Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

ConsistentlyFalconer This early talkie suffers from the fact Hitchcock was rather hemmed in by the John Galsworthy play it's adapted from. He wasn't allowed to influence the script it as much as he was later in his career, and so it's not quite as human as you'd expect. And of course some of the characters' attitudes (especially towards women) are very much of their time.As a grim drama, it's not bad at all. It's a decent story with a good old-fashioned moral at the end of it. Edmund Gwenn is an actor I would loved to have seen on stage in his heyday, and his performance is excellent here - it's just a shame it's all-but-ruined by his horrendous Generic Middle Class Industrialist Regional Accent, which seems to be half Yorkshire and half Brummie. There are a couple of interesting moments in terms of filmmaking - the hectic market scene; a cut from what we think is a view out of the window to a poster on a wall; and of course the rather daring (for the time) whip pans in the auction scene. Hitchcock also chooses to have several large chunks of dialogue delivered off screen, too, another in the long list of Voyeuristic Hitchcock Moments.Verdict: If you're looking for classic Hitchcock, look elsewhere. yetanotherfilmreviewblog.tumblr.com

Michael Rhodes When people first hear the title of this film they often think that it is either pornographic or a very violent film involving mutilation of some sort. Let me clear the air by first saying that it is as far as you can get from either of those things. The movie is really about two warring families: the Hillcrists and the Hornblowers. The Hornblowers are attempting to urbanize a particular area and to do such they are purchasing every piece of land in the area but the Hillcrists who has lived in the area for generations do not want the last area of land to be bought up. So a bidding battle begins at the auction house and the battle between the families becomes fiercer than ever. The story is actually pretty interesting and worthwhile with neither family being shown as being right or wrong. It's really up to the audience to decide which family is correct which is good storytelling. So overall a pretty interesting and entertaining story even if the film does end really abruptly.The acting in the film is underrated but still not anything amazing. C.V. France plays Mr. Hillcrist and Helen Haye plays Mrs. Hillcrist. France does a standup job in his role and really seems like a fierce old man with a firm belief in protecting the land. Helen Haye on the other hand is a weak actress who really doesn't bring anything to the role and really doesn't make the character seem like she cares about what is even going on. Edmund Gwenn plays Mr. Hornblower and he is probably the best actor in this picture. He seems like a real businessman who knows his goal and how to get there. And as for the other actors and actresses in the film, they are all mediocre with no real standouts. So a mixed bag of sorts but not as bad as most people seem to think.As for the special effects here, you have some pretty decent ones for 1931. All of the sets look really good and the drowned corpse at the end looks really realistic for the time. Now the sound doesn't have nearly the same level of perfection. It cuts out constantly and some parts seem nearly muted which is really bad for any movie of any time period! So great special effects but mediocre music and terrible sound.To sum up my thoughts on The Skin Game I'll say that it adapts the original play very well especially since plays rarely work in movie format. The story is incredibly entertaining and well done although it has a very abrupt ending which makes me wish that the movie had gone on a little bit longer. One major problem here is the camera which will often chop off people's heads at the top of the screen or keep jittering around which feels really unprofessional. And as for everything else the acting is a mixed bag, the special effects are great, and the sound is abysmal. So a lot of positive and negative qualities in this movie really make it a mixed bag of a film. Check it out if you are a fan of the original play or Alfred Hitchcock's work but don't go out of your way to see it. Score: 5/10

mikhail080 I recently saw Hitchcock's "Rich and Strange" and really enjoyed it, so I was game for another go at this early 1930's British cinema, in my attempt to become a "Hitchcock completist." Please keep in mind that I'm an American with a pretty-good ear for British dialog, but there are some speeches contained here that I couldn't understand in the least. But only a fairly small portion that is. The early sound equipment doesn't help either.The title "The Skin Game" refers to a heated altercation that leaves no holds barred, and no prisoners taken. The plot line is essentially a "Hatfields and McCoys" family feud over land rights, with a lot of dirt being dug up on both families involved. Like pretty much all early sound films, there is a heavy reliance on dialog and the spoken phrase, which makes "The Skin Game" obviously derived from the stage.At the beginning there's a long take with probably ten pages of dialog in it, using a medium shot of three characters, with the camera panning between them. At least once, someone was speaking dialog while not on camera, which I always find distracting -- a minor flaw I admit, but noticeable. Hitchcock's pacing feels relatively quick considering, and he keeps interest in these scenes with dramatic exits and entrances of characters, and revelations of plot details.Really some of these takes were so long that actors coughed, dropped things and retrieved them, and other apparent flubs that were never re-shot. Seems like once the director was five minutes into a scene he couldn't afford the film stock to begin again, so there are a lot of miscues and such, which kind of adds to the immediacy. Especially considering that I'm certain that even the young Hitchcock was keenly aware of every missed cue and dropped line, and it had to drive him to distraction! I was certainly impressed by this early Hitchcock effort and I'm sure that audiences back then went away from this one with the feeling that they got their money's worth. It was apparent that an extremely talented film maker was at work here, trying to keep the audience involved every step of the way. And he did succeed actually.For instance, there is a scene at an auction house that lasts for about ten minutes, and Hitchcock sets it up in such a way to keep the audience anxiously awaiting the outcome. He has the camera making very fast pans from one bidder to the next, slowing down only when the bidding does. The audience has some background information about the proceedings, but not enough to spoil the surprise at the end.It's early sound cinema -- so most viewers today can't bear this kind of thing, but if you're familiar with and enjoy films of the early 20Th Century, it's extremely enjoyable and does have a payoff at the end! *** out of *****

federovsky For Hitchcock scholars only. Image quality is murky and the extremely poor sound makes it quite hard to hear what is being said. The acting is rather turgid. Characters don't quite seem able to attain anything recognisably human - perhaps because of the theatrical origins of the piece, but mainly because Hitchcock hadn't yet unpicked the psychological key to making films.The stand-out thing is the auction scene where whip-pans flash around the room and there is a nice twist at the end of the bidding - ah, so it is Hitchcock. The rest of the film - a battle of wills between some landed gentry and an encroaching industrialist - is static and dreary and the only point of interest is the array of fascinating English accents now all but extinct.