Pieces (1982) Review:

For various horror genre fans, there are those who enjoy it just for the blood and those who like ones that have a little more intelligence with its blood. This movie has no intelligence in its script at all. I was shocked to see how the plot unfolded and was unimaginably preposterous.

The prologue to the story shows a child who was caught by his mother assembling a puzzle with a pornographic photo as its cover. In response to his mother's outlandish temper tantrum, the child grabs and axe (from where might I ask?) and kills her with unfeeling malice. He then hides until the police arrive with his caretaker. Ok, so that part of the film isn't bad. It is a nice lead up to how the killer came to be.

Yeah...40 years later he's interested again......come on!

However, forty years later, the killer decides to come out of nowhere and decides to start chopping people up again. Where's the continuity? A serial killer just doesn't disappear for four decades and then reappears out of thin air. Maybe to make the story sound creepy, the screenwriters could have had the murderer killed off and then he comes out of the woodwork by spirits; but that's not even used. How and why he returns is never explained. So what has the killer been doing for forty years? Vacation? Out killing people in other continents? What?

This villainous character does have a mystery surrounding it. As he kills more of his victims, he re-assembles the puzzle he once started when he was interrupted by his mother forty years before. This stirs intriguing questions about his personality and his preferences. Is he looking for a person to match the individual in the puzzle? Is that who he prefers more to victimize? The costume of the serial killer actually resembles The Shadow (1994), but obviously with much darker intent. The music is something too. Composed by CAM, the feel of it is very different from your normal slasher films. It uses a drowning organ tone, and with a bass line in the back. And within those notes are small bells that give the theme an eerie, demented sound. I like these specific elements a lot.

Really? Where's the logic in this film?!?!?!?!

But this still does not make this film good because of how terrible scenes were executed. For example, a college student is killed out in the middle of broad daylight, on campus, and no one noticed or heard what happened? How ridiculous is that? And that's just one nonsensical event that occurred. In a slasher/creature film, it is accepted that victims will wander off into danger at the exact moment the killer is in their path, but these particular moments have too many flaws! So many victims are mutilated in areas that are expected to have crowds of people, yet no one is around when it happens!

There is lots of blood throughout the killing scenes, and they definitely are brutal no doubt, but they don't make up for the improbable flaws that surround them. Plus, the acting isn't bad, but there are times where the dialog is very strange. Sometimes, even the mouth to voice alignment is off. And the worst, part is at the finale. This is a horror flick but no one said it involved a zombie until the very, very, very, last minute of the film and it totally destroys the ending. Something like that is random and out of place, much like the karate teacher that has nothing to do with the plot at all during one of the tense scenes. So silly.

Director Juan Piquer Simón's slasher film isn't unique nor does it have well written continuity. The blood, costume design, and music is there but that's all there is.

Points Earned --> 4:10