#228. Going To Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)

DVD Synopsis: Every fear you've ever felt. Every evil you've witnessed. Every nightmare you've ever known... have come together for the first time in one film. Going To Pieces is the ultimate anthology that takes you on a horrifying journey through your favorite slasher films including Halloween, Psycho, Friday the 13th, Prom Night, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream and When A Stranger Calls. Interviews with horror icons John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Rob Zombie, Tom Savini and many more guide you through a series of gruesome scenes from classic films and recent hits. Watch as the history of the slasher film comes alive... if you dare!










On October 23, 1980, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, two well-known Chicago film critics who hosted a popular TV program called Sneak Previews, dedicated an entire episode to examine slasher films, which at the time were pulling in millions of dollars. Not even trying to hide their utter contempt for this “new” style of horror film, the two tossed around words like “cruel”, “misogynist”, and “sexist”, and even went so far at to criticize the fans who were packing theaters to see them.

Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film is a documentary that takes a long, hard look at both the slasher phenomenon and the artists behind it. We get to see some clips from this Sneak Previews episode, which are presented alongside interviews with the stars and directors of the movies the duo attacked, who, at long last, are given an opportunity to plead their case.

Yet the best defense for the subgenre came from Fred Walton, the filmmaker behind 1986's April Fool's Day. Walton didn't feel the need to defend slasher films at all, summing up brilliantly what millions of fans have been feeling for the better part of three decades: “If you don't like it...boo-hoo!”.

Going to Pieces provides an in-depth analysis of the history of the slasher craze, which started (its box-office success, at least) in 1978 with John Carpenter's Halloween. We hear from Carpenter himself, who spins a few yarns about what it took to turn a low-budget horror movie into a cultural phenomenon. Yet as important as it was, Halloween was only the beginning of something very, very big.

Going to Pieces dedicates a fair portion of its runtime to reviewing all of the early, influential slashers, such as Friday the 13th and My Bloody Valentine, films that gave horror fans a whole new reason to go to the movies. Of course, as with any pop culture sensation, the marketplace eventually became over-saturated with low-rent knockoffs and sequels, which tried the patience of even the staunchest genre afficionados. Going to Pieces looks at these films as well; it is all-inclusive, and doesn't shy away from any movie, even the terrible ones.

Going to Pieces is a horror buff's delight, a film filled with fascinating insights from both the legends (John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tom Savini) and those following in their footsteps (including Rob Zombie and a handful of others). It is an exhaustive documentary, containing everything you'd want to know about slashers, and maybe a few things you didn't.

If you are a fan, then this is a documentary you simply can't afford to miss.

And if you're not... boo hoo!