Census Bloodbath: In Case of Emergency

Year: 1982

Director: Francisco Rodríguez Gordillo

Cast: Jack Taylor, Mirta Miller, Claudia Gravy

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

Plot: El cepo/The Icebox Murders follows Chantal (Mirta Miller of the previous year's Bloody Sex, bless her heart), a prostitute who is taken by her rich sugar daddy Dr. Beneau (Jack Taylor of Edge of the Axe and the same year's schlockterpiece Pieces) to an isolation mansion along with her friend Sylvie (Claudia Gravy). They discover he and his creepy assistant Jean (Juan Meseguer) are very protective of a mysterious icebox in the basement that may be linked to the recent disappearances of a slew of French women.

Analysis: A note: The single battered copy of this film that exists in the world has... a few flaws. The first act loses 2 seconds of footage every 20 seconds or so. And then there's a 20 minute period in the middle where there's no audio at all. After that it's relatively flawless, but there might be some nuances I have missed, shall we say.

That said, the movie has done an excellent job of making sure that every boring scene that occurs is repeated at least once, just so we don't miss anything. Instead of kill scenes, like most slasher movies come liberally stocked with, El cepo is content to watch Sylvie and Chantal wander around this giant house and be vaguely creeped out for 80% of the run time, a feeling that does not transfer through the screen to the viewer via osmosis, as it turns out.

It doesn't help that the film's inevitable Bluebeard twist is visible from space, so whenever the film thinks it's ratcheting up the tension, it's just reminding you that you're still farther from the reveal than you wish you were. Also the red herring at work here is one of the most bizarre in the business. We're not meant to recognize that the wealthy man who approaches Sylvie at the bar is also Jack Taylor, just because Dr. Beneau wears sunglasses that he refuses to take off, even when in the bedroom with his lover. You know, like normal, non-suspicious characters always do.

The slasher element, which begins anemic, proves it has nothing to offer once the few kills actually kick in. You'll notice in my body count below that two out of three victims are shot, but what is not mentioned there is that another victim who is believed dead until a third act twist was also shot. Unless you're in the third act of a Scream movie, there is no need to have a gun in your slasher, and centering multiple kill scenes around people clutching parts of their body then keeling over highlights the film's excruciating lack of personality.

Most of the atmosphere it succeeds in creating is glommed off of Psycho, down to the swinging lamp that lights a climactic moment. There's also one good original shot (pictured below), and while I have certainly committed the sin of bumping up my score of some Census Bloodbath entries because of one good shot, the inane goings-on of the rest of the film prevent that from proving to be much of a boon in this case. The best I can say about this unimaginative slasher entry is that it suffers from Good Poster Disease like so many of its illustrious contemporaries, where the film imagined by its promotional material is oodles more exciting than the way it actually turns out.

Killer: Dr. Beneau (Jack Taylor)

Final Girl: Chantal (Mirta Miller)

Best Kill: Sylvie (pictured above) is shot while standing in a herd of cardboard stand-ups of women with targets on their chests.

Sign of the Times: Chantal works out in a monochromatic peach tracksuit.

Scariest Moment: Jean screams at the women to take off their blouses while he photographs them on a boat.

Weirdest Moment: Although Jean is believed to be dead for half the film, he shows up in the end to save Chantal from the killer, at which point she promptly hitches a ride and drives away from him, leaving him running behind the car like Sweetums in The Muppet Movie.

Champion Dialogue: "I want you to give up your ridiculous profession."

Body Count: 3; not counting several mangled bodies discovered in a nightmare sequence on a train.

French Woman is strangled.

Sylvie is shot.

Dr. Beneau is shot.

TL;DR: El cepo is a boring, arid film that barely crosses the line into being a legit slasher.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 748

Census Bloodbath: Back To Back To Skull - Day 4

For the crossover review of this film over at Kinemalogue, click here.

Year: 1982

Director: Juan Piquer Simón

Cast: Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Ian Sera

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

Now's the time where things get really weird. Our fourth collegiate slasher entry for the week - Pieces (aka Mil gritos tiene la noche) - hails from Spain in 1982, by which time slashers had crept over the globe like the invasive kudzu plant. Just like the Canadian slashers before it, Pieces bends over backwards to pretend it's American, to the point where the frame is doused in product placement for Wendy's, American film posters (including 1981's Friday the 13th Part 2), and - my personal favorite - framed photos of Ronald Reagan on the walls.

In spite of this back-breaking effort, the film can't escape a thick sheen of Euro sleaze, for which it benefits more than anything else. Without the strange coloring of a (largely inept) foreign take on the tropes of the genre, Pieces wouldn't be anything more than a typical low-grade campus slasher. But with it? It's still enormously low-grade, that's for sure, but it has enough purely campy or slightly pretty elements to allow it to pass with flying colors.

Four days in, I'm quickly running out of school puns.

Our story begins in "Boston," where young Timmy (Alejandro Hernández) is playing in his toy room with clear intent to transition into playing with himself, once he finishes his naughty naked lady puzzle. When his mother catches him and smashes a mirror in rage (she's so angry, she even smashes it again in slow motion), he surprises her with a an axe to the skull and a bit of post-mortem sawing to boot. Cut to 40 years later on an unnamed Boston campus in Madrid.

When a mysterious killer shown only in silhouette begins murdering co-eds around campus and removing parts of them with a chainsaw, it soon becomes clear that his wicked intent is to stitch together into a sort of Frankenstein sex doll. As healthy young women drop like flies (but not before baring their breasts) and the killer puts the bloody puzzle from his childhood back together piece by piece, police spy/tennis pro Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George of Mortuary) is enlisted by Lt. Bracken (Christopher "Mr. Lynda" George, also of Mortuary and Graduation Day) and Sgt. Holden (Frank Braña) to masquerade as a tennis coach on campus and work with the Dean (Edmund Purdom of Don't Open Till Christmas) to try and track down the mysterious madman.

The suspects include Professor Brown (Jack Taylor of Edge of the Axe), a closeted homosexual and anatomy professor - it's a toss-up as to which makes him more sinister; Willard (Paul L. Smith), the creepy groundskeeper with an affinity for chainsaws and being in the wrong place at the wrong time - think of him as a more pervy Hagrid; and Kendall (Ian Sera), the campus lothario whose girlfriend becomes the second victim at the school swimming hole. His alibi for not being at the pool where she told him to meet her so they could have sex? He was busy banging a different chick he found on the way over. Later in the film, a girl squeals with pleasure before he even touches her and, when admonished for making so much noises, eagerly suggests that he could gag her. The police decide that this horny Romeo is much too slick and awesome to be the killer, so they immediately enlist him to aide Mary in her investigation, no questions asked. 

It's good to be the king.

Pieces is well-liked by the horror crowd, but only as a Troll 2-esque trash gem, so why don't we try a little counter-programming and begin with what's good about it? This won't take long.

The best thing about the film is by far its cinematography. Aside from having the dusky romantic glow of a cheap foreign film processed through about a dozen different formats, the imagery is largely well-composed, with special focus on the power of shadow. Especially in the aerobics hall scene, light and shadow is used to suggest movement and project sinister intentions. Small points of light in the darkness bear the most visual information of some scenes, making subtle implications rather than straightforward statements.

Wasn't that fun? Now, on to the bad stuff.

There's plenty where that came from.

Although the film is a little too repetitive and has a lethargically stately pace, there are moments of pure bad-good camp gold littered throughout that make it all worthwhile. It starts off small, with little moments like Kendall reading a note in the library where the voiceover is whispering. But before long, the movie cuts loose and rams full speed into moments like the killer hiding a chainsaw behind his back in an elevator, cops shooting the hinge off a door, and - a perennial favorite - Lynda Day George channeling the forceful energy of every damsel ever tied to the railroad tracks to cleave the heavens in two with a rapturous, thunderous cry of "BASTARD!"

Along with these scattered treasures (I won't even mention the ending), the entire film is blessed with an otherworldly patina by the just barely out-of-sync dubbing and the dialogue which was clearly written by people with a less than workable knowledge of the English language and performed as if it were the first time the lines were being read*. 

The pinnacle of these scrappable scriptural moments is when a police officer thanks a records employee by saying "I'll send you a case of lollipops," but there's plenty of instant classics like "Don't tell me I'm the bearer of bad news, I could kill myself," "We don't have any more time. Take some uppers or something," and a girl flirting with a professor by asking where her pectorals are. The rest of the script is made up of odd non sequiturs or responses that are just one degree off from real human speech, like when I've just woken up and groggily answer "How did you sleep?" with "Thank you." It's really more like a group of humans talking at one another than legitimate, organic dialogue, and it is purely fascinating. 

*The actors (who are of a piece equally inept, though several of the minor female classmates are the most insidiously horrendous) begin each line with no clear idea how it will end, shifting allegiances and enunciations with unsteady bravura halfway through. Even the climactic discovery is bungled, with the police declaring the identity of the murderer like it was their coffee order.

Caption Contest: What do you think Willard says in this scene?

While the dialogue and presentation are deliciously fun, the mystery at the center of Pieces is a muddled affair, with halfhearted but admirably persistent red herrings forming most of the B-story while nameless nubile women are chopped up at every turn. Each kill is preceded by about two minutes of sexy scene-setting, whether it be sexy swimming, sexy aerobics, or two full rounds of sexy tennis. And although many of the murders aren't spectacularly bloody thanks to budgetary limitations, given the context what is shown (a girl peeing herself in fear, a stabbing on a water bed, some splashy geysers of blood) is palpably, unavoidably misogynistic.

The slasher genre is never more than two steps away from uncomfortable gender relations, but in Pieces it's hard to ignore. The killer's sexual neurosis is exploited rather than explored in any meaningful way, and Mary - the one lady cop - is wimpy and malleable, melting like a Drumstick on the kitchen counter (don't ask, the wound's still fresh) whenever something violent happens. On top of that, the victims aren't even characters. They exist solely as the film's pound of flesh with no personality traits or affectations, just a heap of skin and a scream.

Pieces is still a fun watch, but between the duller moments and the griminess of its exploitation, you're gonna have to grit your teeth to get through it. It's absolutely worth checking out for any fan of the best of the worst cinema has to offer, especially if you're looking for gems with less airtime than films like The Room or Troll 2. So I suppose the overall net worth is positive, but not by a wide enough margin to really be proud of.

Killer: Charlie Chainsaw [The Dean (Edward Purdom)]

Final Girl: Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George) sort of.

Best Kill: Virginia Palmer is abruptly decapitated with a chainsaw in the quad in broad daylight. Nobody seems to care.

Sign of the Times: We have the distinct pleasure of watching a solid two minutes of aerobics (oh how the 80's loved their rhythmic exercises) to a song that sounds like a robot trying to sing disco.

Scariest Moment: The kettle abruptly goes off while [the Dean is spiking Mary's coffee with Evil Drugs.]

Weirdest Moment: When Mary is creeping around the campus, a Bruce Lee impersonator leaps out of nowhere, attacks her with martial arts, then immediately falls to the ground, asleep. When Kendall shows up, he explains that it's just his kung fu professor, who then wakes up and claims he ate bad chop suey, so he must have blacked out.

Champion Dialogue: "The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a water bed at the same time."

Body Count: 7; including the killer.

1. Timmy's Mom is axed in the head and decapitated.
2. Virginia Palmer is decapitated with a chainsaw.
3. Jenny is drowned with a pool net and dismembered offscreen.
4. Mary has her arm cut off with a chainsaw.
5. Sylvia is stabbed to death on a waterbed.
6. Tennis girl is chainsawed in half.
7. [The Dean is shot in the head.] 

TL;DR: Pieces is an absurd mess of a slasher with enough outrageous campy moments to make it noteworthy but only to the most minimal degree.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1657