This rare Italian action adventure tells the story of a broke man called Rudy, who goes into the African jungle to join his half-brother Franz. Franz is leader of a mercenary group that fights against native rebels, but Rudy only wants some money from his next of kin (on one occasion, he says: "You know I can't stand violence"). But Franz, a racist who sees Africans merely as animals, just wants him to leave again immediately. Then, Franz gets abducted and imprisoned by the rebels. Rudy joins forces with the other mercenaries, who are as fascist as Franz and like to kill Africans and rape their wives. He does so to make a deal with Franz as soon as they have freed him, but the mercenaries get attacked on more than one occasion by the natives.
This tedious piece of sleaze is barely watchable. Not because it's too violent or so, but for a whole bunch of other reasons: It's extremely boring, the acting is ridiculously bad, there are painstakingly racist moments (even though the mercenaries themselves are portrayed to be the scum of the earth), Mario Siciliano's direction is awfully uninspired and Stelvio Cipriani's score may well be by far the worst he's ever composed. And even though the film has a high body count, almost no drops of blood are spilled. The title is a "lie", because nobody gets skinned alive or even skinned at all: There are just verbal threats of getting skinned alive, but it never happens. All in all, "Scorticateli Vivi" is a waste of time that's just not worth watching.
This is one of the few forgotten films that really don't need to be rediscovered for distribution. Rating: 1 out of 10 - and that's almost an honor for this abysmal mess.
