Murder-Set-Pieces

Murder-Set-Pieces
Theatrical poster cover
Directed by	Nick Palumbo
Written by	Nick Palumbo
Produced by	Nick Palumbo
Starring	Gunnar Hansen Cerina Vincent Tony Todd Edwin Neal
Cinematography	Brendan Flynt
Edited by	Todd C. Ramsay
Music by	The Bronx Casket Co. The Giallos Flame Necrophagia Zombi
Production company	Fright Flix Productions
Distributed by	Lionsgate Paramount Pictures Universal Pictures The Weinstein Company 20th Century Fox
Release dates	December 24th, 2004
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Murder-Set-Pieces is a controversial feature horror motion picture known for its unnerving thematic content and realistic graphic violence, which was directed, written and produced by American filmmaker Nick Palumbo.

Plot

Set against the backdrop of Las Vegas, Murder-Set-Pieces depicts a newly immigrated German fashion photographer who spends his days taking photographs of female models and his nights brutally raping and murdering them. As in Maniac and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer before it, Murder-Set-Pieces takes place from the murderer’s POV. Additionally, Murder-Set-Pieces was the first Unrated slasher film to be released in American theaters in 20 years.

Pre-Production

In the early summer of 2003, Palumbo finished work on the screenplay for ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’, which would explore and expand some of the themes found in his first feature motion picture, Nutbag. For ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’, Palumbo set his sights on creating a visually stunning and truly evocative big screen filmic enterprise. In order to achieve his goal, Palumbo spent over eighteen months seeking private funds throughout greater Las Vegas, meeting with hundreds of potential investors until he secured nearly $2,500,000 in capital.

Palumbo next enlisted performing horror icon Gunnar Hansen, who played “Leatherface” in the original groundbreaking horror feature, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as Edwin Neal from the same film. Palumbo then hired actor Tony Todd, known for his work as the title character in Clive Barker's popular horror film franchise, Candyman, Oliver Stone’s Academy Award-winning Platoon , Clint Eastwood’s Bird (1988), The Crow and Final Destination. Actress Cerina Vincent, know for her roles in Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever and Not Another Teen Movie also joined the cast of Murder-Set-Pieces. Sven Garrett was hired to play the lead role of the photographer.

Palumbo also enlisted a few significant adult film stars of the era, including Crissy Moran and Destiny St. Claire for ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’. St. Claire, however, was so traumatized by a rape scene, which she performed in, that on the set of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’, she screamed out loud that she would rather participate in "sex with over a hundred different strange men than go through that again," which was reported to journalist and editor Art Ettinger of Ultra Violent magazine, Volume 7.

Production

’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ began formal production in July of 2003. ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ was shot over the course of three months on 35mm film at dozens of locations throughout Las Vegas, Nevada, including an exterior portion of the then historic downtown strip. [need ref]

Over a half dozen continuous, realistic murder scenes take place in ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’. The special effects team enlisted for ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ employed the use of over 55 gallons of special effects blood over the course of the production for the film.[need ref]

During production, Palumbo and the film’s special effects crew were arrested and detained by Las Vegas police officers when neighbors near a suburban home filming location reported that they had heard loud screams and cries. These sounds, in fact, came from two actresses who participated in a fictional murder scene for the film. When police arrived, they not only found crew members covered in fake blood, but also discovered blood-covered prosthetic body parts nearby. Local police suspected each of the special effects crew of an actual murder that took place simultaneously to the shooting of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ only fifty feet away at a convenient store. All charges we dropped and the cast and crew resumed shooting a few hours later. Later, during production, one of the arresting officers ultimately helped the production to remain on course by deflecting subsequent law enforcement interaction with the cast and crew.

Post-Production

’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ was edited by Todd C. Ramsey, known for his award-winning work for horror film director John Carpenter, including the feature horror re-make of The Thing (1982)and Escape From New York, as well as Star Trek: The Motion Picture and other feature films.. Notably, cinematographer Brendan Flynt previously shot the only 35mm motion picture film footage of the tragic World Trade Center terrorist attacks and horrific building collapse that took place on September 11, 2001 in New York City. Palumbo and Ramsey incorporated this footage into a montage for a nightmare sequence about the breakdown of society dreamt by the antagonist of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’.

Rating Controversy

The movie was released Unrated to theaters because after it was submitted to the MPAA they told the producers the film would be given the NC-17 rating. The producers felt that this would hurt the film's distribution as many American theatres refuse to allow films that are rated NC-17 to be shown in their theatres. The poster of Murder-Set-Pieces does say that "No One Under 17 Admitted" and has the NC-17 logo on it. The "No One Under 17 Admitted" is a practice theatres used for ultraviolent Unrated films such as Dawn of the Dead.

Theatrical Release

Blackwatch Releasing distributed ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ theatrically in several major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York and Chicago on December 24 – Christmas Eve – of 2004. The original theatrical release of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ had a running time of 105 minutes. While Palumbo stated in several interviews that ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’was intended as an NC-17 film because of the strong graphic content, he and the producers ultimately chose to release the film uncut and unrated to accommodate a major city theatrical release.

Critical Response

After the theatrical release of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’, several notable national film critics and cinema peers responded to the movie:

"For his second feature film effort, director Nick Palumbo erupts onto the cinematic scene with a high-anxiety spectacle that induces aneurysms in guardians of decency. Palumbo has made his own apoplectic fit of a movie in which blood cascades down faces and torsos, wherever fists, blades, bullets and, yes, a chainsaw blade have broken the skin. Palumbo's monstrous tableaus might just provoke cries for restrictions in art, even among staunch defenders of artistic freedom."

- Ned Martel of The New York Times on January 7, 2005

"Murder-Set-Pieces is about to blow everyone’s minds. It’s incredibly good. It’s extremely well made. It’s directed impeccably, and it’s definitely, no holds barred, the most brutal and graphic film I’ve ever seen (that includes porn and all horror films). Murder-Set-Pieces is the serial killer film to end all serial killer films."

- Heidi Martinuzzi of Film Threat Magazine on January 18, 2005.

“An interesting effort to make the ultimate horror movie by imitating modern classics of the genre in a systematic way, putting actors from the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre into the cast for good measure. Be warned that the results are in aggressively frightful taste from beginning to end, though."

- David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor on January 7, 2005

"4 out of 4 Stars - For slasher film fans, this is the pot of gold at the end of the blood stained rainbow. The most erotically charged, aggressively deranged, unabashedly brutal American horror film EVER made. The perfect date movie-if your date happens to be Charles Manson. An instant-deeply twisted-classic."

- Todd David Schwartz of CBS NEWS Radio on December 27, 2004

"Aptly titled Murder-Set-Pieces, writer-helmer Nick Palumbo's second feature offers over-the-top horror imagery as a Las Vegas serial killer dispatches one victim after another, the pic distinguishes itself via sheer extremity of gore, sadism and tastelessness."

– Dennis Harvey of Variety on December 27, 2004

Palumbo also came under fire from fellow filmmaker William Lustig, director of the classic horror feature film Maniac. Lustig caught an early preview of Muder-Set-Pieces in New York City. Lustig was upset by the sexualized violence depicted in Murder-Set-Pieces that he contacted Palumbo to indicate that Palumbo "went too far."

However, 1970s exploitation horror filmmkaer and Palumbo's late friend Roger Watkins, who directed Last House on Dead End Street, said that Murder-Set-Pieces is the "real deal. It is more than just a great film; it's pure poetry."

DVD Releases

After the theatrical release of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’, Fright Flix Productions issued the film as a limited edition DVD of 5000 units, which sold out in the course of 4 days during the summer of 2005. This version of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’was the second director’s cut – after the theatrical release – which ran 90 minutes long.[need ref]

’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ was later sold to Lionsgate Home Entertainment in the fall of 2006 and was released in January 2007 as a DVD in a significantly edited form, losing 23 minutes of original footage to secure an R rating. Many scenes were greatly reduced or eliminated in the new DVD, while the color of other scenes were desaturated or made black and white to limit the strong visceral effect of the filmic gore intended by the director. The loss or alteration of many of these scenes rendered the film into a significantly different and degraded version of the original. Additionally, the sound and visual output quality of the Lionsgate version of the film on DVD were greatly reduced for a hasty entry to market. Lionsgate also widely released similarly themed feature horror films, such as the Saw and Hostel film franchises during the same period.

Controversy and the U.K, Ireland and Norway Banning of the film

Palumbo has both incited and endured a substantial amount of public media controversy that has arisen since the release of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’.

In 2007, Dee Snider, lead singer of the 1980s heavy metal band, Twisted Sister, and host of Sirius Satellite Radio’s Fangoria Radio, conducted a two-part radio interview with Palumbo. Snider accused Palumbo of being an “anti-Semite” because of Palumbo’s integral use of Nazi themes and symbolism in ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’ Snider also disapproved of the use of an ambiguous opening text quote that skewered Jewish people, which was originally graffitied on a wall by the notorious serial killer, known as Jack The Ripper, near one of his murder victims. Palumbo has made references to Jack The Ripper in all of his films to date. The opening Jack The Ripper credit sequence quote is followed by a sequence of the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City. Snider misunderstood the order of this content as blaming Jewish people for the 9/11 attacks, which Palumbo flatly denied. Palumbo countered that ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’’ lead character, the murderous photographer, was a descendent of Nazi criminals and thus Palumbo populated his film with directly related imagery and dialogue. Palumbo and Fangoria Radio’s co-host Debbie Rochon noted that Snider, who is of Judaic decent, made a biased accusation, based on his own religious beliefs.[need ref]

In November of 2003, when the exposed and unprocessed film stock that comprised Murder-Set-Pieces was sent to the three largest commercial developing and printing film laboratories in the U.S. – Technicolor, Du Art and Deluxe Laboratories – it was rejected by all of the companies. Employees from each film laboratory believed that they had developed a true record of murder or at least a substantial violation of law – instead of a fictional feature film of murderous subject matter – and therefore called the FBI, which arrested the producers of the film. Eventually, Ascent Media in Burbank, California developed and printed the film for Murder-Set-Pieces.

The film was submitted for release in the United Kingdom to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) who refused to give the film an '18' certificate, therefore making the film illegal to supply within the UK. The BBFC stated they rejected the film because of sexual violence, and the film was potentially breaking UK obscenity laws.

On February 27, 2008, a new distribution company for Murder-Set-Pieces, TLA Releasing in the U.K., submitted the feature film to the British Board of Film Classification for DVD release. The BBFC effectively rejected and banned Murder-Set-Pieces. Journalist Archie Thomas describes the event of the rare U.K. ban in the February 18, 2008 issue of Variety:

“The ruling comes a day after Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed his concerns in Parliament over the potentially destructive social impact of violent films and video games. Recently, a cross-party group of politicians has been pushing for reform on violent and sexual material. If successful, the campaign could see the BBFC forced to toughen its stance.

"Rejecting a work outright is a serious matter and the board considered whether the issue could be dealt with through cuts,’ commented Cooke. ‘However, given the unacceptable content featured throughout, and that what remains is essentially preparatory and set-up material for the unacceptable scenes, cutting the work is not a viable option in this case and the work is therefore refused a classification."

The Uncut Directors Cut International Release of Murder-Set-Pieces

Following the substantial press controversy, post-production issues and compromised initial release of ’’Murder-Set-Pieces’’, ironically, the film was subsequently released worldwide on DVD in 2007-2010 by The Weinstein Company, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox in its original uncut theatrical format and running time.

External links

• Nick Palumbo at IMDb
• Nick Palumbo official website
• http://facebook.com/nickpalumbo
• Murder-Set-Pieces official website
• Fright Flix Productions official website
• Template:Myspace
• Official website
• Murder-Set-Pieces at IMDb