Pieces (1982)

A quiet weekend on the schlock movie front, although I did manage to catch up with another so-called 'video nasty' in the form of the 1982 Spanish-US co-production Pieces.  It is another of those films which, when watched today, makes you wonder why on earth it was ever seized (although not prosecuted) under the Obscene Publications Act back in the eighties.  Sure, it has a lot of chainsaw killings and their concomitant gore, but it is all so over the top and unrealistic that it is impossible to take any of it seriously.  Perhaps it was the unpleasant details like one victim wetting herself with fear as she's about to get chainsawed that was objected to - at this distance in time, who knows?  Personally, what I found offensive was the hand-me-down plot that has been done before and better and the presence of Edmund Purdom, who, once again, goes through the whole film with that mortified look on his face, as he ponders how he keeps ending up exploitation films he clearly felt were beneath him, but still had bills to pay.  The answer of course, was simple: while Purdom might have had a magnificent voice, he was an actor whose performances made trees look animated - following his failure to establish himself in Hollywood's top rank of stars, he retreated, in a huff, to Italy.  But getting back to Pieces, unusually for a cheap continental slasher movie of the era, a lot of it actually was shot on location in Boston and boasts slightly higher profile than usual US stars.  Well, it has Christopher George and Linda Day, (who were married in real life), who were to be seen regularly in US TV movies throughout the seventies and eighties.  (Christopher George also made appearances in Italian-shot horror movies, most notably Fulci's City of the Dead).

It is, however, the presence of another American actor in Pieces left me somewhat perplexed.  Paul L Smith, who here plays the suspect grounds keeper, is nowadays remembered for appearances in mainstream movies like Midnight Express, Dune and Popeye (as Bluto), but he also did a stint in Italian exploitation, where he became known as a serial Bud Spencer impersonator, co-starring in a series of Terrence Hill/Bud Spencer knock offs.  Now, being American you'd expect, when appearing in an English-language film, he would speak with his own voice.  But no - as soon as he opens his mouth, we hear the distinctive tones of Edward Mannix, the regular (and best) English language voice of Bud Spencer himself, (he dubbed for the big man in most of his movies from the mid to late seventies onward).  Perhaps it is intended as a homage to Smith's time as a Bud Spencer impersonator.  Actually, Mannix, (who also regularly dubbed another burly and frequently bearded Italian actor in Luciano Pigozzi), could sometimes be heard in the most unexpected of circumstances.  In Fulci's New York Ripper, for instance, UK viewers are generally surprised to hear his distinctive tones emanating from the mouth of British character actor Jack Hedley in the English language version.  For sure, Hedley was playing an NYPD detective, but Mannix's voice was a poor match for Hedley, who was neither burly nor bearded, (the two things one immediately associates with Mannix's voice).

To return, once more, to Pieces, the film's main problem seems to be that it tries to meld together the slasher and giallo genres, but doesn't really do either element particularly well.  The POV stalkings by a black gloved killer just doesn't feel as suspenseful when they are wielding a chainsaw rather than a knife or even an axe.  The chainsaw simply doesn't lend itself to suspense with all that whirring and all those exhaust fumes - it is more a device of terror.  Not that Pieces makes it particularly terrifying, either.  Unfortunately, the script feels as much of a patchwork quilt of influences from other movies as the 'perfect' woman the killer is putting together from all those bits missing from the corpses of his victims.  The script, moreover, fails to move the plot along smoothly, leaving the viewer with the feeling that it is being put together in much the same manner as that jigsaw of the naked lady the killer is always working on, rather than progressing in a logical manner.  Worse than that, it frequently feels as if there are some pieces of the jigsaw missing, or at least inserted in the wrong places.  The film, of course, is infamous for its truly WTF 'twist' ending which, quite literally, comes out of nowhere and makes no sense whatsoever - rather as if a piece from a different jigsaw had strayed into the original puzzle.  Which rather typifies the films problems: it feels as if it has been assembled from a series of components selected for their shock value, rather than their plot relevance.  None of which to say that it isn't reasonably entertaining - even if the identity of the killer is obvious and many of the 'shock' and 'suspense' sequences utterly lame.  Oh, and even if tat ending makes no rational sense, it is very satisfying to see that annoying student get his comeuppance.