Independent micro-budget director Dustin Mills rips off David Cronenberg's The Fly something rotten for Skinless, chucking in a smidge of The Incredible Melting Man for good measure. Working with what must be a fraction of The Fly's catering budget, Mills delivers a cheap and cheerful concoction of bargain basement gore effects and gratuitous nudity that should prove moderately entertaining if you're not averse to no-frills homemade horror.
Brandon Salkil plays the Seth Brundle character, geneticist Peter Peele, who tests his experimental cancer treatment on himself; initially successful, the treatment ultimately has unexpected side effects, Peele's flesh liquifying, the scientist turning into a hideous deranged monster. This is not good news for Dr. Alice Cross (Erin R. Ryan), the woman Peele is obsessed with...
The majority of Mills' $2,000 budget appears to have been spent on fake blood, KY jelly, and latex - the film is very goopy. I can't imagine much was left in the coffers to pay the performers, so one assumes that the cast are all friends of Mills happy to muck in for free, which would explain the less than stellar acting. Not that great performances are necessary for this type of thing: Mills aim is to deliver plenty of splattery effects and to get the women in the film to strip off, and he succeeds in both.
In the grand scheme of things, Skinless is not great -- extremely derivative (Salkil even twitches like Goldblum) and technically crude -- but considering the amount of money that the film was made for, it's a marvel that it is as entertaining as it is. A movie to crack open a few beers to...
5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.
