Almena Films, 1982
starring: Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Edmund Purdom and Ian Sera
directed by: Juan Piquer

the plot: A once quiet college campus in Boston is filled with terrified screams and the roar of a chainsaw as young co-eds start turning up dead. Kendall (Sera), the campus lothario, is the first suspect, but he’s quickly cleared of any wrongdoing. In fact, Detective Bracken (George) thinks Kendall, with his connections to everyone on campus, might be essential to solving the case. And so Bracken teams Kendall up with Mary Riggs (Day George), a former tennis pro turned undercover cop, and the two attempt to track down the murderer. The school’s dean (Purdom) isn’t comfortable with having a police officer on campus, but his concerns are brushed aside when more and more victims turn up—always with pieces missing from their bodies.

why it’s good: Any film involving exploitation legend Joe D’Amato is sure to be a sleaze fest, and “Pieces” is no exception. D’Amato co-wrote the flick, and while his original script probably didn’t call for, say, an actress peeing her pants in terror or a real pig carcass being used in one of the more gruesome murder scenes, it’s no surprise to see this kind of stuff in a movie with his name attached to it. Without giving D’Amato and co-writer Dick Randall too much credit, though, there’s a neat subtext at play in “Pieces” that, while probably unintentional, gives it an additional edge (beyond the spinning blade of a chainsaw, that is). Are all the chainsaw killings, dismemberments and stabbings an elaborate, gory metaphor for STDs marching through the student body? Even though he’s not holding the chainsaw, Kendall does sex up the entire female cast in “Pieces,” so maybe his poor sexual health is the real killer. Or maybe not. Early in the movie, a busty coed tells her friends that “the most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed,” so any subtlety is probably accidental. After all, this is the sort of movie where a Bruce Lee look-alike shows up randomly, does some kung-fu, collapses and then gets up, blaming some “bad chop suey” for his outburst. It’s a moment that adds just the right amount of cheese to the rest of the sleaze and cements the movie’s place in the annals of slasher flicks.

why you should own it: Grindhouse Releasing’s two-disc edition of “Pieces” features all the extras you could want, from liner notes by horror journalist Chas Balun (the guy behind the awesome 1980s horror zine Deep Red), an interview with director Juan Piquer and more. If ’80s slashers are your thing, you can’t really go wrong with “Pieces.”