Post Description

Plot
This American film deals with the activities of a wealthy immigrant *** killer; a German photographer, who leads a double life: by day he shoots erotic photos. By night he rapes, tortures and murders prostitutes.



Release
It was released to select theaters with an NC-17 rating on December 24th, 2004. Murder-Set-Pieces was picked up by Lionsgate, who released the film with an 'R' rating on DVD.[4] In comparison with the theatrical cut of the film, the 'R' rated DVD version was missing approximately 22 minutes.[5] Most of the cuts were to obtain the 'R' rating and removed several intense scenes of sexualized violence and torture, however, some scenes were also removed by the director himself which he intended to edit out of the film before going into theaters but never got the chance.[6]

Murder-Set-Pieces was released by Universal Pictures in Spain, The Weinstein Company in Sweden, 20th Century Fox in France, and Anchor Bay Entertainment in Russia.[7] A DVD director's uncut-version of the exploitation film was released after its theatrical run. The uncut DVD version runs at 91 minutes, whereas the 'R' rated version runs at 83 minutes.[8]

The film received mixed reviews. Film Threat gave it four stars out of four, calling it "incredibly good" and "well made."[9] Metacritic gave it a score of 13, signifying "overwhelming dislike" and Rotten Tomatoes had a critical consensus of 36%. Debra Birnbaum of the New York Post wrote it "aspires to be a highly stylized exploration of the mind of a *** killer, but it's nothing more than a gory, bloodsoaked snuff film, reveling in its own shock value." Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote that the film's "nastiness is so insistent, one-dimensional and excessive it risks self-parody."[10] On Earth-2.net's flagship podcast, Earth-2.net: The Show (episode 407), the movie reviewers gave it a "negative googol", calling it "the worst movie ever made" and said that "to be a movie, you have to be better than this."[11]



UK ban
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.[12]