Video Trash: Pieces (1982)

What better marriage is there for a 1980s horror movie than a slasher flick and college coeds? Add to this mix another marriage, that of Christopher George and Linda Day George (as Linda Day) with early 80s horror movies. Now for good measure throw in a chainsaw, lots of blood, and of course those college girls have to get naked. This is not an instant recipe for success, misogyny yes, but the movie still needs to be entertaining to some degree.

Pieces begins with the all too common flashback sequence which pretty much defines where this movie is going. A young boy is harshly scolded by his mother after being caught putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman, and in return harshly hacks his momma to death with an axe. Some 40 years later (patient SOB he sure is) girls on a college campus are being dismembered with parts of their bodies gone missing. The police, an undercover female cop and a college student join forces to smoke out the madman, if they themselves don't get killed in the process.

Pieces is also the all too common 80s misogynistic trash. Being an 80s slasher flick alone is odds enough that it would be that, but then throw in girls getting naked then being cut up by a chainsaw wielding killer and it screams misogynistic trash. Interestingly it is also pretty well paced and does not bore, if you are the right audience for this movie.

From the very start of Pieces there is slicing and dicing. Unlike the tried and boring formula of many slasher flicks of the 80s, this does not waste time with stalking and superficial character development. There is no character development in this story, they are just characters on screen. The movie starts with a bloody killing and continues this spree. The pacing moves the movie along well while an underlying soundtrack that sounds more like it belongs in a zombie movie keeps the tempo.

As with this type of 80s trash you really don't have to worry with bad acting. Aside from Linda Day George's character and a secretary there are no female characters in this movie given any more importance than being chainsaw meat and there's not enough time for them to get in any bad acting. I stand corrected; there is Linda Day George's infamous "BASTAAARD!" scene which has gone down in movie history as an achievement of over-acting. Intelligent dialogue and a sensible plot are also something very much missing from this movie.

I give it 3 Daggers. For the right audience it offers plenty of blood, action and a decent amount of nudity from start to finish.

Availability

Blu-ray and DVD

Video Trash: Savage Island (1985)

Savage Island (1985) - Cobbled together from two existing Italian/Spanish women in prison movies, Escape from Hell (1980) and Hotel Paradise (1980) which were shot back to back with much of the same cast, Savage Island adds a wraparound of new footage starring Linda Blair as an introduction and conclusion to the story.

An elegantly dressed, attractive woman (Linda Blair), walks into an office high-rise one evening, shoots a security guard in the head (Penn Jillette of all people), and finds her way to the office of a sleazy emerald mine owner (Leon Askin) who has been using women prisoners as slave labor for his mining operation. She is there to tell him a story about one of his mining operations, and hence follows the original movie footage.

Being cobbled together from different movies, even with many of the same actors, Savage Island is at times sketchy, even outright jumpy in its presentation. Some actors are in only one or two scenes and then disappear from the movie, while other scenes are roughly edited together. Even with the bizarre editing of two movies into one, they actually succeed in making it work, having one cohesive, though at times hard to follow, plot throughout the movie.

Savage Island though is not about the plot. Women in prison movies often aren't. It's about the sleaze, and Savage Island is notoriously filled with it. Either of its two parent films could contend for the sleaziest of WIP flicks for iits time, but Savage Island upped the ante by taking some of the best parts of both and having more nudity than either of its parents alone.

Sweaty naked women, lashings (of naked women), fights between the prisoners (while naked), and of course naked while taking a communal shower, and some threadbare plot about a revolt and escape that nobody really cares about is what makes up this movie. Those looking for sleaze will find it in abundance. If you're not looking for sleaze then you'll want to avoid this one because it doesn't have anything else to offer. This was and is a direct to video release and the image quality is not great.

Availability

DVD

Video Trash: The Flesh and Blood Show (1972)

Released to UK theaters in 1972 and US theaters in 1974, The Flesh & Blood Show was a gimmick film with a 3D flashback segment in black&white, even though the film was in color. It was released in a VHS Big Box by Monterey Home Video with the very same movie poster for the film used as the cover, but the 3D segment is just a black&white segment, not in 3D, on the VHS home video release.

The Flesh & Blood Show was directed by Pete Walker (House of Whipcord, Frightmare, House of the Long Shadows) and featured Luan Peters and Robin Askwith. There are some bits of nudity in the movie, enough to get a 13 year old excited but not much beyond that.

The plot concerns a theater group rehearsing a play and looking for a place to rehearse and put on the show. They re-open an abandoned theater, shut down after a double murder there 30 years ago, but are soon stalked by a gloved killer knocking off the troupe members one by one.

Availability

Redemption Blu-ray 

Pete Walker Quadruple Feature DVD