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  • The Laughter Dies
    • An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1998)
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    • Private School (1983)
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    • Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)
    • The Swinger (1966)
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    • Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie (2012)
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    • What Planet Are You From? (2000)
    • What's Your Number? (2011)
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    • Your Highness (2011)
  • Thrill-Less
    • Abduction (2011)
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    • Airport (1970)
    • ATM (2012)
    • Avalanche (1978)
    • The Avengers (1998)
    • Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
    • Band of the Hand (1986)
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    • Beneath the Darkness (2012)
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    • Superman Returns (2006)
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    • This World, Then the Fireworks (1997)
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    • Vertical Limit (2000)
    • Visiting Hours (1982)
    • When Time Ran Out... (1980)
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    • Windows (1980)
  • To the Shredder!
    • Angela's Ashes (1999)
    • At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
    • Atlas Shrugged Part 1 (2011)
    • The Blue Lagoon (1980)
    • Blood and Chocolate (2007)
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    • A Thousand Acres (1997)
    • Tropic of Cancer (1970)
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  • Epic Fail
    • Alexander (2004)
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    • Conan the Barbarian (2011)
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    • 54 (1998)
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    • Lady in the Water (2006)
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    • The Man Who Wasn't There (1983)
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    • What Dreams May Come (1998)
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    • X, Y and Zee (1972)
  • Oh, the Horror...
    • An American Haunting (2006)
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    • Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
    • The Gates of Hell (1983)
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  • Sci-Fried
    • Alien: Resurrection (1997)
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    • Timerider (1982)
    • Trog (1970)
    • Yor, the Hunter From the Future (1983)
  • A Little Pitchy
    • The Apple (1980)
    • At Long Last Love (1975)
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    • From Justin to Kelly (2003)
    • Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)
    • Glitter (2001)
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    • Staying Alive (1983)
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    • Yes, Giorgio (1982)
  • This is Art?
    • Anatomy of Hell (2004)
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    • Inserts (1976)
    • Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
    • The Moon in the Gutter (1983)
    • Passion in the Desert (1998)
    • Querelle (1982)
    • Rubber (2011)
    • Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
    • Siesta (1987)
    • The Singing Forest (2003)
    • Straight to Hell (1987)
    • Track 29 (1988)
    • Two Girls and a Guy (1998)
    • Zabriskie Point (1970)
  • Gut Check
    • Amin: The Rise and Fall (1981)
    • Andy Warhol's Bad (1977)
    • Angel (1984)
    • Anthropophagus (1980)
    • The Baby (1973)
    • Bitch Slap (2010)
    • Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)
    • Captivity (2007)
    • Chaos (2005)
    • Escape 2000 (1983)
    • Forbidden Zone (1982)
    • The Gore Gore Girls (1972)
    • Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1980)
    • Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)
    • House on the Edge of the Park (1980)
    • The Human Centipede: First Sequence (2010)
    • The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence (2011)
    • I Spit On Your Grave (1978)
    • Jail Bait (1954)
    • The Love-Thrill Murders (1971)
    • Luther the Geek (1990)
    • Mother's Day (1980)
    • Otto; or, Up With Dead People (2008)
    • Reform School Girls (1986)
    • The Room (2003)
    • Strangeland (1998)
    • Survive! (1976)
    • The Tempter (1974)
    • Vegas in Space (1992)
    • Vice Squad (1982)
    • Vulgar (2002)

Pieces (1983)

Picture

        This nasty and nauseating little number is not only merely bad because of its extreme, foul violence, but it is also bad because it has no logic, coherence, or even a hint of style.  Pieces is just a piece of splatter excrement.

        The story begins in 1942 when a young boy takes an axe and chops up his mother.  Why?  Because she got angry over the fact that he was putting together a jigsaw puzzle that features the picture of a naked woman.  So, yeah, mom had to go.  But of course, when the police arrive, no one suspects the little tyke of being the killer.

        Anyway, jump to the present, and suddenly a university is the site of some vicious killings.  First, a girl is decapitated via chainsaw while studying....in broad daylight....in the middle of campus.  Naturally there were no witnesses (?) and her head has vanished.  What you would expect to happen is that the rest of the students would be horrified and, if not leaving the school entirely, would probably not want to go out anywhere alone.  But, no.  Not only does nothing change at this college but none of the other students even seem aware this vicious murder even happened.

        Anyway, enter schlock god Christopher George (Graduation Day, The Gates of Hell, Mortuary) as the local detective hunting the killer.  Who could it be?  Well, as much as the movie would have you believe the killer is the creepy gardener, Paul Smith, the answer is actually very, very obvious.  So, since the mystery element in Pieces doesn't work, what about the rest of it?  It's just a nonsensical bloodbath.  Every few moments another stupid girl goes somewhere alone and then gets sawed to...well...pieces.  One girl goes swimming in the university pool in the middle of the afternoon, so of course she's completely alone, and even more believably she doesn't bother to turn on the lights.  Another gets on an elevator with the killer, who's not only clad in black from head to toe with gloves, trenchcoat and hat, and hiding the chainsaw behind his back (yeah, right).  And so on.  We just get one laughable set up like these that results in scenes of women getting chainsawed with blood and guts being spewed out all over the screen.

        The ultimate (and completely illogical) motive of the killer is to take certain pieces from his victims in order to sew them all together to form his own jigsaw-puzzle woman.  Wouldn't just killing one woman be enough, after all, she'd have all her parts already together (or at the very least cutting up the parts and sewing them back together)?  And why does the killer wait 40 years before going on this rampage?  And why is it that none of the other female students realize that their classmates are getting murdered?

        To speculate on the answers to these questions is giving Pieces much more credit than it deserves.  After all, this would mean you would be putting much more thought into watching it than the creators put into making it.  It's just a piece of garbage for those viewers who only care about the amount of blood spilt, and not to how or why.

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