Who payed the critics

Sadly Over-hyped

Dreadfully Boring

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

This was made back when Holdens and Fords used to line the streets of New Zealand towns. Ken Blackburn - as business and community leader Bob Warner - is the film's major merit ; an insidiously naive opportunist who wheels and deals beneath a cloak of civic respectability. Trouble brews when Sandra (Deryn Cooper) arrives from the big city to take up a health massage job at the men's gym. She's been 'round the block a few times and won't take no nonsense from the local clowns, least of all Bob, who in between working bees and maintaining his Stepford wife, fancies on expanding Sandra's job description. Skin Deep is a blackly comic and insightful drama surrounding the self-serving social inadequacies of a group of men in a small town. Produced when the New Zealand film industry was in it's infancy, Skin Deep remains one of country's most memorable films.