everyday is halloween

pieces [1982] 

a DADA kind of ditty produced by veteran exploitation stalwart dick randall, who also helmed the screenplay, directed by spanish filmmaker juan piquer simon, starring christopher george, lynda day george, jack taylor, paul smith [who played bluto in robert altman's revisionist adaptation of the cartoon popeye the sailor man, and edmund purdom as an erstwhile college president.  with a line-up like that how can you lose at the box office?

i dunno, really.  i didn't become aware of this movie until i started reading about it in the late '90s.  i bought a cheap DVD of this movie in 2002 and in 2008 in purchased the grindhouse releasing DVD.  not because the movie is that good but because it is so wacky and fun to watch.

not that i'm in to the slasher genre so much.  jason vorhees as a villain is for me not interesting.  neither is the set-up of slasher pics, a crazed murderer hacking his [it is almost always a he] way thru a group of teens.  but every now and again comes a film that transcends the limitations of its genre.  hence this movie moves at a fairly quick pace with some very interesting set pieces.  little in the way of psychology or explanation over the killer's motives except that as a child his mother scolded him for putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman.  for her pains the mother is given 40 whacks with an axe.

queue 40 years later on the campus of some quaint new england liberal arts college.  taylor is the popular professor, purdom is the president and bluto is the groundskeeper.  guess which one is the culprit?  randall's script is rather heavy on the red herrings and none are convincing.  the killer is shown in shadow mostly and wearing a long overcoat.  the tool of choice for his kills?  why a chainsaw of course.  how the hell the killer roams the campus with a  rattling chainsaw without rousing the least bit of suspicion from the student body is beyond the script. 

speaking of pieces the film is so clunky edited that it looks like a postmodern pastiche of the slasher genre.  it is near genius in its syntax.  this is the kind of movie luis bunuel would have made if he made a slasher flick.  not too little praise, i know, but this movie comes with a caveat.  it ain't much but it is expressed in the movie's promo tagline, it's exactly what you think it is.  you have been warned.

boo