Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I didn’t discover until after I had watched Nick Palumbo’s movie ‘Murder-Set-Pieces’ that it was even supposed to be ‘Controversial’. The only reason that this movie made it into my DVD player five years after it was released is that I had heard that Tony Todd got wasted in it and I try to make it a point to see how Mr. Todd dies in every movie that he makes. But now it’s come to my attention that this movie was ‘controversial’. The most shocking movie ever in the history of filmmaking. And here I was thinking it was just an exercise, or an excuse to squeeze as many naked, full-figured women in a movie as the law will legally allow.

The dude they call The Photographer (Sven Garrett) is nuts. The Photographer likes to roll around Las Vegas in his muscle car, pickup whores, have sex with them on some occasions, kill them on all occasions, workout on his bench press while covered in blood, let us know how down he is with the Nazi mystique, and pester his girlfriend’s twelve year old baby sister.

Why does The Photographer do these sick things? We will never completely discover this, but part of the reason, not surprisingly, seems to stems from his whore of a mother. His girlfriend Charlotte (Valerie Baber) loves this dude something awful even though he treats her like total garbage and won’t even have sex with her. This behavior has baby sister Jade (Jade Risser) besides herself in anger wondering why her over developed big sister deals with this nonsense. Jade informs Charlotte that there are number of men who wouldn’t mind being her boyfriend. Jade would be correct in assuming this.

Anyways, The Photographer continues to go through the process of tracking down over-developed hookers, since his over developed girlfriend apparently does nothing for him, and he continues brutally slaughtering these hookers while dreaming about the 9-11 attacks. What does this have to do with anything relating in this movie? Not a gatdamn thing that I could see, but I’m not the brightest bulb in the box.

Eventually this all going to boil down to a twelve year girl saddled with the task of saving Las Vegas from the paralyzing grips of the fear known as The Photographer. That is if this city of Las Vegas were aware that its titty for hire population was dwindling because they seem to be completely oblivious to this.

There’s really not a lot to say about ‘Murder-Set-Pieces’ since it was barely a movie to begin with, but it does highlight some of the things I don’t understand about the movie business. Take the woman that played Hooker #3 in this flick, one Christina Holsinger, who we see from her filmography that this is the only movie that this woman has done. Admittedly Ms. Holsinger didn’t do a heckuva lot in this movie except do a quick sexy dance, get naked, get drowned and get her throat slit, but the woman has all kinds potential. So out of all the movies that get made, and we have seen our share, you mean to tell me that no filmmaker can find a use for this woman? She’s physically perfect and has no qualms about getting naked and yet no filmmaker has room for this young woman in any of their productions. Tragic I tell you.

But back to ‘Murder-Set-Pieces’. … long pause… I don’t have anything to add to this movie by way of ‘criticism’ that’s for damn sure. The movie basically consists of watching Sven Garrett walk the streets of Las Vegas, have nightmares, work out a lot and bleed. In between he does stuff such as look at naked women, take pictures, kills, buy a gun, and harass Tony Todd playing an adult book store owner, though the majority of these scenes don’t seem to be connected in any kind congruent way. If there is a ‘story’ in this movie it’s watching the young girl trying to figure out why her sister loves this loser so. The Photographer himself spends a lot of time stalking the little sister, though this isn’t really explained either.

‘Murder-Set-Pieces’ is nicely shot and Palumbo makes good use of some very good dynamic lighting and lots and lots of fake blood and quite few naked women, and the movie isn’t too terribly dull so it never became a chore to watch, it just seemed so pointless.