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The ultimate
gross-out horror film of all time may be the Spanish/Italian venture, Juan Piquer Simon’s Pieces (1982, Film Ventures
International, R), which bills itself as “it is exactly what you think it
is,” much more explicit than either Texas Chainsaw Massacre film.
1980s Dallas columnist Joe Bob Briggs would just say,
“Check it out!” Violence like this is bad for you. In Pieces, by the way, the
big bad Dean on campus is guilty (predictable), but some of the chopping
scenes (cutting flesh, cutting a girl in two on camera) are among the most
graphic ever on commercial film. And there is one final payback mutilation of
the Dean by one of the walking reassembled corpses that censors won’t let
newspaper reviewers describe. As for
the Texas films, the Tobe
Hooper film (1974, Bryanston, 83 min, R) was
wonderfully grainy, cheap and low budget, with pathetic swipes even from
grandpa. I saw this at the tiny Northtown Mall
theaters in Dallas in the early 80s. The remake from New Line
Cinema (2003, dir. Marcus Nispel) is big and bad
(though shot flat) but seems overslick for the
material (although the trap-amputations are horrible.) There is also Boxing Helena (1993,
Orion Classics, dir. Jennifer Chambers Lynch), a British satire in which a
surgeon Dr. Nick Cavanaugh (Julian Sands), hits ex-girlfriend Helena (Sherilyn Fenn) with a car,
takes her home and, in two operations, amputates her legs and later her arms
to make her into a coffee table freak.
The film is quite effective in showing her reduction visually, to the
point that she is put in a box and made into a household decoration. “Payback’s
a bitch” when her old boy friend catches up with the surgeon and executes
him. NBC Anchor Tom Snyder gave this film a lot of hype on talk radio then. There
is even The Collector (1965, Columbia, dir William Wyler,
UK), where a man chloroforms women to kidnap
them, until one of his victims finds out how to tease his chest. I remember
seeing this in Arlington’s old Buckingham Theater. The payback got a rise from the audience.
This is not about debt collectors!
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