SKINNED DEEP is a movie released direct-to-video in 2004 by Fangoria and Gorezone Video. For that reason I recognized the cover but never paid any attention to it until Mr. Majestyk recommended it. Turns out it’s a really interesting one – if not great, at least very distinct. It’s the directorial debut of Gabriel Bartalos, a makeup effects guy who worked on DOLLS, the LEPRECHAUN movies and the BASKET CASE sequels. More recently he did the zombie horse in ARMY OF THE DEAD and worked on DESTROY ALL NEIGHBORS.

Different parts of it reminded me of HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, THE ROAD WARRIOR, THE HILLS HAVE EYES and TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 2, except with acting out of a John Waters movie and a few characters that would work in FREAKED or a Brian Yuzna movie. It has a grimy indie look to it and okay, I’m doing the math in my head here and it does seem that 2004 was 20 years ago, but I definitely would’ve guessed this was older than that – in a good way. This does not seem like the same year as DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, SEED OF CHUCKY, CURSED and EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING. I don’t know, maybe it’s that low budget rawness.

It opens with a (reportedly done for real) scarification ritual branding an S and a D into skin, which is not part of the story, just an intense way to lead into the title card. Next an old man driving at night is killed by a monster-faced man with goggles bolted into his head and a bear trap jaw who swings a grappling hook at him and causes his car to flip. This is intercut with close ups of a bodybuilder flexing. We don’t see the muscle man’s face, and much later we’ll learn that he doesn’t have a head at all. This one is pretty different from other movies, is what I’m getting at here.

The normal part is a family on vacation getting their tires spiked and coming to a little general store that doesn’t have a phone but the old granny who runs it (Liz Little) says “My grandson works on cars.” While they wait for repairs they’re invited for dinner, and since they’re guests they’re very polite about the filthy walls, the broken phones and credit cards hanging from the ceiling, the weird doll heads and chains and things, as well as the strange family they’re introduced to: “the surgeon” (Kurt Carley, werewolf performer in various UNDERWORLD films), Plates (Warwick Davis, who must’ve befriended Bartalos in the makeup chair on those LEPRECHAUNs) and a nice kid who serves them a plate of nasty giblets and things. Everyone calls him Brain, though he later says it’s Brian.

The surgeon turns out to be also known as The Surgeon General, and he’s that trap jaw guy from the beginning, badly hiding his cyborg parts behind the face of the guy he killed. Brian’s enormous head, currently covered in muslin, turns out to be a giant brain. And Plates turns out to be the most MAD MAX-ian character, wearing a white jumpsuit with a black backpack filled with plates that he pulls out and throws at people, sometimes from the back of a speeding vehicle.

After Surgeon General slaughters the parents at the dinner table, sullen teen Tina (Karoline Brandt) and little brother Matthew (Lee Kociela) run off, so it seems like it’s gonna be just the two of them on the run. Then about a minute later little Matthew gets graphically bisected. It’s like a samurai movie – he thinks the blade missed him, then he splits into two. Like a fuckin Twix bar.

Tina’s only spared because Brian wants to keep her. She gets knocked out and wakes up in a room entirely plastered in newspapers – walls, floors, bed, light fixture. In fact she finds a window that’s boarded up and each board is individually covered in newspaper. She peels those off to find bricks and pulls those out to find bars. It’s very dreamlike. She finds a trap door to a crawlspace lit by Christmas lights, peeks through wooden grids with steam coming out, falls through and lands in a dank dungeon with skulls and hooks and a tube TV showing home videos of her dead family.

When Granny discovers that Tina got out she lectures Brian: “I thought we agreed she would be your responsibility.” He ties a rope around his pet and takes her for what he must believe is a romantic motorcycle ride to the park. He has his brain out with lots of feathers and beads and things attached for decoration. He thinks since she doesn’t have her original family anymore she should just accept that she’s part of theirs now.

Then they dress up Tina in a white dress like they’re gonna force her to get married, which turns out to involve gagging her and posting her on the front of their truck like a masthead (or like Max in FURY ROAD!), playing chicken with a pickup truck full of drunks, throwing plates at them and slashing them. Most of this is clearly done with actual moving vehicles, including some amazing shots of Davis throwing plates at the camera. Definitely the stand out scene.

I love how much of this is crazy looking cyborg and mutant guys doing insane shit out in broad daylight. Sometimes there are people around but nobody pays attention. I suspect they couldn’t clear the park for shooting so they just let it go.

Brian wears a knight helmet made out of many knight helmets, the family accidentally starts a war with elderly bikers, some heads get graphically blown off, an old man rips Plates’ head off, drinks blood from the neck and punts it, hitting the windshield of a passing van. And there’s a wild finale where Tina discovers a mad science lab of fish tanks, TVs and even more bizarre creations. The muscleman turns out to be “The Creator,” whose chest peels open and a little Belial or Kuato type guy jumps out on Tina. Don’t you hate it when that happens? At the end she has a vision of her family smiling, holding bunnies, surrounded by cooing doves, telling her not to kill the Surgeon General. Instead she runs him over with a motorcycle, tearing him into several burning, whirring pieces, and blows up the whole house (shown from multiple angles).

It may be a weakness that Tina doesn’t have a chance to have much more of a personality than being realistically grumpy for her age before just having to run around and sometimes fight. But I think it’s a credible final girl performance that somewhat holds together the varying tones of the thing. I’ve seen it listed as a horror comedy, which seems fair with the giant brain and some other things, but it seems to me to take the horror seriously, and she’s at the center of that.

On first viewing there was something that kept me a little at a distance, so I’m not ready to call it one of the great aughts horror movies. What’s undeniable though is that it takes you on an impressive tour through a bunch of imaginative sets and props, low budget feats of imagination and massive elbow grease. And it has a really good mix of atmosphere – much of it on these sets meticulously decorated with junk and debris, but also a bunch of sunny outdoor madness. It’s like the most impressive roadside horror maze you ever encountered, with a thrilling stunt show in the middle. Thanks for the recommendation, Majestyk.

p.s. This features an original song by Captain Sensible, a name that I remembered very vividly, and it turns out it was from his 1983 song “Wot!” He’s also in The Damned but I don’t know anything about them. My wife didn’t recognize “Wot!” when I played it for her and I determined that I only knew it from my friend who knew about this kind of stuff because he had an older half-sister who was into Adam Ant and stuff.