Skinned Alive

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.

I rented 'Skinned Alive' under the impression that the movie was made fairly recently. Well, the joke was on me as 'Skinned Alive' is a cheap crap independent movie made in 1989. Apparently, fans were just begging for this movie to be re-mastered and re-released on a digital format, so the director complied. Well, for everyone's sake, he should have just burned the master instead. The collective cast is perhaps the ugliest, most unappealing troupe ever assembled reciting possibly the stupidest lines committed to paper. I love bad B horror movies as much as the next guy. This crap should have been left buried though. There's DVD extras, but I'm not sure why the hell anyone would want "extras" on a movie that appears to be created with the talent of a bowling team who got bored during the off-season. I'm not going to bother to give a plot synopsis, since it would be a waste of time. You could give a monkey a pencil and paper, sit him down in a room for an hour, and he could come up with a better script than this. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Filmed on location in scenic Ohio.

I didn't expect to like this funny and gory horror comedy as much as I did. It's certainly not for all tastes; even though it runs only about 80 minutes (including the long closing credits), the pace is extremely slow and nothing much really happens throughout. The gore effects are cheap but effective. The villains are a really twisted gang: the foul-mouthed, abusive, wheelchair-bound matriarch, the clumsy and slightly retarded son, the sadistic hottie daughter (no nudity from her, though the opportunity does come twice - what a shame!). The "hero" is an alcoholic ex-cop who has to put a stop to their activities implied by the title. All of the acting is amateurish, but at least the actors don't take themselves too seriously and seem to be in on the joke. This film will probably be appreciated only by those viewers interested in low-budget horror film-making. (**1/2)

A traveling family of sickos, an inept brother/ sister team and their wheelchair-bound mother, Crawldaddy (Mary Jackson of "The Waltons" fame), have their car brake down after they kill a guy. So they stay at the neighbors of an alcoholic ex-cop and continue nonchalantly killing people. Will the cop exorcise his demons long enough to put an end to Crawdady and families reign of terror? Due to the ultimately jaw-dropping awfulness, Will we even care? To be fair the first 10 minutes hold a little promise and the last 20 are OK by me. It's just the endless minutes of stupid slapstick 'comedy' in the middle where the movie becomes a chore to sit through. and what a painful chore it is. The film would have been a good short film. But as it is now, it's not even passable entertainment.

My Grade: D

DVD Extras: Commentary with JR. Bookwalter and David Lange; Isolated music score audio track; 35 minute Making-of; Behind the scenes; camera and wardrobe tests; About the Remastering; Artwork and Stills Galleries; an episode of 'Roomates"; Theatrical Trailer; and Trailers for "Ozone", "Eddie Presley", "Dead and Rotting", and "Hell Asylum"

I can't believe that people actually like this film. I suppose i was lured in by the DVD cover thinking this could be an enjoyable gory-horror-comedy type of film. Boy, was I wrong. This movie was so horrible, I barely made it to the end. The acting was terrible and the gore was lame. The sound quality and dubbing was absurd. This is the kind of movie I watch every now and then and think... why the hell am I not making movies? I can't even recommend this for a good laugh. For something in the same genre, but actually good, try Dead-Alive or Bad Taste. Hell, I would even recommend an HG Lewis film over this.