The slasher movie is one of the most narrowly defined genres in cinema \u2013 essentially a series of riffs on Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/em> (1974) and Halloween<\/em> (1978) \u2013 and Pieces<\/em> has no interest in pushing at its boundaries. A killer is on the loose on a college campus, killing women one by one with a chainsaw, using their body parts to make a human jigsaw. The broad strokes of the plot are interchangeable with most \u201880s slasher movies, if not a little subpar. In the LA Times<\/em><\/a>, Kevin Thomas called it “a wretched, stupid little picture whose sole purpose is the exploitation of extreme violence against women.\u201d Made in Spain by director Juan Piquer Sim\u00f3n, there\u2019s a definite strain of giallo through its DNA \u2013 in its frequent heavy-breathing killer POV shots, you can see he wears black gloves \u2013 but leaving aside its Italian-style dubbing, no more so than say, an American slasher like Friday the 13th<\/em>. The opening scene, in which a young boy kills his mother, makes its adherence to slasher tropes clear in its obvious modelling on the opening of Halloween<\/em>, where Michael Myers murders his sister. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But that opening scene also makes clear that Pieces<\/em> is not<\/em> exactly what you think it is. The boy is putting together a jigsaw of a naked woman. His mother yells at him, telling him to throw it away. And then he attacks her with an axe. The gore is hyper-excessive: blood splattering everywhere<\/em>, drenching the boy, the room, the jigsaw, as he hits her over and over again. Unlike Halloween<\/em>, an unsettling portrayal of unmotivated child violence, it\u2019s comically over-the-top. From there on out, Pieces<\/em> consistently compliments its comically gratuitous violence with comically gratuitous nudity, mostly (but not exclusively!) of the female variety. Pieces<\/em>, Ian Conrich writes in Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema<\/em>, has an “almost self-reflexive awareness of its status as an exploitation film.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet it\u2019s not, like fellow 1982 slasher The Slumber Party Massacre<\/em>, a wry, knowing satire. There\u2019s nothing knowing about Pieces<\/em>. It is, instead, like a movie beamed directly from another planet, made by aliens who definitely know about slashers and giallo, but mostly grew up on the very different cinema of their home world. Subtly off in dozens of ways that feel collectively like genius,it never shies from or even attempts to subvert the expected beats \u2013 it is exactly what you think it is \u2013 but it has its own distinct, and distinctly unhinged, brand of gleeful madness. In an interview on the Grindhouse DVD, Sim\u00f3n reveals that a real pig carcass was used for a scene where a girl is cut in half and her guts spill out on the floor. A classic alien-making-an-Earth-film move: don\u2019t know how filmmakers do gore effects? Buy some real guts! <\/p>\n\n\n\n In one of the film\u2019s first scenes, apropos of nothing and with zero subsequent payoff, a gaggle of college kids have a conversation entirely about waterbeds, concluding with the immortal line, \u201cNothing is better than smoking pot and f**king on a waterbed.\u201d All the dialogue is like this, ringing with an unintentional absurdity that no Earthling could adequately replicate. A bloody chainsaw is found beside the dismembered body of a college student, and the detective \u2013 unwilling to wait for the coroner\u2019s report \u2013 very seriously asks the anatomy professor if the killing could have been done with a chainsaw. An undercover policewoman is assaulted late at night by a martial arts guy, which is explained to everyone\u2019s satisfaction when another character introduces him as \u201cmy karate professor.\u201d The whole thing bursts with so many non-sequiturs that it\u2019s an incredible achievement they squeezed in such a conventional little plot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like the mayor in Jaws<\/em>, the dean insists that the killer on the loose be kept tightly under wraps, lest it damages the college\u2019s reputation. \u201cIs all this really<\/em> necessary?\u201d he asks about the cops asking some basic questions. But where the mayor in Jaws<\/em> is motivated by the need to keep the wheels of capitalism turning for the Fourth of July, Pieces<\/em> dares to ask the question: what if the mayor was secretly the shark? Rather than anyone in the parade of red herrings \u2013 the creepy gardener, the anatomy professor, or our college kid protagonist, Kendall, who the cops adopt as one of their own \u2013 the killer is (spoiler alert) the dean himself, trying to create a 3D version the sexy jigsaw of his childhood wearing his dead mother\u2019s clothes. After the cops shoot him dead, one of them leans against a bookshelf that rotates under his weight, revealing the stitched-together corpse behind it. It\u2019s kind of a perfect metaphor: the same way the killer sews together body parts, Pieces<\/em> sews together bits and pieces of horror cinema into something new and grotesque. (But when Pieces<\/em> does it, it\u2019s cool.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the film\u2019s final shot, the stitched-together corpse suddenly reaches up and crushes Kendall\u2019s penis. No context, no explanation. But the aliens saw Carrie<\/em>, and they loved it. “Pieces” is streaming on several services<\/a> and available for rental or purchase from Amazon<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_dxdSiIiqxjs\/TPLwpjDephI\/AAAAAAAAAcU\/xlNrYFUAuFg\/s1600\/Pieces+poster.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n