Editorials
‘Skinned Deep’: One of the Most Bonkers Horror Films of the 2000s Is Now Streaming on Screambox
It was the week of Valentine’s Day in 2004. While young romantics everywhere were doing their best to be struck by Cupid’s arrow, Outkast released seminal classic Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Family Business was the small screen star while Todd Phillips released the pre-Hangover seventies reboot Starsky and Hutch. And against all odds, a strange little slasher-monster-science fiction movie found release. That gonzo movie was Skinned Deep.
Now if you watch Skinned Deep, you will spend the majority of the time (just like I did) wondering if you read it wrong that the movie was made in 2004. Yes, it is two decades behind us but Skinned Deep actually looks more akin to the shot on video films of the late eighties and early nineties. And director Gabriel Bartalos refused to let his microbudget hold him back.
Bartalos had existed in the horror scene for almost twenty years at the time, working make-up and special effects before he got a shot at his own flick. Bartalos got his start in Hollywood in 1986, working on Spookies, before going on to work with legendary horror directors on beloved cult films; Frank Henenlotter on Frankenhooker and Brain Damage, and Sam Raimi on Darkman, as well as providing make-up for nearly all of the Leprechaun films. Needless to say, heading into the 2000s, Bartalos had already shown he had a proclivity for the weird.
But none of his past work holds a candle to the surreal exotica that is Skinned Deep.
From the outside looking in, Skinned Deep is nothing all that original. It’s pretty much a major lift from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, following a family travelling through rural America that is captured and tortured by an odd clan of serial killers. It borrows a smidge from The Hills Have Eyes as well, giving us a version of a mutant family, while also leaning a bit into that Mad Max wasteland feel. The first thirty minutes of the movie, in particular, feel extra low budget and like a straight up ripoff of the Tobe Hooper classic.
But Bartalos is not here to drop something you’ve already seen in your lap. In fact, Bartalos pieces together one of the most wild, surreal, completely bonkers horror films of the 2000s. The family fronts a diner to draw people in that they then kill or experiment on; Granny is the mother figure who runs the diner; Plates (played by Warwick Davis) is a ghostly white plate-throwing maniac; Brain is a younger man with a massive skull and brain cortex; and Surgeon General is some amalgamation of a mutant monster and futuristic robot with a bear trap mouth. Yes. You read that right. Warwick Davis plays a character named PLATES who literally runs around with a backpack full of DINING PLATES to MURDEROUSLY THROW AT PEOPLE.
That is only the tip of the weirdo iceberg. ONLY THE TIP OF IT. The first half of this movie introduces these gonzo characters but does little else to really differentiate itself from its obvious influence. The super low budget leads to strange almost fever dream-like chase scenes through fog machine-covered forests in broad daylight and ’90s era camera shots and sets. Bartalos really uses his talents as an effects artist to his advantage to create some truly solid gore-filled kills but it’s the last third of this movie that will have you obsessed.
I don’t want to ruin things for you but here are some things that happen: a group of elderly bikers battles the murderous family; there is a vehicular fight scene made up of Surgeon General and five out of shape drunkards; a chase scene through a cactus field that involves hidden buried plates; and a decapitation and explosion scene that must be seen.
Bartalos went full tilt for this movie lost to time. It feels like it was plucked straight out of the eighties and dropped into our laps and it’s wild that in the same year that gave us films like Saw and Dawn of the Dead we also got this meager yet completely earnest attempt at something much more wild. Skinned Deep is like Grant Morrison wrote a movie that Bad Taste era Peter Jackson released under the Troma banner. Released on DVD by the now-gone Fangoria/GoreZone DVD label, copies can be found online, and Skinned Deep is now streaming on Screambox!
It must be seen to even be believed…
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on November 27, 2020.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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