Pieces

Oh "Pieces". Oddly enough, you are made up of "pieces" of other favorite movies. The director Juan Piquer Simon also directed "Slugs", which is easily my favorite bad movie. Speaking of "Slugs", the guy that yells out "YOU DON'T HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO DECLARE HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" is in "Pieces" but he's a bit more restrained. And to all you MSTies out there, you'll remember Juan Piquer Simon also directed "Pod People". Now that you know all of that, you'll know what kind of movie "Pieces" is.

And to keep throwing in other movies, I thought while I was watching this that "Student Bodies" was mainly making fun of "Pieces" but it turns out "Student Bodies" came FIRST! I'm just amazed.

Alright, so the opening takes place in Boston 1942 and some kid is in his room putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Mom comes in and sees the puzzle is of a naked chick. Mom has an epic freak out where she pretty much punches the kid repeatedly, then threatens to burn his room down. I'm not even exaggerating about any of that. She demands that the kid go get some garbage bags but he comes back with an ax and chops Mommy up.

Meanwhile some nosy bitch is constantly ringing the bell. When no one answers, she calls the police almost instantly. Jeez lady, they could just NOT be home. You have to wonder if this happens all the time. She shows up and if no one answers she calls the police. I'm sure the cops rolled their eyes when they saw it was her.

Oddly enough, this call was warranted cause they find the body and the kid crying, pretending he didn't chop the body up.

It's now 40 year later and we're at some university. They don't say which, so it could be any in the Boston area. Boston people, leave me a comment telling me which one it could be. Keep in mind the director is Spanish and all the people in this movie are dubbed.

This is one of those movies where they hide the killer's identity by filming him from the back and he wears nothing but black. He's in a room and he pulls out the nudie jigsaw puzzle and I guess he gets horny or something cause he gets the urge to kill!

And he kills some girl that's just chillin' on a lawn somewhere. He cuts her head off and soon, the body is discovered. The cops are called in and two detectives Bracken and Holden are assigned to the case. They talk to the Dean of the university and the Dean wants to keep all of this quiet. Of course.

I can't even begin to describe all the weird awkward dialouge and strange dubbing that's in this movie. There's a whole scene where a busty girl asks Professor Brown, who ends up being a suspect, where a breast muscle is and everything about it is weird and awkward.

Anyway, later we meet Kendall, a guy who apparently likes to bone chicks everywhere. He gets an offer to bone some girl in the pool and of course she goes off by herself, gets naked, and soon, the killer kills her and takes her torso. You can probably figure out what's going on here by now.

For whatever reason, Bracken tells Kendall he can work with them on the case and keep an eye out on things on campus. Cause the campus male whore is the best detective. And because Bracken doesn't have time to babysit Kendall, he teams him up with Mary Briggs, A TENNIS PLAYER!! I....don't know....what....ok.

Well, Kendall and Mary prove they're shitty cops cause two more girls are killed. One girl loses her arms while the other loses her legs. So the two girls killed was a dancer and a(nother) tennis player, but the parts he took from them seemed backwards to me. He took the dancer's arms and the tennis player's legs. You'd think dancers would have great legs while tennis players have great arms. Then again, I'm not a serial killer trying to play Frankenstein with dead chick's body parts. That is, until it's proven in court.

Some third chick is killed but no body parts are taken from her so it was pretty gratutious. There's a great scene in the middle where Mary is walking around at night and she thinks she sees someone following her. She's running and before you know it, some Asian dude jumps out of nowhere, doing typical kung-fu moves and jumping in the air, making the "AWWWWWW!" noises. He simply falls down, Kendall arrives explains he's the school's KUNG FU TEACHER, and the guy stands up and says "I don't know what happened. I must've had some bad chop suey. LATER!" and he simply walks away. I couldn't make that shit up if I tried.

My favorite suspect is this big John Ryhes-Davies lookin' motherfucker who's the school's groundskeeper. They keep playing it like he's the killer cause anytime the killer strikes, we see this dude leaving the building the murder just happened in. And anytime he's on screen, he acts all shifty eyes and looks like he's about to bench press someone. I shouldn't have to tell you the killer isn't him.

Ok, I'm gonna spoil this movie and tell you who the killer is cause that's what I do, as a service for people who enjoy reading my reviews but don't ever plan on seeing the movie. I know they're curious who the killer is, or even figured it out on their own but still. If you want to see this movie, skip the next paragraph and jump to the last one where I give my final word and rating.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE!

Kendall helps out one of the cops and he stumbles upon the fact that someone's records makes a note about a name change. The cop looks into it and finds out that the guy when he was a kid, saw his mother get chopped up with an ax. Who's the guy? Why it's The Dean! And Mary is visiting him now! OH NO! So The Dean puts some poison in Mary's coffee so she can't move and he's about to chop her feet off when the cops burst in and kill the Dean. As they're looking around for all the body parts, they find a secret compartment with the body made up of different body parts, which falls on Kendall. Later, they're about to leave when the body, I guess, comes to life and rips off Kendall's nuts. And that's where this movie ends. Seriously.

SPOILERS END HERE!

So this is a wacky movie, and the tagline is pretty awesome: "You don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre". The funniest thing about this movie is the weird dialouge and all the dubbing. The acting is sub-par and you know the movie is throwing us red herrings about who the killer is. I kinda figured it out about midway in the movie but I didn't know why he was doing what he was doing. This is kind of a fun movie, one you'd watch at a party. Plus, if you enjoyed "Slugs" or "Pod People" you'd probably get a kick out of this.

-Jason