The great thing about 80's horror is that some of it is so bad it's brilliant. Films like Slaughter High, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and this, 1982's Pieces are never going to be considered classics, but are riotously entertaining for that precise reason.
The good people at Arrow Video seem to know this. They bring out great releases of actual classics like Dawn and Day Of The Dead, lesser known gems like Romero's brilliant teen vampire film Martin, and 80s cult hit Vamp, but they also release definitive versions of films that I mentioned in the first paragraph. And in the days of just throwing a disc into a case, all their releases come complete with booklets, posters, reversible covers, and all the extras that it is possible to amass. You can tell their releases are real labours of love.
I'm going to be honest. I'd have never even heard of Pieces if I hadn't noticed it had been released by Arrow. One brief look at the synopsis and I knew it was something I had to see, and I hope you feel the same...
After a particularly disturbing childhood incident involving a jigsaw puzzle which results in a kid caving his Mother's head in with a sharp and blunt weapon, we jump 40 years to 1982 where the kid is now a psychotic man, intent on cutting up sexy young college students with the intent of making a human jigsaw puzzle.
Pieces is pretty terrible on all levels. The story line rarely makes sense (the 1940's flashback features a touch tone telephone!), the acting is dreadful and a lot of the cast are dubbed because the film was shot in Spain, doubling for Boston. As in Boston...America.
Just when some kind of sense is forming something weird happens, whether it be a character (an obvious red herring at that) attacking police officers for no reason, or the appearance of a Bruce Lee lookalike (apparently because the producers of the film were also making a martial arts film at the time and just thought it would be a laugh to have him in a scene.)
It's also almost too gory as well, if you can have such a thing as too much gore. Copious amounts of blood splash all over the shop, and heads and other various limbs get hacked off left, right and centre. Compared to similar films of the time it's really over the top grue-wise (but Arrow have released it uncut, so that's a bonus.)
But it's the terrible acting, the dubbed dialogue (the DVD have the option to play the film in Spanish, so I guess half the characters would be dubbed into Spanish. Stick with the English version. Unless you are Spanish), the strange nonsense that occur on screen, the excessive gore and nudity that make Pieces an absolute blast.
Sitting watching it on your own probably won't do it justice as much as sitting with a group of friends mocking it. Hell, even one of the films tag lines almost seem to be taking a pop at it, the slightly insulting 'It's Exactly What You Think It Is' (I bet the writers and directors were really pleased with that, although the film is awful. so they only have themselves to blame.)
Pieces is one of those glorious horror films that are so bad they are positively genius, and it's for this reason that everyone can rest easy that it will never get ruined by a terrible-for-the-wrong-reasons remake.
***
A hard film to rate. From a cinematic standpoint it's an absolute turd and should be given less than one star, but for entertainment and unintentional comedy value it rates around a 4 or 5. Highly recommended for any 'Bad Movie Night' you may host.
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