By LINNEA QUIGLEY, DAN GOLDEN (Draculina Publishing; 1995)
The object of this glossy large format paperback was to spoof Madonna’s SEX. That 1992 tome, for those who don’t remember, was a coffee table book that consisted mostly of saucy (but not quite pornographic) photographs of Madonna in various sexual situations, with a supporting cast that included Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Naomi Campbell and Vanilla Ice, interspaced with “poetic” ruminations and letters from someone named Dita (Madonna’s alter ego, apparently) to her lover John. The book, needless to add, was a massive bestseller.
In SKIN the veteran B-movie scream queen Linnea Quigley and Draculina Publishing give Madonna’s tome a careful once-over, replicating its design and attitude with impressive fidelity. The major difference is that SKIN, in keeping with Ms. Quigley’s scream queen title, is explicitly horror-themed.
The famous opening lines of SEX, “THIS BOOK IS ABOUT SEX. SEX IS NOT LOVE. LOVE IS NOT SEX. BUT THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS IS CREATED WHEN THEY COME TOGETHER,” are tweaked here in the lines “THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT SKIN. SKIN CAN BE THIN. ALTHOUGH BEING THIN DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE THIN-SKINNED.” From there we’re introduced to Derma, who in place of Madonna’s notorious “I like my pussy” soliloquy gives us “I love my uvula” (because “screaming is my business, so I need my uvula to make money”). SEX’s hand written letters from Dita are likewise adroitly mocked in these pages, as in one reading “I invited Dracula to join us outside…he and the werewolf took turns eating my pussy, so now I have to get a new cat!”
The photography by Dan Golden likewise deserves credit for how accurately it replicates the look of SEX, down to the not-quite-X-rated sexual content. We see Linnea canoodling with rotting corpses, straddling a skeleton on a beach (“Talk about jumpin’ somebody’s bones! And speaking of boners, everything on this guy was hard”) and fondling herself with a severed hand, amid cameo appearances by horror hotshots like CANDYMAN’S Tony Todd, Gunnar Hansen (pictured, appropriately enough, wielding a chainsaw) and several of Linnea’s fellow scream queens.
What might somebody unfamiliar with Madonna’s opus get out of SKIN? Not much, I’m guessing. But taken strictly as a parody it works undeniably well, being a beautifully designed and, most importantly, fun book.