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"Murder Set Pieces"
DVD
You know...people bandy
the word "unwatchable" around a lot. Uwe Boll movies,
the latest game or comic book adaptation, Nick Cage...the word comes
up every so often. Well, congratulations, folks...a copy of "Murder
Set Pieces" now appears next to the word in any dictionary.
Oh, and if you can't find the picture or the word, it's not my fault.
There is a plot in "Murder
Set Pieces", though it's of the most shaky sort--a fashion
photographer roams Las Vegas chopping holy hell out of his models,
building a body count to make Jason Voorhees cringe, and frequently
screaming in German for little or no apparent reason.
I confess that when I
first saw "Murder Set Pieces" I was concerned. The fact
that they put "Warning: Shocking, Horrific, Controversial."
on the cover of the box was enough to get me unsettled. Usually
when a movie advertises its own controversy, this is a magnesium
flare-clear sign that means: "This is gonna be godawful."
On, not to mention trotting out not one but two naked chicks in
the first six minutes. That's another nice clear sign that this
movie's not going to be working with much. Even worse is the box
quote that comes from Hustler, of all places, that describes "Murder
Set Pieces" as "the most graphic horror film ever committed
to celluloid." And if Fango's calling it "sick" and
"repellent", well, that's even worse.
And with this kind of
body of evidence built up against it, I'm not in the least surprised
to discover my every fear was completely founded. "Murder Set
Pieces" is utter garbage. Someone who obviously watched "American
Psycho" one too many times and said "me too!" went
out and made a movie. Trying to turn Christian Bale's nonchalant
slasher--which worked because Bale was damn good and could pull
off that kind of thing--just can't translate into some massive cold
killing machine with a German accent so thick you could throw blocks
of it into a lake and walk to the other side. It especially doesn't
help when director / writer / producer Palumbo has clearly paid
his lifetime membership in the "gore-for-gore's-sake"
school of filmmaking and has thus thrown buckets of red corn syrup
around every set on which he shoots.Even worse is the repetition.
If it weren't for the fact that he killed a different girl every
several minutes, we'd almost be watching the same scene over and
over and over again as our Germanic murder machine kills girl after
girl after girl.
I do, however, have to
give "Murder Set Pieces" the credit it deserves for suddenly
switching the language track to German at the times that it's most
freaky. Got to admit, the gutterals and harshness of the German
language really ramps up some tension.
But sadly, this isn't
enough to separate "Murder Set Pieces" from what it actually
is: one non-stop series of random murders perpetrated for no other
reason than to be shocking. And you know what? it's not shocking.
It's really not. It's just trite. An endless, pointless barrage
of blood-soaked imagery with no point or plot to hold it together
is just so thoroughly asinine that, well, frankly I can't believe
someone even bothered to put it together, let alone give this waste
of plastic distribution.
And then they inserted
footage of 9/11.
And that was the last
nail in the coffin of "Murder Set Pieces".
The ending is actually
kind of exciting, sending a twelve year old girl on her own in to
do battle with the German monster killing machine, but still not
enough to forgive what happened for the entire hour and ten minutes
leading up to it.
The special features
Spanish subtitles, English closed captions, audio options, a commentary
track, and trailers for "Saw III", "The Punisher",
"Crank", "The Descent", and "Grim Reaper".
All in all, I can't find
enough synonyms for "reprehensible garbage" to adequately
express my feelings for "Murder Set Pieces".
Murder
Set Pieces
zero stars
DVD
Directed by Nick Palumbo
Written by Nick Palumbo
Starring Sven Garrett, Gunnar Hansen, Cerina Vincent, Tony Todd
Produced by Nick Palumbo
NR
80 mins
2007
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