Lousy Lottery 21: Pieces!
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week 21! This week you picked a real puzzler, 1982’s Pieces! Before we put this puzzle together, let’s talk plot.
Just know before we begin, that Pieces is widely considered one of the weirdest movies ever. So, if the plot seems odd or confusing, well, trust me, the movie is worse. That said, we start our journey in the early 1940’s in what seems to be rural America. A young man is putting together a nudie puzzle. A woman who is probably his mother comes in, sees what he’s doing and scolds and shames him. She also whoops him with a belt. While this sounds like a pretty normal reaction for that period, it doesn’t sit right with the young man. He up’s the ante by chopping mom down with an axe! No one tells this little monster not to look at nudie puzzles!
We skip ahead in time forty years and learn the story has moved to a university campus in Boston. I guess that kid killing that lady with an axe over a puzzle didn’t need further explaining. We see that the kid is now 40 years older and still putting together that puzzle for some reason. Also, somehow he has all of his mother’s clothes, shoes and accessories from that day. Not sure how he got them, why he still has them or why he’s still working on that puzzle, but if you’re looking for logical answers and explanations, you won’t find them in Pieces.
It seems our little fella’s grown up to be a dastardly bastard who is shockingly good at staying in the shadow. No, seriously, the guy’s face is basically in perpetual shadow and I truly do not know how he pulled it off. Either way, his identity remains a mystery as students and police alike try to discover who is behind a recent spree of murders on campus. In true Superbad fashion, the police enlist a nerdy student to help with the investigation. Just picture McLovin going to crime scenes and giving his two cents on what may be going down and you’ve got a pretty accurate view.
We then meet a guy the filmmakers clearly want us to assume is the killer. He walks around carrying a chainsaw and even strokes it lovingly like a pet. He’s also constantly scouring like a Popeye cartoon villain. Oh, just to make things even more obvious, he also randomly kills a sunbather. So, the cops descend on him and he nearly fights them all off with superhuman strength. Just to show you how bizarre and poorly thought out this movie is, after this scene of them taking ol’ chainsaw mcgee out, he’s just not a suspect anymore. Wait, what?!
No explanation, no exposition, he’s just walking around a free man because fuck you that’s why. He goes from suspect no. 1 to not a suspect at all in a split second. If you think this is the most random shit in the movie, you’d be wrong. There are whole scenes in this movie, whole characters, that serve no purpose and don’t advance the plot at all. In fact, in several countries this movie was deemed pornographic because there is a scene where two characters are talking in the foreground while two random extras fuck in the background. Think about that for a second. The scene is outdoors, two characters just standing on a college campus’s grounds talking about a murder investigation and the director’s like, “hey, why don’t we get a couple of porn actors to just randomly be having sex in the grass in the background?” Uh, sure, why not?
As we watch one random, bonkers thing after another happen, the film also cuts to our killer slowly putting together that damn nudie puzzle. It may dawn on you that he’s only putting pieces onto the puzzle when he takes the corresponding piece from an actual woman. So, he’ll put on an arm, then the next scene is him killing a woman and cutting off her arm. We learn the killer is taking all the pieces to build his own version of that nude woman from the puzzle. Why is he taking pieces from other women rather than just killing one woman? Who knows. Why does he ultimately dress up the frankenwoman in his mom’s clothes when she was opposed to the whole nudie puzzle thing? Uh, for reasons?
The police and McLovin accidentally discover who the killer is when they go to the Dean’s office to talk to him and stumble upon both the nudie puzzle and the corpse version. Do they then cut to them arresting the Dean? Nope. Well, at least they show him confronting the Dean, right? Incorrect. I know they at least explain why he’s gone to all this trouble and whether he’s done this before, yes? Wrong again. Instead, the cops plus McLovin place the corpse version on the floor and start talking about what to do next when the corpse inexplicably reaches up and rips McLovin’s balls off. Aaaaaaaaand scene. No, seriously, that’s it. The movie is over and you can’t even name a single character.
This movie is exactly the sort of b-movie I love. It’s unlike any other movie and is the product of people who have far more enthusiasm than skill. The choices they make are made out of practicality and the bizarre imaginations of the filmmakers and not at all for the purpose of character development or plot. For example, the movie was shot in and around Valencia, Spain. That’s not strange. What’s strange is the decision to base the story in and around Boston. Like, why? The filmmakers clearly did not know anything about what Boston or US college was like at the time. It’s almost as though they randomly chose Boston for no apparent reason, but then shot it around Valencia for practical reasons.
It’s just wonderful. So many choices in the production of this movie are just baffling. If you’re looking for a well thought out story that actually goes somewhere and develops themes, characters and the like, this isn’t the movie for you. Watching this movie is like reading the diary of a madman. It rambles, it rants and it all, as a whole, makes no sense at all. It sure is a fun read, though. Pieces was banned by several countries and considered obscene by many others. As such, it was always one of those legendary movies that your cousin had some pirated copy of. You need not hunt for it, though, as Pieces is streaming on Tubi, Shudder and more. If you haven’t seen this one of a kind weirdfest, you definitely need to check it out.
Also, don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 22! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
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