Review: Skinner – The Ted Raimi serial killer movie gets a 4K resurrection

Directed by Ivan Nagy
Starring Ted Raimi, Traci Lords, Richard Schiff, David Warshofsky

Unavailable for years – some thought it was actually lost – the late Ivan Nagy’s 1993 serial killer thriller is returning to the horror movie scene with a spiffing 4k resurrection on Blu-Ray by 101’s Black Label. Dennis Skinner (Ted Raimi), wanders from town to town, pursuing his obsession – in a nice bit of normative determinism, our Dennis enjoys not only nice, long walks in the seedier parts of town, but picking up sex workers who he not only kills but then expertly skins, keeping those skins as trophies. And even more disturbingly, to wear, to show his “true self”.

The story has elements of the 80s slasher, with the focus on killing young women in bloody fashion, with elements of the serial killer genre (not least Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill and his woman “skin suit”, and a couple of scenes that hint to Norman Bates in Psycho). One of the aspects which differentiates between this and other similar horrors of the era though, is the use of Ted Raimi. Of course, Raimi is no stranger to horror and the fantastic genres, having been in everything from Dark Man to a recurring role in Xena. Fair to say, in fact, Ted is a much-loved genre regular.

Here however Nagy is playing Raimi against type – there is always something of the charming goofball about his characters, and normally a lot of humour and a fair bit of charm too. And those qualities are here and feel very Ted Raimi. And then we see the other side come out, the monster within that charming, smiling, considerate, polite, affable guy in glasses, a monster created in his youth by a brutalising father and the murder and dismemberment of his mother by his father in a grotesque parody of an autopsy.

I must admit at first I wasn’t entirely convinced – the initial glimpses of Raimi’s Skinner letting his restrained inner demon out didn’t quite work for me, it was hard to buy cuddly Ted as an evil killer. But the more I watched the more I revised that opinion because I realised that was more than likely the intention here, that we’d find it difficult to believe one of his characters could be this nasty. Like Ted Bundy and some other real-world serial killers, Raimi’s Skinner is the last person you’d expect to be a bloody-minded psychopath, he seems the nicest, gentlest person, always a ready smile, and that’s a major part of Skinner’s draw here, having a monster who, most of the time, doesn’t seem like a monster.

Traci Lords plays Heidi, the only streetwalker to survive Skinner’s murderous thirst for women, terribly disfigured and in constant pain, hiding her multiple scars and wounds as she relentlessly hunts for Skinner. As with many serial killers, Skinner has a preferred method of operating, and as Heidi mutters, this makes him “as creature of habit, predictable”, aiding her quest to hunt him and seek revenge. As the film progresses and we see more of her, while sympathising with the suffering inflicted on her and her right to seek her own brand of justice, the film also starts to intimate that her scarring is as much mental as physical, and that, in some ways, her single-minded pursuit, letting no-one stand in her way, has perhaps made Heidi something of a monster, a dark twin of Skinner, the two drawn together in mutual violence and pain.

Some of the film very much shows its 1990s roots – a hidden area in a run-down factory that Skinner uses as a lair is lit with contrasting spots of green, blue and red light that were a style in more than a few productions of the time, but given that’s when it was made that’s fair enough. The early killings are fairly quiet and almost bloodless on-screen – a sex worker lured away, the intimation of Skinner about to strike, then a cutaway to flashes of skin being cut, but only brief flashes rather than the grand guignol bloodbath some may expect. Theses scenes grow longer and more explicit as the film progresses, however, which is more effective in ratcheting up the levels of tension and horror, and while we have to wait for those longer scenes – and the slow reveal of what Skinner does with those pieces of skin he slices from the victims – it works to the film’s advantage.

Skinner is getting the full 4k restoration treatment, and arrives from 101 Films on a dual-format Blu-Ray and DVD, with extras including interviews with Nagy and Raimi, and a limited edition booklet.