Pieces (1982)

"BAAAAASTAAAAARDDDD!"

 Okay, so I revisited this after quite an absence. I was   reading my review from 2008 (listed below), realizing I didn't seem to like it much. I could really feel this negative reaction to the content. Maybe I took it just a wee bit too seriously. Not Friday night, however. I had mentioned the subgenre idea of Surrealist. I think you could almost (if not outright) include Juan Piquer Simón's Pieces (1982) in the Surrealist. I mean, for fucksake, the pieced-together "perfect woman" designed from the body parts of different female victims by Purdom's demented dean grabs the crotch of Ian Sera, seemingly a feminist revenge on man's mistreatment of women. It's too bad it wasn't Purdom's crotch that isn't ripped into and squeezed into mush!

George could never get a light for his smoke

It doesn't stop there. A chainsaw taking a head off in broad daylight certainly gets brought up by all of us slasher fans, as well as, the waterbed bloodbath with the butcher knife getting a little action while the chainsaw took a brief rest. Simón made damn sure to feature plenty of chainsaw. Lots of fucking chainsaw to massacre coeds on a Spanish campus masquerading as a Boston college. A Boston campus with a Kung Fu professor who just up and decides to pop up to swing his feet and legs at a startled Lynda Day George then collapse to the ground because of "bad chop suey". You can't make this shit up. Producer Dick Randall just had to get him some "Kung Fu Fighting" in the film!

Lynda's "tennis professor" can't move thanks to Purdom

A kid took his mom to task for yelling at him!

A tennis student can't even get a shower without interruption

The grisly aftermath of chopped up butchery

This because mama wanted to burn her son's nudies

Paul Smith would love to trim Purdom like the surrounding bushes

Even with all that blood Simón makes sure the knife glistens

Purdom is in a sleazy Christmas horror film pretty much as bad as Pieces, also produced by Randall (with Purdom even directing some of it) called "Don't Open 'Til Christmas", made three years later. In both of these films, Purdom clearly wishes he was in anything but them. I think I read that Purdom was potentially the killer in Christmas but because he was "replaced" (depending on who you ask), that twist was altered. I watch Christmas every year, though. It isn't the least bit good, but I find it watchable all the same. I guess you could say the same as Pieces. 

I actually recall my stepfather's nephew reporting to us (my brother was in the room with me) about renting this ghastly horror movie with lots of shocking violence called Pieces. When he discussed the film, you could really tell it left this imprint on him. He described how the killer just savaged folks. And he wasn't wrong. It wouldn't be until the mid 2000s before I'd be able to see it myself. Gosh, I believe he told us about it all the way back in probably 1990 or 1991. So I actually never forgot that. My mind and memory is like that. Like all these little memory pieces won't fade into the ether, while plenty of other memories (or the names of actors and details in films I would like to know at a certain time, often coming to me hours or even weeks later) flee way into brain obscurity.

When I see Christopher George in these early 80s films I have this brief sad thought that always slaps my feels, every time: his time on this earth was coming to an end. Ugh. Here, he is a cop just needing some answers while female student after female student is not just killed but torn apart. I get a kick out of how the killer can just carry around that chainsaw, as if it were nothing more than wallet or keys. So unassuming to have a chainsaw inside a college building with a student not giving it a second thought...until her arm is taken clean off. The director definitely makes sure there are severed heads and upper torsos (with lower torsos gone) to be discovered. There isn't a shortage of hideously mutilated remains for George and his officers to find. Ian Sera is in the thick of it, too, as he was a student whose blond, athletic swimmer lover (one of many, it would seem) gets "netted" and chainsawed into bits and pieces. This film rivals Fulci for how to butcher women.  I know lots of slasher fans love this. I think I give it like 2/5, though, it is VERY memorable. I could see slasher fans taking me to task for such a low rating. There are instances -- such as the rollerskater girl just impacting a mirror being taken by two movers across a sidewalk -- of sheer randomness I can't help but find entertaining. If anything, the gore effects are quite convincing and the violence viscerally gruesome.

Slasher favorite with a very vocal cult following concerning a demented sickopath murdering female students on a Boston college campus with disgruntled Lieutenant Bracken(Christopher George)hoping some kind of lead can be detected from secretly planted policewoman Mary Riggs(Lynda Day George), covertly posing as a tennis coach, and student Kendall James(Ian Sera)as they pursue his identity on the grounds. Under their very noses the killer uses a chainsaw and butcher knife, stalking and viciously executing victims while they are alive and screaming. Bracken also relies on partner Sergeant Holden(Frank Braña)to seek out informative leads on the campus faculty, perhaps questioning whether or not they might have a motive or background history which would provide an incentive to chop up bodies, taking pieces away from the scene of the crime. Secretly, the psycho is building a body of his own using various parts removed from those he kills, while also putting together an old jigsaw puzzle from his youth the day he attacked his mother with an ax, hacksawing her head from her body. A possible suspect..and prototypical red herring..is the grounds-keeper Willard(..the massive and imposing Paul L Smith)who uses a chainsaw to remove unneeded limbs from bushes on campus.

Over the years, thanks to netflix, I've watched some films from the 80's regarded as "video nasties". Many didn't quite live up to such notoriety, but if any film would it's Juan Piquer Simón's Pieces. This has to be one of the vilest, most violent gore-fests I've sat through. It's a mean film in the vein of Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper, where women are attacked in the most vicious, cruelest ways possible. An ax to the head as blood sprays throughout a room as a young boy, who'd later be the campus psychopath, delights in pulverizing his mother for seemingly no reason whatsoever. A female student, studying, gets her head taken off by a chainsaw in broad daylight with blood splattering. A girl in a pool is pulled from the water by a net, later found chopped into pieces, shown in such a state as the police comb to area for clues. A woman is stabbed multiple times on a water bed, ending with the knife sticking through her head and out of the mouth. One tennis student is cornered in a shower with no where to run as the killer slices her side with a spinning chainsaw blade. Another female student is cornered in an elevator with her arm decapitated by the infamous chainsaw. If you thought Fulci was a misogynist, then you need to see this film because Simón unrelentingly butchers women as they cry for help, receiving nothing but the unforgiving chainsaw blade carving through their flesh. As others, both those who embrace and dislike this film, have mentioned, Pieces will appeal to those who find bad cinema and gratuitous violence, with nudity, entertaining. You have to appreciate and/or enjoy films which are made for a certain crowd who digs sheer exploitation, and Juan Piquer Simón's slasher is catered to those who want just that. I think this succeeds where many other slashers fail, it delivers the gore and tits fans crave. It really is a true, dye-in-the-wool, slasher fan's wet dream. For everyone else, I find it hard-pressed to recommend Pieces. The Mondo Bizarro ending has to be seen to be believed. It is like all the victims *come together* to gain revenge on the male member which often demeans them! Edmund Purdom(Don't Open Til Christmas)is one of many suspects, the school's Dean who finds the circumstances plaguing his school aggravating. Jess Franco's vet, Jack Taylor also portrays a suspect, professor of anatomy who is often enlisted by the police to aid them in the horrifying cases concerning the methods of mutilation. This is not for the squeamish, but why would anyone with a weak stomach rent a film like this to begin with? The dialogue is sure to cause plenty of chuckles. --2008, IMDb