Pieces

One of the greatest slashers from the mid-80’s, a movie that is so bad, so incomprehensible that it has to be either genius or lunacy. The story is short but very familiar: psycho dismembers women in a college campus, and it’s up to two detectives and a young man to solve the problem. This movie is so full of weirdness that I still wonder if it’s on purpose. From the moment a teen skateboarder (who looks like she’s never ridden one) crashes through a mirror like it was something out of Laurel & Hardy, to the ridiculous lines (“There’s nothing better than smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed”) and the ridiculous sequences (like the kung fu teacher attacking one of the policemen, passing out, then saying “must have been bad chop suey). Seriously, what kind of drugs where they smoking? Then there’s the bad filmmaking involved (like the improbable POV shots) all given to us by Juan Piquer Simon, the man who gave us the equally ridiculous Slugs. And of course, Popeye’s nemesis Pluto, Paul L. Smith, plays Willard, a gardener so psychotic, I’m shocked anyone would hire him. The ending, where our lead gets his balls ripped off, is one of the greatest in the history of cinema. Like they say in the public screening extra of the new Grindhouse DVD, every single movie should end this way, with the lead getting his balls ripped off by a supposedly (?) dead corpse. One of the worst and most entertaining films ever.