Skin Deep (1978)
In small town Carlton Bob, the head of the Progressive Association, the local accountant and the boxing coach at the men-only gym, hires a masseuse from Auckland. Sandra is quite happy to give straight massage, but Bob pressures her to give "city massages". The wives are disturbed by her presence - perhaps with some justification. The climax occurs when accountant Phil, wants to leave his wife for Sandra; but when she rejects him, he smashes up the gym. The boys rally round to hush up Phil's indiscretion.
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To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.
The acting in this movie is really good.
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
This was made back when Holdens and Fords used to line the streets of New Zealand towns. Ken Blackburn - as business and community leader Bob Warner - is the film's major merit ; an insidiously naive opportunist who wheels and deals beneath a cloak of civic respectability. Trouble brews when Sandra (Deryn Cooper) arrives from the big city to take up a health massage job at the men's gym. She's been 'round the block a few times and won't take no nonsense from the local clowns, least of all Bob, who in between working bees and maintaining his Stepford wife, fancies on expanding Sandra's job description. Skin Deep is a blackly comic and insightful drama surrounding the self-serving social inadequacies of a group of men in a small town. Produced when the New Zealand film industry was in it's infancy, Skin Deep remains one of country's most memorable films.