Popular reviews

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  Review by Dyrnott ★★★½ 2

  The movies is entertaining but the story behind it I find fascinating. Starring Traci Lords, Riki Lake and Ted Raimi. Ted the brother of director Sam Raimi. The director of this movie was Ivan Nagy. The movie is about a man who mutilates prostitutes. Ivan directed TV shows like CHIPS and Starsky and Hutch. What is scary fascinating about Ivan is that he was a convicted bookie, ex boyfriend of Heidi Fleiss and was arrested for recruiting women for prostitution the same year this movie came out which turned out he ran a prostitution ring in Hollywood. The gore effects are awesome and the thought that he wrote this and was pimping is mind blowing spooky. Not a great movie, also definitely politically incorrect in many different ways but is definitely not boring. You can find it on Tubi.

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  Review by Ian West ★★★½ 5

  Ted Raimi pulls a joe spinell/ed gein/ted bundy, traversing the graffiti alleys/railroad tracks of L.A. with his bag o blades—eventually moving in with Ricki Lake and her dickbag trucker husband, all while Traci Lords plays a scarred/drugged up ex victim hot on his tail for revenge. Definitely has a mood—unpleasant, sleazy, darkly comic, and the KNB effects definitely add to the ew factor. Then there’s that scene... where Ted Raimi wears a black man’s skin suit and runs around chasing his next victim.

  Interesting slice of pre Scream weirdo low budget 90’s slasher mayhem—not as dingy as post Se7en movies but I like that, I love that time period and the oddities it produced... I also couldn’t help but feel like Damien Leone’s Terrifier was influenced by this—it definitely had that same nasty feel, it’s also worth mentioning that numerous times during this movie I thought Ted Raimi in this was somehow an inspiration on Heath Ledger’s Joker?

  
  Thank you Severin films <3

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  Review by Kevflix And Chill ★★★ 4

  #SlasherSaturday
  Ted Raimi is great as a drifter, Dennis Skinner, that stalks prostitutes, collecting skins and crafting a skinsuit. Also stars Ricki Lake as the innocent housewife who has rented a spare room to Skinner, and Traci Lords as one of his victims seeking out revenge. It’s not super compelling as a pseudo noir thriller, but it’s pretty fun just watching Raimi, Lake and Lords. There’s a few fun moments of Dennis skinning his victims. The wildest part of this film is looking into the director Ivan Nagy who was convicted of bookmaking and running a call-girl ring. He’s also famed for being a boyfriend of Heidi Fleiss. (Heidi also happens to be Traci Lords character name in this.)  There’s a pretty…

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  Review by bummer_buddy ★★

  As campy as you’d expect considering the cast but also possesses a surprisingly sleazy mean streak, including some of the most racist humor I’ve ever seen in a movie. The literal black face/Texas Chainsaw homage was so bad I gotta assume Ted Rami was into some white supremacist shit for even being willing to perform it.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★ 1

  In which Ted Raimi, playing a serial killer named Dennis Skinner who skins people alive, chases a young woman while wearing a black man's skin. As she flees shrieking in abject terror, he shouts, "Who do you think you are?!" A bit later he feeds some of the skin (the "glove") to a dog. Deeply silly, but at its best (especially in its depiction of one of the grimiest, garbage-strewn versions of LA I've ever seen on film) this resembles something like early Ferrara, with a lot of pathologized misogyny and disrupted domesticity, and Traci Lords doing her best Zoë Lund as a junkie-chic demoness cruising the streets for revenge.

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  Review by Lynn Betts ★★★ 4

  #SlasherSaturday Jan 13 recap...

  The first time I watched this was punctually and properly. Punctually since I saw it on Saturday night for once (a very rare night off!) and properly because it was the feature on a night when my friend and I got drunk and stoned, kept dozing off during in shifts, and upon waking always asked, “Is Ricki Lake still alive?”. The last time we dozed off we both woke up to find the credits rolling, calling it a night without finding out the answer...

  So on Sunday I checked it out again, always the diligent completist once sober. Ricki Lake’s acting is terrible but also quite endearing. Traci Lords is... dramatic - although I must say…

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  Review by Sean Baker 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Review by Ghoul Gruel 🧟‍♂️ 🥣 ★★★

  “I told you not to look while I was getting dressed! We’re gonna have a talk…”

  From the director of Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979) comes this odd, 90’s, Clive Barker-meets-Danzig debacle that’s really only carried by Ted Raimi and some sweet lighting and camerawork. You get the sense of a classic beneath the surface but it’s way too inconsistent in almost every regard. It doesn’t know what it wants to be and lacks its own personality. Strong open, some weird choices following, and a super anticlimactic ending. 

  There’s this one scene though, with Dennis loping about in his Earl-suit acting real problematic, and it’s hilarious Troma-styled lunacy. One star for that alone. My second fav bit was Dennis drinking a glass of water.

  But the worst part of the whole film was Dennis cutting chicken skin then leaving the knife on the other side of the kitchen, unwashed. And that’s how you know he’s a serial killer.

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  Review by coles84 ★★★★ 1

  How was Ted Raimi not in blockbuster after blockbuster? The dude is handsome, charismatic, fun, got great screen presence and really knows how to lead a film. SKINNER is one such example of Raimi’s talents. A film that feels like HENRY has taken a bunch of steroids and any realism walls are taken away to allow for a super fun serial killer flick with an extreme kick. Ricki Lake and Traci Lords both assist Raimi though and Lake in particular shines with a sweet yet powerful performance as a kind hearted yet soon to be broken hearted hard worker. Lords as a kick ass vigilante certainly destroys any comic book heroes butts. 

  The kills leave a lot to the imagination…

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  Review by Edith ★★★ 2

  Blame it on Hannibal and Maniac if you want (and we will), but making serial killers questionably cool is the nineties down to its bones really. A low budget movie that doesn't treat itself like one: ethereal surrealism, grotesque sexual deviancy, and possible occult elements flashing in like a NIN music video. I've said this before and I'll say it again, there is an ingenuity to taking an existing idea and making it your own. I am of the camp that art is a Hegelian dialect of sorts creating an artistic "Absolute Spirit" and this is a phantom of where we were subconsciously in 1993. Including, if not still extremely outdated and unsettling for the time itself, a drawn out blackface number that is…

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  Review by sydney

  half utterly beautiful (all that water, all that blue light...), half unbearably sickening - the tension of raimi skinning a chicken as ricki lake innocently beams at him is almost as disturbing as the actual gore - i have no idea what to rate this, but i am kind of in awe of just how thoroughly unsympathetic toward its wacky killer this is. he gives his speech about childhood trauma during the most gory and uncomfortable scene so there is absolutely no question that he has no excuse for the act he's committing, and the ummm..literal blackface scene is depicted as the height of depravity, something only the craziest scum of the earth would do, the fact that he acts…

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  Review by Gregory⛧Joseph ★★★½ 1

  The Letterboxd summary refers to Ted Raimi as "a decent looking lad."