Skinned Alive (1990) Horror psychos

Skinned Alive (1990) -  . Its a simple setup for a very simple film. Tempe DVD is still in business and still selling some wonderfully horrible trash films. This one is horrible but not wonderful and really difficult to get through. What do you expect for a film made for $18k? A family of psychopaths travel the country looking for victims to kill, skin and make leather products out of. Could be an interesting set up but the script written by director Jon Killough is a horror comedy lacking both horror and comedy.  The primary problem is the cast that just yells at each other in every scene and swears constantly. Playing completely over the top might have seemed like a good idea at the time this feature was made but it really has not aged well. We have a family of killers here, Crawldaddy (Mary Jackson) the Mom is the handicapped matriarch with two adult children, Phink (Scott Spiegel) and Violet (Susan Rothacker) who drive around killing people and then skinning them. The chaos of what they do is not in their actions but more in their interactions with each other. Shouting, cursing and general low brow behavior makes the film almost unwatchable. There is a bit of a storyline when they settle into a neighborhood after their van breaks down. They are invited by the locals Paul (Floyd Ewing Jr.) and Louise (Jennifer Mullen) to stay with them, contrasting the trusting locals with the traveling assholes. There is some killing and then stupidly not getting rid of the bodies, so the risk of getting caught but there is a problem with this set up. The locals are way too simple to get these people are jerk offs and family of killers are way too unlikable to care if they get caught. You sort of want them to get caught just to shut them up.
  The sort of one reasonable character is the neighbor Tom (Lester Clark) a former cop with a powerful gun. When the shit hits the fan he lets the human leather making family have it and its the one thing that we can cheer about in the film. All and all though this is not a fil I can remotely recommend. Its on you if you need to make yourself suffer through it.