Customer Reviews

Skinner [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

A low rent, horribly written, acted, and directed exploitation film, Skinner tries to be "Silence of the Lambs Too", with "Xena's" Joxer (Ted Raimi) as Dennis Skinner, the Buffalo Bill character who likes to skin his victims and play dress up, and Traci Lords as the female protagonist determined to track him down. Apparently, (this is never explained in the story) Lords' character was one of Skinner's victims who managed to escape before he finished the dirty deed. She has nasty scars on her arm and leg and has to inject herself with something, presumably to ease the pain. Throughout the movie, she either stands in water or limps around muttering threats of revenge, mostly unintelligible as the audio in this movie sucked. Worse still, the DVD has visible frame roll. Don't bother.

Worth watching once to see the movie it might have been. An amazing performance from Raimi, who slides deftly among the layers of the psychopathic title character without once overplaying his hand in a truly chilling performance. Ricki Lake is also subtle and effective as the unhappy landlady with a slowly growing attraction for her strange boarder. Unfortuately, the high-caliber performances are wasted on a meandering script and unfocused direction -- and a fatally slow pace which destroys any interest we might have in what's going on. As for the gore, it isn't that it's too much, it's that it's not enough. Too little and too late, it's almost half-an-hour before we know anything more about the movie than what we read on the box, and by then we're no longer interested. A shame, and most of the people involved deserved better.

The DVD is the EDITED R-rated version and is missing all the intense gore effects in the original "unrated" VHS release. It's also an awful transfer so avoid at all costs. The uncut VHS version is definitely worth a look, though....even if just for the excellent grue.

Picture Joxer the Mighty, almost stark naked, and psychotic. If ever there were anyone who could surprise you with his versatility, it's Ted Raimi. His character, Dennis Skinner ranks right up there with Hannibal Lecter and Patrick Channing. An innocent looking nice-guy, Ted Raimi will most definitely disturb you with his not-so-nice-guy behavior once the lights go out. A great movie, especially if you like blood & gore. They don't skimp on the skinning either. I recommend it for anyone's horror movie collection. ~SerialZero

Skinner. Quite a self explanatory title for this badly edited movie. I thought the plot had been fine but it needed more work. I believe the story was much too short in order to fully go into the plot enough. I saw several scenes that annoyed me in how horribly edited they were and vital parts of speech, that would have better filled out the characters, cut out. Something good I can say about this is that the acting was interesting fake when it came to Ricki Lake, but I was impressed by Ted Raimi's call on the classic homicidal manic. To tell you the truth I think you should pay close attention to the relationship between Traci Lord's character of Heidi and Raimi's character of Dennis. It all comes down to them. Bottom line, this is a wacko against humanity movie and at some points you actually feel pity for the insane murderer. I would recommended this as a great movie to study, if only for a short while.

This film is truely terrible. Everything about it sucks, the sound is awful and the picture isn't any better. This is the worst DVD transfer i have saw, some might say that is reflected in the price (i bought the double feature with The Surgeon included) but there is alot of budget DVD's out there that do a fine job in both departments. Where was the brutal gore the inside sleeve promised? Maybe that was the bit when the picture started to roll and i missed it! If your looking for a good slasher film with lots of gore pay a bit extra and go for The New York Ripper. Stay away from this rubbish.

I only bought this dvd because ted raimi was in it, don't get me wrong seeing him semi naked was fanastic but the quality of this disc is terrible as after three plays it is jumps and pausing when it feels like it. Very disappointed about the quality, but I am still happy as the overall movie is interesting.

Ted Raimi is this movie's only saving grace, and the only reason I bought it. Here's a question for you: If Traci Lord's vengeful character Heidi is so ashamed of the way she looks, then why does she spend the whole movie dressed in nothing but lingerie and a trench coat? And did you notice that Dennis carves up that chicken with a dirty knife? Yuck! This movie was obviously the brain child of a male mind. Don't bother unless you are a big Ted Raimi fan.

i only ordered skinner only because it is a hard to find title and after seeing a interview in a issue of fangoria on ted raimi it looked like it could of been a graet horror flick. After viewing simitar's transfer to disc all i can say is that it is a terrible transfer the sound echos and even a bad jump in the picture that is obvisiously from the master tape used in the transfer. the only thing keeping this this low budget shocker afloat is ted raimi fine performance that makes me still gives this film 3 stars. there is one thing that was not explained in the film "what is skinners obsessession with running water?" Overall it was an interesting low budget flick that also gets my thumbs up to KNB for the fx.

Muffled sound, blurry image...The movie is just plain weird