Skinner
Skinner
5.243%
A decent-looking lad called Dennis Skinner rents an apartment in a couple's house, Kerry and Geoff. At night he roams the streets with a goodie-bag filled with knives looking for victims to skin, constantly followed by the hobbling, wobbling junkie Heidi who was mutilated by him and is now looking for revenge. Dennis is attracted to Kerry and wants to show her the real him.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 2, 2025
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 big rabbit hole to go down here. I believe Nagy later went on to direct porn.
Ultimately, I kind of liked the setup for this, but it didn’t really have much of a satisfying conclusion, even has some weird inconsistencies. For example, in the end there’s a scene where Heidi is looking for Skinner at Kerry’s (Lake) house but runs into Kerry’s husband. The two of them get into a scuffle and she goes after him with a syringe and ends up tossing him down the stairs. The next scene he’s driving her in his Mack truck to Skinner’s location and as soon they get there, she jabs him. I actually love stuff like that though.