Truly Dreadful Film

A Major Disappointment

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Total rubbish, insulting crap, rates ZERO. A major waste of time with people who must have been pulkled of the street to "axt" in this abysmal, amateurish effort. Thumbs down all round. Crap!

Skinned Alive starts somewhere in Ohio with a hitchhiker (writer & director Jon Killough) trying to thumb a lift on a lonely deserted backwoods road. Eventually a van pulls up, the words 'CRAWLDADDY'S TRAVELING TANNERY' are written along the side. He opens the door but the driver, Violet (Susan Rothacker) kicks him in the face & then Violets Brother Phink (Scott Speigel) kills him. Togetehr with their wheelchair bound, eye-patch wearing Mother strangely named Crawldaddy (Mary Jackson) they drive off. Before long a fat guy named Willard (Mike Render) whose car has broken down ends up the same way. But their van is having problems starting so they take it to a garage where a mechanic named Tom Miles (Lester Clark) says he can fix it but it'll take a while & invites the family to stay at his house with him & his wife Whinnie (Barbara Katz-Norrod). While their there the family repay their host's good deed by killing a few more of the locals to pass the time including a Jehovah's witness (played by music composer & producer J.R. Bookwalter) & a delivery boy (Mike Shea) intending to skin them & make jackets & handbags out of it, however Tom's next door neighbour, an ex-cop named Paul Hickox (Floyd Ewing Jr.) discovers the families murderous ways & decides to put an end to it...Edited, produced & directed by Jon Killough who also has a small role in it, I personally thought Skinned Alive was an absolutely awful horror film in every way imaginable. According to the IMDb Skinned Alive's budget was an estimated minuscule $18,500, well all I can say is where did the money go because it didn't end up on screen that's for sure. I'm trying to think of a single positive thing to say about Skinned Alive but I simply can't think of one. The script is a mess & has all the intelligence, subtly & entertainment value of being written by an illiterate five year old. It can't decide whether it's a straight horror or comedy, I'm sure there are certain scenes which are meant to be funny like when Violet strips for Phink & when she kicks her boots off they both hit his head complete with silly sound effects & a stupid expression on Phink's face, unfortunately these 'comedy' moments are about as funny as losing an arm or leg. There is no story to speak of or any developed characters. The dialogue between the family is very annoying & consists of nothing more than how many swear words they can fit into sentences insulting each other, I hated the lot of 'em by the time Skinned Alive finished. The acting is as terrible as you would expect, real amateur stuff & it wouldn't surprise me if the entire cast were friends & family of the director's except Scott Spiegel (hey Scott loose the ponytail mate...) who I was shocked to see in this piece of pond scum & whose credits include The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), Intruder (1989), Darkman (1990) & the two recent Spider-Man (2002 -2004) films among others. I'd have thought he could have pointed the whole production in the right direction but obviously he didn't, oh & he can't act either. Basically Skinned Alive has no meaningful story, characters or incidents & lacks any sort of atmosphere or tension. The poorly conceived & executed gore scenes have no build up or pay-off. There's a bit when someone has the skin on their chest sliced off, a split in half head, a sliced open stomach, some severed fingers & a couple of skinned corpses but it's all very fake looking & filmed in such a way it has zero impact. Technically Skinned Alive is real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, the keyboard synthesiser music is basic, bland & doesn't complement the on screen action in the slightest, the acting as I've already said is rotten throughout, the photography is of home camcorder quality & it was obviously shot on very low grade film or video as it is extremely grainy & lacks any colour definition & as a result Skinned Alive just doesn't look like a film, the director uses the most basic & as few shots as possible to accomplish the scene with no close-ups or establishing shots of note, neither does the camera move that much & when it does it's pretty jerky, the thing appears to be shot in two different houses & that's it for locations, I could probably go on all day about how bad this piece of crap is but hopefully you get the idea. Overall I hated Skinned Alive, it's the kind of film that gives the horror genre a bad name & will put casual viewers off other much better examples. I really don't have a single good thing to say about this lousy zero budget amateurishly made mess of a horror film. Avoid at all costs, you have been warned.

I've read a lot of other comments and I have to say that this movie does not suck and it's certainly not stupid. You just have to have an open mind and a taste for this kind of stuff. It's not a horror movie in that it will scare you but there is some gore (albeit not very authentic gore, but they were on a miniscule budget) and some seriously twisted characters in it. Admittedly, all the stuff with the former cop neighbor is very lame (I skip it usually). But, the joy of this flick is to watch Scott Spiegel and Mary Jackson together. They are an absolute riot! Spiegel really makes the film worthwhile. He pretty much did it as a favor to the director and producer and boy did he deliver! He's an innately funny man and the lines that he and Mary Jackson exchange are incredibly funny. The physical comedy is superb as well. I ordered this sucker on DVD without seeing it first and was not disappointed at all. Those of you who are familiar with the 'Fake Shemps' (Spiegel, Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, Ted Raimi, etc) will enjoy this flick. Trust me.

As somebody who values and has a rather large collection of low-budget horror films, I can honestly say this is one of the most horrible movies I have ever seen! It's like a thirteen year old wrote the dialogue, and then set up the scenes to look "wicked awesome." Another thing is this movies has no actual concept of reality...I know it's a horror movie, and most stuff in horror movies isn't even slightly based on reality, but when you have people shooting and stabbing people in the middle of the day, in the front-yard nonetheless...well you can't help but feel that either you the viewer are being treated as an idiot, or the film makers themselves are idiots. Even if you were drawn to the movie for the gore, or the cover of the DVD which features a bikini girl with "Skinned Alive" carved in her stomach...JUST STAY AWAY! I have never seen gore so badly done in my life! There are scenes where the bodies being skinned are obviously made of clay! You can actually see the clay bunch up when a knife is plunged into it, and this is supposed to pass for human flesh? You would think that the director or editor would have seen how horrible some of the crap looked, and cut it out, but it's there in all it's 3rd grade glory. There is no redeeming quality to this movie at all. The acting is bad, and the special effects are the worst! Do not spend any money on this movie.