Skinned Deep (20th Anniversary)

Part of Dundead Horror Film Festival 2024. Priority booking for members starts at 10:00 on Wed 3 April. Passes and individual tickets will go on sale from 10:00 on Fri 5 April. More information on Festival Passes can be found below.

Please note: this film contains flashing images which may affect viewers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.

A gonzo splatter transmission from deep in the dusty Californian desert, Skinned Deep is the kind of trashy should-be-cult-classic midnight movie that we love at Dundead and we’re thrilled to be showing it on the big screen for its 20th anniversary – the first time the film has ever been played in a cinema in the UK. 

Writer/director Gabe Bartalos cut his teeth providing special effects for such B-movie classics as Leprechaun, the Basket Case sequels and even Gremlins 2, which stood him in good stead when it came to expanding the grotesquely creative corners of imagination in Skinned Deep. 

The film is classic horror film set-up: a family on a long road trip make a stop at a “friendly” local spot, only for them to be terrorised by a gang of violent oddballs. While the premise is familiar, Bartalos’ approach is anything but. Shot on grainy 16mm with a bizarre intensity, the film takes multiple narrative detours (including the introduction of a pension-age motorcycle gang), while giving our monstrous family, headlined by the horrific Surgeon General, plenty of opportunities to unleash their extravagantly violent impulses. 

If you need further convincing of Skinned Deep’s manic magic, it also stars the legendary Warwick Davis as a giggling, plate-throwing, philosophising pale-faced killer called…“Plates”. A hilarious, gory, inventive fever-dream of a film.