Skinner

If there's one thing I've learnt from Skinner, it's not to accept a dinner invitation from Ricki Lake: 20 minutes to prepare and cook an entire chicken?!?! That sounds like a recipe for some serious E.coli to me. And while we're at it, Ted Raimi isn't so hot on kitchen hygiene either: he fails to wash his hands after manhandling the chicken and proceeds to spread bacteria all over the place.

Of course, a bout of serious food poisoning is still preferable to being killed and flayed, which is what Raimi's character, Dennis Skinner, likes to to do hookers, using their skin to create a suit in which he can prance around in the moonlight (a man's got to have a hobby). When Skinner's landlady, Kerry Tate (Lake), becomes close to her loony lodger, the psycho decides that the time is right to reveal his secret to the lucky lass, much to her horror. Meanwhile, Heidi (Traci Lords), morphine-addicted survivor of one of Skinner's earlier attacks, hunts the psycho looking for revenge.

Skinner is by no means a great movie, suffering from an erratic narrative and plot details that are left frustratingly unexplained (what is up with Dennis's fascination with water?); it is, however, an entertainingly piece of trash, a sick little psycho flick with a wonderfully over-the-top performance from Ted Raimi, and solid support from Lake and Lords, the latter channelling Meiko Kaji and Christina Lindberg for her role as a vengeful junkie on a mission.

The film also features an impressive moment of graphic flaying (courtesy of KNB effects group) that is guaranteed to please gore fans: Skinner slices open his victim's back, works the skin loose, rolls the body over and yanks the skin down off the face (be sure to watch the uncut version of the film: there's an iffy copy on YouTube that is missing this splattery scene).

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for the delectable Ms. Lords, who doesn't get nekkid (for a change), but is still very hot (it takes more than a few scars and a lack of hair to stop her from being sexy).

Ted Raimi is Dennis Skinner, a friendly, grinning wacko who kills women, skins them and wears a suit made of their stitched-together flesh. He rents a room from lonely housewife Kerry (Ricki Lake), who's glad to have some company since her moody trucker husband (David Warshofsky) is always gone. Meanwhile, Heidi (Traci Lords), a depressed, soft-spoken, scarred, limping morphine addict who managed to survive an attack years earlier, balances her time in a grimy hotel room shooting up, crying and plotting revenge.

This is a dark, dreary, depressing and often awkward film and I hated it when I first saw it. However, I gave it another chance and am glad I did. Aside from the top-notch KNB FX work, it takes place in a unique, graffiti-tinged decaying urban hell landscape, has a great score from Contagion and plenty of clever movie references if you're looking for them. There's one odd and powerful moment in this film, where Dennis is talking to the shell of a victim he's just killed and skinned about his traumatic childhood and rubbing the hands of the deceased along his face for comfort. Moments like these, done with some thought and care, lift a film like this right up out of the gutter.

I completely disagree with the potshots made at Traci Lords. Many people just cannot put their perceptions of her behind them long enough to even consider the fact she's capable of giving a competent performance. I found Lords to be more than just a little competent in this particular role. It is by no means an easy or flattering part to have to play, but I thought she played it very, very well.

Speaking of unflattering portraits, you can learn more about director Ivan Nagy by viewing HEIDI FLEISS: Hollywood MADAM.

Score: 7 out of 10.

Now...I am a HUGE Ted Raimi fan, and I bought this movie under the assumption that this highly underrated actor would be in a starring role and make a worthwhile movie. However, this is not the case. Although this movie had promise, the script needed work (to say the least), the audio track was terrible, and I sense that there was a lot of poor editing done, because it was full of plot holes. The only thing I really learned was that the skin of the bully that the dog ate must have been poisonous, because I can think of NO OTHER REASON why the dog died. Its really a shame, too, since poor Ted has not been offered more leading roles because he is immensely talented. I'm just sorry that his brother's perpetual habit of putting him in the background drove Ted to this during his early career. Tracy Lords mumbled her way through, and I wondered how in the hell a DVD has a video roll in it. I guess I'll just swallow my $9.00 loss (at least the shipping was free), and be glad that there is better Ted Raimi fare out there.

I feel like this sits at a slight tipping point. It would have been very easy for it to have been shaped into a morbid horror comedy; alternatively, it would have taken little for it to become an erotic horror-thriller, or a more pointedly grotesque gorefest. I like that as we see it the feature strikes a bit of a balance: touches of cheeky levity without being ham-handed, flashes of imagery and suggested brutality without being utterly viscerally repulsive. That's not to say that 'Skinner' isn't plentifully nasty, and in fact this rather has "video nasty" written all over it. Yet director Ivan Nagy demonstrates just enough restraint to keep from going overboard in any direction, and the different aspects somewhat keep one another in check. For all that, this is a whole lot of grisly fun, with bizarre, grim imagination tempering the utmost violence.

Not to sell anyone or anything else short, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Ted Raimi is the chief selling point here. I don't think I've ever seen him in a role that's at once so stunningly dark, but also peculiarly over the top. From Skinner's neighborly candor, to his more out of control moments, to the outrageous "personas" he adopts at select points, Raimi embodies the killer with fantastic, dexterous range, and it's a joy to watch him here. For that matter, though, the rest of the cast is swell, even those in smaller roles (like Time Winters as watchman Bob), and it's an unexpected delight to see Ricki Lake in such a picture that seems so uncharacteristic for her.

It's not all fun and games, though, and 'Skinner' surprises in some other ways. The production design and art direction are genuinely terrific; the setting of every scene feels so real, like one could reach out and touch it (though in most cases we probably wouldn't want to). Nagy demonstrates an unlikely sense of artistry with some shots and scenes, and this includes primo use of lighting. Though plainly overdone the blood and gore are suitably delicious within the limits of suspension of disbelief, and this dovetails with fine costume design, makeup, and hair styling, not least for Traci Lords as she capably portrays hard-bitten Heidi with downcast determination. And while all this is going on, the ambient original score of Contagion adds some definite pensive atmosphere to the proceedings.

This isn't the most immediately grabbing horror flick; for all the instances of heightened vibrancy of one flavor or another, the pace is very deliberate. The most gnarly scenes are measured out so they never overwhelm, or lose their punch. With a little bit of patience, however, the movie is wonderfully enjoyable and satisfying for those who appreciate the genre. It's solidly made in every regard, with tight writing and direction that carefully spotlights every best detail in the narrative and scene writing. If you have the chance to watch 'Skinner,' this is worth checking out.

This is the coolest movie I have ever seen. It takes a porn star and gives her a chance to get vengance on the man whom she took in to her home (she was not a prostitute, but his landlord, like ricki lake) and skinned her while she was still alive. I still want to know exactly how she killed the hotel manager, though. That has always intrigued me.