Skeleton Man



This weekend I watched the previous weekend’s Sci Fi Channel “original movie” Skeleton Man (2004). I have to write about it quickly because it’s already starting to fade from my memory.



It starts out with Casper Van Dien (if you’re old enough, you may remember a time when he was in movies that appeared in actual theaters) as an archeologist who has been paid a lot of money to dig up some Native American burial ground. While examining the artifacts he is attacked by a figure in a cloak. The figure kills the archeologist and his wife, and a few other people for good measure.

At this point I admit I was rather intrigued. While the whole “Indian burial ground” angle implies yet another “monster on the loose” picture from Nu Image (a company that specializes in low budget movies about giant animals and insects), the cloaked figure was obviously wearing a store bought skull mask. Not the cheapest one you might find, but still not at all convincing as an actual skull. Moreover the figure’s cloak was made of synthetic silk substitute. Could this movie be a bait and switch? Are we supposed to assume that the monster is the result of a curse, but it’s really just a person in a costume trying to scam his way into some of the money mentioned earlier? That would be pretty cool, and a nice tweak of the hoary formula.

All my hopes were dashed in the next scene. We see the figure, now riding on horseback, killing off some generic soldiers in a generic forest. Another unit is sent after the killer, this one led by Michael Rooker, and featuring two girls for every guy. This really is just another awful monster on the loose film, with what's supposed to be a Native American spirit warrior dressed up in a retail fright mask and cheap cloak. I'd hate to think that the money they saved on the monster went to many gratuitous explosions that pepper the film, because that would be sad. We can see explosions in any old action film, in a monster movie we at least expect the monster to be interesting. I had to wonder if the movie started out as something very different, because the monster MO changes radically from one section of the movie to another. Early and late in the movie Skeleton man uses a modern axe, but in the woods he uses more primitive weapons. And none of his killing sprees are explained.

While tromping around the woods our heroes run into an old Native chief who tells a story about a warrior who killed his entire tribe during a religious ceremony. This warrior is known as "Cottonmouth Joe," he says, which I thought was supposed to be a joke, a goof on the horrible song "Cotton-Eye Joe." But no one laughed, and I've read that "Cottonmouth Joe" was the original title of the movie.

Our heroes slog through the woods some more, occasionally spotting Cottonmouth Joe and shooting at him to no great effect. He beheads various people until only Rooker is left, and the scene abruptly switches to chemical plant that Rooker causes to explode, somehow killing the Native American spirit. By the end of the movie my spirit had died too.

Posted: Mon - March 14, 2005 at      

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