Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Movie
I wasn’t sure if I’d write anything about this but it certainly has enough in it to bear a few words, if only for the fact that it certainly showed me that there’s still a lot more out there for me to see, in addition to giving decent screen time to two of my slightly obscure faves, Happy Birthday to Me and The Slumber Party Massacre, with worthwhile interview time on each. It’s more focussed than other documentaries of its kind and I think that’s why I liked it so much – it begins with Psycho and Peeping Tom and pretty much ends with Scream but it bypasses things like Texas Chainsaw (except for a cheeky flash on the Matthew McConnaughey / Renee Zellweger sequel in a montage of famous people who got their start in the genre) really just focussing on the pure slasher flicks. Definitely worth a look if you’re a horror fan.
April 12th, 2007 at 1:13 am
[...] Like Going to Pieces, this is a wonderfully focussed documentary on the horror genre – in fact, if anything, it’s even more focussed, dedicating around 10 minutes each just to Romero’s Dead trilogy (well, the first two parts, and Tom Savini’s make-up work thereon), Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, John Carpenter’s Halloween, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw, and David Cronenberg’s Shivers. There’s some brilliant intercutting from the movies concerned to actual reality footage of the time, truly putting the movies in question in context. [...]