Product Details

• Language: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000CDG5MW
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #35,136 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars murder-set-pieces (director's cut), January 13, 2009

By	itmustsucktobeyou (duluth, mn) - See all my reviews

i want to clarify from the get go that my rating of 2 (i'd actually give it 2.5) stars has nothing to do with me thinking this movie is disgusting. i'm not an over-dramatic type calling this 'torture porn' or anything of the like. i'm a horror fanatic. the entire 2nd floor of my house is dedicated to my love of the genre.... much to the dismay of my very patient wife.

one thing's for sure... there is / was a ton of hype around this film... some of it deserved... some of it not.

if you're reading this, you probably have an idea of what this movie's about, so i'm not going to waste my time going over the basics. i will, however, spend some time going over my issues with the film:

1.) the "plot" (and i use that term very loosely) is almost non-existent. there's just enough to get a vague (and when i say "vague" i mean VERY VAGUE) idea of why this guy does what he does. throughout the movie you see flashbacks to the photographer's childhood that leads you to believe he suffered some sort of abuse as a child. what kind? who knows. was he even actually abused? who knows. is he just crazy? who knows. the rest of the "plot" revolves around the photographer's girlfriend's young sister stumbling in to his "secret hobby shop." basically, there's just enough of plot here to keep this movie from becoming nothing more than five minute mini-torture music videos.

that leads me to my second issue with this film...

2.) nearly all (all?) of the brutal torture / rape / killing scenes are shot in a poorly done marilyn manson-esc video style, complete with generic, stereotypical, crappy heavy metal music. i honestly think if you were to take out the crappy nu-metal, these scenes would have been much more effective. sadly, the way a large portion of these kill scenes were shot remind me of the way the kill scenes in Saw are shot. it really didn't do it for me at all.

3.) don't get me wrong. there is definitely some brutal stuff in this film, but as far as being gory goes, not so much. with the exception of a scene involving a chainsaw, you're basically left with naked women covered in buckets of fake blood. *yawn*. i don't want to ruin the scene involving the chainsaw, but i have my own issues with that as well.

4.) 9/11 flashbacks. again, i'd like to clarify... i'm not a prude when it comes to, well, anything. i'm not going to get up in arms simply because 9/11 footage was used in a film. my issue with this is that it seems to be used for nothing more than shock value. it really is completely irrelevant and out of place here... and try as i might, i just can't come up with a way to tie the happenings of 9/11 with the photographer's constant childhood flashbacks.

5.) the whole "nazi" thing. again... this seems to be used for nothing more than shock value. it serves absolutely no purpose other than to add more disturbing imagery to the film. the way i look at stuff like this is by asking myself "does this help the story? detract from it? neither?" the answer here is an overwhelming "neither." making this guy a nazi sympathizer doesn't aide to the story in the slightest. to me, it's just another excuse to "shock" the audience with pictures of hilter, videos of his speeches and giant nazi flags. i'm not down with that. at least find a way to really tie it in to the story. until then, i call b.s. i hope others out there are smart enough to know when they're being force fed garbage.

the one section in this film that honestly disturbs me... and the one section i'd say is very well shot, is the section that involves his (apparent) son in the crib. my hat's off to palumbo for that. it was so disturbing, in fact, that i actually sat there after the movie was done thinking to myself "what kind of parent would allow their one year old child to be involved in a scene like that?" i'm actually surprise palumbo didn't throw some crappy heavy metal music over that section.

the final nail in this flick's coffin: the ending. yawn city. predictable. boring. anti-climactic. when the credits started rolling, i made a certain up-and-down hand gesture involving my fist being perpendicular to my crotchal region while yawning. this will remain in my dvd collection... mostly because i'm a completest and never part with anything i own in the genre, but i doubt i'll ever watch it again.

i've never seen the R version, but i can only imagine what was cut from it.

final verdict: if you have any interest in seeing this, i suggest renting it before buying it. if you're a huge horror fan, it may be worth checking out. just not so sure it'd be worth spending more than $10 on. if i would have picked this up when it was selling for $50+, i wouldn't have been a happy camper.

10 of 14 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've gotta shoot some girls., June 2, 2006

By	Justin "Mad Man" - See all my reviews

For those of you, like me, who thought the movie adaptation of "American Psycho" was a total cop-out, this is a lot closer to what it should've looked like. If you want to get it, check out xploitedcinema. I bought mine from them. Great seller.