Podcast: Pieces (1982)

Your Stupid Minds finishes out October with a Spanish giallo about Boston college students being brutally murdered. There's also a karate guy in the movie for no reason. It's 1982's Pieces, starring Lynda Day George, Ian Serra, and Paul L. Smith.

In a cold open flashback, a young boy named Timmy is lambasted by his mother over a pornographic jigsaw puzzle, so he does what any normal person would do and chops her to death with an axe. Forty years later, that same boy, now an adult, starts murdering again on an unnamed university campus that looks suspicious Spanish in its layout and vibe. First a co-ed is eviscerated with a chainsaw on the quad, then a co-ed is eviscerated with a chainsaw in the natatorium, then a co-ed dance student is eviscerated with a chainsaw in an elevator. You get the idea.

The police decide to pull out all the stops to catch this vicious serial killer. By shutting down the school and enacting a city-wide manhunt? No! They get one undercover cop Mary (George) posing as a tennis instructor, and deputize student Kendall (Serra) because one of the victims sent him a letter for a sexy rendezvous at the pool, so obviously he has his finger on the pulse of all the comings and goings at the college. 

Through dumb luck and Kendall's painstaking unpaid work as a police researcher, they're able to narrow down the killer. Can you figure it out? Is it grumpy groundskeeper Willard (Smith)? Or homosexual Professor Brown (Jack Taylor)? Or maybe a third, not red herring person? You’ll have to listen to find out!