If there were any doubt about the giallo influence on Pieces, the hilarious motivations for the killer's activities (triggered with a head-scratching early scene involving a dense roller skater flying to her death in a big pane of glass, thus bringing his psychosis back to the surface) should quickly reveal its true intentions. Can our undercover sleuths discover the killer before he realizes their plan? And can anyone explain that lunatic final scene? Meanwhile young girls continue to fall prey to the killer, in settings ranging from a swimming pool to a water bed(!), all executed in graphic detail. The officer in charge, Lieutenant Bracken ( City of the Living Dead's Christopher George), enlists the aid of tennis player Mary (Lynda Day George) and unbelievably dippy, he-slut college student Kendall (Sera) to sniff around for clues on campus. Flash forward forty years later, as an idyllic Boston campus is being terrorized by a chainsaw killer who removes different body parts from his victims. The neighbors arrive with the police to find the house splattered with blood and the little boy hiding in the closet. His mother bursts in and angrily chastises him, to which he responds by taking an axe to her head. In the obligatory prologue, set here in 1942, a young boy works on a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman. Of course, the predictable yelps of protest quickly ensued over its supposedly misogynist depictions of college women being attacked by a jigsaw-happy lunatic, though in fact this Spanish-shot film owes far less to its slasher cohorts than to the genre's decade-earlier ancestors, the Italian gialli, which Pieces both imitates and nearly parodies to a completely absurd degree. Shuffled into coast-to-coast theaters at the height of slasher mania in the early '80s, it became an instant drive-in favorite with its prominent unrated status luring in huge audiences. Thankfully some of his anti-masterworks have ascended to bona fide cult status, and none reigns more supreme than the tasteless and relentlessly entertaining Pieces. While Spanish directors like Jess Franco certainly had their moments of hackwork, nobody else managed to hit the bottom of the barrel as consistently as the endearing Juan Piquer Simón who assaulted audiences with the likes of Cthulhu Mansion, Slugs, The Rift, and The Pod People. Grindhouse Releasing (Blu-ray & DVD) (US R0 NTSC), Arrow Films (Blu-ray & DVD) (UK RB/R0 HD/PAL) / WS (1.66:1) (16:9) Pieces.Starring Christopher George, Ian Sera, Lynda Day George, Jack Taylor, Paul Smith.You don't have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!.Pieces - Le sadique à la tronçonneuse (Canada - French title).Der Kettensägenkiller (Germany) (video title).Chainsaw Devil (Netherlands) (video title).The co-eds of a Boston college campus are targeted by a mysterious killer who is creating a human jigsaw puzzle from their body parts.Cinematography by Juan Mariné (as John Marine).Produced by Stephen Minasian, Edward L.Starring Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Frank Braña, Edmund Purdom.Written by Juan Piquer Simon, Joe D'Amato & Dick Randall.Distribution Co: International Film Distribution (1982) (Spain) (theatrical) | ARC (1983) (USA) (theatrical) (dubbed) | Film Ventures International (FVI) (1983) (USA) (theatrical) (through) (dubbed).Production Co: Almena Films | Film Ventures International (FVI) | Fort Films | Montoro Productions Ltd.Running Time: France:87 min | Greece:90 min | USA:89 min.