We watched Pieces on Shudder, and it was a fun if extremely dated slasher from 1982. It’s got intensely awkward scenes, lots of nudity, and is the ultimate form of copycat slasher bullshit. Listen to Horror Movie Talk’s take on this fun and puzzling slasher.

Pieces can be found on Shudder and Amazon.

Watch the trailer for Pieces:

https://youtu.be/S1cnjEAZOjk

Pieces starts with a young boy putting a smutty puzzle together. His mom walks in on him fiddling around with this puzzle and does what any good mom would do; she flips out. The boy leaves and comes back within ten seconds wielding an ax that he uses to murder the bejesus out of his mom. This supposedly happens in the 1940s, which is weird because I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it was remarkably hard to get your hands on a smut puzzle from the ’80s in the ’40s.

We fast forward in time 40 years to a university that is

having some issues with a grizzly series of chainsaw murders. The movie

transforms into a who done it with plenty of potential suspects that could be

the shadowy killer who seemingly only targets attractive, naked co-eds.

Pieces wants to be a fun, funny, cult slasher, and to some extent it is. It tried so hard to cash in on the early slasher craze that it actually ends up being a fun, funny, cult slasher because of how hard it falls on its face. It is good because it’s bad, and it’s funny because it’s not. Gratuitousness and bad irony are what rules the day in Pieces, and I had a pretty fun time watching this.

My Rating

3/10

On paper, this movie

is a solid 2/10, but somehow, through

silly bullshit and charm, it edges it’s way up into a pretty watchable piece of

camp fun.

Spoiler for Pieces

In the opening where the little boy kills his mom, the goof-factor is already off the charts.

How did this boy make it to ten years old without already killing his mom? So

much about this scene is silly that I immediately knew I was in for a good

time.

When the police entered the room where the boy murdered his mother, they found her severed head in the

closet, and I laughed out loud at how alive the actor who played his mother was

behind that dresser. I think I saw her eyes move.

Cutting up your mom really can take it out of you.

The stars of Pieces are all B movie and TV actors, with the only two actors of any real note being Lynda Day George (Mary Riggs, the hot undercover cop/tennis player) and Christopher George (Lt. Bracken who looks an awful lot like a young Roger Moore).

There was a lot of audio dubbing and voice over work in this movie, which was distracting at first, but after some time it just added to the campiness of it.

Weird Storytelling

The who done it aspect of Pieces is only interesting enough for you to say, “Hey, they are trying to do some sort of Clue ripoff.” However, then you would be terribly wrong because Clue didn’t hit theaters until three years later in 1985 – silly you. The story is very heavy-handed in its suggestion that the antagonist is Professor Arthur Brown, which leads you to believe that it’s probably him.

Professor Brown is in charge of the Anatomy Dept. and is

always sneaking around where he shouldn’t be.

It also insinuates that the killer might be the beefy

groundskeeper with the shifty eyes who enjoys stroking his chainsaw when he

isn’t raking the grounds of the University or shiftily shifting his eyes.

Shifty eyed groundskeepers are prime chainsaw massacre suspects...duh.

Pool Sex?

At one point in Pieces, a girl asks one of the lead characters, Kendall, if he wants to have sex in the school pool. He answers in the affirmative, then becomes sidelined by a plot point. As she waits for him in the pool, she is murdered, which is a good thing because let me just say, you should never have sex in a pool.

Not only is pool sex gross for everyone else who has to use

the pool after you, but it can also cause