Review of Pieces (2013) by Bram K — 15 Jan 2009

You know what, I should stop right now and issue a warning. Now, I consider myself a serious film fan, in that I see film as more than just entertainment, more than just time spent in front of a screen simply zoning out for two hours. Yet I still have this fascination with movies that are "so-bad-it's-good", and I'm not above saying that I get a kick out of movies that are so inept that I end up enjoying the film because of it's sheer stupidity. So, if you're one of those film fans or critics with a huge stick shoved so far up your ass your nose is permanently turned up to anything you don't find "important" or "moral", then don't read further. I promise you will hate me for this one. I have seen the ultimate "so-bad-it's-good" movie, and it goes by the name of Pieces!

Directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Piquer Simon, Pieces is probably the most infamous low-budget slasher flick to ever come out of the subgenre's gory glory days of the early-1980's. The movie's pre-credit sequence takes place in 1942 Boston, where a young boy hacks his mother to death after she catches him- and demeans him- for playing with a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman. After the credits, the story jumps ahead forty years, and we are at a university where a chainsaw-wielding maniac is dispatching female co-eds and taking severed parts with him. It seems the killer is making a human jigsaw puzzle using parts of his numerous nubile victims. The cops, lead by Christopher George, are (naturally) clueless, so they decide to recruit a former tennis pro (played by George's wife, Linda Day) and a campus "cassanova" (played by Ian Sera) to go undercover to catch the sicko.

If the premise alone sounds implausible and dumb, you have heard nothing yet! Pieces is a shamelessly repulsive, badly-written, badly-acted, clumsily-edited, politically-incorrect, degrading, dingy-looking movie. This movie is so bad, and so insulting, by all accounts it should be dumped in the garbage and set on fire. However, by some -I'd say hellspawn- miracle, Pieces manages to be highly enjoyable laugh-filled riot, in addition to actually living up to it's massively gruesome hype!

Pieces promises that "You don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!" and that "It's exactly what you think it is!". Well, I can say that, despite the cheap effects, this is one of the most unapologetically brutal pictures in horror history. The notoriety of the film's violence is definitely not without merit!

It goes without saying that you don't walk into a movie called Pieces expecting to find a deep, psychological thriller. I didn't. I knew what I was in for. This movie was made long before the days of The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. By the time those films were made, psychology was seen in the culture as a viable tool to catch a serial killer. Pieces was made in a day and age when horror movies like these (as well as it's hard-boiled cop characters) simply snickered at such ideas. The serial killer was simply a shock tactic; a cheap way for filmmakers to put more blood and guts on the screen. But that's only the surface of it's politically-incorrectness. All of the killer's victims are women, and are hacked in various stages of undress. This is one film that would justify the critics' view of the slasher genre as a misogynistic. Also, the dean of the university refers to another character's homosexuality as an "affliction". And in one of the picture's many illogical moments, we get a few bad Asian stereotypes thrown in.

But if Pieces is nothing but wanton extreme violence, produced in a time of ignorance, what could possibly make it worthwhile? The only thing more shocking than the gore in Pieces is that the film is so awfully constructed it's actually hysterical! But believe it or not, it's the bad script, bad dialogue, and bad acting/dubbing that serve as blessings in disguise! Seriously. When I say "many illogical moments", I mean it! There are a lot of scenes in the movie that leave you crying, "What the hell?!" and "Oh, come on!" while chuckling at the same time. What's really awful about the script is it's complete and utter inability to build any real suspense and it's oh-so-obvious laziness to develop Paul Smith or Jack Taylor as believable suspects. These two guys end up looking useless. The dialogue of the characters and the actors' delivery are so silly, if you close your eyes you'll think-I shit you not!- you're listening to an episode of "Scooby Doo"! What these shortcomings do is provide Pieces with a lot of unintentional, yet much-needed, humour to offset the extremely graphic and unsettling violence, and in turn, they separate the film from similar, yet oppressively dour and completely irresponsible slasher flicks such as I Spit On Your Grave and Don't Answer the Phone.

Pieces should be viewed not only by horror fans looking for a history lesson in old-school gorefests, but by anyone in need of an hour-and-a-half full of belly laughs. It has more than enough violence for the gorehounds, but it surprisingly has something for those who want more than that. No one should be ashamed of liking Pieces in this day and age if you find the humour in, and pity, it's political-incorrectness and ineptitude. Hell, you could have your own "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" party with this one.