatter, a token Oriental martial arts expert, Jane Fonda-style workout aerobics, a vacuous dancing disco bunny on roller-skates getting turned into a bloody pulp after she crashes into a large pane of glass, a throbbing Goblinesque prog-rock score, the truly tasteless moment where a foxy topless young woman wets her pants as she's about to be carved-up by the killer, and a simply stupendous surprise ending in which the composite corpse inexplicably comes to life so it can castrate libidinous womanizing heel Ian Sera. And remember everyone: it's exactly what you think it is. In this case this means a prime putrid piece of pure unabashed and unadulterated trash.

Here's a bloody, and I mean bloody chainsaw flick, this makes the Texas Chainsaw look like pumped versions of The Sound of Music. Take the warning on the front cover seriously before watching the dispatches of torso's whatever that follow. A little boy caught by his mother with a * jigsaw becomes killer, ending her in just the start of the carnage that follows. Cut many many years later, to the eighties on a school campus, we have a nut, with a chainsaw, cutting his way through nubile bodies to create his own human jigsaw. Siuck f..k. Christopher George, a detective on the case, sends a woman, undercover, who's trained in Karate to catch this madman, where it's not easy. We have one suspect, Midnight Express's Paul Smith as a caretaker, bearing a chainsaw. Could he be the one. A student on campus helps George, in his investigation, going through mugsheets, whatever. This bright intellectual really has his work cut out for him, where he thinks this work is kind of cool. Meanwhile, the chainsaw nut out there is still making the cut. One girl literally wets herself in terror while getting it in the elevator. As an Italian cheapie classic, Pieces is one horror fan's guilty pleasure, with a not so happy ending for an innocent party. If you want blood and hot bodies, don't pass this one up. I'd option for this over the Texas Chainsaw Massacres anyday. The Asian jogger who went to attack our undercover hottie, who outwits him, then takes off again as though everything's cool. What the hell was that about.

How could I not love this movie? It is a rare cinematic occurrence indeed to find such delightfully sleazy ingredients as chainsaw massacres, disco aerobics, on screen vomiting, pornographic jigsaw puzzles, a girl wetting her pants, and a guy salivating over a woman's feet all in one place. Only from the combined minds of Joe D'Amato, Dick Randall, and J. Piquer Simon could such a thing spring forth – and judging from the number of reviews here, I'm not alone in my fondness for this movie. Many of the cast members will be familiar to fans of these kinds of movies. Christopher George (having already been through Graduation Day and a trip to the Mortuary) is a strong lead as the no-nonsense detective on the case, while Jess Franco veteran Jack Taylor creeps around the increasingly decimated campus as an anatomy professor. Of course the victims are just anonymous dead meat, but then that's all they need to be. Say what you will about the overall quality of the film, but one thing's for sure - Pieces doesn't suffer from a lack of blood and guts. The crimson stuff flows freely once the chainsaw starts up, and the movie actually lives up to the surprisingly honest tagline - `it's exactly what you think it is' - take it or leave it. And the ending - what an ending!

Juan Piquer Simon is my favorite "bad" director of all time! The man gave us "Slugs", "Monster Island" and – especially – "Supersonic Man". He always delivers very entertaining films and I can't bring myself to bash his work no matter how amateurish and cheap it looks. This "Pieces" is Simon's attempt to cash in on the very popular early 80's slasher trend. It blends the success elements of both "Friday the 13th" and "the Texas Chainsaw Massacre", only the gore-factor is about ten times higher. In fact, "Pieces" easily could have been one of the most shocking movies ever if the gore wasn't so over the top and laughable! This film is a series of repulsive massacres committed on a campus. The intro is supposedly set in the early 1940's, where a stern mother forbids her young son to play with puzzles that have naked women on them. So the boy just slaughters his mommy with an axe and forty years later he makes puzzles out of chopped off limbs, heads and torsos that he collects randomly on campus! Z-horror legend Christoher George (from Fulci's "City of the Living Dead") stars as the police lieutenant who even recruits college students to help him catch the maniac. The violence in "Pieces" truly surpasses your wildest imagination! The killer here unquestionably is the most bloodthirsty creature in horror history since he even saws a girl in half! This all may sound terrifying but, due to the poor production values, it's easy to digest and actually more funny than scary. The only slightly disturbing aspects are some of the killing-situations because they often look like guidelines for rapists and other sick puppies. For example, several killings are textbook crime-stuff like a girl alone in the park, or in an abandoned pool, the locker room and the aerobic-gym! Not surprisingly the script was written by Joe D'Amato, who majored in sleaze. The acting is weak, the dubbing is painful and Simon wisely decided to replace all tension-building elements by blood, gore and more blood! If you like the sound of rusty chainsaws and the images of knives cutting through human flesh....here's your chance to go wild! "Pieces" is an insane movie that has to be seen by all you deranged people!