P I E C E S
1982 *1/2 89 mins.
1982 *1/2 89 mins.
One of the taglines for this film says it all. "Pieces . . . It's exactly what you think it is!" From the first time I heard that tagline, I wanted to see this film because I wanted to know exactly what they thought I thought it was. Well, it's many things. If it's pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, then you're right. If's pieces of people, then you're right. If you think this film is pieces of wasted film, you're right. This film is just so . . . bad. The dialogue rarely matches up exactly with the movement of the characters' lips, a lady in high heels has to run away in terror, a girl runs topless through a locker room, bodies are mangled with a chainsaw (hence, the other tagline: "You don't have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!"), and just about every other horror cliche imaginable is contained in this film. Yet, for some reason, I can't bomb it. I think that it could have been a decent film if done right.
Here's the premise: a young boy is assembling a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman. His mother finds it and gets outrageously upset about it. The son then takes an axe and kills his mother, only to make it look, to the police, like someone else came in and did it. Forty years later, a madman is reassembling the puzzle, not just with the jigsaw pieces, but also with pieces of his victims. This reassembled body is then dressed with his mother's clothes, which he kept from the first murder all those years ago.
This film is very predictable except in one way: the identity of the killer as an adult is not completely obvious at first. The person who seems to be the killer is not. Still, though, even that is found out pretty easily long before the killer is revealed. Basically, if you've got an hour and a half to . . . kill . . . spend some time with Pieces. If you'd rather watch something worth while, I don't blame you.
Not rated; contains language, sexual content, nudity, and gore.
Screenplay by
Dick Randall & John Shadow
Directed by
J. Simon