User Reviews

Where to start? Some guy has some Indian pot that he's cleaning, and suddenly Skeletor attacks. He hits a woman in the neck with an axe, she falls down, but then gets up and is apparently uninjured. She runs into the woods, and it turns out there's the basement of a shopping center out there in the woods. She meets a utility worker and Skeletor attacks again. Luckily, like any good utility worker, he's got a gun and shoots at the guy. Doesn't work, everything starts on fire.

Cut to some people walking through the woods. Even though they've been hiking together for some time, they sit down and introduce themselves to each other. Wouldn't they have probably done that when they first met? Anyhow, they're "undercover" Delta team members (undercover, I suppose, because that way they don't have to pay to dress them in uniforms). The cute girls are various things such as a sniper school instructor and, oh, I can't remember the rest. It doesn't matter. Eventually they all take their guns out and immediately start aiming them at various things. ? Anyhow, they meet an old Indian who is sitting out in the woods. He wants beans. You know, like pork and beans? He mumbles some stuff, I can only assume that it's the premise of the movie. I relied on having heard the premise from the commercials, because you can't really understand anything he says.

So, they walk around the woods some more. All the dialogue is a load of quasi-military, macho BS. I mean all of it, as in every single word. Like "This reminds me of when we were in Kabul" or "This reminds me of when we were in Laos". Skeletor attacks again. Let me give you a rundown of a basic attack. One of the female characters is crouched behind a tree and she aims her gun at the approaching guy on the horse. For some reason, she doesn't fire but yells several times for someone else. Then as Skeletor approaches, she jumps out from behind the tree so that Skeletor can stick her with his spear. Then everybody starts shooting. The bullets cause sparks to fly from the trees. Apparently the folks who made this movie never shot a tree with a bullet. They don't make sparks.

Then Casper Van Diem is all of a sudden driving a semi-truck, trying to run over Skeletor. He misses, and the truck slides to a stop. Van Diem is injured, apparently he slid across the seat and bumped his hip on the window crank or something, so he crawls out of the truck and it explodes. Later he's in the woods dying and everybody says a bunch of quasi-military, macho BS. They meet a couple guys in the woods and blow their "undercover" status by immediately identifying themselves as being from the Army. They beat on the guys for some reason, then they go away.

Some other stuff happens, people mumble, the camera shakes, etc.

I think it comes to an end eventually.

My theory is that the Sci-Fi Channel is getting a little annoyed with everyone bashing their movies, so they put this out to remind us all how bad movies can really be. Like, you think our movies are bad? Well, you haven't seen bad. HERE'S BAD!!! Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, the rest of our movies are pretty good in comparison, right?

Well, it's just a theory.

As I write this, no user reviews are in yet, but there are 17 votes with a 4.8 average, so apparently some people thought this movie had its moments. I didn't notice any, and even if I had I don't think I could have stopped rolling my eyes for long enough to appreciate them.

A common debate among movie buffs is whether major mistakes in science, police tactics, and the like so common in B movies should detract significantly from one's enjoyment. I tend to fall into the "Yes, that's a reasonable reaction" camp -- especially when the mistakes are central to the plot. With this movie, I look forward to reading how anyone can defend this mess. They completely botch pretty much every aspect of military tactics and strategy, police tactics, weapons, science, folklore, common sense, and human behavior (outside of B movies, that is.) In short, I can't think of any non-trivial thing they got right.

Any movie would have its work cut out for it when its central premise is a supernatural spirit, impervious to all small arms, able to disappear into another dimension at will, and yet apparently vulnerable to simply a bigger explosion. (They don't make ghosts like they used to.) Combine this premise with every detail being wrong and you have a memorably bad movie.

Bad movies fans rejoice! This movie is flat-out hilariously bad. It has all the hallmarks of a truly awesome bad movie: terrible acting, terrible script, terrible direction, terrible editing, etc. The whole package reeks of glorious ineptitude.

I could write thousands of words in praise of this flick but, alas, I'm only limited to 1k. The premise of the movie is pretty easy to cover, so let's get that out of the way: archaeologists uncover the remains of an American Indian. Indian, referred to as Cotton Mouth Joe (CMJ), _immediately_ returns to the world of the living wearing a very spooky Halloween mask and cape. CMJ proceeds to kill everything in his path, including the majority of a special forces team sent to stop him. CMJ goes head-to-head against Capt. Leary (Micheal Rooker) in the white-knuckle finale. Guess who wins? And now, my favorite part... let's talk about the weak points of the script (SPOILERS to follow -- but I'd suggest it's impossible to spoil this movie).

* The co-ed special forces team sent to stop CMJ contains an "underwater demolitions expert"... but CMJ lives within the heavily forested mountains. Uhhhh.

* CMJ shoots down a helicopter with a bow and arrow (w/o shooting the pilot).

* The action in the movie is supposed to take place "70 kilometers from civilization" and yet our special forces team manages to come across a heavily trafficked road, several power-stations / water treatment facilities, in addition to numerous backpackers, poachers, fishermen, etc.

* Speaking of these "wilderness" power-stations, why do all the employees have automatic weapons?

* Our special forces team manages to load their day-packs with all manner of heavy weapons and ammunition. Even better, our special forces team will routinely, and inexplicably, switch weapons between scenes.

* In a truly hilarious scene, CMJ kills a fisherman who's fishing..... from the edge of a humongous cliff. This dude would have to spool out a hundred yards of line before touching the water.

* For no reason whatsoever the movie continually cuts to this scene of an eagle/hawk that's supposed to be in flight, but it's obviously sitting on some dudes arm. There's no explanation for it at all.

* In a truly priceless segment, we're treated to some of the worst editing of all time. Get this: Sgt. Oberron (Casper Van Dien) discovers a road (in the middle of the woods). Next, we see CMJ hanging out near the road. Then we see, someone, commandeering an 18-wheeler. Quick cut of Sgt. Oberron hanging out in the woods. 18-wheeler careening down the road, presumably to run over CMJ. Cut to Sgt. Oberron hanging out in the woods. 18-wheeler spinning out of control. Cut to Sgt. Oberron hanging out in the woods. 18-wheeler explodes in an apocalyptic ball of fire. Why is this so strange? We learn later that Sgt. Oberron was, in fact, the driver of the 18-wheeler -- even though he's never depicted getting into the vehicle, or even driving the vehicle!! Further, he lives through the explosion and somehow manages to teleport from the road back into the middle of the woods! Too awesome.

This movie is hilariously bewildering. It's like the production team went out into the woods and shot scenes at random, making up the story as they went. Finally: who the heck paid to have this movie made? I really want to know. How could anyone read this script and want to fork over large sums of money to have it made? It's totally insane. You'd have to be legitimately insane to greenlight this movie. I'm glad it was made, because it's hilarious.... but jeez.

That's enough for now. Suffice to say this movie is totally hilarious! Bad movie score 8/10. Good movie score 2/10.

As a helpful warning for others, I believe "Skeleton Man" is actually worse than "Raptor Island." I have been using RI as an example of the worst original movie presented on the Sci-Fi channel, but SM is the most laughably incoherent and wretchedly designed movie I have yet seen. Yes, I did watch almost the whole thing, coming into it about 35 minutes into it. It drew me in with its pure ineptitude. What was Sci-Fi thinking? Once Skeleton Man and the surviving platoon leader (or whatever he was--I'm not good on military unit terminology) reached the chemical plant, the movie moved into a zone of impossible nonsense that was almost mesmerizing. I had the same idea as another viewer who wondered if more than one movie had someone been edited together to make one terrible whole.

I saw this on Sci Fi, and in retrospect, I'm not sure how I actually managed to watch it all the way through. This is utter trash. It's not a B movie, it's a "D movie" at best.

Basically this grim reaper looking thing on a horse (and sometimes not on one) goes killing everything in it's path somewhere in the mid west of America. A load of people are missing (infact murdered) and a bunch of mismatched spec op soldier types go looking for them. The best part of this movie, I'll tell it now, is there's some really cute girls. Let me now spoil this by telling you that all but the least cute one get their heads either chopped off, slashed apart, or hit so hard with a mêlée weapon that the head explodes off. That's no spoiler... The gore in this movie is over the top and really grotesque. It serves no real purpose, either.

Here's what's good: The sets look OK, the actors sometimes act OK, The outfits and props, some of them, are decent.

Everything else that you can think of, sucks. A lot of the badness is in the editing. Some times it just switches over from a rapid action scene to a real quiet and dormant scene. Sometimes the characters do non-understandable things, and they're always splitting up, but not even in a way that the viewer can follow. Looks like they get split up without realizing it amongst themselves but they also all seem to know that they're splitting up all the time and are OK with it even tho they're in a really dangerous situation and there's bodies all over the place and people are dying right and left. Nothing in this movie is the least bit plausible, most of it is incoherent and confusing, and I don't really get how this immortal, indestructible bad guy killer was able to be stopped in the end, and frankly, I don't care. Too much stupid, hilariously bad nonsense happens during this movie and I don't really care to list it all here. And they're all so serious throughout the whole ordeal when it's almost laughably bad... just awful.

This movie is a complete waste of time. There's no excuse for watching this, unless the only channel you happen to receive is SciFi and you're bound to a chair in front of the TV. But if you're not bound, you're better off doing a crossword, throwing a Frisbee, or even just thinking. There's lots of much better B movies that you can watch.

My senior year in high school my friend and I, in visual communication and deign class, made a long movie trailer type deal for our own movie (There was no full movie, just a really long trailer) and we did a better job of filming and editing the piece with premiere. It was better work than this movie. That really says something about this and I'm puzzled and troubled as to why Sci Fi would show anything like this when there are so many good low rate movies they can show.

The only movie that I've ever endured that was worse than this is Raptor Island (another brilliant SciFi work)-though it had smoother and more followable flow than this movie- but this comes very close and is definitely 2nd on my list of worst movies I've ever seen.

This may contain ***SPOILERS***

Where to start on this particular empty wasteland? Well it would have been nice if they actually had a plot. Acting talent, decent dialog, suspense, humor, hey even gratuitous sex would have helped this flick. Unfortunately there was only a lot of gore, (even that wasn't done well), shooting automatic weapons and missing.

There seemed to be no reason to attach the basic premise, a Native American cursed to protect the bodies of the tribe he murdered, with his being tracked down by a Federal Special Ops team who dressed in civvies(?). Most of the time involved violating one of the basic rules of conduct in a Horror movie, separating from the group so you can be picked off one by one. You'd think this team would know better, especially because they are actually the third team sent to investigate, the other two teams disappearing without a trace. When they finally realize they're being picked off they make one of several stands and fire their weapons only to hit the trees a whole lot. Tree shot scene repeats endlessly in this movie to save money.

When they're not shooting trees they're tracking this spirit who leaves no trail, (who knows how they're tracking it), and spouting a lot of macho BS. By the way, did I mention that most of this team are women? Interesting listening to them talk tough. Not very entertaining, but interesting.

All in all, You can find better movies in the bargain bin at Kmart.

I have very few to add to what all the other reviewers already made more than clear! This movie is awful! Beyond awful... In fact, so insufferable that they have yet to come up with a term to describe the awfulness that is "Skeleton Man". In case you expect your movies to feature a minimum of logic and plot, you should stay as far away from this as humanly possible. Sure, loads of people are getting killed by this skeleton-puppet wearing a ridiculous cape, but nobody ever bothers to properly explain what he is, where he comes from or why he's so angry with the world. He looks like a crossover between Skeletor from "Masters of the Universe" and the horseman from "Sleepy Hollow" and runs amok in some godforsaken wilderness. The setting of "Skeleton Man" is another totally retarded aspect! For nearly half an hour, I assumed that the movie took place at a small isolated island, but it simply plays at the mainland where fancy highways cross the forest and power plants are located at the end of the woods! Huh? Why does everybody pretend to be trapped when there are like a million escape routes? Anyway, after a couple of totally random killings, a special commando squad, led by poor washed-up Michael Rooker, arrives to come and hunt a monster they don't know anything about. Really hilarious is how every member of this squad introduces him/herself as the expert in a certain field (we have a sniper-specialist, a tracking genius, a drill instructor...), yet they ALL die before any of them is able to demonstrate their supposedly masterful skills! The horror Gods must really hate Casper Van Dien, as he's present again as well, portraying an heroic soldier who steals a truck for no apparent reason, crashes on the highway, but somehow gets catapulted back to the middle of the woods to die there. Right, that makes sense... Furthermore the characters steal cool one-liners from "Predator", the bonehead's horse constantly changes colors, helicopters are brought down with bow& arrows, ordinary bullets cause trees to explode and completely pointless Vietnam flashbacks haunt Michael Rooker. I say we all combine forces and vote this pathetic flick into the IMDb bottom top 100 ASAP!

The B movie studio Nu Image has made some good direct to video movies over the years. Unfortunately, "Skeleton Man" is not one of them. In fact, I think that this could be the worst effort to date that's come out of the company. For starters, it looks really cheap. Everything about the movie looks real tacky, especially the title monster, which looks like it was put together from Halloween product offered at a dollar store. The characters are just as unengaging - there is precious little development done with these people. They are simply bait for the monster. The movie is also badly directed. It's slow and endless, and the, ahem, horror sequences have absolutely no shocks or even serviceable splatter. But I think the worst thing about the movie is that there is NO real explanation for why the title figure has appeared and why it's doing what it's doing. Does it have to do with the archaeological dig mentioned in the first scene? Does it have to do with the Native American the team finds in the woods at one point? It's never made clear. This movie is junk in every way you can think of. If it had been unintentionally funny, there might have been a reason to see it, but this is one bad movie that's so bad it's bad.

Was this supposed to be a comedy? The black cape and skeleton mask are hilarious. There is like zero plot. The movie starts out with an archaeologist and his assistant. They make a small mention of their dig site being cursed. And then, lo and behold......in drops Halloween Costume Man, dressed in the shiny black cape, with a skeleton mask face, holding an axe. So, he kills off these two people. Then we cut to the woods with a bad imitation of Predator, only the commandos are being hunted down by Halloween Costume Man who is now riding a horse! More commandos show up, but these people are supposed to be disguised as a hiking group. Yeah, production probably ran out of commando costumes. Can you say, low budget? Anyway, they come upon a lone old Indian guy sitting in the woods. He's just too funny. And he starts babbling about something, but you really don't know what he's mumbling about, so they flashback to some Indians getting killed. None of it really makes sense. And then we go back to our commandos where more of them get killed. And that's really basically the plot. It's so laughably bad, you just can't really look away because you want to see just how low it sinks. You could make the same movie with a camcorder, a Halloween Costume and a bunch of your friends with fake guns. Don't see this thing if you want a horror movie. If you want a comedy, maybe? Or just skip it and get something like the real Predator.

In an unspecified wilderness of the American West, the spirit of an Indian goes hunting for humans. Years before he wiped out in a fit of madness and its trunk is now back to demand more of life. After two archaeologists and a team of military his sword (!) Have fallen victim to be an undercover team of Special Forces, led by Captain Leary (Michael Rooker) and Staff Sgt Oberron (Casper Van Dien) charged with the murder to put an end to ...

It is completely funny film. Don't take it seriously. Never take such a film seriously... I mean come on, even the title is ridiculous. I mean sure if you are one of those people who don't see the point in B-type horror or other films like this then this is not for you. Can't blame you... but even if America has brought us shitty wars, then this is their better side the not so serious. I mean what are the actors thinking? How can they do their roles in such seriousness when the Skeleton Man enters... I sure couldn't could you?