Hello Folks!
Well i have just seen the Arrow films DVD release of 80's slasher Pieces and all i can say is WTF????
I never got chance back in the day to catch up with this and was recently listening to the great podcast Motion picture massacre when Vaughn reviewed it, it sounded crazy so i had to get it and boy I'm glad i did, it really is quite insane to say the very least.
The story starts off with a small child innocently sitting in his room doing a jigsaw puzzle when his mum comes in to discover that the jigsaw he is doing is of a naked lady and flips out big time screaming "You remind me of your father, he's a dirty pervert!" and proceeds to smash up his room, you could say doesn't take very kindly to this so decides to smash her head in with an axe, whack! You see the full gory onslaught and the aftermath with a blood splattered room, in the meantime there is some lady trying to get in the house but she can't so the police come around and they break in to discover the Young boy cowering in the cupboard making out that someone else must have done it, sneaky!
We then flip forward 40 years later to see a you girl on a college campus trying to study quietly on the lawn when a guy in the Bush's starts up a chainsaw so she shouts him to be quiet and emerges to take her head clean off with the chainsaw, wallop! and all this is in the 1st 10 minutes of the film, so you know what your in for and it's great!
Starring the great Christopher George who is a detective on the hunt for whoever is chainsawing people to death you can really see where a hell of a lot of slasher movies got their idea's from such as the Wes Craven classic Scream series which bears more than a nod to this film, college campus, killer on the loose, many suspects, twist ending, you get the picture.
Released under the spanish title "Mil gritos tiene la noche" in 1982 it instantly caused a huge stir of protest for the level of violence, With the movie TheTexas chainsaw massacre you never got to see any real gore or chainsaw chopping but in this you certainly do and nothing is left to your imagination, the scene that caused particular alarm amongst the censors was the death of the tennis playing girl, this scene seems so real even if you watch it today and the reason for that is(no she didn't die!) is that they used an actual dead pig as a skin double and we see in close up the chainsaw tearing through the flesh, on the chainsaw note the tagline on the original cinema poster was "You don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre" Genius!
Also on another little note type fact, the most WFT? moment surely has to be when the undercovercop playing a tennis teaching coach is walking around the campus at night a chinese guy jumps out at her and starts doing kung before collapsing then waking up and says "Sorry, i must have had some bad noodles" then runs off, i kid you not, the reason this guy is in the film is because the producer Dick Randall was also at the time working on Kung-fu films and the guy was playing a Bruce Lee imitator in another one of his films so he gave a cameo, Needless to say that the film was a success for the makers from a quite low budget it grossed over $2 million at the box office.
So we do find out who the killer is of course after countless killings, dismemberment in a lift, poolside limb removal and a great death scene on a waterbed and i have to say if like me you have yet to see it do so, and if you have already seen it this release is a definate must have for your collection,
8/10 Jonny T.
Starring the great Christopher George who is a detective on the hunt for whoever is chainsawing people to death you can really see where a hell of a lot of slasher movies got their idea's from such as the Wes Craven classic Scream series which bears more than a nod to this film, college campus, killer on the loose, many suspects, twist ending, you get the picture.
Released under the spanish title "Mil gritos tiene la noche" in 1982 it instantly caused a huge stir of protest for the level of violence, With the movie TheTexas chainsaw massacre you never got to see any real gore or chainsaw chopping but in this you certainly do and nothing is left to your imagination, the scene that caused particular alarm amongst the censors was the death of the tennis playing girl, this scene seems so real even if you watch it today and the reason for that is(no she didn't die!) is that they used an actual dead pig as a skin double and we see in close up the chainsaw tearing through the flesh, on the chainsaw note the tagline on the original cinema poster was "You don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre" Genius!
Also on another little note type fact, the most WFT? moment surely has to be when the undercovercop playing a tennis teaching coach is walking around the campus at night a chinese guy jumps out at her and starts doing kung before collapsing then waking up and says "Sorry, i must have had some bad noodles" then runs off, i kid you not, the reason this guy is in the film is because the producer Dick Randall was also at the time working on Kung-fu films and the guy was playing a Bruce Lee imitator in another one of his films so he gave a cameo, Needless to say that the film was a success for the makers from a quite low budget it grossed over $2 million at the box office.
So we do find out who the killer is of course after countless killings, dismemberment in a lift, poolside limb removal and a great death scene on a waterbed and i have to say if like me you have yet to see it do so, and if you have already seen it this release is a definate must have for your collection,
8/10 Jonny T.
Press Release.
“A MASTERPIECE OF EARLY 80s SLEAZE.” – ELI ROTH, DIRECTOR OF “HOSTEL” AND “CABIN FEVER”.
From cult Spanish exploitation king, director Juan Piquer Simón (Slugs; Monster Island), comes Pieces, a brilliantly perverse 80s slasher starring Christopher George (The Exterminator; City Of The Living Dead), Lynda Day George (Beyond Evil; Mission: Impossible) and Jack Taylor (The Ninth Gate; Conan The Barbarian) that proves “you don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre.”
Jigsaw puzzles can be maddening. They can drive you to distraction. You might even go so crazy as to take your own mother down with an axe... and that’s only the beginning for one repressed teenager.
On a Boston university campus, forty years later, young girls are missing out. Missing out on hands, feet, arms and heads as a certain puzzled psychopath carves a bloody swathe through the college’s female population. Only one tough cop has the stones to bring him in, but can he track down the slayer before all the girls are mincemeat?
Described by TerrorTrap.com as “sick, sleazy, demented and twisted… one of our guiltiest of guilty pleasures… deliriously fun”, Pieces is a must-see movie for 80s exploitation movie aficionados and slasher fans everywhere.
Pieces (cert. 18) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by Arrow films on 5th September 2011.
Special Features
Introduction by star Jack Taylor; “Pieces Of Jack: An Actor’s Experience Of Spanish Splatter” – Actor Jack Taylor recollects his experiences of performing in “Pieces”; “Pieces of Deconstruction: Looking Back At A Grindhouse Gorefest” – “Hostel” producer Scott Spiegel, filmmaker Howard S. Berger, Fangoria’s Michael Gingold and horror historian Santos Ellin Jr. reflect on the lasting legacy of “Pieces”; audio commentary by Fangoria magazine’s Tony Timpone; reversible sleeve with original and newly commissioned artwork; double-sided fold out artwork poster; collector’s booklet featuring brand new writing on the film by Stephen Thrower, author of “Nightmare USA”; original 1.66:1 (16x9) anamorphic aspect ratio; original English and Spanish mono audio options.
Introduction by star Jack Taylor; “Pieces Of Jack: An Actor’s Experience Of Spanish Splatter” – Actor Jack Taylor recollects his experiences of performing in “Pieces”; “Pieces of Deconstruction: Looking Back At A Grindhouse Gorefest” – “Hostel” producer Scott Spiegel, filmmaker Howard S. Berger, Fangoria’s Michael Gingold and horror historian Santos Ellin Jr. reflect on the lasting legacy of “Pieces”; audio commentary by Fangoria magazine’s Tony Timpone; reversible sleeve with original and newly commissioned artwork; double-sided fold out artwork poster; collector’s booklet featuring brand new writing on the film by Stephen Thrower, author of “Nightmare USA”; original 1.66:1 (16x9) anamorphic aspect ratio; original English and Spanish mono audio options.
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