Review of "Pieces" by The Headless Critic

The man so popular his newest special crashed Shudder.com. Actor, writer, critic, film historian, proud Texan and everyone’s favorite drive-in theater host Joe Bob Briggs returns for The Last Drive-In. Thirteen days ago his supposed one night only, live comeback has him hosting thirteen of the best drive-in worthy features on Shudder in a 24 hour plus long movie marathon. This is it folks. What very well may be the last television horror movie host puts on his bolo tie one last time. Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater first started showing films on premium pay channels in the 1990’s transitioning into Monstervision on cable tv by the end of the decade. The man who ruled the 90’s in horror hosting dons his cowboy hat for a visit to The Last Drive-In Theater.

Pieces – 1982



Absolutely no one under 17 admitted to this review.

“Pieces… It’s exactly what you think it is!” The curious mind of a young boy is forever fractured by his repressive mother when she admonishes him for putting together a puzzle with the image of a naked woman on it. The young boys response it to cut his mother up into puzzle pieces with an ax. Forty years later at an University campus in Boston, a serial killer is dismembering bodies with a chainsaw and keeping pieces for himself. “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!” The police have placed a plant on campus to catch the killer. “If you think you’re safe, you’re DEAD wrong.”

After 1974’s instant classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the world was calling for more deaths at the end of a chainsaw blade. Four years before Tobe Hooper revisited the Franchise, Spain made their version of an American chainsaw slasher. The concept is strong for a horror film, exploring the fragile psyche of a child turned killer. Marketing is as shameless as the taglines that sell the film suggest. The execution is a blatant rip-off of both The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the city of Boston. Unoriginal doesn’t have to mean it’s bad.

When Spain tries to copy American slasher films, it actually turns out pretty well. The ultimate form of a slasher movie may be dismembering a body. It’s even creepier when the killer is keeping the pieces for his own human jigsaw puzzle. Forget the fact that a body dismembered by a chainsaw blade with literally be torn to pieces and help put together this human puzzle of gore.

4 out of 5 Headless Critics (Joe Bob’s Rating: 4 Stars)