B to Z Movies: Pieces (Mil gritos tiene la noche, The Night Has 1,000 Screams) (1982)

"It's exactly what you think it is." That has to be one of the greatest taglines ever. The other one's pretty good, too, but that second one, right beneath the title, is just awesome in how it doesn't even try to pussyfoot around but, instead, declares, "Yep, it is what it is. Take it or leave it." It's brilliant. I first learned of Pieces, fittingly enough, in the documentary, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film. However, while I learned of the title and saw some clips, I wasn't able to connect the two at the time, as the film didn't have a segment all to itself; rather, it was briefly mentioned when the documentary covered the massive influx of slasher movies that flooded theaters during the early-to-mid 80's, and how many of them were produced by low-rent, independent production companies that didn't survive the decade. I saw the poster and the scene where the woman gets stabbed to death on the waterbed, with the really nasty visual of the knife going through the back of her head and out her mouth, but it wasn't until many years later, when I saw the Cinema Snob's video on Pieces, that I learned they were the same movie (sidenote: he felt the same way about the tagline). In fact, that video was where I first learned a fair amount about Pieces, which Brad Jones, as well as Eli Roth, consider to be one of the greatest slashers ever. It's definitely one of the most gruesome slashers of the 80's, that's for sure, with some truly horrific and nasty gore effects, and is also completely unapologetic in how much of a tasteless, sleazy exploitation flick it is in general. But, one of the absolute best? Eh, I can't say I agree with that sentiment, as, even for a film in a subgenre that isn't exactly known for superlative filmmaking, Pieces is notorious for its incompetence. It can definitely be considered entertaining in that regard, hence the B to Z Movies label, but still, it has random moments that are strange and inexplicable just for the sake of it, plot-points and misdirection that aren't executed well, paper-thin characters, and acting that ranges from indifferent to laughably bad, even from the show-biz veterans we have among the cast.

(This is another instance where I feel the need to put in a bit of a disclaimer. As always, while I'm not going to show any nudity, I will show images of the kills and their aftermaths, which are very nasty. You've been warned.)

Boston, 1942. Young Timmy Reston is caught playing with a pornographic jigsaw puzzle by his mother, who harshly admonishes him for it. She then intends to burn it and any other perverse piece of entertainment he has stashed around his bedroom, only for Timmy to leave the room and then return with a large axe. He brutally murders her, then dismembers her body, while outside, a neighbor finds she gets no answer at the door, nor when she calls the phone. She calls the police and, that evening, she and two officers break into the house and head up to Timmy's room. After finding the floor covered in blood, and Mrs. Reston's severed head in a closet, they then find Timmy himself in another closet, covered in blood and crying about seeing his mother murdered by an intruder. The neighbor sends Timmy to be with his aunt, who lives an hour away. Forty years later, Timmy, unbeknownst to anyone else, is now a demented madman and embarks on a hideous killing spree on a Boston university campus, targeting young women. He murders his first victim, student Virginia Palmer, by decapitating her with a chainsaw. Lieutenant Bracken and his partner, Sergeant Holden, are assigned to the case. They talk with the college dean, Foley, suspecting that the killer may be on the staff, or even one of the students; the Dean, in turn, offers his full cooperation, but asks that they keep the truth about the murder a secret from the students, staff, and media. Soon, the killer strikes again, mutilating another student named Susan while she's swimming in the gym's pool. The groundskeeper, Willard, who earlier found Virginia's beheaded body, comes upon the scene and finds a yellow, blood-splattered chainsaw, similar to the one he uses. He's spotted by Kendall James, a student who intended to meet up with Susan, and attempts to flee the scene, only to be confronted and arrested. Not convinced that he is the killer, Bracken decides to place some undercover agents amid the university's staff, and also enlists Kendall's help, figuring he may know the killer without realizing it. Meanwhile, the killer continues his crimes, gradually assembling the various body parts he takes from his victims into a literal human jigsaw puzzle.

A co-production between four countries (the United States, Spain, Italy, and Puerto Rico), Pieces was the creation of Dick Randall, a New York-born producer who began working in Italy in the 60's, making exploitation and giallo films. In the 70's and 80's, he expanded his range, going back and forth between Rome, London, and Hong Kong, and produced everything from full-on porn and sexploitation to Bruceploitation (The Clones of Bruce Lee, for instance), blacksploitation, and knockoffs of popular mainstream movies. He also occasionally acted as a screenwriter, often under various pseudonyms, and on movies such as The Mad Butcher, Lady Frankenstein, The Cannibal Man, and The French Sex Murders. He, along with Italian producer Roberto Loyola, wrote the initial treatment for Pieces, called Jigsaw, which was only thirty pages long and originally intended for a television mini-series. He would co-produce the film with Stephen Minasian, a frequent collaborator of his around this time, and who would be instrumental in getting a U.S. distribution deal after Edward Montoro, head of Film Ventures International, initially wasn't interested. (Randall would also go on to produce some other slashers, notably Don't Open Till Christmas and Slaughter High).

Since Randall had produced one of Juan Piquer Simon's previous movies, Supersonic Man, he and Minasian opted to hire him to direct Pieces. Simon was something of a Spanish Ed Wood, as his movies weren't exactly critical darlings (Pieces is the highest rated one on IMDB and even then, it's only at a 6.0, which some may argue is too high), and his directing and screenwriting talents were dubious at best, but he was somebody who clearly loved what he did, regardless. Also like Wood, his movies have a unique quirkiness about them, which has led to their having a cult following. By the time he did Pieces, Simon had been making movies since the 60's, with his filmography including Satan's Blood, Mystery on Monster Island, and Los diablos del mar. When he got this script, he decided to expand upon it with uncredited rewrites, and during shooting, a lot of the scenes and dialogue were improvised. I've also heard that one of Simon's goals in taking the movie on was to make it more "believable." Keep that in mind as we continue on. Following Pieces, Simon went on to do some other noteworthy cult films, like Extra Terrestrial Visitors, aka Pod People, and Slugs. There was talk of a sequel to Pieces in the late 80's, and when he was interviewed in 2008 for the film's DVD release, Simon again mentioned that he was trying to get a sequel off the ground. But, obviously, that never happened, and his output slowed by the 90's and stopped altogether by the 2000's, as he could no longer get the distribution deals he once had. He died of lung cancer in 2011, at the age of 75.

Even for this kind of movie, the characters are virtual non-entities, despite being played by some very notable people in some cases. Case in point, Christopher George as Lt. Bracken. Despite being best known in the mainstream for his television work, George was no stranger to lower-tier horror and exploitation movies at this point in his career, as he'd already appeared in stuff like I Escaped from Devil's Island, Grizzly, Day of the Animals, Graduation Day, and Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead. But, not only does Pieces give him very little to do except mostly work behind-the-scenes, trying to identify and capture the killer while he's hacking people up, but his performance often comes off as either fatigued or indifferent, and his anger and disgust at the murders' brutality forced (that could be because he had to dub his lines in a Madrid hotel room, and also due to some of the dialogue he was given). He does have some moments of charisma, like in his scenes with Kendall James when he gets him to help with the investigation and when he talks with Mary Riggs about going undercover on the campus, and there's a running bit where he's often trying to get a light for his cigar from Sergeant Holden, only to be constantly foiled, but those moments are few and far between. In fact, despite George being top-billed, Bracken rarely takes part in the action. For much of his screentime, he's just going through the motions as a detective: meeting with the Dean and discussing how the killer could possibly be a member of the staff, asking the anatomy professor if the second victim could've been mutilated by the chainsaw found at the crime scene, coming up with the idea of having someone go undercover and having Kendall James work with them, and so on. He and the others always arrive at the scene of a crime after the murder has been committed, and it's only at the end, when the killer's identity is revealed, that Bracken does anything significant, which is put the killer down with a single headshot.

Lynda Day George, Christopher George's wife and frequent costar at the time, doesn't first appear here as Mary Riggs until 33 minutes in, but she does have a bit more to do than her beau. Notably, she has one of the movie's most notoriously bad instances of dialogue: after finding the gruesome remains of another murder victim, she melodramatically screeches, "BASTARD! BAAAAASTAAARD!... BASTAAARD!" (I can't do that moment justice in writing. It looks and sounds like she was practicing the best way to yell "bastard," and they used all three attempts.) In any case, a tennis champion, who also happens to work a desk job at the police department, Mary is more than willing to volunteer for the undercover assignment at the university, despite the danger involved. In fact, as far as she's concerned, the more dangerous, the better, as she's been bored to death with her regular-job. However, she's not too thrilled when she learns that Kendall James is the only person she'll have watching her back, as Lt. Bracken says they're shorthanded and no one else is willing to volunteer. But, as she works at the school as a tennis coach, Mary grows closer with Kendall, especially when he comes by to check on her when he sees her walking around the campus by herself (and after his kung-fu professor inexplicably attacks her). She then allows him to take her back to her home afterward, though she's not quite ready to let him in for some "coffee." As more grisly murders happen, Mary becomes increasingly uneasy about being alone on the campus. Near the end of the movie, she goes to meet with the Dean at his apartment, leading into the climax, where she nearly becomes the murderer's next victim. 

Sergeant Holden (Frank Brana), Bracken's partner, also gets into the action more than Bracken himself. When Willard the groundskeeper tries to run after being spotted at the scene of one of the murders, and fights with the police, Holden is the one who gets him to surrender, threatening to shoot him if he doesn't stop resisting arrest. Following the third murder, Bracken has Holden do a background check on every, single member of the university's staff to try to find a suspect. And after two more people die, Bracken implores the exhausted Holden to work harder, even encouraging him to take something to stay awake. Bracken sends Kendall to help him, which Holden initially objects to, since Kendall is still technically a suspect, but Bracken couldn't care less. Moreover, while working together, they uncover some information that unmasks the killer, and they, along with Bracken, rush to save Mary. And also like Mary, Holden also has a gem of a line, in how he describes what he and Bracken are doing at the start of the investigation: "Right now, we're just buying clothes without labels and trying them on for size."

While hardly the hunkiest or most athletic guy you've ever seen, Kendall James (Ian Sera) has either banged or come close to banging every hot girl on the campus. He gets caught up in the murder mystery when Susan, a girl he was planning to have sex with at the gymnasium pool, is mutilated there, and he stumbles across the crime scene and also sees Willard there. After they realize that the killer attempted to keep Kendall from arriving at the pool early so he could have with his way with Susan, and Bracken decides he's not a suspect, Kendall becomes much more involved in the case. Bracken brings him in to the station so he can help psychiatrist Dr. Jennings build a psychological profile of the killer, as Kendall may know him without realizing it, and also tasks him with aiding Mary Riggs while she's working undercover. Kendall, who happens to be a big fan of Mary's tennis playing, is more than happy to help. When he sees her walking around the campus alone one night, he decides to head down and check on her (after he decides that the girl he was having sex with is too loud and going to get them kicked out, saying, "Boy, anyone would think you were in bed with Chainsaw Charlie!"). He comes upon her after his kung-fu professor assaulted her for no reason, and he escorts her back to her home. Kendall does try to get with her as well, but Mary isn't in the mood and he has to settle for a peck on the cheek. He's also with her when they discover the latest murder in the locker room near the tennis court, with Kendall himself finding it first. Then, during the third act, he's sent to assist Sgt. Holden in looking up info on the university's staff and, again, he's the one who hits upon a piece of information that leads to the killer's unmasking. Finally, Kendall becomes a major butt-monkey during the last scene, and suffers a painful and humiliating, as well as unexplainable, attack at the very end.

I've seen few red herrings who are more obvious than Willard (Paul Smith), the sinister campus groundskeeper. From his first scene, where he's working with a yellow chainsaw identical to the one used earlier to decapitate Virginia Palmer (whose body he's said to have found), then wipes the blade while chuckling to himself, and goes on to glare at the Dean when he walks away after they've talked, before spotting some students doing it nearby, they try, oh, so hard, to make him seem like the killer, as he always talks in a very menacing tone, and looks at everybody with a distinctive, crazy-eyed expression. When he resists arrest at the scene where Susan's mutilated corpse is found and proceeds to throw guys around, no-sell a hit from a wooden pole, which breaks against his burly body, and struggle against three people at a time, you know he's likely doing this because he knows he's going to be blamed for the murder. While he is arrested, he's eventually let go because, as Mary tells the Dean, "We haven't got enough evidence, yet" (even though he's not the killer, finding him at the scene, with blood on his hand after he touched the chainsaw, and his violently resisting arrest, isn't enough to convict him?). After that, they still try to make him look suspicious, as he's pops up near the tennis locker room just after we've seen the latest murder, and continues acting menacing when Mary and Kendall show up and try to figure out how to turn off this loud music playing over the speakers. But after Willard switches the music off, he runs off when Kendall finds the latest victim and isn't seen again.

One character who gets a fair amount of screentime but, in the end, does nothing significant, is Prof. Arthur Brown (Jack Taylor), the university's anatomy teacher. At the beginning of the movie, he's called in to the Dean's office to meet Lt. Bracken and Sgt. Holden, as the first victim was one of his students. He's not at all enthused about having to do this, and wants to get the meeting over with so he can get on with his day. He's also not thrilled about having to show the detectives around the campus, but the Dean presses him into it. While talking with them, Brown says he didn't know the girl that well, as he doesn't pry into his students' private lives. After Susan is killed by the pool, Bracken asks Brown if, in his opinion, she could've been mutilated by the chainsaw left there. Looking at both the body parts and the saw, he comments, "Even a layman could see it was done with this. I'd say it's elementary." And following the third murder, he stumbles upon the scene and Bracken is clearly suspicious of him, but nothing more comes of him. His final scene is before the climax, when Mary walks with him across the campus. As they walk, he suggests that the Dean may not be the sweet guy he appears to be, and also suggests that Mary stop prying into other people's personal businesses. This arouses her suspicions about him, and she later goes to the Dean to talk with him about Brown's personality. All the Dean reveals is that Brown is gay, which he refers to as an "affliction," but adds that he lets it slide because Brown has never broken the rules. This seems to be an open secret about the campus, as the first time we see Brown, he gets teased by a well-endowed girl who asks him what and where the pectorals are. He tells her that she personally herself has nothing to worry about in that regard, and runs his hand across his own chest to address where the muscles are. And in a later scene, some other students are snickering about Brown's sexuality, calling him "the campus closet queen" and a "sugarplum."

The movie makes no secret of how Timmy Reston (Alejandro Hernandez), the little boy during the opening, is the killer. Not only is this a foregone conclusion in how he kills his mother with an axe and then dismembers her out of retaliation for her harshly punishing him for playing with the nude jigsaw puzzle, but when we jump to the current time period, we see the killer remove Mrs. Reston's bloody clothes and a picture of her, with an X drawn across her face, from a box. He also starts playing with that same

pornographic puzzle and continually goes back to it throughout the movie, which is literally and cinematically tied into his assembling a human jigsaw from his victims' body parts. But, because we don't know what he looks like as an adult, the movie, like most slasher flicks, still ostensibly functions as a whodunit. And yet, as Meagan Navarro at Bloody Disgusting said in 2024, the mystery of the killer's identity is not that important, as the movie is clearly more interested in the extreme violence and gore, and the suspects we get are either too obvious, like 

Willard and Prof. Brown, or you don't buy them at all, like Kendall. The look of the killer is nothing special: just a guy in black, wearing black gloves, and a Fedora-style hat, as well as in, some scenes, a scarf and dark glasses to further cover his face, along with dark lighting. It's a common look for killers in most gialli, although, in this case, it's said to have been based on the character of the Shadow. His weapon of choice, a bright yellow chainsaw, stands out against his black outfit, and he also, in one instance, uses a big butcher knife to murder a reporter who's snooping around the campus. And like the character of Frank Zito in Maniac, he tends to breathe heavily and make uncomfortable, low moaning sounds, suggesting that what he does is a little too "gratifying" for him.

In the end, Dean Foley (Edmund Purdom) turns out to be the killer. (That said, though, Purdom is not the one in the murder scenes; they were performed by a stand-in who, it's clear, is much bigger than the actor. Also, Juan Piquer Simon himself wore the black gloves in the close-ups, something that Dario Argento often did in his giallo films.) Throughout the movie, whenever you see the Dean, he comes off as very polite and cooperative with the police. He tells them everything he knows when he talks with them in his office at the beginning, and brings Prof. Brown in, since the first victim was one of his students, before tasking Brown with showing the detectives around the campus (when you look back in retrospect, it's obvious he was trying to throw suspicion onto Brown). He also asks the police to keep the truth away from the student body and media, and while he's initially not keen on the idea of undercover agents, he does agree to it. He's very complimentary of Mary Riggs' tennis talent, as well as how brave she is for working undercover and potentially making herself a target. But, when she goes to meet with him during the third act, the movie, still not all that interested in being a whodunit, shows the Dean drugging the coffee he brings out to her, and this is even before Kendall and Sgt. Holden hit upon the piece of info that unmasks him as the killer. The Dean also starts to drop the act just as Mary feels the effects of the drug, claiming that Prof. Brown tried to kill him, then adds, "But I'm very strong, you know." As it paralyzes her, leaving her unable to move or speak, the Dean nonchalantly admits to drugging her, then prepares to dismember her, intending to do so with a big butcher knife, when Lt. Bracken, Sgt. Holden, and Kendall show up. He hides while they break into the apartment, and then, when Kendall is alone and trying to help Mary, the Dean charges at him. A struggle ensues and he comes close to stabbing Kendall, but Bracken comes back at the last minute and shoots the Dean right in the head.

One way in which Pieces is different from most other slasher movies is that the murder victims are typically characters with roles in the main plot, even if they're minute; here, all of the girls who get killed literally show up just for that very purpose... and, in some cases, to show off some skin. For instance, we don't get to know the first victim, Virginia Palmer (Roxana Nieto), at all before she gets a chainsaw to the neck while lying out on the grass, studying. Susan (Cristina Cottrelli) is some random girl who passes Kendall a

note about how she wants to have sex while they're underwater, then joins a couple of others in teasing Prof. Brown, before she goes to the pool alone and is hideously mutilated. Mary (Sylvia Gambino) gets it when she's on her way home after her aerobics workout, with the killer trapping her on an elevator and slicing her arms off. According to the others, she doesn't die right away, and there's initially some hope that she can identify the killer, but Bracken is told that there's no hope for her and she dies offscreen. Suzie

Bellings (Leticia Marfil) is a girl who, after some tennis practice, showers and goes to change in the locker room, only to be chased down, cornered, and have her legs removed. Aside from those five victims he kills to create his human jigsaw, the killer also takes out Sylvia Costa (Isabelle Luque), a reporter for the Boston Globe who tries to investigate the rumors of murders happening on the campus. After being stonewalled by Bracken, she tries to talk with both Mary Riggs and the Dean at the school, but gets the same treatment. And while snooping around the 

campus late one night, Sylvia is knifed to death on a waterbed. Because he takes her whole body back with him and hangs her up in his freezer, it's likely that nobody even knew that she had been murdered! Finally, there's the very first victim in the prologue, Timmy's mother (May Heatherly), who gets an axe to the head and sawed up after she slaps and verbally abuses him when she catches him with that nude jigsaw puzzle. She also talks major trash about his father, saying he's going to end up like him if he keeps this up, and tears through his room, finding other pornographic stuff. It's not much of an explanation, but it does give some insight into why he turned out the way he did.

On a technical level, Pieces is fairly well-made. While it still has the unmistakably grainy look of a low-budget, sleazy exploitation movie from the period, the remastered, high-definition releases by Grindhouse, particularly their 2016 Blu-Ray, do look very good. The nighttime sequences especially benefited from this, with the interiors being bathed in a blue-green motif, and the killer is often an ominous silhouette creeping through the shadows. When he kills Virginia Palmer in broad daylight, he's backlit by the sun, which makes for a pretty memorable image.

We also get the prerequisite shots from his point-of-view, with one subtly clever one being when he wanders into the library and nobody looks at him twice, the first suggestion that he's someone the students know and feel comfortable with. There are also many shots of his feet as he's stalking his victims to make him feel more intimidating, and each time he's about to kill someone for a specific body part, you see him assembling said body parts on the jigsaw puzzle, which is a fairly inspired motif. At the same

time, the direction and editing leave something to be desired. There are some instances of melodramatic slow-motion, which, as I've said before, I often find distracting and eye-rolling, and during the stalking sequences, the geography of the environments sometimes isn't set up that well and it can be hard to figure out where everyone is or where they came from. Speaking of editing, in the scene where Mary Riggs plays tennis, if you look closely, you'll see that they keep repeating the same few shots, likely 

because, as Juan Piquer Simon said, nobody on this cast could play tennis whatsoever. Finally, there's one shot where I think Simon was trying to be Hitchcockian, but it confuses the hell out of me. In the lead-up to Mary's death, the camera holds on her leaving the aerobics room and turning out the lights, only for another door reflected in the mirror that covers the room's back wall, next to the door she left through, to open. The killer steps out and goes through the other door she went out in order to chase

her down, but the shot makes it seem as though he came through a door that was actually in the back of that room, rather than reflected in the mirror. What I mean is that you see the killer's reflection walk across the room, towards the door that Mary went through, but you don't see him actually appear on the opposite side of the screen and go through it, as you'd expect. Instead, it looks as though he literally stepped out of the mirror, and went through the door. If the movie had supernatural aspects to it, I wouldn't be making

such a fuss, but since it doesn't (well, there is the ending, but we'll get to that), this is a, well-done, but confusing shot that I, for the life of me, can't figure out in context. If I'm just stupid and missing something obvious, somebody please let me know.

Even though it's set in Boston, the film was shot entirely in Spain, with the Complutense University in Madrid serving as the main setting (there are some exterior shots of Boston, but they're recycled from Simon's Supersonic Man). It's not the most interesting of settings, with its plain hallways, corridors (some of which are nicely claustrophobic for the stalking scenes, though), and offices, and we only see inside one of the classrooms: Prof. Brown's, which is a bit memorable for the anatomical graphs and charts that cover the wall, and the drawings on the chalkboard. 

We also see the large but bland-looking library, the room where aerobics classes are held, the gymnasium, which has both a pool and a waterbed (both of which are the settings for murders), and the tennis court and nearby locker room. We don't see much inside of Kendall's dorm-room (aside from a far too clear look at his dick and ass), but he does have a poster of Friday the 13th on his wall. The Dean's apartment, at the top of this long, spiraling stairway inside this opulent-looking building, is probably the most 

noteworthy setting, as it looks like the inside of a fancy mansion, with a lovely fireplace that houses two candelabras, a clock, a framed picture, and a large portrait on the wall above it, nice sofa, a bookcase in the back (which serves as a hidden door to the spot where he keeps his human jigsaw after she's completed), and a kitchen area, with one section separated by a large, see-through door. Somewhere else in the apartment is a door that leads into a big,

walk-in freezer, where the body parts are stored. Outside of the university, the only other place we see during the main story is the police department and the file room, neither of which are much to write home about, either.

The opening scene at the Dean's childhood home in 1942 is fair enough, given how all we see of the inside is Timmy's room, which does like a child's bedroom from that period. However, there are a couple of major factual errors here. One that I caught immediately was the modern-style, push-button house-phone that you see in two shots, and in close-up, no less. Another, which I didn't catch until I heard someone else mention it, is how, on the wall behind one of the cops in one shot, is a flag for the New England Patriots, a team that didn't exist until 1960,

and were originally called the Boston Patriots, at that. And finally, the woman who calls the police tells them that Timmy's father is away in Europe, working for the "Air Force," but she should've said the "U.S. Army Air Corps," as the actual Air Force didn't come about until after World War II. But these are just the first in a slew of errors, bad dialogue, nonsensical moments, and downright dumb choices on the part of the filmmakers that are strewn throughout the movie.

It's not shocking for a dubbed foreign film, especially, from this period to have both really bad dialogue and horrendous vocal performances, be it because of crappy translations, or dub actors who are either inexperienced or don't give a crap. But even by those standards, Pieces has some doozies. I've already mentioned Mary Riggs' hilarious "BASTARD!" outburst and some other priceless lines, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Early on, a group of students are smoking weed and talking about the waterbed that's been installed in the training room, leading to 

this exchange between two girls: "Have you ever been laid on a waterbed?" "The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed at the same time." In a similar vein, when Susan passes Kendall her note about the two of them meeting up at the gymnasium's pool, you hear her sultrily whisper in voiceover: "I want to do it underwater. See you in the pool." When Prof. Brown shows up at the crime scene at the pool, he flatly says, "What a job you people have. The public doesn't realize how awful it is." Later, when he suddenly shows up after Mary has 

been killed in the elevator, he and Lt. Bracken have this exchange, which is very awkwardly delivered on the latter's part: "Where did you come from?" "Sorry, what?" "I said, 'Where did you just come from?'" "I was upstairs, in the library." "Good. I'll be talkin' to you later." And when Brown is walking with Mary Riggs across the campus, she tells him that she's really unnerved by the murders (she doesn't sound afraid in the slightest) and that she must seem foolish to him; he tells her, "Oh, no. Not at all. I suppose I'm 

so used to bodies... dead ones, that is... I'm afraid I'm callous." Also, when Mary and the Dean are having coffee, Mary comments on how much she loves "the cream," and he answers, "Oh, well, of course. This is New England. I'm glad you like it." (Did I miss something there?) And again, even an old pro like Christopher George isn't immune to some real clunkers, like, "There have been two murders now. That maniac is gonna kill again! This may be the only way we have of catching him!", and, "You'll 

be playing tennis every day. You'll be playing so much tennis, it'll be coming out of your ears!" There are even a couple of instances where the actors step over each other's lines in the dubbing, like when Bracken starts talking while the Dean is saying something, and Willard doing the same when the Dean is talking to him outside. (The latter was a mistake that happened during the actual shoot, so you'd think they would try to fix it in post. But it's repeated in both the English and Spanish versions.)

There are three specific moments in the movie (fittingly, at the beginning, around the middle, and at the very end) that will have you scratching your head and wondering what in God's name the filmmakers were thinking. After the prologue and the opening credits, as well as after we've seen the killer remove Mrs. Reston's blood-splattered dress and photo from a box, the movie cuts to a girl riding a skateboard across the campus and into town. It inter-cuts this with a pair of guys removing a huge pane of glass from a truck and carrying it across the street,

culminating in the girl coming upon them when they round a corner in front of her. Unable to stop, she crashes through the glass, it briefly cuts back to Mrs. Reston angrily smashing a mirror when she caught her son with the puzzle, and then goes to the killer himself beginning to reassemble the puzzle, leading into the first murder. At first glance, this seems like a completely random moment that has no connection with the actual story (akin to another scene later). But, it turns out, that wasn't the case. The girl on the skateboard is Virginia Palmer, the same one who gets

chainsawed in the next scene, and the idea was that she survived crashing through the glass, but the accident was witnessed by the Dean and gave him the idea to create his human jigsaw. Roxana Nieto herself even said as much in an interview. First, you would have no reason to think that was her in both scenes, especially since she not only survives crashing through the glass but, when she's next seen stretched out across the ground, studying, she doesn't have a single cut or nick on her. And second, if this being the

inspiration for the killer's actions is what Juan Piquer Simon was trying to get across, he failed completely. You don't have to hold my hand in order to get something across to me, but you also gotta give me more than some randomly edited scenes that don't appear to have any connection.

Speaking of random, a more notorious example happens around fifty minutes in, when Mary Riggs is wandering the campus at night (a lot of people in this movie are perfectly willing to walk around in the dark alone or be by themselves, despite knowing that a killer is on the loose). The killer is established to be stalking her, so you're expecting him to either pop up and chase after her, or for some fake jump-scare to occur. It's the latter, but not one anyone would expect. Suddenly, we go from cutaways to the killer, to shots of someone in a tracksuit running around in the 

bushes. And as Mary rounds a corner, her flashlight gets kicked out of her hand and she's attacked by a Chinese guy, who comes at her with martial arts moves, while yelling in a typical kung-fu manner. He kicks a gun out of her hand, then repeatedly tries to get her in the head, as she falls to the ground. The attack is stopped when she manages to get him with her foot in either the gut or the balls, and he falls to the ground. Kendall then shows up on his motorcycle and Mary tells him what happened. As the guy comes 

to, Kendall recognizes him as his "kung-fu professor" and asks him, "What's the story, Chao?" The guy, in a very stereotypical voice, answers, "I am out jogging and next thing I know, I am on ground. Something I eat. Bad chop suey. So long!" He goes on his way, and nothing more is said. I'm certain that so many people have sat there afterward, asking, "What was the point of that?!" There is something of a point, albeit in the context of the movie's actual production: because he was producing kung-fu movies at the 

time, Dick Randall decided to arrange for a cameo by famous Bruce Lee imitator, "Bruce Le," despite how pointless and nonsensical it is. These kinds of behind-the-scenes stories on movies like this slay me. They're so stupid and ridiculous, that they have to be true. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

And then, there's the very end, which I would call a sequel-bait, but I think was actually just the usual attempt at one more jump-scare. Of course, this being Pieces, it's random and nonsensical. The Dean has been unmasked as the killer and has been taken care of, and they've also found his human jigsaw puzzle, which falls on top of Kendall. After Lt. Bracken and Mary have left, Sgt. Holden prepares to take Kendall home. He walks by the stitched together body, which has been covered by a sheet, then leans over to grab his coat. Suddenly, the body's arm wrenches up and

tears into Kendall's crotch, as he screams while crossing his eyes... and that's it. I won't lie, the shot of her fingernails tearing into his crotch, with blood streaming out, does make me wince, but still, what the hell just happened? Was the Dean also a Dr. Frankenstein-style mad scientist and managed to bring his stitched up creation to life? Did she attack Kendall out of revenge for her creator's death? Was that all in Kendall's mind? At this point, I couldn't begin to figure out what Simon was thinking, and I don't think he knew, either.

Besides its errors and bizarre choices, Pieces is most well-known for being one of the nastiest and most gruesome 80's slasher movies ever made. Honestly, though, unless they had Tom Savini providing the effects, few of the slashers being made in the United States during this period were all that extreme, despite how much Siskel and Ebert's diatribes would make you think. Pieces, however, is a whole other kettle of fish, and that's likely due to its having been produced in Spain, which, like Italy, was much less restrictive in terms of violence. Not only are the deaths very

brutal and mean-spirited, but there's a gnarly quality to both them and their grisly aftermaths, with lots of severed limbs and organs, with much of the latter being actual organs, as well as blood, taken from a slaughterhouse. As a result, while it didn't land on the "Video Nasties" list, it was among the films confiscated under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act. The carnage starts just two minutes in, with Mrs. Reston getting an axe to the head several times, followed by Timmy sawing her up (you don't see the saw slicing through the limbs but the 

implication, the sound effects, and Timmy having blood splattered all over him is more than enough), shots of the room with blood and viscera everywhere, and her severed head sitting in a closet. Just six minutes later, Virginia Palmer gets decapitated with the chainsaw, and you see a big splash of blood when the killer saws through, followed by a shot of her headless, twitching body on the ground. Susan's actual death isn't shown onscreen, but you see the aftermath, with her severed head and limbs left by 

the poolside, as the killer took her torso. Mary's death in the elevator, while still gory, isn't quite as nasty but, that said, you do see her right arm get sliced off, with spewing all over the wall behind her. But like with Susan, the aftermath that Kendall and the two cops find in the elevator is very nasty. Sylvia Costa may not get sawed up and dismembered, but she's still brutally stabbed in the chest on a waterbed, with her blood mixing in with the water, and is finished off with the knife getting plunged through the back of her

head and out her mouth. And Suzie Bellings' death has a shot of the saw slicing through her side (an actual pig carcass), followed by blood spraying all over the wall behind her, and later, a very gruesome shot of her naked, legless torso in the corner of the room, with blood everywhere.

As if the murders and their aftermaths weren't gross enough, there are also some moments where you see the killer bringing some of the body parts back to his home, as well as shots of his human jigsaw in progress inside a walk-in freezer, like when you see Virginia's severed head in there, and later see him placing shoes on the corpse's feet. You also see Sylvia's body hanging up in there at one point, and at the end of the movie, you see the stitched together body in all of its hideous, partially decomposed glory when it falls on top of Kendall. And like I said, while it may make no sense, any guy is likely to see wince when Kendall's crotch gets ripped open at the very end.

In addition to the extreme violence and gore, Pieces is sleazy as all get-out. You have two women who are sliced up while they're topless, with one swimming in a pool wearing nothing but a bikini bottom beforehand, and the other getting out of the shower and walking around in a towel, which she then takes off to put her clothes on, before she gets attacked; lingering shots of Virginia's butt as she's lying on the ground, and another of two students having sex right on the campus; the aftermath of an aborted attempt at sex, where Kendall gets out of bed naked, leaving 

nothing to the imagination; and that dirty puzzle that Timmy plays with in the opening and which is reassembled throughout. Furthermore, there are a couple of extended sequences of women exercising in their tight-fitting leotards, and if Simon had his way, they would've been doing so completely naked in the first scene. He only gave up on that idea when the actual aerobics instructor who leads the scene told him that kind of thing doesn't go on (although, some of the other women in the scene are said to have been willing). Between that and all of the victims being

women, it's not hard to understand why this flick was especially reviled and accused of being misogynistic (personally, I find Don't Answer The Phone! to be more unsettling in that regard).

When the movie opens in 1942, on a shot of Timmy's childhood home, we hear him singing the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme to himself, and then see him in his bedroom, sitting on the floor, putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It seems wholesome enough, but when his mother walks in behind him, looks over his shoulder, and sees that the puzzle has the full-frontal image of a naked woman, she flips out. She smacks him twice, calls him a "dirty-minded little brat," and while ranting about his father, takes a picture of him

on a dresser and smashes a mirror with it, before threatening to kill Timmy if he brings anything like that into the house again. That's when she sends him to get a plastic bag, intending to burn everything pornographic she finds in his room, and he, in turn, comes back with an axe and takes it to her head several times. As she lies on the floor lifeless (though, you can see her breathe if you look closely), a neighbor repeatedly rings the doorbell outside, then calls the house-phone. All the while, Timmy, ignoring 

the phone's ringing, saws his mother's corpse up. Then, covered in blood, he goes back to playing with his puzzle, when he hears the sound of police sirens approaching and a car pulling up outside. The doorbell buzzes again, and Timmy looks out the window to see that the neighbor has returned with the police. As they prepare to break the door down, he puts the puzzle away and hides in one of his bedroom's closets. The woman and the cops enter the room and are shocked to see that the floor is covered in blood, with the bloody axe lying amid it. The cops 

have this priceless exchange: "Jesus, will you look at this. Something's been butchered up here." "Let's hope it was an animal. I never saw so much blood." (I assume that was the two of them talking to each other; both of them are dubbed by the same guy, so it's hard to tell.) They then open the closet door next to them and find Mrs. Reston's severed head inside. Just as the woman wonders where Timmy is, they hear him whining in the other closet and open it to find him babbling about a "big man" and asking for his mother.

Following the credits and a title card telling us it's now forty years later, we see the killer remove a box from a dresser and open it to reveal his mother's blood-splattered shoes and dress. He also pulls out a picture of her with a red X drawn across her face. After Virginia Palmer crashes through the pane of glass on her skateboard, it cuts to the killer beginning to reassemble the jigsaw puzzle, starting with the woman's head. Then, we see Virginia lying on the grass, studying, when she's disturbed by the sound of

a chainsaw nearby. Looking behind her, she sees a man with a scarf across his face and goggles over his eyes, standing behind a hedge. She asks him if he's going to be long and he says it'll take just a few minutes. She goes back to her studying, only for the man to come around and, before she knows what happened, take the saw to her neck, slicing her head clean off. Later, he reassembles the woman's torso on the puzzle, and then enters the university's library. There, Susan passes Kendall the note asking him to

meet up with her at the gym's pool so they can have sex, before heading there herself. Kendall tosses the note towards a nearby waste basket, but it bounces onto the floor, and the killer picks it up. Susan then enters the pool area, and hears who she thinks is Kendall opening the door. But when she doesn't see anyone or get any response to her calls, she strips down to just a bikini bottom and dives in (that water was freezing, as they filmed this scene in the winter). Unbeknownst to her, the killer is in the room, and he grabs a pool skimmer, walks over to the edge, and 

ensnares her head in the net. He pulls her over to the edge, as she struggles with the net, and then lifts her out of the water and lays her down by the edge of the pool. As Susan lies on her back, coughing and trying to compose herself, the killer walks over to his waiting chainsaw, grabs it, cranks it up, and moves towards her. She backs up against a pillar and screams before she's mutilated. Shortly afterward, the killer carries the bag housing Susan's torso into his home, and the walk-in freezer that also contains Virginia's head.

Willard enters the pool area and turns on the light, when he sees Kendall, on the opposite side of the room, run out the door. He then notices a yellow chainsaw, similar to his own, sitting on a ledge and covered with blood. He stupidly touches the handle, getting blood on his hand, and then turns and sees Susan's mutilated remains by the edge of the pool. Realizing what's about to happen, he storms towards the door and flings it open, only to be met with Sgt. Holden. He immediately grabs him and throws him 

aside, then knocks one cop who comes through against the door, throws another to the side, and takes a blow with a wooden pole from Kendall, which breaks against him. Holden and the two cops try to restrain Willard, but he kicks one into the pool, flings the other two off, and sends Kendall running back out the door when he tries to club him again. He grabs one of the cops, slams him against the wall, and rams into him, but Holden comes up behind him, pulls his gun, and tells him to stop or he'll shoot. The cop who 

got kicked into the pool then climbs out. Afterward, the room has been made into a crime scene (the man taking pictures of the body's remains is Juan Piquer Simon himself), with Lt. Bracken bringing in Prof. Brown to get his opinion on whether or not Susan could've been cut up by the chainsaw found at the scene. Following that, as well as Bracken and Holden talking with the Dean about allowing some undercover agents on the campus, the killer watches an aerobics class through a small window in the door. When the instructor calls for a break, one of the 

women, Mary, goes to use the restroom, which happens to be quite a ways downstairs. She walks down one flight of stairs, goes to the end of a tight corridor, then heads down a second flight of stairs, another corridor, and turns to the right. Upon finally reaching the restroom door, she hears something behind her, and when she turns and looks, the door flies open in her hand and knocks against her side. It turns out to just be someone else coming out, and after Mary collects herself, she heads into the restroom as well.

After Mary Riggs starts working at the school, the killer fills in the arms on the puzzle. It cuts to night, as Mary, the woman at the aerobics class before, is exercising by herself. Like before, she's being watched from the door's window, which she eventually seems to sense. She looks out the window but, not seeing anybody, shrugs it off. She switches her radio off and puts her clothes on, while the killer walks through another door nearby. He follows her when she leaves the room, and she then frantically 

runs downstairs and through the hallways, again appearing to sense that someone is following her. She goes on until she comes to an elevator, pressing the button. She's startled when somebody else reaches out and presses it, but breathes a sigh of relief when she sees who it is. They both wait for the elevator to arrive and climb aboard when it does. The killer, somehow, manages to hide his chainsaw from her by holding it behind his back when he joins Mary, then presses the button, sending the elevator up. However, 

he waits a few seconds and pushes the stop button. He whips the chainsaw out (where he was hiding it so she couldn't see is anyone's guess), revs it up, and slices her right arm off with one swipe. Outside, Kendall, who's working on his motorcycle, hears Mary screaming, as do a pair of cops, and the three of them run to the building. The door is locked, and Kendall climbs through the side window and opens the door from the inside. He and the cops then run through the building and reach the elevator. Kendall repeatedly presses the button, trying to make it come down 

faster, and when it does arrive and opens up, they all recoil in horror when they see Mary's bloodied, arm-less body lying on the floor. One of the cops pukes on the floor from this, and yet, he's the one who Kendall tells to go contact Bracken using the phone in the nearby janitor's office. In the aftermath, upon being told that Mary isn't going to survive, Bracken doubles down on his efforts to find the killer.

The next major scene is when Mary Riggs is randomly attacked by the kung-fu professor, after which Kendall gives her a ride back to her home on his motorcycle. After they've sped off, Sylvia Costa emerges from the shadows and starts snooping around the campus, unaware that she's being stalked. Walking down an alleyway, she's startled by some bushes rustling nearby, but continues on and finds an unlocked door. After she enters that building, the killer's shadow creeps across the door. Sylvia explores

the interior, at one point opening a door to a small room where the chainsaw is sitting on a ledge. She doesn't seem to notice this and closes the door, when the killer, who was standing just to the right of the door, stirs in the shadows to the right, brandishing a large butcher knife. Sylvia goes into the training room, where the new waterbed is, and tries to go out a pair of doors across from her, when a light suddenly comes on right outside of them. The door she came in closes and she runs back to it, trying to force it open, 

when the killer comes out of another door, wielding the knife. He goes for the stab but misses and sticks it in the door. Sylvia struggles with him, losing her coat, and falls back onto a small bench. He takes the knife from the door and swings at her, but misses. But when she falls back onto the waterbed, he pins her down, and while he momentarily drops the knife to the floor, he picks it back up and viciously stabs her in the chest again and again. He misses a couple of times, stabbing the bed itself and causing the water to begin pouring out. Sylvia manages to push him off her and 

onto the floor, and then tries to run for it. But he rises up, grabs, and flings her back onto the spewing waterbed, as she fumbles around, trying to both fight him off and crawl away. When she turns over onto her front to try to flee, he stabs her through the back of her head and out her mouth. He then yanks the knife out and drags her off the bed. Following a cutaway where Kendall sees Mary to her apartment (and then gets scared by a friend of his who comes up behind him in a Halloween mask), the killer goes back to his home. There, in his freezer, he has Sylvia's body hanging up, while he fills in the legs on the puzzle.

Next, Suzie Bellings is practicing her tennis game, when this really obnoxious marching band music starts blaring over the loudspeakers. Aggravated at her concentration being broken, she throws the balls down and stomps off to the locker room. She takes a shower, unaware that the killer has followed her inside. He hides somewhere in the room, while Suzie comes out in a towel, walks over to her duffel-bag, and puts on her panties and a pair of pants. Before she can put a shirt on, the killer cranks his chainsaw. Hearing this, she sees him (like Mary, she also 

recognizes him), and runs for the door, only to find she's been locked in. Unable to open it, she jumps into the restroom, but the killer puts his foot in the door before she can close it. She then opts to hide in one of the stalls, but that offers no refuge, as he begins sawing through the door. She retreats into the corner, wetting herself in terror (which wasn't supposed to happen but Simon decided to keep it in), and the killer slices open a big hole, reaches in, and turns the door handle. He stomps in and, with Suzie futilely trying to fight him off, slices through her midsection. Outside,

Kendall and Mary show up for a match, when they run into Willard. Talking about the music, which is driving Mary to distraction, she opts to contact the Dean to see if it can be shut off. While Willard is reluctant to let them use the phone in the janitor's office, he tells them to wait nearby and goes to get a key. Mary says she thinks she heard a scream, when Willard comes out of a door behind them and leads Mary to the control room. Kendall stays behind and enters the door that Willard came out of, while in the

control room, Willard realizes that the keys he has in his hand aren't his (nothing comes of that, I might add). Despite Mary's objections about leaving fingerprints, he switches off the music. They go back to where they left Kendall, only to find him gone. He comes out of the locker room (seemingly, the opposite room he went in before; like I said, it's sometimes nigh impossible to tell where everyone is in relation to each other), looking horrified, and while Willard runs off, Kendall tells Mary that he found Suzie's

body inside. She goes in, is aghast at the sight of her legless corpse, and comes back outside, yelling about what just happened. Shortly after that, the killer puts his mother's old shoes on the feet of a body dangling inside his freezer.

Again, by the time Sgt. Holden and Kendall realize that the Dean is the killer, we've already figured it out, given how, while Mary waits out in his living room, he drugs her coffee. In fact, because it doesn't affect her right away, he adds more to the next cup. While they're talking about Prof. Brown, the drug begins to do its job, as Mary finds herself unable to speak or even move. The Dean doesn't try to hide that he drugged her, and after a cutaway where Bracken learns of the break in the case, he puts a plastic sheet beneath Mary's paralyzed legs, while creepily 

fondling them and breathing heavily. Kendall and the cops arrive outside, while the Dean grabs the butcher knife from a drawer and moves in. Kendall leads Bracken and Holden to the apartment, and when they get no response from knocking, Bracken shoots the lock open. They burst through the door and head into the sitting room, where they find Mary on the couch, but no sign of the Dean. The cops go to search for him elsewhere (Holden barely searched the apartment itself beforehand), while Kendall stays behind to see to her. He talks to her calmly, trying to get her to 

stand up and walk, while she tries to silently motion towards some nearby curtains, which are moving slightly. He manages to get her on her feet and walks her around, not seeing the Dean emerge from behind the curtains, still wielding the knife. He charges at Kendall, who swings around at the last minute, dropping Mary to the floor. Kendall grabs and holds back the Dean's knife, the two of them falling to the floor, with Kendall landing atop the Dean. He continues pushing the hand with the knife away, 

when the Dean flips them over, grabs him by the throat, and chokes him while he keeps trying to hold the knife away from his head. However, the Dean proves to be as strong as he told Mary he is, as Kendall loses his grip and the knife comes closer to stabbing into him. Fortunately for him, the police return, and Bracken quickly aims and fires, scoring a direct shot into the Dean's forehead. He falls back, off of Kendall, and Bracken then helps Kendall up, while

the other cops and Holden see to Mary. Of course, things still don't end well for Kendall, as the Dean's stitched up corpse falls on top of him when it's discovered, and at the end, grabs and rips into his crotch, violently castrating him.

There have been several different versions of Pieces over the years, including some edited, R-rated one that fell into the public domain and could be found on various horror multi-packs (one of which Jeff Burr once gave me). The Grindhouse edition comes with both the unrated, U.S. theatrical version and the original Spanish version, with the title, Mil gritos tiene la noche. Though the latter is often billed as a "director's cut," there's very little that's different from the American version, aside from the opening credits both looking and playing out differently (in the American version, they play out in one go after the prologue, whereas here, they begin after Timmy kills his mother and are inter-cut with the rest of the opening), and some shots, like the piecing together of the puzzle, being slightly longer. If you're expecting more gore or nudity, you're out of luck. Still, I did watch the Spanish version for the sake of this review, as I wanted to see if the dialogue and performances were different and/or improved. For the most part, the dialogue and what it's trying to get across are virtually the same, but it's not as awkwardly written, and the Spanish dub actors do tend to give better, more natural performances. Sometimes, it is completely different, as the kung-fu professor makes no mention of "bad chop suey" (his vocal performance is also much more respectable), Mary yells, "Animal!", instead of, "Bastard!", and the Dean, when he prepares to kill Mary, says that the police will never find his human jigsaw, rather than creepily joking, "We don't want to make a mess." Moreover, at the beginning, it's said that Timmy's father was killed in action in Europe rather than he's serving over there, and during the present time, there are a couple of instances of voiceover dialogue from Timmy which suggest he's trying to recreate his mother by piecing these different body parts together. And some character names are different, like Timmy's family name being "Weldon" instead of "Reston," and the pool victim being "Jenny" instead of "Susan."

The biggest difference between the two versions is the music score. The Spanish version has an entirely original score by composer Librado Pastor, who has only three other credits on his IMDB page (two of which also involved Juan Piquer Simon: Extra Terrestrial Visitors and Guerra sucia), while the American version has a score cobbled together from library music by various composers like Fabio Frizzi, Carlo Maria Cordio, Enrico Pieranunzi, and Stelvio Cipriani, collectively credited as "CAM." In terms of approach and quality, Pastor's music is more dramatic and traditional, and tries to make the murder scenes feel horrific and disturbing, but sometimes, it's so overbearing that it feels like it's been composed to play over a silent movie. The CAM score, which mostly features themes from Cipriani's score for Ring of Darkness, aka Satan's Wife, and Cordio's work for Joe D'Amato's Absurd, is much more electronic and synth, and while some bits of it are genuinely unsettling (such as the music for the opening credits and whenever the killer is by himself), it mostly gives the American version even more of a cheesy quality. That's especially true of this really goofy music that plays when Virginia is skateboard, an overly sexy saxophone piece that plays when the girl at the pool strips down before diving in, the ridiculous, electronic-voiced song that the women exercise to (the music in the Spanish version isn't much better, though), and the obnoxious marching band music that plays over the loudspeakers at the tennis court, whereas in the Spanish version, it's more traditional material, like Stars and Stripes Forever. The only real negative I can say about the music in the American version is that it's pretty repetitive, playing the same pieces over and over, and it also puts music in spots where there wasn't any originally (though, whether or not you find it more effective is up to individual tastes).

If you look at that poster and think that it's gory, scummy, and makes no apologies for it, then yes, Pieces is exactly what you think it is. But it's also like what would you've gotten if Ed Wood had made a grisly exploitation movie, as it's quite incompetent on many levels. It has flat characters that even some veterans can't bring to life, a lot of hilarious dialogue in the English version, numerous goofs and continuity errors, direction that sometimes makes it hard to wrap your head around a scene, flawed music scores on

either version, random and nonsensical moments that come out of nowhere and don't fit into the movie's context, plot points that aren't explained very well, and a "murder mystery" that's more interested in how sick the kills can be rather than the identity of the killer, with suspects whom you know can't be it. But, also like Wood's movies, there is entertainment value to be found here. I may not think it's one of the greatest slashers ever, but it's got really impressive gore and makeup effects, some examples of fairly good filmmaking and cinematography, moments that will have you laughing, albeit unintentionally, and an innate quirkiness that you may find kind of endearing. If you're not easily put off by a bunch of sleaze, gruesomeness, and perversity, as well as plain old nastiness, towards women, this flick can be fun. Just know who you are before checking it out.