Saturday, March 22, 2008

Pieces

     Pieces is a great shlocky flick from the very early 1980s. It's Spanish, but hopefully, you'll find a copy dubbed into discernable English. I had seen this a long time ago and thought it was great. Then one glorious day, I managed to find it on DVD and was thrilled! The sound was much better and the dubbing is only obvious just now and then. It's been restored pretty successfully and is definitely worth seeking out. 

      Anyway, it begins with a little boy putting together a porno puzzle of a naked lady. His mom walks in and catches him and freaks out, tearing his whole room up. The little boy grabs an ax (well, doesn't every 10-year-old keep one handy?) and slaughters his mom. When the police arrive, they assume there was an attack and the kid goes free. 

      Fast forward a few decades. A college campus is starting to have some problems with young women being butchered to pieces by some unknown maniac. We see from the killer's point of view that it's probably the kid that long ago developed a personal relationship with his ax and even still has the blood-spattered porno puzzle, its picture being that of a naked woman, which has its pieces put back when the corresponding body part has been severed from a victim. Every time a puzzle piece fits together, someone comes up with some missing body parts. It appears that the killer is possibly recreating this puzzle with actual body parts. 

     Whodunnit, you ask? Well, we're given several suspicious characters to choose from. There's Willard the groundskeeper, an ape of a man, wielding his chainsaw all over the place while constantly sneering at the camera (the most obvious attempt at diversion possible). There are also a few suspicious students on the campus, there's a weird police lieutenant, a sexy tennis player, etc, etc. No real clues are ever given and it ends up being the Dean of Students, whom you rarely see throughout the entire movie. 

      As a final shocker, there's a double climax at the very end. When someone leans on it, the Dean's bookshelf slides backward revealing the human jigsaw puzzle he's been working on. Then out of nowhere, the puzzle corpse reaches up and grabs one of the students by the crotch, yanking off his beany weenies. The movie is actually pretty good, decent premise, and the ending alone is worth giving it a look-see.  The acting is rather terrible but in such a fun way!  I believe it's now available in high definition with good sound dubbing for free on YouTube!


1 comment:

Will Bernardara, Jr. said...

No one's commented on "Pieces"?! This movie is a must-see gross-out gore opus. Tries to be like a giallo but actually achieves (probably accidentally) something a little more special than your standard giallo. It's kind of like "Sleepaway Camp" if it had been shot in Spain by a gorehound with brain damage - and I mean all of that in the best possible way. I saw this movie for the first time at the age of 5 and it made a real impression on me. "Pieces" is a classic.