My giallo fest continues with the 80s gore flick PIECES directed by Juan Piquer Simón (SLUGS, THE RIFT) This fantastic giallo goodness packed with 80s wonder as well.
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We start out strong with a boy taking an ax to his mother because she slaps him around for having a pornographic puzzle.
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ZOOM! we teleport 40 years ahead to a college campus where randy 20-somethings try stroll around trying to hook up and tease teachers with sexual innuendo. But, there's a killer wandering the campus with a chainsaw....killing them one by one and shopping them into...pieces. Get it?
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Red herrings abound and between the ham-fisted dialogue, over the top gore, and the bad dubbing, this film is a real treat! Man...the dubbing. They are always trying to keep up with the lips being shown, so we get sped of phrases and...very...slow phrases that...come...out stilted.
We have great giallo scenes with the killer sporting a long trench coat, mask, hat, and giallo issued black gloves as he travels around the campus leering at young women in various states of undress as they swim, practice awful dance numbers and more - his giant chainsaw always at the ready. I thought, "Must be easy to sneak around carrying a massive chainsaw." There are scenes where the killer is stalking someone and you see their shadow with the HUGE chainsaw large and out in front. Mind you, the police are looking for this killer on the campus (No...they don't shut the campus down or have patrols cruising the area), yet he walks around freely with this giant...tool. :)
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There is a rather clever hook to the film that actually had me saying, "Ohhhh...I get it..." out loud at one point.
There are some fantastic trivia nuggets associated with the film including:
Because producer Dick Randall was simultaneously making kung-fu films in Rome, a cameo for a Bruce Lee imitator, Bruce Le, was written into this film, even though this scene makes no sense in the context of the rest of the film. This was a really amazing WTF?! moment that is worth the viewing alone! Just one of the many, "Wait...what...what the HELL did I just see and WHY?!" scenes in the film that are a lot of fun.
In the only trailer released, one of the final shots shows the chainsaw killer approaching the camera. As this happens, the same scream from Janet Leigh, the scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) when she gets killed in the shower scene, is used.
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I had not seen it for ages. I remember renting it back in the day on VHS - the cover calling to horror fans from across the store with it's sexy body and GIANT chainsaw splashed across the front of it. It was one of the VHS tapes that really had us chomping at the bit to see it.
Fans of 80s slashers have to add this to their TO WATCH LIST at once if they have not seen it. Currently available on SHUDDER in the US.
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