Pieces (1982) - Juan Piquer Simón

"You don't have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!" Co-written by the late great Joe D'amato, author of such hits as 1980's Black Orgasm and '79's Pleasure Shop on 7th Avenue, and not to mention the director of the infamous Porno Holocaust, Pieces is predictably trashy. But oh, 'tis a veritable Rembrandt of trash!

Pieces opens in 1942 (or rather, an alternate 1942 reality in which Boston is located in Spain, and you can bitch about the Patriots over touch-tone phones) with an uptight mom walking in on her young son putting together a puzzle ... a filthy, dirty, naked lady puzzle! She understandably goes batshit crazy (slow-mo mirror-smashin' crazy) and starts tearing the kid's room apart in a blind filth search. The boy can only see this getting worse through puberty and does his mom the favour of axing her face in half. And that's just the intro!

Pieces is great because it throws one big horror film cliché out the window: instead of giving us a smart, innocent, likable heroine to survive through the chainsaw madness, we get Kendall, an all around dumbass and against-all-odds campus stud. He inexplicably goes from number one suspect to honourary police officer, and still finds time to nail every campus cutie who crosses his path. One of them even promises to try to contain her pleasure by offering to gag herself, (though truthfully we kinda want to do it for her). Kendall becomes the right-hand man of detective Christopher George, the go-to guy for campus history and information, and bodyguard of the pro-tennis-playing undercover policewoman who happens to be George's future wife IRL. But don't let our hatred for the casanova-cum-cop mislead you, gentle readers: by our troth, this film is near-flawless in its executions.

While Pieces is trash from beginning to end, its kills are among the best in the business. The film opens with axe murder, progresses through chainsaw dismemberments, and throws in various kills of opportunity and plenty of blood on tits (our favourite!). Though one college co-ed claims "the most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed," stabbing an annoying journalist on one comes a close second. Perhaps most brilliantly, the film ends with a Frankenstein of decomposing lady parts who robs Kendall of his manhood. Yes.

The kills more than compensate for all the nonsense that falls between. And just when things start to drag, there's some hilarious racism in the form of a kung-fu professor (Daisy: "what was his thesis?") attacking the lady cop, who later delivers an oscar-winning cry of fear and frustration: "Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!"

No doubt you are wondering where you can find this horrortastic cinematic gem. Look no further than the screen before you: Pieces is available in its entirety on YouTube.

Gutterballs (2008) - Ryan Nicholson

Gutterballs....Gutterballs....I don't know what to say. When we popped the disc in the first thing we saw was a notice that all actors were 18 or over at the time of filming.
"Uh, did we rent porno?"
Turns out we didn't, but instead were watching a horror movie with a porn aesthetic. Poor sound, poor dialogue, and piss poor performances are the stand-out elements on display here.

Opening with a particularly difficult to watch gang rape scene wherein a girl at one point is fucked with a bowling pin, the movie really has nowhere to go but up. The rapists themselves are stereotypical popped-collar variety douches whose dialogue sounds improvised at best. The audience (Me, as daisy literally willed herself into unconsciousness to avoid the rest of the film) is really looking forward to some bowling pin related rape-revenge head smashing, but Gutterballs throws the typical horror formula right out the window and lets the masked madman kill everyone BUT the rapists until the very end, forcing the audience to put up with line after line of forced 'fucks' for most of the 90-minute runtime. If there was even one likable character that I could get behind I could overlook a lot of garbage, but alas, no dice.

As for the positives, I'm sure if the movie didn't have a 15 minute rape scene as its opening I probably would have enjoyed the admittedly inventive kills a lot more. The 69 kill (seriously, and it's fucking awesome), death by bowling pin fellatio, death by ball waxer...the bowling alley is used to its full kill potential and the gore is fantastic. I've never seen a dick cut in half before and I hope I don't have to again for some time.

Gutterballs doesn't shoot any higher than the title suggests, so if you're looking for a mouthful of sleeze n' cheeze, this one's for you.

Porno Holocaust (1981) - Joe D'Amato

in the early nineteen eighties the sex film industry, still reeling from its explosive 'seventies, was rife with cocaine and body hair. women were muffed, men were moustached, and everyone was balls deep in blow. pornography was in its heyday: black or white, dude or lady, solo or sex party - the "anything goes" attitude made for seemingly endless possibilities in the land of the lewd. all this is true of porno holocaust, but mere sexploitation was not enough for auteurs like joe d'amato. he had a vision, and it was bloody. bloody awful.

unfortunately, the preferred bodily fluid of this film remains true to porn form, leaving it somewhat lacking in the horror department. the "plot" attempting to link its various sexcapades is reminiscent of the creature features of prior decades, but without twists, turns, or even a decent kill scene. with underwhelming orgasms as the film's only attempt to climax, it leaves cult movie fans awkwardly unsatisfied.

bottom line: too much porno, not enough holocaust.