Something I've Never Understood

I have a question about Santa Claus....
This first occurred to me as a young boy, and I've never really been able to figure it out. We're told that the toys delivered by Santa each Christmas were made by his elves, right? According to legend, Santa has a workshop at the North Pole where a large crew of dwarfish artisans labor year-round to produce a variety of playthings for boys and girls everywhere. It's common knowledge that the elves make bicycles, toy trains, dolls -- anything a kid might want for Christmas, really. Well, here's where that concept confuses me: How is it that Santa can also give away name-brand toys?


Like, let's say that I get a Nintendo game from Santa on Christmas. It looks just like an authentic, licensed piece of video game software, with the official Nintendo Seal of Quality and everything. The game plays exactly like the real Nintendo-produced title; it comes in the same type of box; the instruction manual is perfect....Am I to believe that the ELVES made this??? How are they able to not only code any video game I want, but also produce it? Most depictions of Santa's workshop do not include cubicles full of computers and facilities for the mass production of silicon chips. The elves are usually represented as CRAFTSMEN, not programmers or graphics designers. Do they really have the time and ability to produce perfect replicas of any electronic device I might demand?

Furthermore, aren't Santa and his elves violating copyrights? I mean, how can they get away with basically PIRATING Nintendo software and distributing it for free on a global scale?? They make the EXACT same thing that Nintendo makes, even slapping the Nintendo logo on it, and then they just give it away??? There's no way that Nintendo (or ANY company) would allow something like that to go on -- especially during the lucrative holiday season. Santa and his elves would be sued into oblivion if they tried to mess with the corporate world in such a way. Hey, even the most generous company wouldn't be dumb enough to let someone hijack their products during the busiest time of the year. That would be a bad business decision no matter how you slice it.

And it doesn't have to be Nintendo games, either. Just think about any item that a child might want on Christmas, and it's probably going to be a brand-name SOMETHING. Tonka trucks...Hot Wheel cars...Barbie dolls -- Santa gives all of these things away every year, and no one questions how this is possible. The elves are just making high-quality knock-offs, I guess. And that would have to be basically the ONLY thing the elves do, since I don't recall ever seeing a toy that had a "Made in the North Pole" sticker on it.


Perhaps the elves don't actually MAKE the name-brand toys that Santa delivers to children each Christmas, and they just buy them. You know -- the elves head out to Walmarts and Targets around the world to purchase, on Santa's behalf, the consumer items needed each year. That would be logical, although it raises questions about where Santa gets the money to buy all of this stuff, and it totally shatters the popular image of the elf as a skilled worker. Apparently, the elves are just professional shoppers now; they run errands. That's kind of sad.

Anyway, while I'm talking Christmas, here's a wonderful film for the whole family to enjoy this December 25th while curled up before the fire.

Pieces (1982)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082748/


Netflix description:
A psychotic serial killer armed with a chainsaw terrorizes a college campus, collecting body parts from each of his victims to create a human jigsaw puzzle. Detective Bracken (Christopher George) and partner Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George) work with student Kendall (Ian Sera) to identify the killer. The long list of suspects includes a creepy dean (Edmund Purdom), an anatomy professor (Jack Taylor) and a maintenance man (Paul L. Smith).

So, this movie is about a guy who uses a chainsaw to kill college girls and collect their body parts. His goal is apparently to build his own ideal woman, and as the murder count climbs, a couple of detectives and a well-meaning student work to determine the killer's identity. Meanwhile, the college dean, of course, frantically tries to prevent news of these gruesome slayings from going public and creating a panic on campus. WILL the killer be stopped before another naked girl gets decapitated???

Pieces is a classic, by-the-numbers slasher flick. It's laughably cliche on just about every level, and each attempt it makes at a "twist" can be seen from miles away. Really, I would have found the whole affair to be quite hilarious, if it weren't for the brutality of its killings, which are the only thing to make this picture stand slightly apart from countless others of the same genre.

Yeah, the murders are a bit more grisly here than I would have expected. Our killer stalks a generic New England college campus in search of young women who meet various physical criteria, and always seems to wait until they're in the shower or skinny dipping before revving up the old chainsaw for some action. As we learn in the film's opening scene, he killed his mother as a small boy, and spent some time in a mental institution. Who he is NOW, however, is kept a secret from us until the very end of the movie.

Meanwhile, there's a ridiculous subplot about some detective's efforts to solve the mystery. He sends an undercover female officer to campus in an attempt to gather clues, and allows her to partner with a random student who is given WAY too much responsibility for someone who never even attended a police academy. The dean, as already mentioned, is adamant that word of these horrible murders be kept a secret, and works to undermine the police investigation as much as possible. Why is it that in movies like this, the person in charge is always so reluctant to warn people about what's going on? You know -- there's a mad killer on the loose at Camp Crystal Lake, and the head counselor thinks it'll somehow work out better for everyone if he keeps all of the kids there and tells no one there's a danger. "If anyone finds out that there's been a murder here, I'll be RUINED!" he always reasons. YEAH -- it's not like anyone's ever going to notice at the end of the summer that 47 kids have disappeared. Just brush it all under the rug, and everything will sort itself out, man. Good thinking!


Anyway, I sensed a deep hatred of women at the heart of Pieces. It's as though the film's director, Juan Piquer Simon, derived a sadistic pleasure from these graphic depictions of young ladies being brutalized. The bloodiest shots are just a LITTLE TOO lingering; the methods of dismemberment a LITTLE TOO sexualized. Even the female cop mentioned above winds up paralyzed and helpless during the film's final scene (oops, spoiler). There is a certain self-indulgence apparent in how this film is constructed, and it almost gave me the willies.

By the third act, it's become painfully obvious who our killer really is, and we're glad when they finally get around to just ending the darn thing. As noted above, Pieces is a standard, run-of-the-mill slasher movie on just about every level -- really only noteworthy because of its above-average gore factor, and the fact that it's half in English, half in Italian with English dubbed over (I'm not sure what that's all about, and don't care enough to look it up). If you're a hard-core horror movie fan, then this one may be worth checking out. Otherwise, Pieces is an unremarkable waste of 90 minutes.

2 out of 5.

b.