Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

The commentary of the directors and people like Savini is júst interesting enough to elevate this to something more than a glorified series of clips. Some of the camerawork during the interviews is terrible though. "Let's move around constantly or have a nearby object block the shot. Art!"

As a genre fan, it's certainly watchable enough. Well, that is at least when the camera isn't playing peek-a-boo with whoever's being interviewed. However, this cheap made-for-TV slasher documentary never really feels that comprehensive. Compared to tomes like "Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th"(2013) and "Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy"(2010), this is more like an episode of "Eli Roth's History of Horror", but without the gore and boobs edited out.

Having grown up in the late 80s, I can't count how many hours I wasted strolling the horror aisles of mom-n-pop video stores (Easy Video, what up?!), soaking up the wonderfully gory VHS covers of the genre's golden era. Alot of times I was too afraid to actually rent the movies, so being able to finally see some clips from things like The Prowler and Maniac was a real treat. It's not only a lovingly crafted doc, but it doubles as a greatest hits list of the decade's goriest fake deaths. F-U-N!!

Pretty half-assed look at/defense of the slasher genre. Edited like a bad History channel special, and when talking about its roots there was no real mention of either Black Christmas, the first slasher, or the Italian giallo genre that more directly led to the slasher formula than the older British directors they were covering. And yeah, why were they shooting so many of the interviews from behind things?

A reminder of how god-awful 99% of these movies were, unintentionally highlighting the staggeringly precipitous drop in quality btwn the genre's touchstones:Psycho, Halloween,& immediately flatlining w/ Friday the 13th! Any genre where originality SOLELY boils down2 picking a holiday, what mask ur killer will wear& what body part ur going 2 skewer doesn't easily lend itself2 discussion but somehow this doc finds some amusing backstories 2 mine about all the horrible copycat attempts2 cash in

Formulaic and blandly made but enough interesting bits here and there. They mustered an impressive group of interviewees and Savini is always a weird delight.

Fairly exhaustive documentary on slasher films from the late 70s and early 80s. It's pretty fun, the people who made it clearly live and breathe this stuff and it shows. Some of the attempts to glean significance from these movies are fairly hit and miss. John Carpenter's assertion that HALLOWEEN had something to do with the Carter administration is pretty puzzling, but a bit about how the movies were a reaction against the body culture of the 80s has some kick to it.

Fun to watch.

Pretty interesting if you're a nerd for slashers.

https://esperwatchesfilms.tumblr.com/post/651112171920654336/going-to-pieces-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-slasher

Strangely, I watched this walking through a field on my way to an alley.

Enough interesting interviews to keep it going, but that seemed to be the only goal here.

When they bring up Weinstein, LOL

The title sequences were so embarrassing but the rest is fun. I love listeneing to Savini and Craven talk. Why did they film some people in a graveyard and WHY did they film some interviews obstructed by things?

Too many spoilers, but it made me want to watch some slasher films.

Focuses on American films exclusively ignoring the fact that the genre started in the late 60s and early 70s in JAPAN; before moving to Southern Asia, the Med; with Italian and Greek films, Africa in the mid 70s with Egyptian slashers, and finally the Cannibal craze in Italy and South America (Mexico and Brazil) before taking off in the late-mid 70s in the US. To that end; it can probably be traced back even farther to 60s/70s Samurai films; and before that Chinese/Shaw, Blood-fu films!

Well made.