Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!
The film Pieces, (Mil gritos tiene la noche in Spanish, which translates to “The night has 1000 screams”) is made by a Spanish director and was filmed in Spain, but it feels very much like a giallo film. Essentially, this is a film where a crazed killer stalks girls at a college campus in Boston, hacks them apart with a chainsaw, and runs off with parts (or, perhaps “pieces”) of the corpse. So, this is a serial killer horror story, incredibly bloody, and has no real supernatural elements. It screams “giallo.”
We’re going to start at some point in the past where young Timmy (Alejandro Hernandez at this point in the film) is caught by his mother (May Heatherly)putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman. His mother reacts all out of proportion to this, demanding that her son throw it away and essentially accusing him of being a pervert like his father. Timmy then overreacts as well, coming back into the room with an axe and killing his mother. Timmy then cuts his mother into…pieces…and hides in the closet, pretending to be a witness rather than the perpetrator when people finally show up.
Years later, after witnessing an accident, the now-older Timmy opens a box containing the puzzle from the opening and the bloodied dress of his mother. And thus begins the killing spree as young women on the college campus start getting offed with a chainsaw. The first victim loses her head, and as we progress, we’ll see people lose arms, legs, and more. Suspicion naturally falls on the landscaper (Paul Smith), since he’s the one who uses a chainsaw in his work. But that’s too obvious. We’re also going to be introduced to Kendall (Ian Serra), who is the local college fuckboy, which naturally makes him a suspect. The other obvious suspect is Professor Brown (Jack Taylor), the gay professor of anatomy—remember, this was made in a time where “gay” was shorthand for “mentally imbalanced.”
And really, this is the whole movie. We watch the police follow the crimes, looking for clues, and enlisting the help of Kendall, Professor Brown, and the school’s Dean (Edmund Purdom). The murders continue on, and while they do serve to move the plot along, the real point of them seems to be to provide the audience with a chance to see most of the female cast topless. Pieces is exactly that kind of film.
The most inexplicable part of Pieces is the presence of Mary Riggs (Lynda Day), who is an undercover police office and a former tennis pro. Why would a tennis pro need to work on the police force? Shut up; it’s a movie. And mainly because the police need a way to put her on campus undercover, and making her the new tennis coach is a great way to do this. Naturally, Mary is going to become a target of the killer because that’s exactly the way these procedurals work.
Honestly, there isn’t a lot more to say about this movie. The acting is bog standard for this era and genre. If you’re here for the nudity, there’s a lot of it, and if you’re here for the blood, there’s a lot of that, too. The cops are just competent enough to slowly put together a case without solving it too quickly, and it’s going to very soon be obvious that the people who have been set up to us as the likely perpetrators are all going to be innocent, because this is also exactly how these procedurals work. The first two-thirds of the film are going to be red herrings and dead ends so that we can all be surprised by the actual killer.
Pieces is considered something of a classic, and I think it’s because of the actual ending. The way this film ends is reminiscent of the original Friday the 13th in the respect that it comes out of nowhere. But in this case, it’s completely nonsensical, happening just for a little more blood and to shock the audience. As such, it feels silly and unnecessary, and there just for one more tweak on the audience.
Pieces has its moments, but there’s better out there, even in the subgenre of giallo films.
Why to watch Pieces: Nudity and chainsaws.
Why not to watch: The last shot is completely inexplicable.
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