First developed as far back as 2002, Skin Crawl is finally seeing the light of day courtesy of Shock-O-Rama. Marking the directorial debut of Justin Wingenfeld (who also wrote), you might be surprised at just how non-horror this plays out for most of its running time, opting instead to be a "cheating husband and lover plan to kill his other half so they can get her money" thriller.

Things start off on a horror vibe though, as we see a small coven of witches (led by indie favourite, Debbie Rochon), who not only happen to be sisters, but also harmlessly worship the "great mother of Earth". But this doesn't fly for the town leaders who, one night, interrupt one of their rituals and drag off the youngest sister into the woods. She's raped and left for dead, which forces the remaining siblings to resort of black magic in order to place a curse on anyone who might try to harm their family in the future.

Flash forward to modern day where we meet their descendent Margaret (Rochon again) who is pretty unhappy with the way things seem to be going in her marriage. Hubby, Howard (Kevin G. Shinnick) just doesn't seem at all interested in her both mentally and sexually. Of course, that might be because he's got a lover on the side in Sadie (Julian Wells).

It's here that Wingenfeld's script starts to stack-up flashbacks from various characters to try and throw a whole bunch of twists into the fairly basic premise. Seems that Howard's also being fleeced by Sadie for Margaret's money and things get even more complicated when a few small-time crooks kidnap and bloodily kill wifey. This also gives Wingenfeld the opportunity to blend Margaret's murder (which involves her being brutally stabbed) with a sex scene between Shinnick and Wells' characters. It's a fairly effective moment which, along with the aforementioned flashback delivery, shows Wingenfeld was pretty confident despite this being his first outing.

It's not really until the final twenty minutes of so that Skin Crawl really becomes a horror flick. Apart from mentioning witches in the opening, this is a standard erotic thriller for the most part, but things really change their tone with Rochon's Margaret returns from the grave as a zombie to exact revenge on her killers, cheating husband, and his greedy double-crossing lover. It's also around this time that Shock-O-Rama regular Misty Mundae shows up in a cameo role, someone gets their guts messily ripped out, and Wells has a whole lot of nastiness occur to her in the final reel (including a really gross vomiting moment).

While it probably could've used more genre elements (people renting the movie based on the box art don't particularly want to sit through almost an hour of jilted lovers and petty crime), Wingenfeld does quite well considering the budget limitations he had to face. Skin Crawl is a fairly cheap looking production but it manages to be watchable thanks to trying for more plot than most of its ilk tend to as well as getting decent enough performances from its cast. Rochon is as solid as expected and John P. Fedele brings just the right amount of sleaze to his roll as one of the co-murderers. Wells does the expected and gets out of her clothes as many times as humanly possible (not that I'm complaining), but she never quite seems to get bitchy enough as someone who's trying to mess-up multiple people's lives.

Hot on the heels of the equally entertaining Shock-O-Rama, Skin Crawl is another recommended indie flick platter from the guys at POPcinema (under their Shock-O-Rama label) and should make for an agreeable 75 minutes of viewing. (Chris Hartley, 4/4/07)

Directed By: Justin Wingenfeld.
Written By: Justin Wingenfeld.

Starring: Julian Wells, Debbie Rochon, Kevin G. Shinnick, Armand Anthony.

Picture Ratio: Full Frame.

Picture Quality: For a lower-budgeted flick, I suppose this could've looked worse, but Skin Crawl still looks pretty "blah" on disc. The picture is pretty soft looking and it's not quite up to previous Shock-O-Rama releases. It's bascially VHS quality tossed onto a shiny round disc.

Extras: The quantity of special features is kept low, but what's here is still pretty decent. We get a trailer (plus trailers for 8 other POPcinema releases), "Coming Soon" trailers for sure fire "gems" such as Creature From The Hillbilly Lagoon, a making of featurette entitled "Under Your Skin", and a commentary track with Wingenfeld, producer Michael Raso, and co-star/DP Fedele (it's a somewhat jokey track, but offers enough background to be listenable).

Visit Shock-O-Rama for more info.