Crappy horror movie reviews Thursday: Skinned Alive (1989)

This movie is pretty much about a traveling family-- who kills people for their skin-- break down in a hick town end up rooming with the local mechanic Tom Miles until their truck is fixed. During their stay they end up killing anyone who they can get their hands on, delivery boy, hitchhikers, neighbors and then moves on to Tom and his wife. When the nosy alcoholic neighbor Paul Hickox gets a whiff of what is going on he tries to play hero and save the family from the murderous rampage-- sounds good doesn't it?

I thought the movie was funny, but it also had some nice low-budget blood and some sweet kills. The story was pretty good, and done in the vein of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The special make-up effects weren't at all great, but they were pretty good. They were almost convincing, and that is all I ask for. The movie had a Raimi feel to it, and it even starred Scott Spiegel.




The acting of the main characters wasn't that bad, but the neighbor was horrible. The introduction of the neighbor was a boring tedious segment, which took up a good 10 minutes of airtime. The main killer "Crawl Daddy" was pretty annoying, and I was hoping she'd die real quickly. I am not sure if this movie was meant to be scary, because it wasn't (but it was entertaining). And, again, like in Bloody Moon, the incest scene could have been avoided.

This is another lost gems of the genre, I am still shocked that Joe Bob Briggs hasn't snatched this one up yet in some form or another. I am betting he would provide an amazing commentary track for this. It's a pretty low-budget picture, but it was very entertaining, funny, bloody and even shocking in a scene or two. The family supposed to have been killing people for their hides, but in the entire movie I really didn't see them harvest the hides, but mutilate them. So, in a way the story made no sense, especially when they carved (what was supposed to be) satanic symbols into the victim's flesh, which again led me to believe that they were killing for fun, and not to harvest the hides. So,in short, the movie strayed off the initial topic for shock value or probably just because of the ultra low budget.

If you can find it for cheap give it a watch!