Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

This is pretty much what you'd expect from the title: a group of actors, directors and special effects people talk about the slasher genre of the early 1980s. They cover all the big ones, some of the lesser ones, and go over the backgrounds.

How did the Italian films of Mario Bava influence the slashers? Are they anti-woman? Do they make kids do bad things? Is it a dead genre? All of this is covered and more... such as the concept of the "final girl" and other tropes so often found in horror.

I would have liked a bit more history, and maybe more credit given to Bob Clark and "Black Christmas" (which, to me, deserves more recognition than John Carpenter's "Halloween"). But I can't really complain with all these people they found to interview -- getting Carpenter, Craven, Rob Zombie and more to appear on film? Well done.

I have met the man who wrote the book this film is based on, the charming Adam Rockoff. If this film was your idea of education, get his book! Much more than you can cram into a 90-minute film.

I am a huge horror movie and slasher fan and I was shocked to see this on my Starz On Demand list. It is pretty good, but I think they try to cover a little too much ground in its short running time to really go into one subject too much. I have seen a lot of the movies that are discussed and it also introduced me to a few that I wasn't familiar with that I can now try to watch. It is good for an introductory course on slasher films and I seriously could have watched another hour's worth of material, but I understand why they had to trim to a shorter time. It does one of my least favorite things in documentaries though, when the subtitles would come up showing a person's name and what film they worked on, the font was very small and it was only on the screen for a second, so I had to keep rewinding to see the name's of people that I didn't recognize (which admittedly wasn't a lot, but still.) If you are a fan of the genre, this is a good little documentary to get you acquainted with some classic movies and maybe introduce a few new titles to track down.

This is a pretty good treatment of the thinking that went on behind the scenes of movies like "Prom Night", "Friday the 13th", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and others. The great thing is that the cool stories and insights are told by the key players involved (directors, producers, special effects artists). You get to hear not only their thoughts on the psychology involved, but also about the marketing struggles they had to deal with.

Essentially, this is a documentary which interweaves present-day interviews with film clips from classic 80's horror flicks to give you a behind the scenes look at a genre during its peak period of interest. If you're a horror fan, you'll probably like watching this.

The positive things about "Going To Pieces" are that it tries hard to include as many Slasher flicks as possible and deliver pieces of trivia for each of them. There are interviews with some influential directors of the genre (John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Sean Cunningham,...), actors, make-up guru Tom Savini and some "horror-experts".

For starters, this movie is a good introduction to the genre. Real fans will not find a lot of new information here. We all know about the influence of "Halloween", we've heard the story of how Freddy Krueger has been created, we know how Wes Craven revived the genre with "Scream". Sure, it's unfair to criticize that all this is being told again in a documentary like this. After all the story wouldn't be complete without this information, but in the end one can't learn too much from "Going To Pieces".

It would have been a real treat to learn the history of gore in movies, to learn about the influences for American slasher in detail. Instead we are only told about Italian horror in what seems like 2 minutes and then there's no further mention of it. "Halloween" is made out to be the first slasher movie, when even "Black Christmas" came before it in America. "Friday The 13th" is given more credit than it really deserves as an original movie. Make no mistake, I'm not trying to imply that those movies aren't very important to the genre, but it would have been a fresh approach to take a closer look at their origins.

Another thing to consider is that before "Going To Pieces" you should either make sure that you know all of the movies mentioned in the documentary or accept the fact that some great twist endings will be spoiled for you, some of which are the only reason to watch these flicks in the first place ("Sleepaway Camp", "Happy Birthday To Me").

In the end "Going To Pieces" will get you excited about watching old slasher flicks again (probably until you rent something like "Pieces" and realize the film is not half as exciting as it's made out to be in hindsight), but there are books out there that are a lot more informative than this documentary.

I can't even begin to describe my feelings for this extremely informative, and entertaining documentary. Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of The Slasher Film is an amazing look at the critically panned, but successful genre of horror, "the slasher genre" to be specific. The slasher genre is probably my second favorite genre, first being the situation dialog world of film. If I become a critic, a dream I hope I will fulfill, I can assure you I will be the only critic who gives a positive review to a slasher film. Remakes will not live by that rule.

The film is mainly about how slashers had their fifteen minutes of fame starting in the late seventies with the film Halloween (of course there were dozens that preceded this, but this was the first that got a lot of recognition. And the first to come to fan's mind when hearing the term). A countless number of slasher followed, but none of which really seemed to catch on, like Don't Go in the Woods Alone and He Knows When You're Alone.

Friday the 13th came out in 1980, and that was the next big horror film that spawned a countless number of sequels. And it became a box office success in no time. The next biggie was A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. The slasher that would spawn another line of sequels, and a crossover with F13's Jason Voorhees in 2003.

The one thing about the film is it not only goes into the bigger, more well known icons of the horror genre, but also the smaller ones that were sometimes made by companies that no longer exist now. When Halloween and F13 came out, other companies and sometimes just regular people would go and make a slasher film. Why not? It's cheap entertainment! You don't need a big budget, a whole lot of script, good actors, or even a moral. Just have some traumatized kid grow up to be a traumatized adult that goes around killing everyone for reasons you can't quite explain. I guarantee, it will have a following of some kind.

The film features three of the horror greats that I can't get enough of; John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and Tom Savini. Carpenter is the director of Halloween, Craven is the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street and dozens more cult films, and Tom Savini is the makeup artist on films like The Burning, Friday the 13th, and Maniac. Rob Zombie and others make appearances as well.

The film was made in 2006 I believe, so around that time there weren't a whole lot of remakes out, which I'll be the first to say this ever, was a bit disappointing since I wanted to hear what the directors of the films would say about their films being remade. Most of them poorly. At least we hear a few moments of Zombie explaining his Halloween, but that's about it.

While the movie spits facts like none other, it doesn't really get into the way these films made people feel. In the eighties, people weren't used to these movies, and many were freaked when seeing them in the theaters. I wish they would've shown some footage of people in the theater watching these films, or just the directors talking about the first time they saw a Horror film. That would've made the film a four star film.

My favorite segment hands down was when they discussed Silent Night, Deadly Night's boycotts, and overreactions from uptight parents. Seriously, this movie wasn't in the theaters very long because of parents who didn't know what the form of "dark entertainment" was. Why didn't they boycott a movie that was released four years earlier called Christmas Evil? Nothing pisses me off more than parents that overreact to something, and prevent others from enjoying it.

One lady on this documentary, Felissa Rose I believe, stated that if her daughter saw the trailer to this film she would explain what kind of entertainment there is in the world, and why it's a work of fiction. Not make a damn picket sign, and stand in front of a theater in the subzero weather because you get offended when you see something that is likely to be out of kid's heads come the holiday season.

Aside from simple flaws, Going to Pieces is highly educated and an informative look at a genre that should go anywhere but "to pieces".

Starring: John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tom Savini, Felissa Rose, Sean S. Cunningham, and Jeff Katz.