The Reflecting Skin Movie Review
by Dirtbag
Tonight’s film, The Reflecting Skin (1990) starring Viggo Mortensen, Lindsay Duncan, and Jeremy Cooper, written and directed by Philip Ridley, comes from the Goodwill second-hand store in Los Angeles where Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards split. They had a surprisingly good selection of forgotten VHS tapes, all at $.99 each. Reflecting Skin had a 1956 Cadillac Fleetwood on the back of the box, so I had to buy it.
One of the things I look forward to most about watching movies on VHS are the old previews that often lead me to other movies I would have never otherwise found or wanted to see. The film previews on Reflecting Skin were for The Miracle and Tatie Danielle, which I am going to track down for a later review.
Of the three VHS movies I purchased, Reflecting is the darkest. It is a story of a young boy in the 50′s growing up too fast in a small Idaho town, all the while his friends are being murdered.
The opening scene is a little dark and it only continues to get darker throughout the movie. Rodger Ebert compared it to a David Lynch film but I really saw no relation.
The story follows a few months with a nearly nine-year-old boy named Seth. His home life seems fairly normal but it’s his daily life that has him keeping a cross under his pillow at night. When you are a young child the smallest things can seem like the biggest to you and adults never relate to what you are experiencing.
With a Black Cadillac full of hooligans roaming the town and his older brother dating a vampire, young Seth has quite a bit on his plate. Seems waterboarding was taking place in rural Idaho long before Guantanamo, and that was just for keeping the oil lamp on too late!
After an exploding frog incident involving his friends and the girl next door, he is sent to Dolphin’s house to apologise where he discovers she’s a vampire. The boys discuss how to handle this vampire next door they know they need the help of an angel, but what’s an angel? One boy believes an angel is a baby with wings, the other believes it is a person who doesn’t blink, and Seth has no idea. They all agree when you make your mom cry, an angel dies.
With Seth’s friends being murdered one by one and eye witnessing a suicide via drinking and bathing in gasoline, he must still find a way to save his brother before the girl next door sucks the last bit of life from him. With his best friend reincarnated as an angel fetus at his side, he manages a way to avoid the Cadillac of Death and devises a plan to keep his brother’s youth, but can he keep it all together at only eight years old?
Reflecting Skin doesn’t have much nudity in it; you see Viggo’s hairy chest and his man butt. The only female nudity is a picture of a nude pin-up girl Cameron keeps in his wallet. It did have that Black Cadillac in a few scenes so that was worth the $.99 alone.
I love traveling and finding new film treasures in thrift stores throughout the States. Only the older films are on VHS so you can never go too wrong, even if only the previews are what’s good about it.
Till next time,
The VHS Vagabond,
DIRTBAG
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Reminds me of the time I thought I had purchased Le Femme Nikita on VHS from Salvation Army. Once home, I promptly popped in the the cherry of a cherished tape only to find it must have been Le Femme Naked-a: it was an amateur attempt at recreating the film but with a couple engaging in pornographic acts. Disgusted, I continued to watch until I felt a pang of torment in the bulge of my jeans. It wasn’t arousal: I had a jaw, my own, in my lap from the sheer audacity.
I really hope to find more of their work so daily I’ll scour the Goodwill’s, Salvation Army’s, and Volunteers of America for tattered and abused VHS tapes with videos inside missing the sticker of authenticity.
Shane — :-D Ahhahah… What a story! La Femme Nikita is such a fantastic movie! I might I have to buy that porn Nikita off you. Sounds interesting.