Boston Underground Film Festival: AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE (2010) and PIECES (1982)
Friday March 26, 2010 at the Landmark Kendall Sq. Cinema, Cambridge, MA.
AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE Written & Directed by Elijah Drenner, narrated by Robert Forster, and featuring John Landis, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Larry Cohen, Allison Anders, Joe Dante, Eric Schaefer and the late Don Edmonds.
The two clearest signs of a well made documentary are that they show you something you have never seen before, or place something familiar in a new light, and they make you want to know more. They seem complete but you wish they could be longer. AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE is a well made documentary.
In covering the history of American exploitation films, Elijah Drenner’s documentary covers areas that have been meticulously explored recently: socially conscious horror films of the 1960′s and 70′s (THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE from 2000), the dawn of cult movies in the 1970′s (MIDNIGHT MOVIES: FROM THE MARGIN TO THEM MAINSTREAM from 2005) and the emergence of porn from stag parties to marquees (INSIDE DEEP THROAT also 2005). Drenner succeeds in plumbing the early days of exploitation movies. He traces as far back as single-reel silents made by Thomas Edison’s film company, and progresses through the Hayes Code of the 1930′s and film noir of the 40′s and 50′s, all in an exhaustive search for the offensive and outrageous roots of American independent films. As with most such documentaries AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE relies on expert talking-head interviews — always a good sign when John Landis shows up! Drenner’s relentless supply of clips and promotional artwork from over 100 movies is what sets his study a notch above others covering similar ground. If only PBS would give him a Ken Burns budget to make a 6 or 8 hour film!
PIECES Directed by Juan Piquer Simon, starring Christopher George, Linda Day, Ian Sera and Edmund Purdom.
PIECES is a piece of junk and I loved it. It was Rated X during its 1982 theatrical release, both for male and female full-frontal nudity, and for gore that was considered excessive at the time. That same summer John Milius had to trim a 3-shot decapitation to a single shot so that CONAN THE BARBARIAN could be Rated R. The following year Brian DePalma lost a protracted battle with the MPAA to get an R-rating for SCARFACE until he agreed to tone down his infamous chainsaw scene. PIECES accepted the X, and was thus enabled to show you a chainsaw bisecting a woman’s torso, plus other nasties that are not that much more splatterrific than todays average C.S.I. episode.
The story begins in 1942 with a young Boston boy who chops up with mother with an ax and a saw after she berates him for playing with a puzzle of a nude woman. This is where the hilarity begins: the puzzle looks more like a 1976 Penthouse Pet, and one of the police officers who responds sports a Ron Jeremy mustache. Jump forward 40 years to follow a series of dismember-murderers of cute young women at an unnamed university in Boston. From there the 80′s cheesiness is boundless. Murder of a girl after we get to watch her in Jazzercise class? Check. Slow motion murder of a woman on a waterbed? Check, and well shot, by the way! Bad actors delivering bad Boston accents? Che– hold the phone — yes, the actors are bad, but not even one makes any attempt at a Cliff Claven accent. PIECES is particularly hard on the Boston Police, who come off like Keystone Cops in polyester, ever ready to Protect & Stand Around.
In fact, for a movie that was actually shot partly in Boston, the only indication of New England are the bare trees in the fall. I’ve seen movies set in Boston but shot in New York, Chicago and even downtown Los Angeles. No Boston movie has less Beantown-credibility than PIECES. I know I’m splitting hairs but this is after all the BOSTON Underground Film Festival! Moments that would have been moderately amusing with any other audience became hilarious with the crowd in Kendall Square. Yup, this was one of those perfect moments for which film festivals exist: to turn scary movies into the funniest comedy you’ll se all year.
The single-shot decapitation in CONAN still messed me up. I think I was twelve when I saw it. Thank you MPAA for keeping me from the two additional shots. (And as a fan of that movie I think the shot works pretty great the way it is. Additional shots might make it look phony.)