Review—Skinned Deep (Severin)
Author: Palo Sionoplia
In the early 2000s, Fangoria films rode the direct-to-video wave with a spate of films under the company’s newly-minted “Gorezone” imprint. While none of these films broke new ground, they gave young directors the opportunity to develop their craft and release material that was too quirky for the multiplex. Skinned Deep, Gabe Bartalos’s first time in the director’s chair, gave the longtime (and still working) makeup and special effects maestro a chance to take the helm and explore a blend of horror and comedy that he would refine a decade later.
Released a year after Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses, Skinned Deep mines strikingly similar territory. An extended riff of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s now too-familiar template, Bartalos tells the story of a teenaged girl whose entire family has been massacred by a family of engineered mutants. Within this fractured family, a mute family member named “The Surgeon General” serves as our stand-in for Leatherface, and the entire film is largely a game of cat-and-mouse that ends in showdown between our young heroine and the malicious, mindless Surgeon. While Bartalos shakes up the TCM formula with a mad scientist subplot, Skinned Deep is more interested in blending bits of more famous films than it is in providing viewers with something new to consider.
Let’s just get this out of the way. There is one reason that you really ought to see this film, and that reason is Warwick Davis. The diminutive horror star (now, alas, best known to children as Professor Flitwick) plays a plate-throwing maniac who offers extended philosophical soliloquies while murdering his victims with a bottomless supply of deadly dinnerware. Warwick’s character, “Plates,” steals every scene he’s in and made this reviewer wish that the Surgeon General had been dropped entirely in order to make Davis the primary antagonist. While Plates doesn’t get nearly enough screentime, every golden moment is well worth a rewind or three.
Video quality is occasionally rough around the edges, though Severin’s 2k scan of the original negative makes the most of elements that I’d wager suffered from poor preservation. Audio is satisfactory though somewhat less than amazing; Skinned Deep is not going to be a demo disc for your system, but that won’t stop you from smiling every time Plates torments his prey.
Supplements include a humorous commentary track with a cavalcade of cast and crew and “Deep Cuts,” a brief (14 minutes) but fun retrospective featuring Bartalos and cast members (no Warwick Davis to be found here, sadly). An archival behind-the-scenes featurette and a trailer is also included. Severin has issued Skinned Deep in two blu-ray editions: a one-disc version that is widely available and an exclusive two-disc edition with an album-length soundtrack CD featuring two tracks by The Damned’s Captain Sensible. While that soundtrack was not included for review, interested buyers may want to consider ordering directly from Severin’s website and grabbing that bonus disc.
Nine years after Skinned Deep’s release, Bartalos helmed Saint Bernard (also released by Severin on blu-ray), a superior effort in which the director better establishes his own voice and moves beyond well-worn horror tropes. While Saint Bernard is Bartalos’s second, and, thus, far, last directorial effort, Bartalos continues to ply his make-up and fx skills on A-list projects, most recently contributing to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. Skinned Deep will certainly be of interest to anyone wishing to revisit the unrestrained, bygone days of over-the-top humor and practical effects that were once hallmarks of the direct-to-video marketplace.
I would be remiss to ignore that Skinned Deep also features the iconic, always watchable Forrest J. Ackerman in a supporting role. If you were on the fence about making a purchase, I’ll bet I just changed your mind.