Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 4:4	Budget Low

Pop Quiz: What do three witches apparently from a Salem-type time frame who literally raise the devil to avenge one of their own have to do with a modern day setting where a dead wife comes back as zombie to extract vengeance on her murderers? Give up? The answer is Debbie Rochon There is a prologue to Skin Crawl that has Debbie playing one of a trio of witches that put a curse of vengeance on anyone who hurts their descendents.

Brett Piper is barely mentioned on the Internet Movie Database, but I am sure he has about a dozen more credits that are listed there. I remember some horrid direct to video movies from years ago that I don't think are listed and perhaps it would be just as well if these are never mentioned again. Clearly the first part of Skin Crawl should have remained in whatever video vault he had it stored in, but some filmmakers just hate not to use stuff they have spent time on. As a result, Skin Crawl starts out with a prologue about three witches who are praying to some Gia type figure. Suddenly the door bursts open and Puritan characters take one of girls away after spouting some typical dialogue to establish a Christian vs. Wicken theme and mention that the girls' children have been taken away. The men threaten violence to the children if the witches don't cooperate. After raping and killing one of the witches, the survivors decide to use Black Magic to gain vengeance on the men even though it will cost them "three fold". I am not sure how the math here works. If I hit someone in the face with a pie, then I would expect to get hit in return by three pies. But if I kill someone with the spell, how do I get killed three times? We see them pouring blood into a bubbling caldron (actually some Karo syrup with red dye number two into a cast iron pot) and soon a gigantic vaguely demonic figure is seen above the house and we fade out. It is worth noting that all of this footage is shot on low res contrasty video. The special effects are video game quality.

When we fade back in, we see Debbie Rochon in bed (which is not as interesting as it sounds, the covers stay tightly wrapped around her). Quickly it is established that she and her husband are having marital problems. After having the "we have to talk later" discussion in the kitchen, Debbie goes to work and discusses trying to work things out with her husband. On the way back to her car she is attacked, hauled off to the woods and killed. No mention of the curse is made at this point. Instead we get a rewind effect of the previous scenes to the point where Debbie is waking up. The earlier scene is replayed with a couple of cuts and then an additional scene is inserted adding more information about the husband's activities during the day. After going through the day again, we return back to earlier in the day and scenes with the husband and his lover and her lover added. This is actually fairly effective and interesting but has nothing to do with the prologue. Once we have replayed the day five or six times and the whole truth is revealed, Rochon returns as a zombie apparently as a result of the curse and kills all the main characters in mostly uninteresting ways. Julian Wells gets the sole clever death scene. The way the movie moves from a murder mystery to a zombie movie might not have been so jarring if it were not for the tacked on beginning which makes the whole zombie thing at the end feel tacked on as well. The rewind plot device works pretty well but is abandoned when we switch to zombie mode.

Still, Julian Wells has about one nude scene for every clothed scene which is almost enough to distract you from the disjointed feel of the movie, but not quite. Misty Mundae is in the movie long enough to spout a line of dialogue or two and have her neck broken. Like everyone else in the movie the simple expedient of walking away from the zombie never occurs to her. She simply stays put with a mildly surprised look on her face as the zombie kills someone in front of her and then saunters over to kill her. There is a great scene in Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake. At one point the zombies invade the local pub and the people in the pub panic except for this old guy sitting right next to the zombie who just gets up and causally walks away. As the zombie enters the pub fully the patrons flee. Soon after the pub is empty leaving no one for the zombies to munch on. (Notice that I took the high road here and did not end the last sentence ...leaving no one to serve zombies to the zombies.) I have always loved this scene as in almost any zombie movie the zombies are horribly slow. The only way they have any chance to take out a victim is either surprise or numbers. In the case of Skin Crawl there is only one zombie which the victims patiently wait for as she ambles along. Although once a zombie, Rochon's character does have the magical ability to appear behind any door at will which makes some of the chasing easier.

I would recommend watching the movie for the use of the clever rewind plot technique. This type of narrative is tricky to do but is a nice change from the usual linear storylines. Really my biggest complaint about this movie is the way the three segments do not relate to each other well.

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