EDITOR’S NOTE: Skin Deep was on USA Up All Night on August 19, 1995; October 11, 1996 and April 19, 1997.

I don’t understand myself. I will defend absolute scumbags like Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco as artists but feel like I need a shower every time I watch a Blake Edwards movie. This has the plot of nearly every one of his movies that I’ve ever seen: Zachary “Zach” Hutton (John Ritter) is an author who has a weakness for alcohol and beautiful women. Hijinks ensue.

The movie starts with his mistress (Denise Crosby) catching him in bed with his hairdryer and they’re all caught by his wife Alex (Alyson Reed). What follows is basically Zach getting laid and nearly killed by a whole bunch of women, including the deranged Molly (Julianne Phillips) who hooks him up to a skin-treatment electro-therapy machine that gives him spasms, a glow-in-the-dark condom sex scene with Amy (Chelsea Field) and being carried to bed by bodybuilder Lonnie Jones, who is played by Raye Hollitt, Zap of American Gladiators. She comes off as the most positive and fun of all the women, despite him clearly being worried that she has such obviously masculine qualities. In fact, she dwarfs Zach who says that he feels like Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Ritter is fine in this but the role was written for Dudley Moore. Dudley Moore in mind. Moore felt the part was too similar to 10 so he turned it town. This led to a rift between him and Edwards. That may be why the original title was 11. This also feels like IMDB BS to me.

At the very least, Vincent Gardenia is good in this.

Seriously, for all the lessons that Zach is supposed to learn, he really doesn’t learn much. We are in his corner only because he is the hero of the movie and at times, I wasn’t in his corner in the least. What a waste of the charming Ritter, as Edwards keeps making movies about white upper class men ruining their lives through drinking and women only to lose nothing. They’re still running their world at the end, no matter what.

At least in D’Amato movies, the rich are shown to be snuff film watching maniacs and are outsmarted by a gorgeous sex positive woman of color.

You can watch this on Tubi.