People are rather aware that VHS is not only in its last dying days, but that it has long since been dead and buried. I think that there are some aspects of that that are undeniably true and other parts that aren't. It can be said that no one really goes out and buys movies on VHS anymore, atleast not something that is a new release. The only times I personally buy a VHS is when I am cruising the video rental stores and there will be a $2 price tag on something like "School Spirit" or "The Erotic Adventures of Pinnochio." But the art of renting movies on VHS tapes is something that I don't think will go out of style. Atleast it is something that I hope. I love taking late night trips to the video store and picking out about 10 insanely obscure movies from the 70's and 80's. It's great chilling out with a nice bottle of wine and seeing the nit and grit of an old VHS, not to mention the grit that comes from the actual movies themselves.

But what a lot of people don't really stop to think about is that we still in a way buy VHS movies, without even realizing it. You know why? Because of companies like Diamond Entertainment, or Brentwood, or sometimes Good Times. What these companies do is take a film from an ancient VHS tape, copy it onto DVD, and put a cheap as hell price tag on it. And there you have it. You own a VHS movie and it sits right there in your DVD collection. That is one of the many things that I love about DVD. It actually knows that people like me exist. Those who want to see a movie like "Pieces" in the way that they would have seen it about 10 or 15 years ago.

"Pieces" is a classic example of movies that I love to see in the format that it is presented on this $3 DVD. It looks like it just got off the truck and made its way onto the new release shelves circa 1982. The employee dressed up like Gary Numan happily puts it up on the shelf. "Pieces" isn't the kind of great movie that you would no doubt want to have on a crisp and clear double disc DVD loaded with extras, but it's not a bad movie to where you don't want to even acknowledge that it exists. It's a very good Spanish slasher flick that combines the qualities of Giallo thrillers and campus hack em ups. It's the kind of film that I would have rented in a heartbeat as a kid, and I would have totally dug it too. I still dig it. I'm glad that I own this on a Diamond Entertainment DVD. Oddly enough, this is one of the titles that Grindhouse Releasing promised they would bring us about 2 or 3 years ago. That special edition hasn't come into play yet. I wonder if it ever will.

The only problem with getting something like this on a cheap DVD is that more often than not, the movie is edited. It is taken directly from the VHS sources, which most certainly were not uncut. When you buy something like "Slave of the Cannibal God" on the Diamond Label, you're not going to get the pig bestiality scene, and in the case of "Pieces," there are a couple of seconds cut from a scene where a woman has her arms hacked off in an elevator. As is, the scene is still insanely graphic, just like the rest of the movie. My own personal morals despises it whenever any movie of this kind is edited, and that's why I can't wait for the supposed uncut release. But if only 2 seconds are cut out, it's enough to live with for now, and enough to bring back the mindframe of the VHS glory days.

This is a slasher film that lasts the typical kind of running time you would guess, but they've packed so much great stuff in here, it's almost like watching a best of tape featuring all the things that you loved about every kind of 1980's slasher film. There are parts that are surprisingly creepy, such as the lurking shadow of the killer (that takes a nod from the old "Shadow" series), and parts that are undeniably funny for good reason, not to mention the high camp quality of the standard 80's work out chicks running wildly through the campus, and lets not forget the shocking conclusion.

There's so much to appreciate, and that is evident in the film's opening and wildly humorous scene. A title card tells us that the opening sequence takes place in the 1940's, yet naturally we see a character that is talking on a 1970's push button telephone. What we're focused on here is a little boy in the burbs who sits in his room and is putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman. Where on earth he got it is a pretty good question. Of course, you can't do something like this as a child and not lock the door, so the mother catches and punishes him in the standard 1940's fashion: she beats him. But the boy then takes his revenge. He hacks her apart and stuffs her in the closet. There's a terrifically delightful scene where the boy is found by the authorities and is crying, then utters out that innocent phrase: "Where's Mommy?"

Cut to the 1980's, the action all takes place on a college campus, where the little boy from the opening scene appears to have gone even more off the deep end. I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that the boy, now an adult, is the killer; otherwise that opening scene would be funny yet pointless. Sometimes I think that college campuses were built so serial killers would have a way of taking out their anger. Atleast the ones who wear masks. The killer in this picture wears a long dark overcoat and a fedora, and until the ending, we only see his shadow and anything buy his face.

Women on the campus are being targeted and brutally hacked apart with a chainsaw. The point here I believe is to create the perfect human jigsaw puzzle. If the killer needs a chest, he kills the woman and takes her chest. If he needs legs, he takes those, and the same goes with the arms, and...you see where this is going. Once the killer gets his desired parts, we see scenes of him putting together his old nudie jigsaw puzzle in the order that he gets the body parts. No wonder he is killing people. He's gotta be sick and tired of that old bloodsoaked nudie puzzle.

Searching for the killer is a very "I don't know about this movie" Christopher George who plays a local detective. There's also one of the students played by Ian Sera who goes about the case in the way that you would expect to see him driving around in a van with 3 other people instead of just driving around on a motorcycle and hitting on one of the other students. There's this truly bizarre scene where the woman is walking alone at night, and a karate master (Bruce Le) jumps out of the dark and starts kicking at her. She is rescued by Sera, but then it all turns out that the karate master is just under a lot of stress from meds and also the killings. A lot of movies could definitely benefit from a Bruce Le cameo. This isn't one of them.

The script here is written by none other than Joe D'Amato, who seemed to still be in an "Antropophagus" sort of mood when he wrote this script. But honestly, it really works though. He knows exactly what the viewers would like to see from a movie called "Pieces" where the tagline is "You don't have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre." Is it any coincidence that one of the other taglines is "It's exactly what you think it is"? There are scenes here of topless women running around the shower rooms before being slayed by, of course, a chainsaw. Body parts fly all over the screen from left to right, and then there's the ending. It's an ending that makes no logical sense whatsoever, but you know what, I really don't care. This is "Pieces." "Pieces" can have any kind of ridiculous and absolutely impossible ending that it wants to have and I will in no way fault it for that. The ending to this film exists in a sort of parallel universe from the film "May," another movie about sewing together body parts to make the perfect human. Both of those films work in their own way. "May" was psychological, and this film is physical, as in people physically get their parts ripped off.

I also like the direction as well, from Juan Piquer Simon. I've never thought that Simon was ever that bad of a director. He kind of always directed movies in the way that you would expect them to be done. When you say that "Pieces" isn't a poorly directed film, then you can picture in your head how it all looks, and that's pretty much what you'll get. He's good at giving a film the look that it needs for its context. He's probably most notable for directing the infamous "Pod People," shown on one of MST3K's greatest episodes. Simon created an interesting blatantly over foggy atmosphere for that movie, and if it were the slasher film that he wanted it to be, as opposed to the god awful "ET" rip off that the producers wanted, he would have pulled it off. In this movie, he definitely pulls off the slasher film qualities. It's a movie that's a bloody bucket full of fun and laughs, and if you know exactly what I'm talking about when I gleefully mention movies like "Happy Birthday To Me" or "My Bloody Valentine," then "Pieces" is something that you'll want to check out for some pretty damn good reasons. Long live watching something like "Pieces" in the classic gritty VHS format on DVD.

Recommended: Yes