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Robert P. Beveridge | Cleveland, OH | 06/01/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

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Skinned Alive (James Tucker, 2008)

First off, take note: this movie, released on DVD under the title Skinned Alive, was originally released under the title Eat Your Heart Out. Don't see it twice if you don't mean to! But, that said, I'm not entirely sure you should even see it once, though I did like it better than the average IMDB user (as I write this, its average rating is 3.7).

Plot (which should sound familiar from a few different flicks): Pandora (Melissa Bacelar, recruited into the Troma stable right out of college for Toxic Avenger IV) is call girl with a difference: after you get what you paid for, you get what you didn't when she kills and eats you. All is going--relatively--well for Pandora until she meets the reserved Jeffrey (Jack Dillon, in his first screen appearance), who falls in love with her at first sight. She finds herself returning his feelings, but has to figure out how to hide her diet from him, or how to break it to him gently. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to either Pandora or Jeffrey, a mysterious man (Aunt Rose's Joshua Nelson, who also wrote the script) is trying to track down Pandora, and given his methods, it's pretty obvious he's not looking to deliver a bouquet of flowers.

Despite knowing better, I always hope, when I see a no-budget horror flick, that I'm going to get something original. The very few times it happens keeps me coming back for more. Skinned Alive, unfortunately, doesn't have an original thought in its head, but there's the occasional derivative movie that's kind of fun. From this perspective, the movie delivers, and not just because Melissa Bacelar would be worth staring at for an hour and a half even if she were just sitting still. Despite your probably not recognizing the names here, this is one of the very few no-budget horror flicks of recent years where the majority of the cast has at least some experience in front of the camera, and it does show. After horror movie after horror movie of characters who seem like they should be in the psychiatrist's office for flat affect, here we have some characters who know how to emote without (usually, anyway) going over the top. And some thought obviously went into the casting of Jeffrey, as well; Dillon, despite being a first-timer, comes across with the difficult mix of shyness and affability that the character calls for.

Not deathless cinema, of course, but certainly watchable. Better, in fact, than about half the horror movies I've seen so far this year (and there have been many of them). ***
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