Pieces (film)


Pieces is a 1982 slasher film directed by Juan Piquer Simón, and starring Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Frank Braña, Edmund Purdom, Paul L. Smith, Ian Sera, and Jack Taylor. The plot follows an unknown assailant killing female students at a college campus in Boston, who uses their body parts to make a human jigsaw puzzle.
A co-production between Spain, the United States, and Puerto Rico, Pieces was filmed largely in the Boston, Massachusetts, area.
Since its release, the film has attracted a cult following and has been a drive-in favorite. While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty controversy.

Plot

In 1942, a 10-year-old named Timmy plays with a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman when his unhinged mother walks in and chastises him for it. After she orders him to dispose of the puzzle, he returns with an axe and murders her, then saws her body with a hacksaw. When the police arrive, they find him hiding inside a closet and Timmy acts as if he was a witness of the crime scene. The police believe this, not suspecting him as the murderer, and is sent to live with his aunt. Forty years later, a black-clad figure opens a box containing the bloodied clothing and a photograph of Timmy's mother. He also unboxes the bloodied jigsaw puzzle and starts to put it together.
As a nearby girl studies outside in broad daylight, she is decapitated with a chainsaw by an unidentified killer, who steals her head. Lt. Bracken and his partner Sgt. Holden arrive to investigate the murder. After the detectives explain to the college's Dean that there were no witnesses or suspects, the Dean asks the rather sinister Professor Brown, who teaches anatomy, to show the detectives around. Outside, the groundskeeper, Willard, is seen trimming a hedge with a chainsaw, similar to the one used in the killing. In the campus' library, a student named Kendall receives a note given by a girl to come to the pool later; the killer finds it and tracks down the girl at the swimming pool, where she is brutally sawed with the chainsaw. A little later, Willard arrives on the scene and is arrested, believed to be a suspect. Near the pool, they find the chainsaw and the girl's body parts, with the exception being that her torso is missing.
The next day, Dr. Jennings meets with Kendall at the station in hopes that Kendall can help provide a profile of the murderer. Lt. Bracken brings in an undercover cop named Mary Riggs, who was also a former tennis player. Bracken explains to Holden that Mary is going undercover to pose as a tennis instructor at the college and Kendall is going to assist her whenever he can. As a reporter named Sylvia Costa is stonewalled by Bracken, the killer stalks a girl later that evening, who had finished her dance routine, and saws her arms off inside an elevator just before Kendall and the police arrive. During the same evening, the killer also stalks Sylvia and stabs her on a waterbed.
Later the next day, one of Mary's tennis students goes into the locker room after the killer turns on music on the loudspeakers and is pursued until she meets her demise by having her waist sawed horizontally. While Mary and Kendall focus on turning off the loudspeakers' music, the killer steals the girl's legs and escapes. Prior to Mary getting enraged for the killer's escape, she and Kendall find Willard being released from custody due to lack of evidence. Kendall then goes to the police station and presents his theory to Holden about the killer being part of the university faculty, since the killer knows when and where to strike before avoiding the police. They spend hours researching files on the faculty and discover that the Dean previously changed his name and that his mother was brutally murdered, finding out the Dean's identity to be a grown-up Timmy. Meanwhile, Mary is drugged by the Dean at his apartment and attempts to saw off her feet after the previous victim's feet did not fit his mother's shoes for the puzzle. Bracken, Holden, and Kendall burst into the Dean's apartment, and the Dean gets shot in the head by Bracken while trying to kill Kendall, who was also trying to leave with Mary, paralyzed by the drugs given to her by the Dean.
After searching through the apartment and discovering the jigsaw puzzle, Holden – joking to Kendall that he should join the police force – leans on a bookshelf which switches around and contains the Dean's human puzzle; a decomposing body made of the Dean's victims' body parts stitched together and donned in his mother's dress, which tears apart as the jigsaw-corpse falls on Kendall, horrifying him. Later on, a shaken Kendall leaves with Holden and just as he grabs his jacket, the jigsaw-corpse inexplicably comes to life and castrates him as he screams.

Cast

Analysis

Film scholar Ian Conrich notes in Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema that Pieces has an "almost self-reflexive awareness of its status as an exploitation film." Conrich summarizes the film as a "hybrid amalgamation" of body horror films, "the pioneering splatter films of Herschell Gordon Lewis," and the Italian giallo. Additionally, Conrich criticizes the film for having a "transparently misogynistic narrative" as well as resembling the aesthetics of pornography, featuring scenarios similar to those found in contemporaneous adult films.

Production

The short script for Pieces was written by American exploitation filmmaker Dick Randall and Italian producer Roberto Loyola, credited as "John Shadow". Contrary to popular belief, Joe D'Amato was not involved in this production. It was given to director Juan Piquer Simón by Randall and Steve Minasian, with whom he had worked on previous films. Although the film was set in the United States, specifically in Boston, it was mainly shot in and around Valencia, Spain, home of film director Juan Piquer Simón, though some exterior filming took place in Boston. The shoot lasted four weeks with the cast and crew, and another week went by to film the special effects for an estimated budget of $300,000.
According to the interview with Simón in Pieces of Juan, the director says that none of the female stars of the film knew how to play tennis, even though they were supposed to be portraying "professional" players. A tennis coach had to be hired so that they could learn to lob the ball in a convincing enough manner to make the film believable. Simón also revealed in the interview that he is proud of the visual effects in the film, especially that a pig carcass was used for the effect of the chainsaw cutting through a young woman's stomach and the slaughterhouse guts used.
The film starred real-life husband and wife team Christopher George and Lynda Day George, Edmund Purdom, Spaghetti Western star Frank Braña, and Paul L. Smith.

Release

Theatrical distribution

The original film was first released in Spain on August 23, 1982. It opened in the United States the following year in Los Angeles on October 14, 1983.
The film has gone on to receive numerous revival screenings since its original release, often as part of the Grindhouse Film Festival.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Pieces holds a 46% approval rating based on 13 critic reviews, with an average rating of 3.64/10.
Kevin Thomas, film critic for the Los Angeles Times gave the film a negative review, writing, "Pieces is a wretched, stupid little picture whose sole purpose is the exploitation of extreme violence against women," and further criticized it for being poorly dubbed and lacking suspense. Billy Kelley, entertainment writer for the Fort Lauderdale News, awarded the film no stars, describing Pieces as a "gross-out extravaganza" and a "bargain basement abomination."
In a retrospective review, Alex McLevy of The A.V. Club wrote that the film's "narrative is pedestrian as hell, but damn, the execution. The movie manages to luck into that ideal combination of over-the-top bloodshed, gratuitous nudity, and unintentional absurdity for which enthusiasts of the genre are perpetually on the hunt." Bill Gibron of PopMatters wrote of the film: "Thanks to VHS and the thriving home video market, the sleazoid shocker became an instant cult classic... Pieces is the kind of fright film that sneaks up on you. It is really nothing more than your standard slasher effort with a chainsaw doing all the slice and dice."
Film scholar Scott Aaron Stine was less laudatory of the film, writing that it blends elements of the giallo and the slasher film "without adding anything new to either." Scholar John Kenneth Muir notes that the film features sequences "so poorly staged" that they "elicit laughter," ultimately deeming the film "utterly absurd from start to finish."

Home media

The uncut, uncensored director's cut of Pieces appeared as a 2-disc DVD in October 2008 distributed by Grindhouse Releasing / Box Office Spectaculars. The release includes interviews with director Juan Piquer Simón and an extended interview with star Paul L. Smith. The two-disc deluxe edition by Grindhouse includes, for the first time, an restored original soundtrack by Spanish composer Librado Pastor, as well as many other extras and bonus materials. On September 5, 2011, British company Arrow Video released the film on DVD in a anamorphic aspect ratio version with an introduction by star Jack Taylor and a number of other extras.
On March 1, 2016, Grindhouse released a double Blu-ray disc / 1 CD special edition of Pieces. The Blu-ray part of the package includes the U.S. theatrical and Spanish versions of the film, a new documentary about the history of 42nd Street called 42nd Street Memories, a re-scoring of the film, a new commentary for the U.S. version by star Jack Taylor, and the extras from the 2008 special edition DVD release. The CD part includes the original soundtrack of the U.S. release of the film composed by CAM, taken from the original master tapes. In addition, the first 3,000 units of the special edition included a 15-piece facsimile of the nude woman puzzle seen in the beginning of the film. This 3,000-unit limited edition, known as the "Puzzle Edition", was shipped out to customers early, and as of February 8, 2016, was sold out.