Pieces (1982) - Alternative Ending

Does any horror fan remember the cult classic slasher film, Pieces? In case you don't know what the film focuses on; it's about a young boy who murders his mother years back, during the Second World War over a pornographic puzzle he had found. Fast forward forty years, the boy is now grown into an adult and decides to make his dream come true by killing a bunch of girls on a college campus to hopefully create a human jigsaw puzzle out of his own mother. Crazy stuff, huh?

There had been a rumor around about an alternative ending to this movie that was shot, but then was scrapped at the last minute for being "too frightening". Spoilers ahead of the original, you have been warned: the original ending has Mary drugged by the Dean at his apartment who virtually saws off her feet. Bracken, Holden, and Kendall burst into the Dean's apartment, only to find the Dean missing. While left alone to assist a paralyzed Mary out of the apartment, the Dean comes out of hiding and tries to kill Kendall - only to get shot in the head and killed by Bracken.

After further investigation of the apartment, Holden leans on a bookshelf and the corpse (consisting of human body parts) stumbles out of the closet, landing on top of Kendall; much to his fright. With the scene cleared up except for Kendall, he goes to grab his jacket only to be castrated by the corpse. The alternate ending commences within the same scene but it's halfway into the castration when the Dean comes back to life; an earsplitting screech accompanies the scene along with the Dean giving a chilling death stare. The scene immediately goes back to reality, revealing that the whole scenario was just a hallucination in Kendall's mind.

Shaken, he immediately snatches the jacket from the corpse, looking back at it for one last time - but it doesn't spring to life. He immediately scampers out of the room through the door everyone left in and slams it shut; the camera shifts away from the corpse and only focuses on Kendall as this happens. After about three more seconds, it shows one final shot of the Dean's room with the corpse disappeared from view. It then fades to another shot of the now-completed jigsaw puzzle as the camera zooms into it - implying that those who have watched the scene, movie or are reading this, are next. The screen then fades to black and the film ends.

Juan Piquer Simón (the filmmaker) did not like this idea of having a film ending so terrifying and weak, which was either supposed to have been played out seriously or just as a joke, so the alternate ending was scrapped. It was presumably destroyed by request after all these years, but it still lurks out there somewhere - for those who wanted this film to be "exactly what you think" it once was...