Skin Gang

Auteur Bruce LaBruce, whose Hustler White repeatedly flirted with the conventions of gay pornography, went all the way to create this, his first hardcore effort. Entitled Skin Gang, it is a riveting, disturbing look at modern society. With his trademark grittiness, freewheeling narrative line, and documentary approach, LaBruce here records the actions of a marauding group of skinheads for whom fighting is an integral part of their social - and sexual - interplay. In short, it is a fascinatingly nasty little film After an opening montage, Skin Gang actually begins by zeroing in on an ambivalent youth, Manfred (Tom Vincent) in a solo session during which he shifts from looking at girlie magazines to Mein Kampf in order to bring himself off. Meanwhile, Wolfgang (Ralf Steel) steals some money from a woman on a park bench, and when he realizes he has been observed by a proper, bespectacled passerby, Karl (Jens Hammer), he follows him into a public restroom where they cruise each other and have rough manual-oral-anal sex. Apparently Hammer's character has his own darker side, for he (literally) rises to the callous sexplay instigated by Steel. Cross cut with this scene is another in which LaBruce at first seems to be satirizing that oldest of porn cliches: the plumber under the sink (Darren James, an Aryan prototype) and the client whose pipes need cleaning out (Bastian, a light-skinned black). Both sequences are hyper-intense, especially during the parallel anal action as Hammer and Bastian are subjected to extensive heavy-duty plowing by their skinhead topmen. Later, as two of the gang members (Steve Master and Eden Miller) prowl the streets, generally wreaking havoc, they come upon Vincent, who wants to join the gang. The next explicit action occurs in a funky apartment where Master, Miller, and Vincent are joined by Tom International and Steel again to drink beer and watch straight porno movies. (A poster of Clockwork Orange is prominently displayed on the wall of the place.) Soon Master and Miller retreat to the bedroom to attack each other in a rough-and-tumble, highly competitive flip-flop that is the sexual zenith of the film, while Steel and International go at it in the living room as Vincent watches, jacks off, and eventually joins in. The film next returns to Hammer and Bastian, who turn out to be lovers happily ensconced in an upper middle-class apartment where they make gentle, affirmative love. But the idyll does not last long, for soon the skinheads have broken into their happy home. With a knife to his throat, Hammer is forced to fuck Bastian, whom the intruders assume is his "houseboy." Racial epithets fly, and soon a chant begins to build: "I've never fucked a monkey before." The scene escalates into a gangfuck, a murder, and Hammer seeking revenge on the leader of the pack (Master) by forcing him to have sex at gunpoint. The sequence is electrifying. And the final moments of the film are as bleak and ambiguous as the rest of it. The non-sexual sequences are primarily shot in black and white, hand-held-camera style, while the sex scenes are mostly shot in color with a slick, professional awareness of the specific demands of explicit filmmaking. The results feel like the work of two different directors, and though they are jarring, they are not off-putting. Skin Gang, then, is like a bloody automobile accident. The viewer winces at the sight, but he cannot take his eyes away from it. Cast: Jens Hammer, Ralf Steel, Tim Vincent, Steve Masters, Eden Miller, Tom International, Niki Richardson, Darren James, Bastian, Others