Le Sadique à la tronçonneuse

Whether or not this movie is an accidental camp comedy or if it was intended to be as silly as it was, Pieces delivers exactly what it promises - a chainsaw massacre that's not in Texas.

How could I not love this movie? It is a rare cinematic occurrence indeed to find such delightfully sleazy ingredients as chainsaw massacres, disco aerobics, on screen vomiting, pornographic jigsaw puzzles, a girl wetting her pants, and a guy salivating over a woman's feet all in one place. Only from the combined minds of Joe D'Amato, Dick Randall, and J. Piquer Simon could such a thing spring forth – and judging from the number of reviews here, I'm not alone in my fondness for this movie.

Many of the cast members will be familiar to fans of these kinds of movies. Christopher George (having already been through Graduation Day and a trip to the Mortuary) is a strong lead as the no-nonsense detective on the case, while Jess Franco veteran Jack Taylor creeps around the increasingly decimated campus as an anatomy professor. Of course the victims are just anonymous dead meat, but then that's all they need to be.

Say what you will about the overall quality of the film, but one thing's for sure - Pieces doesn't suffer from a lack of blood and guts. The crimson stuff flows freely once the chainsaw starts up, and the movie actually lives up to the surprisingly honest tagline - `it's exactly what you think it is' - take it or leave it. And the ending - what an ending!

'Pieces' is a wonderfully entertaining trashy slasher movie. Dumb, but lots of fun. It has impeccable exploitation credentials - directed by the guy who gave us 'Slugs - The Movie' and co-written by both Dick Randall (assorted kung fu and Emanuelle movies) and shlockmaster Joe D'Amato, director of the legendary 'Antropophagus'(a.k.a. 'The Grim Reaper') to name the most notorious of his 150+ movies. Plus the star is Christopher George ('The Exterminator', Fulci's 'City Of The Living Dead'). George plays a cop sent in to investigate some bloody slayings on a college campus (the movie is Spanish but tries to pretend it's American). The viewer knows the killer is obsessed with female bodies and there is a recurring motif involving jigsaws and mirrors. As in most slasher movies there are plenty of suspects to choose from, including a scary looking gardener (cult favourite Paul Smith, 'Midnight Express', 'Crimewave'), a Professor of Anatomy (Jack Taylor, who appeared in a few Jess Franco classics like 'Succubus' and 'Eugenie'), and the Dean (Edmund Purdom, 'The Fifth Cord', 'Ator'). The lovely Lynda Day (Christopher George's wife) plays an undercover tennis coach(!) and spaghetti western veteran Frank Brana is George's sidekick. If you approach 'Pieces' with the right frame of mind you'll have a hell of a good time. It's bloody, completely illogical and contains the most unexpected martial arts scene in the history of horror movies (yeah, I know...)

First saw this on opening night in 1983 Recently revisited and it's just so much cheesy/gory fun: atrocious acting, suspects all over the place, a killer in giallo gear, amazing chainsaw murders, and arguably the most absurd ending in slasher film history. Gotta love it!

While playing with a puzzle, a teenager is repressed by his mother, and he kills her and severs her body with an ax. Forty years later, in an university campus in Boston, a serial killer kills young women and severs their bodies in parts, stealing body pieces from each student. Lt. Bracken (Christopher George) makes a deal with the dean of the campus, and infiltrates the agent Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George) as if she were a tennis teacher and together with the student Kendall (Ian Sera), they try to find the identity of the killer.

"Pieces" is so bad, senseless and ridiculous, that contradictory becomes very hilarious and a slash, gore and cheesy cult-movie. The first funny points are the beautiful naked "actresses", always naked to be killed - all the victims are women with delicious bodies. The dialogs, screams and situations are so absurd that become another attraction: the tennis player that is an undercover cop to survive; or the student that accesses the documents and help the police in the investigation itself; or the killer that starts killing forty years after his first death with unexplained reasons or trigger. I could list lots of unreasonable situations in the screenplay, but better off the viewer finds them (and certainly will). The bloody effects are good, but when the killer is stabbing a woman on a water bed, the terrible cut is absolutely visible. I personally liked this film a lot, but I only recommend it for fans of trash-movies. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Terror da Serra Elétrica" ("The Chainsaw Terror")

Note: On 05 July 2020, I saw this film again.