Pieces (1983)
Directed by Juan Piquer Simion
Written by Dick Randall, Roberto Loyola
Starring Christopher George, Paul Smith, Edmund Purdom, Linda Day
Release Date October 14th, 1983
Published October 17th, 2023
Pieces? Where have you been for all of my horror movie loving life. Pieces is a 1983 slasher movie that perfectly mixes camp and horror. The film is often hysterically over the top and genuinely gross in gory set pieces well at home in the horror genre. It's not an easy balance between being goofy and scary and Pieces really hits the sweet spot. I can't say that anyone making Pieces knew they were making a goofball melodrama crossed with a bloody slasher movie, I imagine they thought they were just making an exploitation film. And yet, what they made is exactly what I love about 80s horror, a hilariously overwrought drama and a slasher movie.
Pieces centers on a child named Timmy Reston. It's 1942 and Timmy's daddy is fighting in World War 2. On the home front, Timmy has found some of dad's risque collection of... puzzles. Well, one puzzle specifically, one of a nude, smiling woman. When Timmy's mom catches him putting the puzzle together, she reacts with fury and plans to burn the puzzle and everything Timmy owns in revenge for this lustful heart. Timmy, being perhaps even more dramatic than his mother, runs to grab an ax which he uses to split his mother's skull and dismember her body. Timmy manages this just as his governess is arriving at the home. She calls the Police and though Timmy is covered in blood and his mother's head is in his closet, they assume he's just a traumatized kid and not the killer.
Cut to 40 years later, it's 1982 and we get our first bizarre non-sequitur moment. On a college campus, we see a young friendly girl on roller skates. She's waving to friends and appears to be a beloved young person. Shots of her on her roller skates are cross-cut with the arrival of a van for a glass company. We see the girl on skates and workers exiting the vehicle. She skates faster and more excited and the workers are removing a sheet of glass from the van. You know where this is heading and exactly what you think is going to happen, happens, she crashes into the glass. Is she dead? You might assume so. Why did we witness this? Beats me, there is zero explanation for this happening.
Find my full length review at Horror.Media
