Skin Gang, directed by Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, follows the various sexual and violent escapades of several skinheads. The film raised a great amount of controversy when it premiered in 1999, as many viewers were disturbed by its violent and sexual content, and many critics within the gay community criticized it for perpetuating negative stereotypes about homosexuals and for glorifying violence.
As is typical of films directed by LaBruce, Skin Gang contains a great deal of sexually explicit content, which generally causes it to be categorized as adult or pornographic material. A strong theme in the film is sado-masochism. One infamous scene involves a character masturbating and ejaculating onto a copy of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. Another scene, in which a gang of skin heads break into the apartment of an interracial couple and rape and torture them, caused walk-outs at film festivals.
The film was produced and shot in the U.S., England and Germany. It was co-produced with Cazzo Film, a German gay porn company that produced a similar video, Sex Skins, in 2000. Skin Gang is available in a softcore re-edited version entitled Skin Flick.
Famous quotes containing the words skin and/or gang:
“Whether you want it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin a political tone.
your eyes a political color.
...
you walk with political steps
on political ground.”
—Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)