pieces

I remember seeing this when I was around eight years old , and finding it very realistic , and unsettling. I just watched it for the first time since , after picking up the dvd for the bargain basement price of $6.99. How times change.....this memorable movie from my misspent youth is now pretty hilarious.

The plot of this Spanish/Italian co-production is pretty basic. It starts in 1944 , with a disturbed little boy working on a puzzle of a naked woman ( hence the title Pieces) . His religious zealot mother catches him , and orders him to get a gladbag to get rid of the smutty puzzle. I got a couple of chuckles out of that one.... I'm no great historian, but I'm pretty sure plastic garbage bags weren't around in 1944.

He's a crafty little bastard though.... by the time the cops turn up , he's hiding in the cupboard crying crocodile tears and whimpering "What have they done to my Mommy?". We then fast forward to 1983. A girl is sunning herself on a college campus when a guy with a chainsaw takes exception to her requests for some peace and quiet , and spoils her day by cutting her up and stealing a body part for good measure.

Needless to say , she isn't the last victim. Bodies start piling up all over the campus. The cops are baffled. Not only do they have absolutely no idea who the killer is ( apart from a Bud Spencer lookalike with a fondness for powertools) , but they really are curious about what the killer is doing with all those body parts.

Pieces is a lot like Anthropophagous. There's a pretty strong argument for it being out and out bad , yet it still does have redeeming qualities. It tries to be an Agatha Christie style mystery, but it's that predictable that you'll pick the killer in the first five minutes. As a mystery it really is a dismal failure , and a boreathon. It actually took a couple of viewings for me to make it all the way through this.

That said , it does have some pretty convincing gore effects, and an unusually high body count. The chainsaw ripping through flesh was done very well , and all of the effects were similar to those in Absurd ( aka. Anthropophagous 2). I think the same make-up / fx artist may have worked on both movies. It also had a couple of genuinely intense scenes , like the one in the shower block....but these were few and far between , and sandwiched between long and boring scenes, or basically hilarious ones.

Chimpanzee lookalike , Christopher George ( Grizzly) gave a fun, hammy, Columboesque performance as the detective. Edmund Purdom ( After the Fall of New York) was playing his usual type of role as the crusty old dean. Depending on how patient you are with this , this will either be an average splatter movie , a crashing bore, or something in between. It's hard to actually watch , because everything always looks murky ( you might even fall asleep during your first viewing like I did. The main weakness was that Christopher George , Edmund Purdom, and the Bud Spencer lookalike are about the only two dimensional characters in the whole thing. Still , it's O.K. if you're looking for another chainsaw massacre, and its a hell of a lot better than Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 ( or whatever it's called) , because at least this has blood and guts. Try and stick it out till the end for one of the most inane , mystefying , and hilarious slasher movie endings ever....