In the Flesh

B. Skow and his uncredited teammate David Stanley hit rock bottom with "In the Flesh", a disastrous barrage of attempted sexual humor at the expense of religion. Under the banner of porn's twin phony cloaks of opposing religious sanctions against obscenity/free speech and the outlaw/bad boy image, the deadly duo insult one's intelligence throughout, dragging some talented and several unknown performers through the gutter. It's neither sexually stimulating nor entertaining, just stupid.

With sickly sentimental music droning (one sex scene is scored to "Silent Night") this pretentious mess opens with a long screen crawl "explaining" to us dunderheads what's a-foot: it's posited that Shame is the root of all evil (one would think pornographers would be ready to admit to the cliché of Money in that spot, but not this time) and so Jesus in the form of Alec Knight (very poor casting) returns to Earth to save mankind once more. Only this time he crudely preaches the endlessly repeated phrase "Go f*ck yourselves".

I've seen other Skow videos where he thinks mindlessness is funny, for example the "critically acclaimed" 1-joke (Voodoo with a small prosthetic dick) stinker "The Pinch", but this is perhaps his worst. Knight's other catch phrase is his constant insistence that he's "only a man", and sure enough his character is identified in the end credits as "A Man".

But he frequently glows, emitting a holy white light which is the show's cheap special effect that instantly makes believers of us all, or at least his fellow cast members. With Texas/Southern accents that vary scene to scene and even line to line, the players are awful, particularly Steven St. Croix cast as the devil, who in the wake of flamboyant Tom Ellis's performance currently in the role on TV's "Lucifer" is actually dull rather than delivering the expected over-the- top crumminess.

Another terrible casting is untalented Dick Chibbles as a local sheriff (or Texas Ranger as he calls himself at one point), intent on torturing Alec until he sees The Light. Chibbles is married to luscious Mercedes Carrera, the only performer who almost emerges unscathed from this fiasco, by virtue of her inherent sexiness.

Her femme co-stars are pitiful, no-name casting that makes one wonder if moneybags Girlfriends Films, which bankrolled this loser was on an austerity kick when it was shot. Kasey Warner as Dick & Mercedes' daughter is thoroughly unappealing; Dakota James a walk-on (or actually hump-on) as a hippie contributing requisite interracial sex in the opening scene with Karlo Karrera; and Raven Bay and Kassondra Raines a yawn in a foursome that ends the mess. Typical DVD sloppiness has three different actresses credited in the Menu for scene-by-scene breakdown, none of them showing up for work or in the finished print: Daisy Haze replaced by Dakota, Sara Luvv supposedly in Kasey's role, and Samantha Rone missing in action when Raven Bay humps instead.

Nothing interesting happens over the course of two hours-plus, just Alec looking smarmy and folks humping on cue. Bad jokes abound, and I would guess only morons who like to watch intentionally poor material (think Troma) could enjoy this. For Girlfriends in-joking, a LaMoyne neon sign left over from the lesbian label's hit "Twisted Passions" series (set at Lamoyne Hotel) appears in Chibbles' home and later in a local lodge basement where Knight silently (we only listen to a femme narrator's drivel instead) delivers a second Sermon on the Mount.