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 kinned
Deep" marks the directorial debut of special
effects and make up artist Gabriel Bartalos, who
has worked on the likes of "The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre 2", the
"Leprechaun" series, various Frank
Hennenlotter films, and more recently, "The
Cave". Although it may on the surface
seem like yet another of the recent crop of
would-be 1970s grind house style genre films,
"Skinned Deep" is actually a deeply
crazed and highly inventive effort, with a
decidedly surrealist streak which unfortunately
may make it too bizarre and whacked out for many
viewers.
The plot is based around the
familiar 'tourist trap' motif, with an odd family
of mutated cannibals living in a ramshackle
country house and preying on city folks and
tourists they catch with the usual road traps. The
family is made up of the seemingly benign Granny
(Liz Little), the diminutive, crockery throwing
Plates (played by the "Leprechaun"
himself, Warwick Davis), Brain, a man with a
grotesquely oversized cranium (Jay Dugre), and
Leatherface wannabe Surgeon General, who comes
complete with a steel trap mouth. During the
course of the film, a series of unfortunates fall
into the family's clutches, including Tina
(Karoline Brandt) and her family, and an elderly
biker gang appropriately called 'The Ancients'
(who include the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman
amongst their number). When Brain persuades Granny
to spare Tina's life, hoping to take her for his
bride, all hell breaks loose in an insane orgy
which is equal parts violence and nonsense.
What sets "Skinned
Deep" aside is the fact that director Gabriel
Bartalos is clearly unafraid to break with genre
conventions and take the film deep into the realm
of the weird, making for unpredictable and wild
viewing. The film frequently goes off on tangents,
with dream sequences and flashbacks a-plenty, one
of which includes Brain taking a naked run through
the crowded streets of
New York
(the filming of which resulted in Dugre being
arrested, a fact which gives a pretty good idea of
the level of dedication on show).
Of course, much of this is
hit and miss, and while a number of sequences are
either hilarious or horribly inspired in a
deranged sort of way, a good few fall flat and
have all the charm of being leftovers from a Troma
film. Similarly, the fact that Bartalos, who also
scripted, divides the screen time between a fairly
large cast of characters does tend to give things
an episodic feel. As a result, "Skinned
Deep" is difficult to take seriously,
although this in itself is not a criticism as
such, since the director is obviously not aiming
for straightforward horror.
However, it may mean that
viewers suckered in by the "Texas
Chainsaw" style box art are left disappointed
and quite probably appalled by a film which
expects them to accept a bunch of geriatrics as
avenging outlaw heroes. There are a good few scare
scenes peppered throughout the film, many of which
are strikingly similar to those in Rob Zombie's
"House
of 1000 Corpses", which "Skinned
Deep" actually resembles in a number of ways
and to an extent, tone.
However, Bartalos is clearly
more interested in disturbing the viewer through
the sheer weirdness of the proceedings, and throws
in scenes which are memorable rather than
shocking. There is a fair amount of blood, and
some good special effects, made all the more
impressive by the obviously low budget, although
most of the gore is either played for laughs or is
simply too odd to cause offence.
The film does have a nice
look, though the usual pitfalls of independent
film making are all too obvious, including some
gratingly bad acting and a poor sound mix which
leaves a fair amount of dialogue unintelligible.
Still, these are pretty much par for the course,
and don't really detract too much from the joy of
watching what is a genuine oddity and for those
willing to keep an open mind, a breath of fresh
air in the stale world of safe, button pushing
genre film making.
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