Product Details

• Language: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000CDG5MW
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #77,154 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars TOTALLY INSANE BUT NOT SENSELESS, July 21, 2006

By 

Anton Ilinski (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Murder-Set-Pieces [Director's Cut] (DVD)

Guess I was a little prejudiced against this movie - while watching I was trying to figure out all that "gratuitous violence". But all in vain - it wasn't gratuitous. "Murder-Set-Pieces" is indeed shocking, disturbing, brutal and relentless, but it's in no way an exploitation film. It seemed to me Nick Palumbo's flick was a serious and at the same time mercyless insight into a serial killer's mind. And it was rather thorough. Maybe first since William Lustig's "Maniac". Actually "Murder-Set-Pieces" can be seen as a homage to many horror classics, first of all "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" comes to mind after sequences in the killer's den with all the carcasses and other human remains. And not just "Texas Massacre", but the main impression Palumbo's film gives is of a "Maniac's" traditions continuer. They are very similar in many ways. "Murder-Set-Pieces" is utterly atmospheric and it could have been even more, had Palumbo left in all the cut footage of driving through the streets of Las Vegas. By the way city theme is extremely important here as in "Maniac". In Lustig's movie New York acted like an individual actor influencing maniac's mind, making him descend deeper into madness. Here Las Vegas is doing the same thing, we see this huge city of million lights and crowds of people as an empty place. Is it possible to feel yourself alone in the crowd? According to Nick Palumbo - yes, it is. And those Vegas suburbs look like a completely desolated and abandoned places. And it seems that people are not people at all, they are just some kind of cardboard setting. It's amazing what an atmosphere Palumbo created here so that we could think and feel the same things as his serial killer - desperation, anger, pure rage towards the whole humanity. And violence in "Murder-Set-Pieces" is not self-sufficient. It just helps to create the mood for the movie and to try to touch something that's unsane. By the way very good is the contrast between ghastly murder/torture scenes and blank, almost sterile-white and beautifully-shot sequences of photo-sessions.
Just try to imagine William Lustig's "Maniac", but more explicit, graphic and shocking. We even see children being slain here which is not a common thing in cinema as we all know. But again these scenes' purpose is not just to shock the audience but to demonstrate all the depth of a man's insanity. And to show the striking difference between glamourous and shiny exterior of the City and its rotten and dark core. Nick Palumbo manages this goal as perfect as it is just possible.
"Murder-Set-Pieces" turned out much better than I expected, being much more than your regular slasher gory flick. And I'd mark small roles by some prominent men of the genre - Tony Todd ("Candyman"), Gunnar Hansen and Edwin Neal ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre"), Fred Vogel ("August Underground").
Don't listen to anybody and don't believe any hype. Don't make up your mind regarding this film on what you heard about it. See it yourself. It's worth your viewing. And it definately is worth being in a collection of anyone who is interested in horror genre.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good very disturbed movie, November 13, 2009

By 

Amanda Hurst "irelandrain" (escondido ca) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Murder-Set-Pieces [Director's Cut] (DVD)

I am a huge horror movie fan the more disturbing the movie the better, i loved this movie it had a nice amount of gore and torture, it does hit very close to home in the fact it can pretty much happen in real life we dont know who our neighbors are or what hides behind closed doors, It was shot in Las Vegas and centers around a disturbed man who had an abused childhood as far as i can gather his mom was a prostitute who was murdered by a john, and he has issues involving women he seems like an upstanding person to everyone but he has a basement where he tortures women.I loved this movie i think anyone who is a huge horror fan needs to see this movie.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionary extreme horror -- unreservedly brutal and sadistic, October 22, 2008

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Murder-Set-Pieces [Director's Cut] (DVD)

Let me take a moment to personally thank director Nick Palumbo for going where few horror directors even dream of going - he doesn't just go there, he moves right in and throws a freakin' party. I can't imagine any gorehound not being impressed by what they see here (as long as they get the uncut director's version and not the extremely neutered R rated version). Murder-Set-Pieces is, in a word, brutal. No one can ever accuse Palumbo of being a gore tease like the established horror directors in Hollywood. Copious amounts of blood, ultra-realistic scenes of torture, and several extremely violent rape scenes await you in the main character's blood-soaked killing room. And this madman doesn't discriminate by age, either - he's more than happy to hack and slash little girls to pieces when he's not sadistically destroying young women. This film may or may not live up to its tagline ("The most visceral horror film ever made"), but if it falls short, it's not for lack of trying. That's why thought police all over the world have tried to deny you the right to see this movie. It was banned in the UK (not surprising, given the UK's history of censorship), and it was banned from every film festival in North America. The film proudly bills itself as "the only film in the history of cinema that was banned from the Big 3 film labs." The final credits list Herman Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels alongside Robert Ley as executive producers. This Nick Palumbo guy just doesn't care about all of the critics lining up to condemn him and his film, and I love the guy for that. Heck, he even uses one scene in the movie to unabashedly plug his first film, Nutbag: The Story of the Vegas Ripper.

Go out and read some of the film's more critical reviews. It's been damned as "the lowest form of cinematic life," and the New York Times' Ned Martel actually opines about the psychological damage he "knows" some of the actors must have suffered just from appearing in the movie. If you thought the psychological hullabaloo over Danielle Harris' performances in Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers (Divimax Edition) and Halloween 5 - The Revenge of Michael Myers (Divimax Edition) was bad (and it was), you haven't seen anything yet. (Young Jade Risser appears nervous early on, but she rises to the occasion in plenty of time for the film's final harrowing scenes. This girl has all the makings of a terrific scream queen once she reaches the other side of puberty.) When the daiquiri-sipping elitists get this upset over a movie, you know it has to deliver. Criticism of the acting performances is certainly valid, but I have no problem with the killer's brooding, stilted behavior. For Pete's sake, do all of the poo-pooers out there expect an ultra-sadistic butcher to appear perfectly normal?

Needless to say, Murder-Set-Pieces is an independent horror film - a rather expensive one, as indie horror films go (the budget was 2.2 million dollars). Shot on glorious 35 mm film, most of the budget was obviously spent on blood and gore. It features several actual streetwalkers, strippers, and at least one pornstar (Crissy Moran) among its cast of victims (how's that for realism?), but that cast also includes Gunnar Hansen and Edwin Neal from the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2-Disc Ultimate Edition), as well as the legendary Tony "Candyman (Special Edition)" Todd, who acts the hell out of his one memorable scene.

By the way, there is an actual story here underneath all of the blood and body parts. It basically comes down to an unfiltered and daring look into the mind of a sadistic serial killer, with plenty of cinematic tension supplied by the killer's oblivious girlfriend's sister, who seems to be the only person capable of recognizing that the weird German dude is creepy and dangerous. You can't help but worry about young Jade's possible fate, especially when you see how willing the killer is to slaughter innocent little girls.

Unlike most critics, I'm not going to psychoanalyze the killer or the movie itself. Instead, I will just say this: never before has sexual rage been unleashed this viscerally on the big (or small) screen. Murder-Set-Pieces separates the real gorehounds from the wannabes. It's so revolutionary that even some horror fans just don't get it - sadly, a few have even repeated the censorship mantra of the talking heads who make it their business to stifle creativity and to control what you are allowed to see, hear, and think. Whether you love it or hate it, don't let anyone deny you the right to judge this film for yourself.