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107 reviews in total

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63 out of 91 people found the following review useful:
My honest opinion of "Murder-Set-Pieces", 12 January 2007

Author: psychoticpleasures2004 from Australia

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.

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62 out of 99 people found the following review useful:
All hype, 25 December 2005

Author: polysicsarebest

A long time ago, I set out to see every gory movie ever. I went from Bad Taste to Premutos to Riki-Oh to Dead Alive and on and on and... well, after Dead Alive, I'd basically had my fill. There was a movie that was hilarious and well-made and -- oh yeah -- REALLY gory. After that, I noticed more and more in so-called "gore films" that directors just went the extra mile to try to shock people. A lot of these films are all about the gore and the effects, and they convey absolutely nothing. I learned that gore does not necessarily equal a good film. And even though there are still kids out there who say "OH I GOTTA SEE THIS FILM CUZ IT'S GORY!!!!!!", most are quickly shut up after seeing Dead Alive. Most of those kids will now say, "Oh, I heard this film is gory, but is it actually worth watching?" And with this "gore film", I can safely say that there is no reason to ever watch it.

A lot of the reviewers on this site gave this bad reviews and say that the film is shocking and offensive and unwatchable because of the rapes and infant murder and so on. However, none of that shocked me or repelled me; rather, it bored me to tears. There was pretty much no plot, which is okay (most slasher films are basically plot less), but there was... well, there wasn't much of anything really. It was just "disturbing scene" after "disturbing scene", with Nazi footage thrown in for fun. Yawn. So, yeah, gore for gore's sake. Wasn't this kind of stuff already done in the Guinea Pig series? My suggestion to the filmmakers is to take all the money they earned from this stupid hype campaign and actually invest in writing a decent script. Throw in some actual characterization. Then, it's safe to go ahead and throw in buckets of gore. A film without any real characterization means I don't care about any of the characters or what happens to them, and this all really was just an excuse to throw gore at the screen. Just kind of a lame experience all the way around and easily avoided. Good soundtrack and decent cinematography notwithstanding, this is one of the most pointless films in history and totally skippable.

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30 out of 40 people found the following review useful:
Miserable-Sick-Pointless, 21 May 2007

Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls

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.

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39 out of 58 people found the following review useful:
fairly mediocre, 3 March 2005

Author: shredfeak from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

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.

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35 out of 56 people found the following review useful:
From the "Naked Dead Girl Cult" school of juvenile film-making..., 30 January 2006

Author: Bryce David

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 shooting two naked women against the tree were included only to titillate the male audience. It's eye candy, for sure, but in the end, is 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.

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24 out of 37 people found the following review useful:
The only thing that shocked me was the boredom, 29 December 2005

Author: blackmariah from Fort Worth, Texas

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I love a good messed up movie. What I DON'T love are movies that bore the hell out of me and insult my intelligence with sub-par acting, writing, and direction.

There is no plot here. There is no character development. There is nothing but a bunch of murder set pieces surrounded by the thinnest veil of story. I guess the movie is accurately named, but if all they wanted to do was string together some effects shots then they should have just done that and forgot about tying it all together with some stupid story. Don't insult me by trying to make stuff like this meaningful unless you can actually pull it off. In other words you do the story first and work on the deaths second.

I've noticed some people on the board talk about the "perceived" misogyny in the film. Look... if you have to use the word "perceived" then you obviously don't know what the hell misogyny is. This movie is absolutely filled with it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, Silence of the Lambs had a misogynistic killer, but the presentation here is purely exploitative to the point of stupidity.

Stupid. That's a word that describes this movie quite well. The scene in the porn shop was stupid as hell and quite possibly the dumbest thing I've seen committed to film in quite some time. The killer walks in looking for a snuff film called "The Nutbag". This is obviously a reference to Palumbo's previous film. Anyone ever notice how only the crappiest movie makers make such overt references to their own works? Anyway, the store manager proceeds to cuss the killer out in one of the most forced scenes of dialogue this side of high school drama class (most likely due to horrible writing. Tony Todd isn't exactly a bad actor). Then, just as the killer is about to off the clerk... there's a hold up. Yeah. Deus ex machina, our saviour (this movie is so bad it's making me quote Donnie Darko... sad).

So why am I giving this three stars and not one (or, preferably, none)? Because the effects are three stars by themselves. The Toe Tag team obviously know their stuff. Too bad the director is so unbelievably amateurish that he makes most of the effects into absolute jokes through his sheer incompetence.

This movie is nothing more than a Z-grade American Psycho ripoff. Lame acting, lame writing, lame directing, lame everything but effects. Watch American Psycho, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, or Silence of the Lambs if you want a GOOD serial killer movie. Watch any of the Guinea Pig films if you want blood and guts. Just don't watch this garbage. I went into this film WANTING to like it, WANTING to be entertained by it... but instead I was just bored out of my skull.

Avoid unless you're a fan of good effects. From a technical standpoint this is a good movie. From any other standpoint it's just stupid.

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26 out of 42 people found the following review useful:
Murder Set Pieces - More like murder to sit through, 19 January 2007

Author: kinskiguy from United States

What a total waste of time this movie is! Talk about a misleading ad campaign. If you are a fan of either Cerina Vincent, Tony Todd, Gunnar Hansen, or Ed Neal you will be disappointed. They are all only in the movie for a cup of coffee! They are listed just to suck people in.

The movie has little plot if any at all. It is certainly not scary at all. The jacket claims that it is the ultimate Serial killer movie! Please, not even close! There are warning posted also stating that it is one of the sickest, most repulsive films ever made! I know one thing, I was sick of watching it really early in the game. So they got me there. In all honesty it was just plain boring to me, not intense, scary, or interesting in any way.

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48 out of 86 people found the following review useful:
No really, I want my money back!!!, 10 January 2005

Author: shanghaisusie-1 from United States

I love horror movies and this was just terrible. It was ridiculous and an insult to the genre (and the audience). There weren't any good "jumpy" moments and the laughs we had were because of the things we whispered to each other because it was so bad. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting this movie to change my life but I didn't think it would be awful- and it really was. I know reading a bad review of a horror movie wouldn't stop me from seeing one but after seeing this, I feel compelled to try. It was pretty bloody, but you didn't see a lot of the murders. There was a lot of badly implied violence and a lot of blood. I can't write a real critique about the movie because I don't really think of it as a real movie. The plot holes were enormous, the acting was terrible, blah blah, blah. I guess there is something to say about the fact that this managed to be a monotonous, boring slasher film. I have seen stupid slasher films- but not one that was so repetitive and yes- boring. I also agree with the other review that it was gross for it's own sake and shocking as well. Some of the things that I am sure are controversial (people murdered and images in his dreams)seem to just be there because they can be or to try and prove something. I don't think they worked at all and I was mad that he would use them in such a cheap way. Normally, I think any film that makes you feel anything this strongly has to have something redeeming in it. Not this one, it was 2 hours of my life completely wasted.

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15 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Bleah, 23 July 2007

Author: TheatreX from Louisville, KY

The best part of this movie is the Las Vegas settings, and maybe the car. The worst part of this movie is the rest. Gunnar Hansen's name is on the box but he appears for maybe 2 minutes. Tony Todd appears for a bit longer as the owner of an adult book store, and perhaps turns in the best performance in the film. Which isn't too hard. As for the rest, there's this photographer that is the grandson of a Nazi who has a thing for torturing and killing women in the basement of his sterile-looking (except for the basement) Las Vegas house. The young daughter of a woman he dates on occasion thinks he's strange (she's right) and eventually uncovers his secrets. And that's really about it. There's some nightmares that this guy has and he's shown lifting weights a lot and picking up specimens for his basement torture dungeon but there's not really an interesting story to go along with all this. It's plenty bloody and icky but so what. 2 out of 10.

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8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
One of the most complex horror movies I've seen, 27 September 2007

Author: (hbh@vktv.no) from Verdal, Norway

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I found this movie disturbing, as it should be, yet, compared to other movies in the same genre: Hostel, Saw, Devils Rejects - it's the movie with the most gore, blood and shock value. I too, at first, found the script a bit on the light side, but it grew on me throughout the movie; It portraits the dark side of humanity in a very shocking, disturbing and sadly - true - state. None can deny there is murder going on - every day. Gruesome. Gory. Bloody. That is for all to see. But beneath this gore? Is there some other story told? I actually find "the photographer" more sane and mental appealing than for example: George Bush (or other world leaders), who have more death on his hands, yet he does it with a smile into the camera. He smiles to us from the TV. The photographer hurts as we can see, time after time, he hates himself, he shouts in pain and yet he can not escape the broken child that still exists inside of him, making him keep on killing females & children. I found the subtle connection to 9.11 very suitable, when thinking about the mentioned connection with murders committed by the "leaders" of the country. First the lives of young American soldiers, then the children and women of Iraq who suffers daily upon this leadership. I am not surprised that most Americans never saw any connections like this, as most people are lost inside their little glass bubble, in denial about the state of planet Earth. This is not simply a gory horror flick - it is a mirror of the times we all live in. That's why I give it 9 out of 10. Another common thing with the photographer and George is that they both like to quote from the bible. As to justify their actions to some kind of good or justice, that most people can relate. Yet, it is completely madness, as we can all see. Nothing is covered here, it is all in the open - and rightly it is almost too much for anyone to see, the gore, the horror - Abu Grabi like - crazy - concentration camp like. Yes, there were the 3rd Reich connection as well. Did everyone who gave this movie 1 out of 10 not get anything out of all the connections, the symbolic languages told? It is almost as I would recommend those of you to buy the Twin Peaks box set and start study analogy and symbol languages therein. Just to fresh up that ability and then I hope many of you watch M.S.P. one more time. Last: plz try to see the whole thing this time. Despite the blood, gore and un-human like behaviour.

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