Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

This is pretty much what you'd expect from the title: a group of actors, directors and special effects people talk about the slasher genre of the early 1980s. They cover all the big ones, some of the lesser ones, and go over the backgrounds.

How did the Italian films of Mario Bava influence the slashers? Are they anti-woman? Do they make kids do bad things? Is it a dead genre? All of this is covered and more... such as the concept of the "final girl" and other tropes so often found in horror.

I would have liked a bit more history, and maybe more credit given to Bob Clark and "Black Christmas" (which, to me, deserves more recognition than John Carpenter's "Halloween"). But I can't really complain with all these people they found to interview -- getting Carpenter, Craven, Rob Zombie and more to appear on film? Well done.

I have met the man who wrote the book this film is based on, the charming Adam Rockoff. If this film was your idea of education, get his book! Much more than you can cram into a 90-minute film.

GOING TO PIECES is a fun reflection on the slasher genre, primarily exploring the wave of American slasher flicks that came out since the success of Carpenter's HALLOWEEN in 1978. Other influences such as Argento and Bava are only mentioned in passing, and there are some notable omissions (what about BLACK Christmas?) but for the most part this is a fun and in-depth look at a much-maligned sub-genre of film.

Obviously, the documentary is awash with clips that take up about two-thirds of the running time. Most of these focus on the goriest of the kill scenes in each film, so if that's your bag then you'll enjoy yourself. However, in addition, we get interviews with tons of guys involved with the production of these movies; writers, producers, directors, occasionally stars. You'd expect to see Carpenter and Savini here, but I appreciated the less well-known faces too. GOING TO PIECES is a great watch for anyone with even a minor interest in the slasher genre.

I am a huge horror movie and slasher fan and I was shocked to see this on my Starz On Demand list. It is pretty good, but I think they try to cover a little too much ground in its short running time to really go into one subject too much. I have seen a lot of the movies that are discussed and it also introduced me to a few that I wasn't familiar with that I can now try to watch. It is good for an introductory course on slasher films and I seriously could have watched another hour's worth of material, but I understand why they had to trim to a shorter time. It does one of my least favorite things in documentaries though, when the subtitles would come up showing a person's name and what film they worked on, the font was very small and it was only on the screen for a second, so I had to keep rewinding to see the name's of people that I didn't recognize (which admittedly wasn't a lot, but still.) If you are a fan of the genre, this is a good little documentary to get you acquainted with some classic movies and maybe introduce a few new titles to track down.

I am probably one of the biggest fans of slasher movies.Whenever I see one,I expect gore,violence,and mayhem.'Going to Pieces: The Rise of the slasher Film' delivers what I want.It shows us when the slasher genre was famous after such films such as 'Psycho', 'Halloween', and 'Scream'.It also shows us when the genre was becoming weak after films such as 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation' and many others.What really made the movie good was showing us some clips and death scenes of the films of the slasher genre,which makes this documentary both gory and entertaining.I just have one question before my review ends.

Where is the DVD?

This is a pretty good treatment of the thinking that went on behind the scenes of movies like "Prom Night", "Friday the 13th", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and others. The great thing is that the cool stories and insights are told by the key players involved (directors, producers, special effects artists). You get to hear not only their thoughts on the psychology involved, but also about the marketing struggles they had to deal with.

Essentially, this is a documentary which interweaves present-day interviews with film clips from classic 80's horror flicks to give you a behind the scenes look at a genre during its peak period of interest. If you're a horror fan, you'll probably like watching this.