Pieces 1982 cast movie#
We don’t expect to be mentally stimulated or inspired or taken by surprise, even if the movie in question happens to have a twist, because ninety percent of the time we see it coming a mile away. Not only do we anticipate such a generic approach, we demand it.
Pieces 1982 cast series#
On paper it was pretty straightforward: make a movie in which a masked killer stalks promiscuous teens through a series of heavily contrived set-pieces while a perverted revelation draws nearer. The slasher’s golden age was merely an exercise in formula, a fast food approach to cinema that fed audiences no frills slaughter and fulfilled their anarchic urges, transforming characters into vacuous stereotypes, employing familiar settings, setups, and other endlessly regurgitated tropes.īecause of their relative simplicity in terms of execution (at least in theory), the slasher was the perfect entry point for upstart filmmakers and indie distributors fishing for the next commercial phenomenon. Giallo films, though written off as Hitchcock derivatives with unseemly lashings of gore, were bold, inventive, and visually and technically brilliant, as were American efforts The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas and Halloween. Psychological suspense films such as Michael Powell’s claustrophobic exercise in voyeurism Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock’s gallows humour masterwork Psycho, movies which invited audiences into the minds of killers in a way that posed deeply uncomfortable questions, were witty, cerebral endeavours that were arguably the genre’s true progenitors. If you look back at the evolution of how the slasher came to fruition, you’ll witness the equivalent of a human baby evolving into a fully formed ape. As long as there was a demand for cynical, blood and guts horror, the slasher was here to stay.Ĭries of creative regression were certainly valid. As proven by Sean Cunningham’s commercial catalyst Friday the 13th, a blatant Halloween rip-off with an inspired summer camp setting that made a whopping $59,800,000 on a budget of only $550,000, it was the cheapest and easiest way to turn a profit during the 80s home video boom. Called out for its lack of invention and general artistry during its dominant 80s run, it was damned by critics who cited a moral bankruptcy that not only degraded the art of filmmaking, but a generation of slasher fans clamouring for the kind of creative violence that was much closer to reality, and as a result more damaging. When it comes to sheer ineptitude, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger perpetrator than the slasher sub-genre. I actually enjoy them more, understanding that there’s as much fun to be had with films that are so inept from a technical standpoint that highlighting their various flaws is a fun and fulfilling experience in itself. All these years later, I’m much less passive, but I don’t enjoy so-called lesser movies any less. I had no awareness of pacing, dramatic tension or the dozen other facets that make a movie great in the traditional sense, even if, with the likes of Halloween, I was aware on some primal level that what I was experiencing was something special. I fell in love with action B-movies much earlier, those gloriously cack-handed Golan-Globus productions just as sketchy, but as an uneducated tyke I genuinely believed that Michael Dudikoff was the greatest actor alive (it might be worth noting that I also had serious aspirations of becoming a ninja).Īs I approached my early teens horror became my unbridled fascination, the likes of Fred Krueger and Jason Voorhees consuming me absolutely. Led by beautiful undercover cop Mary Riggs (Lynda Day-George) and student-stud Kendall ( Ian Sera), the investigation leads everyone to the killer, who has just finished adding the final pieces to his human jigsaw puzzle.The slasher was my first real insight into the idea that a film doesn’t have to be particularly good to be enjoyable. They find a trail of dismembered bodies that happen to be missing some parts and a group of suspects including a shady dean of students (Edmund Purdom), an anatomy professor (Jack Taylor), and a monstrous caretaker (Paul Smith). Police Lieutenant Bracken (Christopher George) and his partner arrive to investigate. Cut to 42 years later and the little ax-man has moved on to chainsaws as he begins buzzing coeds on the campus of a New England college. The bloodshed opens in 1942 with a scene of a little boy axing his mother after her discovery of him piecing together a puzzle of a nude girl. With a tagline that reads, "You don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre," this Spanish-Italian entry into slasher film territory went on to achieve a dubious distinction as one of the most tasteless films ever produced.