Skinned Alive (1990)

If you're in the market for late eighties, cheap gory fun then you might want to check out this one, starring Scott Speigel of "associated with Sam Raimi" fame (although you'd be better checking out his film Intruder first to be honest). Three crazed killers, Crawldaddy, Phink, and the other one, roam Ohio, killing hitchhikers and turning their skin into leather. After killing some Vegas hot shot, their van breaks down and they end up at the house of car mechanic Miles and his chatterbox wife, while next door ex-cop Paul is drinking himself daft and being harassed by his ex-wife and her attorney. Things aren't going to turn out well for everyone, as after killing a delivery boy and a Jehovah's Witness, the killer set their sights on Miles and the rest, not knowing that Paul has some severe hardware to hand. Basically a very, very cheap excuse to show loads of gore effects, Skinned Alive's flaw comes from it's almost complete lack of storyline. There's no real background to our killers, and only the role of Paul is given any kind of background. However, I'm not all about backstory due to various head injuries over the years, so a 74 minute long film full of gore was enough for me. I like ultra-low budget films and this one was good enough (it has a nice healthy dose of humour that helps greatly). Skinned Alive is by no means a great film, but it passes the time nicely. Spiegel's directed Intruder did it much better, but this would make a good companion to that film. Also starring that J.R Bookwater guy whom I've heard lots about but only own one film by (The so-so Demon Fire).

A number of Grade-Z horror icons like J. R. Bookwalter and Dave DeCoteau were involved with this turkey. The leads are played by non-actors Mary Jackson, Scott Spiegel and Susan Rothacker. The result is exactly what I deserve for haunting a dying video store and buying its used tapes for five bucks a pop. A homicidal mother and her two grown children–the Crawdaddy Clan, no less--all look the same age as they travel around butchering and flaying convenient victims. Then their van breaks down and they're forced to stay with some equally weird country yokels. Mother Dear, a scraggly-haired, wheelchair-riding one-eyed wonder, is rude to her hosts and eats like a wild hog at the dinner table but the nerds let her stay anyway. The son and daughter are grubby, foul-mouthed, incestuous and so inept that most of their victims don't die the first time, so we get to see some of the same people hacked on more than once. The dopey hosts don't catch on to what their guests really are until just before they're murdered and hung up to dry. This is one of the most scatological horror films ever and there's not one likable, normal or even rational character in the whole picture. The acting is over-the-top, the writing and plot are negligible and most of the production values are rock-bottom but SKINNED ALIVE, if nothing else, lives up to its name. Except for one fake hatchet murder the numerous splatter effects are convincing and there actually is one live skinning with the killers playing with the peeled hide afterward. In the best scene a Jehovah's Witness walks up to Mrs. Crawdaddy and asks "Are you happy with your life?" She pulls a Colt .45 and blows him away. Maybe she isn't so bad after all.

I still can't tell whether this film is serious. It's called a horror on here but it must be a black comedy. It absolutely hilarious! The effects are awful and so is the acting and the story line but put together it all makes one funny film...if you don't have a good sense of humor then probably give it a miss but if you do and you like gory films this is fantastic! It's similar to the Evil Dead series if you like them. The murders are gory and bloody and very unrealistic and over the top with victims surviving through shootings and stabbings and wounds healing between shots and blood stained clothes suddenly becoming clean. I found this film hysterically tacky and awful.

As somebody who values and has a rather large collection of low-budget horror films, I can honestly say this is one of the most horrible movies I have ever seen! It's like a thirteen year old wrote the dialogue, and then set up the scenes to look "wicked awesome." Another thing is this movies has no actual concept of reality...I know it's a horror movie, and most stuff in horror movies isn't even slightly based on reality, but when you have people shooting and stabbing people in the middle of the day, in the front-yard nonetheless...well you can't help but feel that either you the viewer are being treated as an idiot, or the film makers themselves are idiots. Even if you were drawn to the movie for the gore, or the cover of the DVD which features a bikini girl with "Skinned Alive" carved in her stomach...JUST STAY AWAY! I have never seen gore so badly done in my life! There are scenes where the bodies being skinned are obviously made of clay! You can actually see the clay bunch up when a knife is plunged into it, and this is supposed to pass for human flesh? You would think that the director or editor would have seen how horrible some of the crap looked, and cut it out, but it's there in all it's 3rd grade glory. There is no redeeming quality to this movie at all. The acting is bad, and the special effects are the worst! Do not spend any money on this movie.