GoingtoPieces

Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)

This is one of those times that I’m a bit late to the game. Going to Pieces is a documentary about the phenomenon that was the slasher film, which of course had it glory days in the 1980s. I remember watching this when it first came out back in 2006 and thinking it was a decent documentary, but over the last couple of years I’ve really started to get into the slasher genre. So when I went back to check this out as part of the big slasher theme here at Gutmunchers I was surprised by how much my opinion had changed.

First lets start with some positives. You get short interviews with the usual suspects like Sean S. Cunningham(Friday the 13th), Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street), and John Carpenter (Halloween). So obviously they went out and got in touch with the directors of the important franchises. This is cool, but they also got people like Herb Freed (Graduation Day), Armand Mastroianni (He Knows You’re Alone), Amy Holden Jones (The Slumber Party Massacre), and Joseph Zito (The Prowler/Friday the 13th part 4). I think it was just as interesting, if not even more so to hear what these smaller players had to say about the slasher craze that basically enabled them to make their movies. Thru the interviews with these directors the documentary mentions the early days of the slasher movie, crediting Psycho and Peeping Tom with setting up the basic premise of what would later become the slasher film. It then jumps to Halloween and how then that Friday the 13th ramped up the gore quota and added the “Carrie” jump scare.

Here I want to make my first complaint. I understand that it is impossible to include and cover everything. But how the hell do you go from Psycho to Halloween without mentioning Bob Clark’s Black Christmas? It isn’t as if they were skipping an obscure movie with a cast of no names. So that bugged me. They also don’t mention Bava’s Bay of Blood, which clearly inspired much of the gore that would follow in the slasher movies of the 80s. Now to be fair it gets a brief mention later on. But then they spend a decent amount of time on He Knows You’re Alone and Graduation Day. I think they could have spared 5 minutes to give these 2 classics their due.

After mentioning Friday the 13th they then go on and talk about some of the other notable slashers including Prom Night, The Prowler, My Bloody Valentine, and Happy Birthday to Me. They use these movies to set up the “formula” and show how it works. You get the last girl standing, the killer’s motivation, cool settings (mines, high school, etc.), how does he kill, and can you find a holiday that is still available! The documentary also goes on to mention some of the more unique twists in the slasher genre (Sleepaway Camp) and the first real spoof of the genre (The Slumber Party Massacre).

They then have Tom Savini talk about how the gore started to ramp up with each film trying to outdo the one before it. This lead to the MPAA cracking down and along with movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night was the beginning of the end. An ending that was only made easier by the mass marketing of the slashers with Freddy Kruger and Jason becoming more jokes then killers. The documentary also takes a real nasty shot right here at Friday the 13th part 5, which sort of pissed me off. Another thing that kind of made me mad was how the documentary ends with Wes Craven’s Scream franchise being portrayed as the savoir of the slasher genre. The first movie was okay, but really did it reenergize the slasher genre or did it just make work for forgettable WB actors during the summer months?

Now that I’m a bit more into the slasher genre I suppose I’m way more picky than the first time I saw this. But there is still some good information and interviews in the documentary that makes it a worthwhile watch. But honestly ignoring Black Christmas is still unforgivable.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer