Pieces
Dir. Juan Piquer Simón
A killer, attempting to piece together a human jigsaw puzzle made from body parts, starts cutting up students on a college campus. Bad dialogue, terrible acting, gratuitous nudity, sloppy gore effects, and unexpected kung-fu ensue. Warning: contains guffaws.
Directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Piquer Simón in his native Valencia (though set in the States), the marvellously trashy and overtly sleazy 1982 extravaganza Pieces is a scuzzy slasher that ranks down there with the
Like the tagline indicates – It’s Exactly What You Think It Is - and what with me thinking it was a cheap, sleazy, terrible piece of filmmaking; it wasn’t wrong!
The plot, so to speak, is structured around grisly and splashy deaths, unattractive sex scenes and increasingly ridiculous scenes in which the main characters stand around and indulge in dull expository dialogue. The police investigation - which is carried out by a staggering array of people (some of whom aren’t even cops) including detectives Bracken (Christopher George) and Holden (Frank Brana), the Dean of the university (Edmund Purdom), professor of anatomy Prof. Brown (Jack Taylor), former tennis pro turned undercover detective Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George) and the campus alpha-male turned undercover cop assistant Kendall (Ian Sera) - consists of trawling through files and shuffling papers looking for clues. Tension could have been mustered in a number of stalking sequences, but the direction is so bland and the pacing so devoid of momentum that it just never feels as suspenseful as a good slasher should. Case in point – the killer sneaks into an elevator with one victim who fails to notice the big chainsaw he’s hiding behind his back, while another character, who is fished out of a swimming pool with a small net by the killer, simply reclines by the pool in terror giving the killer plenty of time to retrieve his chainsaw from the other side of the pool. The shock ending featuring a body made up of stitched together parts of all the victims is also a depraved delight that would be echoed years later in Lucky McKee’s May – though to much more poetic and chilling effect.
“While we were out here fumbling with that music, that lousy bastard was in there killing her. Bastard! BASTARD! BAAAASSSTAAAARRD!!!”
Interestingly, there is a number of tantalising giallo trimmings scattered throughout Pieces; not least the killer’s wardrobe which consists of black leather gloves, fedora hat and long dark raincoat. He also boasts some major psycho-sexual issues and is depicted in the prologue as a young boy indulging in a spot of matricide with an axe after mommy dearest finds him playing with a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman. When we cut to 40 years later, an unseen figure – the killer! - sporting black leather gloves fondles some obviously fetishised items in a box – including pieces of a familiar looking jigsaw and bits of the dress worn by his mother when he murdered her. There’s even a photo of her with a big red cross through it – you know, just in case we don’t get how much he hates her. Even the event which seemingly triggers the murderer’s memory of killing his mother (a young girl roller-skating into a big mirror and a flashback from the opening scene when the mother smashes a mirror when she discovers her son’s pervy jigsaw) echoes similar devices used in giallo films when the killer sees something that reignites a dormant obsession or psychosis. A basic staple of slasher and giallo films - prowling POV camera work – is also chucked in for good measure. Similarities with Italian gialli stop here though, as Pieces unfolds as a messy, somewhat soiled and hilariously bad splatter pic with about as much subtlety as a curiously stained breezeblock being hurled through an ornate stained-glass window.
If trashy slashers featuring big dollops of gore, nudity, bad dialogue, hammy acting and direction are your bag, then uncork something vulgar and cheap and guzzle it while watching Pieces. Sleazy, absurd and ridiculous.
