Murder-Set-Pieces (2004) Reviews

• Murder-Set-Pieces: Famous faces in a movie with zero production value

  Platypuschow2017-07-04

  Its a rarity that I give a movie a 1, a 1 is for when a movie literally has absolutely no redeeming features at all and that's hardly a frequent event. I give a movie a 1 about as often as FOX news report something without bias. What threw me was the lack of production value, the movie looks awful despite a surprisingly high budget for a movie of this type. Three people with name value (Tony Todd, Cerina Vincent and Gunnar Hansen) star but must be doing a favour for someone as I simply cannot see how they would have been roped into this mess any other way. And when I say roped into I mean literally, reinforced diamond lasso covered in superglue level of roping! The story is thin, it all looks terrible, several scenes are hard to watch and I don't mean gore or violence I mean sexual violence and graphic torture that is done in such a way that you just feel wrong watching it. Like walking in on your parents sleeping together, you've seen "That" plenty of times but under these circumstances, with these variables and your parents in the mix it's something that will stay with you forever, haunt your dreams and possibly cause an expensive few years of therapy. Bottom line here is that Murder-Set-Pieces must have been made by a sick puppy with no knowledge of film making and who must have spent the money on catering, extras or perhaps liquefied his assets at the bar but it certainly didn't go on the film.

• Miserable-Sick-Pointless

  Coventry2007-05-21

  You know you're in trouble when the DVD opens with the director proudly announcing that multiple production studios rejected his project and that members of both cast and crew were arrested several times because the explicit nature of the footage bordered on being illegal. There's only one thing worse than an untalented horror director, and that's an untalented horror director suffering from a gigantic ego. Even though the introduction is only a couple minutes long, you can clearly tell that Nick Palumbo worships himself and that he's a little bit too proud of his own work. Referring to "Murder-Set-Pieces" as simply a bad film would be too easy, because it actually doesn't even qualify as being a film. In order to make a film, and yes that even includes a mindless horror film, you require character drawings, continuity and something that at least remotely resembles a storyline. "M-S-P" features none of the above. Palumbo's precious life work is nothing more than an overlong compilation of vile and ultra-sadistic images that are edited together without the slightest attempt to build up a plot and/or tension. I'll be the first to admit that the violence, gore and raw sex easily rank among the most disgusting and sickest footage ever captured on film, but it's all very pointless and leading nowhere and thus it automatically loses all of its shocking impact. Ravishing young women are briefly introduced, usually whilst performing a strip-act, and only moments later they end up nailed against the walls of a torture chamber, screaming and begging for their lives in vain. The maniac responsible is a nameless German immigrant who lives in Las Vegas and severely suffers from sociopath tendencies. His granddaddy was a prominent Nazi (maybe even Hitler himself, as the script even fails to properly explain that) and apparently that's his only excuse for butchering and sexually abusing young girls. The whole thing simply doesn't make any sense. If he's a Nazi, then why doesn't he aim his anger at Jews or other religious groups? If he's simply a woman-hater, then why do the pointless childhood flashbacks exclusively revolve on him walking across a railroad? This photographer dude just is the dumbest, most random serial killer in the history of horror cinema and even though he leaves behind thousands of obvious clues at each crime scene, there doesn't seem to a single cop working in Las Vegas. There's a negligible 'sub plot' about the 10-year-old sister of one of the his victims investigating the habits of the killer herself, but the elaboration of this is totally implausible and actually just too stupid for words. "Murder-Set-Pieces" desperately wants to be disturbing and controversial, but it never surpasses the quality level of infantile amateur rubbish due to the lack of logic and incompetent plotting. Whenever there isn't any filthy rape or torture going on, "M-S-P" is dreadfully boring and nearly impossible to sit through. Heck, even when there is filthy rape and torture going on it gets boring after a while. The make-up effects on the girl's bodies may be very graphic, but still most of the actual murders are committed off screen. That's just lame and even a bit hypocrite considering the self-assurance of the director. One thing I can't possibly deny is that Mr. Palumbo has a great taste in women and he's clearly also able to talk them into playing humiliating and degrading roles. Okay, most of them are first-time actresses and professional strippers, but still I think they imagined their film debuts to be slightly different. Lead performer Sven Garrett terribly overacts, especially when he shouts out his lines in German, and the guest appearances of veteran horror icons Gunnar Hansen and Tony Todd are hardly even worth mentioning. Hansen briefly appears as mechanic who has a Third Reich flag in his living room (wow, how courageous!) and, judging by his facial expressions, Todd didn't even seem to be very interested in playing the clerk of an adult bookstore. For the record, in the sequence at the bookstore, the German killer dude refers to Nick Palumbo's previous film "Nutbag" as a real snuff film. Yeah right, talk about gigantic egos. In short, "Murder-Set-Pieces" certainly isn't worthy of all the internet-hype and it honestly isn't half as shocking as it wants to be. This film is nothing more than the overactive imagination of a wannabe artist and real horror fans won't be the least bit impressed.

• My honest opinion of "Murder-Set-Pieces"

  psychoticpleasures20042007-01-12

  Let me set the record straight, first and foremost—I am an enormous fan of the horror genre. I have never had more fun with any other type of film. There is nothing that I enjoy more than kicking back with a good scary movie. I'll be honest. When I first heard about "M-S-P," I was a bit apprehensive about seeing it. Some of the reviews I'd read on its graphic content made me wonder if this was a film I should sit through. After all, this *was* the film titled the most "graphic and disturbing horror film ever made." I finally got my hands on an uncut copy a few months ago. I sat back with a good friend of mine and popped the disc in. As the film progressed, the two of us began to chuckle. Those small, child-like giggles soon turned into full on hysterical laughter. "M-S-P" is a film so laughably bad, the two of us couldn't believe our eyes. What is called the most graphic and disturbing horror film ever made is nothing more than gore for the sake of gore, violence for the sake of violence, and vicious bloodshed for the sake of vicious bloodshed. That's not what the two of us found so funny. What we found so incredibly hilarious was the fact that this film was ever made in the first place. Who could've possibly been behind this pathetic drivel? Then, I stumbled upon the homepage and MySpace of writer/director Nick Palumbo. Oy vey. Where to begin? This is a man so positively hellbent on making a name for himself, it's actually downright sad and most of all, pathetic. Most of the hype around the film comes from him himself. *He* is the one calling this film shocking, disturbing, graphic, violent, terrifying. *He* is the one responsible for the public's knowledge about the film's content. *He* is the one claiming film labs refused to print it and the set was intruded upon by uniformed officers brandishing rifles and guns. He *wants* more than anything to go down in the books as the most controversial horror director in history. If those are your aspirations, fine. If you have the talent to back it up, wonderful. Sadly, he does not. What he presents the audience with is a weak script that goes basically nowhere. There is no story arc, there is no character development, there is nothing but bloodshed. Most of the dialogue in the film makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is an incredibly poorly written script that must've been only about twenty pages long upon its completion. Mr. Palumbo does not care about story. He does not care about dialogue. He does not care about creating characters an audience can identify or even sympathize with. When a new character is presented, he or she (mostly she) is simply killed off. That's it. Time to move on to the next scene of vicious bloodshed. I felt absolutely no remorse for any of the characters getting the axe because they simply were not believable. This film contains some of the stiffest, forced performances I've ever seen, most of which came from Sven Garrett. I read an incredibly poignant, smart, and honest review by film critic John Fallon that perceived the film as a "'Look at me, look at me! 9-11 footage! Look at me!' opus." Very true. Mr. Palumbo desperately wants you to look at him. He wants you to believe the film is all of the aforementioned adjectives. He wants you to believe he himself is sick and depraved. He is not. The film is not. It's just another pathetic film that tries way too hard and simply does not deliver.

• From the "Naked Dead Girl Cult" school of juvenile film-making...

  Maciste_Brother2006-01-30

  Here's my review of the "controversial" MURDER SET PIECES: Story: beefy German-speaking serial killer murders tons of naked women in Las Vegas. For 90 minutes, we see various naked women getting killed by the serial killer. The women are tortured, sliced, diced, chainsawed, etc, to death. That's it. There's very little attempt to create suspense or understanding into the few characters populating this claustrophobic flick. It's all surface. No depth whatsoever. And any level of realism in MSP was thrown out of the window because the abysmal acting, certainly from all the bimbos. I mean, we are talking HG Lewis level of acting here. The main actor, Sven Garrett, was OK but he's definitely not a seasoned pro. He looked more like he belonged in the WWE than a horror film. The lack of coaching or practice, which is standard in low budget films, was evident with Garrett. For instance, he was totally unconvincing as a photographer. I'm sure he never held a 35mm camera in his entire life before making the film. He should have spent a bit more time researching for his role than doing weights at the gym. Oddly enough though, the casting of Garrett is one of the few "original" aspects about MSP. Garrett is a somewhat good-looking, somewhat Neantherdal looking (depending on which angle he's shot from). Unlike MANIAC or DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE type of films, where the psycho is always homely, the director probably thought having a hunky serial killer would make sense due to the humongous amount of women murdered in MSP. His presence and the director's intent to show off his physique are the only things that contrast with the plethora of naked girls in the film. This includes the pointless scene with Garrett in a swimsuit and having visions of 9/11. The serial killer's psychosis is confused and, like the rest of the movie, hopelessly muddled and badly written. Why does he kill all these women? Because is grandfather was a Nazi? In one scene, you see him chew on a corpse. Is he a cannibal? Is he a Neo-Nazi cannibal? He also has sex with his victims while he kills and tortures them. Does this mean he can't get it up without blood or violence? Is he a an impotent Neo-Nazi cannibal? If it wasn't for the really bad acting on the women's part, the movie and the level of violence towards women seen in it would have been impossible to watch. The ONLY truly "disturbing" aspect of MSP is the unrelenting violence made towards women, which is numbing. The women all blend together and I couldn't tell who he was killing after a while. Just look at the film's credit to see the number of anonymously named women written for this flick: Basement Girl #2, Hooker #3, High Chair Girl #1, Tree Girl #2, Dildo Girl #1, etc. Because the violence made towards women is so unrelenting (I've lost count after 20 minutes into the movie...) but also because of what is left out of the landscape: we basically only see the beefy psycho killing naked, screaming women. We see almost nothing else. Are there any other people out there? Whatever happened to the scene with the medium/card reader seen in the trailer? This somewhat minimalist approach to the "story", more to do with the director's complete inability to come up with any other idea than killing naked women, accidentally creates the film's only distinctive quality, and indirectly, the film's unrelenting violence shown towards women became more and more disturbing as it went along. Disturbing because I suddenly realized that what I was watching was something clearly made by people with, hmmm, a *lot* of issues. The direction is stilted and awkward. You can really see that the director was "influenced" by films like "Texas chainsaw Massacre" (the film starts with flashbulbs illuminating a corpse of a naked woman...) or HALLOWEEN, and a lot of nights spent at strip clubs trying to woo investors. Oddly enough, the look and direction of MSP reminded me more of THE BOOGEYMAN (1980), Ulli Lommel's horror opus. The filmmaker has no vision or understanding of what horror is. He just used clichéd aspects of horror movies (gore, naked girls, Nazies, chainsaws, naked girls, Halloween, etc) and tried to make something shocking. The director's inexperienced is obvious throughout the film and seeing him try to combine heavy subjects like serial killings, sex, violence and 9/11 was the only true entertaining aspect of MSP. Watching all these missteps was fascinating, to say the least, and the reason I gave this 3 stars instead of 1. Here's a question I have for the director: Would the film have been more effective if, let's say, the women actually had kept their clothes on? Probably. Because the nudity is so gratuitous (and, in the end, unrealistic) that the only thing I got out of watching MSP is the number of "actresses" out there who are willing to take their clothes off for a few bucks for roles in a low-budget film; how many of them actually had sex with the producers; and how "interesting" the casting sessions must have been ("Can you scream but with your clothes off?"). Scenes of the Photographer taking pictures of two naked 'playmate' women against a tree were included only to titillate the male audience. It's eye candy, for sure, but in the end it's more of a disservice to the film's 'realism' than anything else. MURDER SET PIECES suffers from the fact that it's too trashy to be seen as a serious "shocking" portrait of a killer and it's not fun enough to be seen as great exploitation.

• fairly mediocre

  shredfeak2005-03-03

  What the other reviews have pointed out is right on track. It's far from a brilliant horror film, and relies on a LOT of sex and sadistic killing (which will be good or bad depending on your taste of course). I think this one may end up being known more for it's incredibly hot chicks than for the blood and gore. There's a TON of hot strippers/hookers, and mostly naked. A real surprise. Of course they always end up getting killed in brutal ways but that goes w/the territory i guess. The best scene IMO is the one with Tony Todd (Candyman, NOTLD) in an adult books store. It's priceless to say the least. The creative aspect of film making is a bit weak in MSP. It's just too one dimensional, even though I like some of the elements. Give us more substance Nick. It's also not as gory as what the promoters would have you believe and the writing isn't very interesting. Fairly basic set-up: sicko takes girls to his house and has sex with them, then tortures/kills them. That's pretty much all there is to it. Not a terrible movie, but not great either. There are some pretty original elements as far as hearing what goes on inside the killer's head. If the end had been better, it would get a higher rating. If you want to see a better horror flick i'd recommend Saw, much better script and more entertaining.