The fact that I have never reviewed this movie is a dramatic oversight on my part. Hopefully, this will make up for that. This movie came into my life a couple months before I had a site and thus was left in limbo. No more! Allow me to shock and amaze with my review of...
The film begins with a pretty famous opening scene amongst horror aficionados like myself. A young men has his naked lady jigsaw puzzle smashed by his mom and all of his dirty magazines stolen. Oh that bitch has to die! Faster than you can say 'matricide,' the lady gets hacked up with an axe. The police come in and find the kid covered in blood. Did he go to jail? An asylum? We have to wait to find out because we get the opening credits.
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The film jumps ahead forty years...for some reason and we get a modern (as of 1982) college campus. One young woman is out studying on the grass when, out of nowhere, chainsaw decapitation! Are you awake yet? Naturally, the police are a bit miffed by this, especially when the head remains missing. We get the first of many shots of a man in his study. He place the head on a wall, evidently part of a bigger thing. All will be revealed later, kiddies.
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After another murder and missing body part set, the police decide to send someone undercover at the school to find out who the killer is. Naturally, they pick a famous tennis star (no, really) to go in as...herself...as the new tennis coach. Police intelligence is the real oxymoron! She is played by Lynda Day George, wife of Christopher George (of Grizzly fame)- who also stars in the movie as the police captain. We get a second lead as well in a very Jewish-looking young man who is apparently a 'player.' 90-lb Torah readers really get college girls all wet, I guess. He gets in on the investigation and tries to help.
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This movie is defined by two things: incompetent law enforcement and vicious killings. One girl gets stuck in an elevator and cut up badly, while another is cornered in the bathroom. The latter is killable because our heroes are off trying to find out why the P.A. is blaring loudly. They completely miss the killing and the villain's exit. Good job saving nobody, guys! The whole thing builds up to our killer's master plan: making a human doll. Unfortunately for the last girl, her legs prove to be too short to fit into the shoes set up for it properly. Not only were her legs cut off with a chainsaw while she was still alive, but she died for nothing. I guess the killer needs one final piece. How about the lovely legs of a tennis star?
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I will spoil the ending for you here. Read at your own risk.
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We learn that the school Principal is actually the killer. How has he hid his insanity for years and risen to such prominence for forty years? They don't say. He knocks out the tennis star and gets ready to complete his work. Fortunately, our Jewish hero has solved the case and rushes to her aid. They manage to shoot him in the head, killing him instantly. They inadvertently uncover the corpse doll (a lovely effects shot) and figure everything out...sort of. As our young hero goes to leave, we get the mother of all inexplicable shock endings.
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The doll (which is made up of different woman's parts and simply sewn together) suddenly comes to life and grabs our hero by the balls. What...the...hell?!?!?
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This movie is great. It is played like a classic giallo (no doubt showing the international influence) and is all about solving the case. All of our killings are done in first-person perspective and give us plenty of gore. The pacing is solid and the killings are shown in the right amount of detail for all of you gore-hounds. You can practically walk through a couple of the plot holes and the acting is fairly average. Edmund Purdom shows what he is worth though, which will be more apparent in one of my future Christmas-time reviews. The DVD release by Grindhouse Productions is solid and features a lovely 'audience reaction' track. A solid rental for forgiving horror fans that love, love, love gore.
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Let's switch gears from the gore and focus on dolls. These are the ones that shoot you though and only one tiny man can help us. Stay tuned...
high five on this one, Pieces rules, its on my Bday list this year for sure
ReplyDeletegreat pick, my favorite thing about this movie is that, even while the doll thing is *totally* obvious near the end, it STILL got me the first time around.
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