Review by Peter Syslo
GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM (2006) is a documentary about the "boom" of the slasher film, in its heyday, in the early 1980s. The film contains interviews with several directors, actors, producers, and other miscellaneous people in the industry. For example, there are interviews with Sean Cunningham, Harry Manfredini, Tom Savini, Tony Timpone, Stan Winston, etc. From those names, you can get a feel for the rounded approach that the documentarians took towards creating this film.
GOING TO PIECES... is a production of Candy Heart Productions, Starz Entertainment, and Thinkfilm. The documentary stems from a book (of the same title) written by Adam Rockoff and it is narrated by Ed Green.
I thought that this was a decent documentary about slasher films and actually, I was quite surprised about the depth they went into, regarding some of the more obscure films. They talked about such lesser-known slashers as THE PROWLER, SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE, etc... which was nice, because sometimes these documentaries about the horror genre just focus on the mainstream successes. Don't get me wrong, though, a great deal of the documentary was still spent on the "biggies".
Actually, one of my main concerns about the documentary was that it was very biased – it was definitely coming from a specific direction. All of the content was great and all, but I didn't like the fact that it jumped from PSYCHO, right to John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. Yeah, HALLOWEEN (1978) is my favorite horror film and it is the beginning of the slasher, for me, but nothing was said about Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS, British films of the 1970s, or more exploitative things like TEXAS CHAINSAW – which I feel all had a great influence on the explosion of the sub-genre, which was sparked by HALLOWEEN. I realize that this documentary focused on the slashers of the 1980s, but they could've filled in the gaps a little and credited a little more than they did; at least, they focused somewhat on Hitchcock and PSYCHO.
Another criticism is that (again, speaking to the biased nature of the documentary) the narrator/filmmakers treated sequels as if they were always second-rate and were just money-making imitations of the originals. I admit, sometimes sequels are exactly that (hmm...let's see... THE GRUDGE 2, THE RING 2, SCREAM 2, SCREAM 3, I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID... not to mention all of the remakes since the year 2000, which are basically sequels too) but that doesn't mean that they always are second-rate marketing ploys. In fact, there are some sequels that I like even better than the originals or that are on the level of the originals (except in the case of HALLOWEEN – the first is the best, in my book – but I like and enjoy most of the sequels). Also, some of the holiday-themed films and other various slashers are a little more than just imitations – some are better than others, but a lot of them do leave their own original mark. At the end of the day, this is solely based upon my opinions – slashers are my favorite horror subgenre and I could talk for hours about them.
Some positive aspects of the documentary are the interviews and some of the neat tidbits, which you don't usually get in common documentaries/ interviews. For example, Harry Manfredini explained how he came up with some aspects of the FRIDAY THE 13th score, the director of APRIL FOOL'S DAY spoke about how the joking tone of the film killed the genre for awhile, and even Wes Craven went into deep detail about how he developed the idea for A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST. (also the producer of the film described the difficult time raising funds for the shoot). There were many nice moments like that, which contained things that you don't see in everyday, run-of-the-mill interviews. Also, I really enjoyed the in-depth discussions about FRIDAY THE 13TH – there are no special features on those DVDs, as of yet, so it was very cool to see.
Cutting to the chase: GOING TO PIECES... was a decent documentary about slasher films, which contained some information with which I was not familiar. Also, it opened me up to some very obscure releases that are often forgotten in ordinary discussions of the sub-genre. Again, I didn't like the direction of the film, at times, and I feel that some early "slasher-esque" films of the 1970s were short-changed, but the resulting material was satisfying enough to cover that. In essence, it is good viewing for any fan of slashers and it is influential enough to make you go out and hunt for some of these movies, in order to add them to your collection. I give it a 6/10.