Film Year: 1982
Genre: Horror
Director: Juan Piquer Simon
Starring: Christopher George, Paul Smith, Edmund Purdom, Linda Day
The Movie
Originally titled The Night Has 1,000 Screams in Mexico, or, as I would like to call it, I Have Issues With Women: The Motion Picture, Pieces is about a guy who dismembered his mother when he was a lad growing up to wear the Rat Fink costume from Wild, Wild World of Batwoman. Inspired by a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman, he goes around a college campus and murders coeds with a chainsaw, taking body parts home to stitch together.
This film is from Juan Piquer Simon, who MSTies will recognize as the director of Pod People, which he actually directed just after this. Pieces is a more consistent piece, as unlike Pod People it doesn't try to juggle being a horror film and an E.T. knock-off at the same time. Though, once you see the stiff acting with an overdub, you will definitely recognize the stamp of Juan Piquer Simon.
Unless you hear the title "Pieces" and you think it's going to be an art drama about putting one's life together after tragedy (which is definitely not what this movie is), Pieces is exactly what you would assume it would be about. It has chainsaws, dismemberment, lots of blood, and body parts hitting the floor. Lots of graphic violence, and not much of a story. There is an attempt to flesh it out with a detective storyline of the trail of the killer, but for the most part this movie is all about the gore, with a dash of nudity thrown in (very rarely is a woman killed in this movie without flashing their breasts at the camera first). This is the main focus of the movie, mutilation of women, and there is really no arguing against that.
That's something of a theme to the movie: a hatred for women. The movie starts with a boy who clearly has an abusive relationship with his mother, which reaches the point where he just kills her outright. He then grows up and has those killer tendencies again, murdering promiscuous girls left and right. A lot of horror films in the 80's were about the murder of promiscuous girls, yet this is one that's ballsy enough to make it the point of its own movie. Whether this movie is fetishistic of this theme might be up to the viewer, though it feels to me that they might be closer to just jumping on what was popular and taking it to an extreme level to sell tickets. It's exactly what sells, in one bloody package.
Because of that, people may either love or hate Pieces. It's for the extreme gore hounds who search endlessly for the bloodiest movie ever made, and those who aren't in that same ballpark wandered into the wrong movie. I admired it's extremity, if nothing else. And you can't say it's not upfront about itself when its very first scene features a child killing his mother with an ax and then sawing her into pieces. The movie is interesting and somewhat engaging for being what it is, even if it is the most vile thing people any human being can think of.
And this movie has a KUNG FU PROFESSOR! That gives it cool points right there.
Unless you hear the title "Pieces" and you think it's going to be an art drama about putting one's life together after tragedy (which is definitely not what this movie is), Pieces is exactly what you would assume it would be about. It has chainsaws, dismemberment, lots of blood, and body parts hitting the floor. Lots of graphic violence, and not much of a story. There is an attempt to flesh it out with a detective storyline of the trail of the killer, but for the most part this movie is all about the gore, with a dash of nudity thrown in (very rarely is a woman killed in this movie without flashing their breasts at the camera first). This is the main focus of the movie, mutilation of women, and there is really no arguing against that.
That's something of a theme to the movie: a hatred for women. The movie starts with a boy who clearly has an abusive relationship with his mother, which reaches the point where he just kills her outright. He then grows up and has those killer tendencies again, murdering promiscuous girls left and right. A lot of horror films in the 80's were about the murder of promiscuous girls, yet this is one that's ballsy enough to make it the point of its own movie. Whether this movie is fetishistic of this theme might be up to the viewer, though it feels to me that they might be closer to just jumping on what was popular and taking it to an extreme level to sell tickets. It's exactly what sells, in one bloody package.
Because of that, people may either love or hate Pieces. It's for the extreme gore hounds who search endlessly for the bloodiest movie ever made, and those who aren't in that same ballpark wandered into the wrong movie. I admired it's extremity, if nothing else. And you can't say it's not upfront about itself when its very first scene features a child killing his mother with an ax and then sawing her into pieces. The movie is interesting and somewhat engaging for being what it is, even if it is the most vile thing people any human being can think of.
And this movie has a KUNG FU PROFESSOR! That gives it cool points right there.
The Drive-In
"The Drive-In will never die."
Joe Bob is right. Even though he has been saying repeatedly that this marathon is his farewell to horror hosting, the demand for Joe Bob was too great. People were flooding Shudder's live stream to see our hero back, cracking open a beer, and rambling about these movies, and it got to the point where Shudder's servers crashed. That's love, right there! And we love Joe Bob! We loved him so much that Shudder decided to order more! I'm so proud of the fans!
But Joe Bob thinks this will be his final movie that he will ever show as a horror host, and he chooses a movie that almost got him fired. His four star review of Pieces got feminists and conservatives on Joe Bob's case as he was recommending a disgusting murder film in which all the victims were women who are killed in graphic fashions. Joe Bob claims he knew better examples of films featuring what they were protesting, but Pieces was the one that hit mainstream, and Joe Bob got dragged through the mud with it. But he stands by his four star rating thirty-five years later! "I am violently opposed to the random killing and mutilation of women unless it's necessary to the plot."
Trivia about Pieces has a lot to do with the setting of the film, as Juan Piquer Simon had never been to America but insisted on setting the film in Boston so he could portray a more wild and promiscuous take on college girls ("The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed at the same time!"). This amuses Joe Bob a great deal. He also talks a bit about the cast, which he insists is talented but Simon doesn't let them act, as they give flat performances that are overdubbed. He also gets into a digression about Bruce Lee knock-off Bruce Le, who has a random cameo in the film, and other Bruce Lee knock-offs. There are some filming tidbits, including the interesting bit of trivia that one of the film's victims peed her pants on film because the chainsaw got too close to her and the director kept it in the movie and the climactic "ball buster" actually scratched the actor's groin (though not as badly as it is in the movie).
But I have a large fondness for the opening of this episode over all the movie related stuff, because Joe Bob decides to mark his "last" (lol) horror hosting gig by going over a history of horror hosts, which is more or less a tribute to the late John Zacherle. He gives Zacherle credit for being the first horror host, dismissing Vampira because she hosted the movie through comedy sketches and never talked about the movie. He lists off more than his fair share of the hosts throughout the years, but always comes back to Zacherle. At the end of his monologue, Joe Bob gets a little choked up. He continues through it, but you can hear it in his voice. He dedicates this episode to Zacherle.
If this were Joe Bob's last hosting gig, then it would have been a fitting way to go out, with an extreme and controversial movie that Joe Bob himself has a link to. But fate is on our side and Joe Bob came back a few months later with his Thanksgiving marathon Dinners of Death, so instead Pieces is just another must-see Joe Bob episode on the road to many more.
Joe Bob's Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐
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