Horror Fest V Day One: Pieces

"It's Exactly What You Think It Is"

Pieces is an interesting slasher film from 1982 (filmed partially in Boston and partially in Madrid, which accounts for the strange dubbing throughout) that is remembered best for its fairly gruesome violence and its last second twist ending, which I'm going to go out on a limb here and say heavily influenced Lucky McKee's May.

The easy comparison for Pieces is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in part because the poster openly acknowledges the similarity in murder weapons. While it is true that the killer in Pieces uses a chainsaw to cut apart his victims, for the first half of the film, his M.O. is very different than that of the cannibal family in the Lone Star State. The hook for Pieces is a good one: in 1942 a young boy murders his mother with an axe, then hacks her up with a handsaw and feigns victim status when the police arrive.

Forty years later, the grown up psychopath begins killing young women on a college campus near where he grew up, but not simply to murder them: he's collecting the "pieces" - corresponding to a jigsaw puzzle repeatedly used as a metaphor - that would create a new "mother" (shades of Psycho). Pieces runs into trouble when the killer apparently has all of the parts he needs but continues to kill - in part to pad out the film's 85 minute running time - and take parts we already know he has. As a result - and this reminds me of the problem I had with Slumber Party Massacre III - the killer gets sloppy towards the end of the film and the logic of his plan collapses.

What Pieces does do well is extend the guessing game of "who's the killer" by placing otherwise easy-to-rule-out characters in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time. There's even a "why are all of our suspects in the same place for the same murder" lineup midway through the movie. Unfortunately, it's clear who isn't the killer before you're sure who is, even if they stack the deck against the Anatomy teacher and the groundskeeper. The police procedural component of the film also drags at times, but is balanced out by the inventive (and graphic) kills.

The ending (which I won't spoil) manages to save most of the faltering third act, although I unfortunately called it, as will anyone who remembers the last shot of May. It makes about as much sense here as it does there, but the shock value ends Pieces on a high note.

Up next: Jorge Grau's The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue!