Skinner (1993)

"Your Tolerance Levels May Vary"

It's time for some obscure low budget 1990s horror as 101 Films brings out Ivan Nagy's SKINNER in a limited edition dual format release. 

Ted Raimi is Dennis Skinner (not the well-known Labour politician in case you're hoping this is a biopic). This Dennis Skinner haunts a stretch of abandoned warehouses where some kind of prostitute apocalypse seems to have taken place, as apart from him they seem to be the only people wandering around in it.

Dennis skins the prostitutes and makes costumes out of them. He needs somewhere to live so he rents a room at Ricki Lake's horrible house that has peeling wallpaper and the most suspect fridge you'll see in movies this year. Her husband is an insensitive trucker who is always in a bad mood. His lorry is always missing his trailer so you can understand why his bosses give him a hard time if he keeps losing something as massive as that. Traci Lords pops up at regular intervals as a kind of bizarre Van Helsing-type on Quaaludes. She's hunting Skinner aided by her small case of hypodermics and frilly old lady hat. 

Dennis gets a job. A gentleman of African-American extraction upsets him. Dennis skins the man and then embarks on a rampage that is perhaps the ultimate in cultural appropriation, to the extent that this scene is more likely to have people switching off than any of the graphic skinning sequences. More bad things happen, very drearily and very slowly. It's that sort of film. If you manage to get to the end I'm not going to spoil it for you.

The best thing about 101's SKINNER release is the extras. Screenwriter Paul Hart-Wilden (who gave us the equally depressing LIVING DOLL) spends time telling us about getting the film made and his lengthy hunt for it after it disappeared into obscurity shortly after its release. He claims that while he was in Hollywood during the film's production his mum rang him up to tell him some bloke had come up with something similar to SKINNER and that it was called THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. The fact that an industry insider like Mr Hart-Wilden can claim to have no knowledge of it does makes one wonder which part of Hollywood he was actually in at the time, as presumably this must have been around a year after the film of Thomas Harris' novel came out. Presumably it wasn't the part with cinemas, video shops, or where they gave out Oscars.

You also get an archival interview with director Ivan Nagy, new ones with editor Jeremy Kasten and star Ted Raimi, plus out-takes and deleted scenes. One for early 1990s completists and anyone who fancies seeing Ricki Lake in some terrible dresses.

SKINNER is out on dual format DVD & Blu-ray from 101 Films on Monday 14th October