Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 10, 2016, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Pieces was the first “No one under 17 admitted” movie I ever saw back in my burgeoning horror-lovin’ youth without an older friend to help me through the doors. The additional sign over the box office reading, “If you’re not 17, you’re not getting in!” didn’t stop my friend and I—neither one of us close to that magic age—from achieving access.
So happy were we to have broached the domain of the age-forbidden that we each bought a huge tub of popcorn and giant soda at the concession stand (total price for everything: less than just the price of two tickets today) before sitting down with the larger-than-usual matinee crowd. How appropriate that the film that unspooled is the ultimate in horror-cinema junk food: not good for you at all, indigestible at times, but providing a heck of a rush while you’re consuming it.
Directed and, as we learn in Grindhouse Releasing’s three-disc Blu-ray set, scripted without credit by Spanish B-meister Juan Piquer Simon, Pieces first won notoriety for its appropriately unsubtle advertising tag: “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!” In this case, you have to go to a college in Boston (actually Madrid), where a maniac with the genre’s favorite power tool and a large knife carves his way through a succession of coeds. But he’s not just killing for the fun of shedding blood—he’s putting together a human jigsaw puzzle to match the real one, depicting a nude woman, that his mother once discovered him assembling as a child. Back then, in the ’40s, he hacked up his mom with an ax, as seen in a prologue that does equal violence to period accuracy via a glimpse of a push-button phone and the mom’s request for a plastic garbage bag.
Once my pal and I and our fellow viewers caught these references, the laughs and hooting began, and didn’t let up throughout the rest of what followed. Pieces is easily one of the most ridiculous examples of either the slasher or Eurohorror trends, with hilariously bad dialogue exacerbated by its straight-faced delivery by the actors. The cast is a mix of Americans (Christopher George and his wife Linda—a.k.a. Lynda—Day, veteran heavy Paul L. Smith), Brits (Edmund Purdom) and Spanish thesps (Frank Brana, Jack Taylor), at least some of the latter clearly speaking phonetic English for dubbing later. Add a series of exaggerated splatter setpieces with occasionally laughable setups—most notably the killer hiding his saw behind his back as he enters an elevator with his next victim—and assorted random acts of weirdness (like a sudden, out-of-nowhere attack by a “kung fu professor” played by Bruce Le), and you’ve got a movie that’s best enjoyed with a group who can appreciate psychotic cinema at its most entertainingly ludicrous.
Grindhouse, which previously issued Pieces in a double-DVD package in 2008, has given it a further visual upgrade for the Blu-ray, providing a 4K 1.66:1 transfer that’s remarkably sharp and colorful, while preserving the movie’s gritty, downmarket atmosphere. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 English-language soundtrack, including the library score by Italian publisher Cam, is nice and clear. The disc also offers the option to view the film in its original Spanish-spoken version titled Mil Gritos Tiene la Noche [“The Night Has a Thousand Screams”], featuring a different, melodramatic, piano-heavy score by Librado Pastor. The subtitled dialogue here is often altered from that on the English track, in an apparent attempt to make the movie seem less silly (the mom in the beginning asks simply for a garbage can, and the kung fu instructor doesn’t blame his sudden assault on “bad chop suey”)—which is understandable, if a little counterproductive under the circumstances.
Indeed, Pieces is one of those movies that, as Eli Roth notes in one of the Blu-ray set’s Easter eggs, is so over-the-top that no amount of viewer response and backtalk could make it seem any funnier. That’s amply proven by an alternate audio track, recorded during a screening at Hollywood’s Vine Theater and ported over from the DVD, in which the audience reaction is exactly what you think it would be: cheering and shouting during the many extreme sex-and-violence moments. But there’s nothing in their carrying on that’s nearly as much fun as watching the flick with your own gang.
Two further tracks are new to the Blu-ray. One consists of an alternate electronica score by Umberto (a.k.a. Matt Hill) that’s listenable only on its own, sans the film’s dialogue and sound FX. The other is a commentary by co-star/Eurocinema veteran Jack Taylor, who genially resists any attempts by moderator Calum Waddell to discern artistry in Pieces. He says things like “I don’t think there was any intellectual process to it whatsoever” more than once, though he does recall that making horror films was a way of getting around censorship during that period in Spain, and also shares amused and amusing recollections of collaborators ranging from Jess Franco and Amando de Ossorio (with whom he had a fairly contentious experience) to Conan the Barbarian’s John Milius.
Also present on disc one is a remarkable set of image galleries, among which can be found such rarities as the photo shoot for the nudie puzzle and behind-the-scenes pics of the dead pig used for close-ups in one sawing scene. A collection of promotional art reveals the movie’s many alternate international video titles, among them The Chainsaw Devil, Mutilator Man and, just to confuse slasher buffs, Maniac, with art stolen from the poster for 1987’s Slaughterhouse! Simon and a couple of colleagues discuss some lobby cards and posters in an extra video segment, during which he reveals that he still owns the original puzzle used in the film. An Easter egg provides outtakes from this bit, in which the group ogle nude photos of Pieces’ starlets with a fetishistic relish worthy of the film’s villain, and take a few moments to dis the Baldwin brothers!
So, how intentional are all the weird/humorous touches that make Pieces stand out from the stalker-film crowd? According to Simon in Pieces of Juan, one of two 55-minute interview featurettes on the second disc, quite a few of them. The director asserts that the outline initially offered him by producers Dick Randall and Steve Minasian “dared me to figure out how to make it even moderately believable,” and notes that “the more exaggerated, the more fun and even the more interesting it is.”
This segment, produced and directed by fellow Spanish genre filmmaker Nacho Cerdá, is both fun and interesting throughout, and while the line of questioning sometimes doubles back on itself, plenty of nifty tidbits and trivia are revealed. Simon was first offered Last House on the Left 2 by Randall and Minasian, after he distributed their equally jaw-dropping Animal House ripoff King Frat in Spain; the onscreen “campus” was actually an unoccupied chalet; a good deal of the film (including the inclusion of Le, who was pressed into service while visiting the set) was improvised to boost its running time; and young star Ian Sera had to have an ice bag applied to bring down his visible erection during a bedroom scene. For good measure, Simon shares a few notable observations on the Spanish film scene of the ’80s, during which he bucked government prohibition of shooting in any language other than the native tongue.
Paul Smith: The Reddest Herring, a lengthy chat with the late actor at his home in Israel, isn’t as on-topic as the Simon piece; only a small portion is devoted to Pieces itself. But only the most die-hard devotee of that movie could object, as Smith takes us on a fascinating trip down memory lane, from his debut in Otto Preminger’s Exodus—which led to him joining the Israeli army to fight in the Six Day War—through many collaborations with Dino De Laurentiis and ending with the berserk Sonny Boy, which leads to a great closing line. Revealing himself to be a thoughtful thespian who stuck to his guns and stood up for his opinions, through a career dotted with as many schlock items as high-class/big-scale productions, Smith demonstrates a fine sense of humor and also admits he’s squeamish about blood—he requested not to be directly involved with Pieces’ gory bits—and rats, which came up during his stint on Sam Raimi’s Crimewave. Yet he also spins a hilarious anecdote about willingly eating the cooked tongue of a dead cow while playing the Beast in David Lynch’s Dune!
Both these documentaries first appeared on Grindhouse’s DVD, but there’s plenty of new stuff on Blu-ray number two as well. First up is an amiable new audio interview with Minasian, who discourses for a few minutes about Pieces’ U.S. release and how he got screwed by distributor Edward L. Montoro of Film Ventures International. There’s another Easter egg here in which Simon talks about the obstacles of doing Christmas horror movies, though Randall’s own Don’t Open Till Christmas isn’t brought up.
The big fresh extra, however, is Waddell’s feature-length 42nd Street Forever, in which a galaxy of genre and B-movie directing stars wax nostalgic about the notorious Manhattan strip that, following golden days of showcasing theater and classy film fare, hosted all sorts of disreputable cinema in the ’70s and ’80s. Everyone from Frank Henenlotter to Joe Dante contributes to this fascinating history, recalling specific movies they saw there (copious photos reveal odd double features like Halloween and The Spook Who Sat by the Door), the grimy details of the theaters and subcultures of people who dwelled within them and the porno craze of the ’70s when adult fare went mainstream, winding down with the street’s cleanup in the ’80s, during the age of Rudy Giuliani and home video. Finally, the careers of numerous key Pieces people are covered in thorough biographies/filmographies, and Grindhouse goes yet another extra mile by scattering relevant video/audio snippets (trailers, still more interview bits) throughout them. (An Easter egg here has The Bruceploitation Bible author Michael Worth briefly discussing Le.)
On top of all that, the third disc is an audio CD of the assorted score pieces from other Italian horror films pieced together by Cam for the soundtrack; not only can you now hear them on their own, you can learn which movies they were all derived from. And there’s even a small replica of that nudie puzzle tucked into the case as well! This set is a definitive example of the sum of the Pieces adding up to one exemplary whole.
